I went ahead and continued working on the patch a bit more today after speaking to the search team on Matrix. They informed me that one of the considerations of the megabar redesign was to ensure that users always knew that their input focus was on the address bar when opening tabs, so that they "clearly know the current focus state of your application". I took a look at Safari on macOS and GNOME Web on Linux and it looked to me that the border that they showed around their address bars were thicker than the one in Firefox currently. In order to solve for this need, I went ahead and added this to the patch in all modes (not just compact) - of course, this can be committed in a separate bug if preferred for organizational purposes. I think it looks pretty good in all modes, so I hope that this makes sense. Additionally, I went ahead and fixed the other big issue I had noted in the previous patch -- the one off search panel at the bottom of the suggestions panel looked way too large for the compact mode. The padding here has been modified and I think *that* looks good too (no modification in any mode but compact). Lastly, while I continued abstain from expansion on focus (since that now feels solved with a larger border), the input area inside the address bar looked too short as I typed into it in the context of the rest of the popup panel that appears when suggestions are shown. For that issue, I went ahead re-enabled the expansion at the top of the panel when the panel is expanded - it overall leads to a more balanced look, in my opinion. I would love to discuss this further to see if this is palatable to the team and to our userbase. Video attached.
Bug 1630508 Comment 12 Edit History
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I went ahead and continued working on the patch a bit more today after speaking to the search team on Matrix. They informed me that one of the considerations of the megabar redesign was to ensure that users always knew that their input focus was on the address bar when opening tabs, so that they "clearly know the current focus state of your application". I took a look at Safari on macOS and GNOME Web on Linux and it looked to me that the border that they showed around their address bars were thicker than the one in Firefox currently. In order to solve for this need, I went ahead and added this to the patch in all modes (not just compact) - of course, this can be committed in a separate bug if preferred for organizational purposes. I think it looks pretty good in all modes, so I hope that this makes sense. Additionally, I went ahead and fixed the other big issue I had noted in the previous patch -- the one off search panel at the bottom of the suggestions panel looked way too large for the compact mode. The padding here has been modified and I think *that* looks good too (no modification in any mode but compact). Lastly, while I continued to abstain from expansion on focus (since that now feels solved with a larger border), the input area inside the address bar looked too short as I typed into it in the context of the rest of the popup panel that appears when suggestions are shown. For that issue, I went ahead re-enabled the expansion at the top of the panel when the panel is expanded - it overall leads to a more balanced look, in my opinion. I would love to discuss this further to see if this is palatable to the team and to our userbase. Video attached.