702959 - Allow switching to left-handed use

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Theme and Visual Design, defect, P4)

Description

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

The design on phone (native) and on tablet (XUL, at the moment) both make a lot of tradeoffs in favour of right-handed use. We should allow switching into a more left-hand-specific layout.

Comment 1

[Cristian Nicolae (:xti)]

This feature will be noticeable for large screen phones (like Samsung Note 7000, Galaxy S2, Droid Razr, Galaxy Nexus) and especially for tablets. 
For example Tab Menu button/Tab panel could be moved could be moved accordingly to the desired hand usage.

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Implementers working on this bug should also take into account RTL languages, which I suspect will also have an effect. So we need a solution for:

A) Right-handed user, LTR language
B) Left-handed user, LTR language
C) Right-handed user, RTL language
D) Left-handed user, RTL language

My gut tells me that A and D will not actually be the same, nor will B and C.

Gerv

Comment 3

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

I'm also wondering what "left-hand-specific" means, because I'm right-hand dominant but tend to hold my phone in my left hand. Finding the new tab-button placement very inconvenient.

My US$0.02 for this bug would be: Please aim to keep the UI neutral with respect to handedness. Maybe keep the most-used controls within the union of the areas in reach of average-length left OR right thumbs. The old hidden-to-the-sides UI felt like that to me, though admittedly I have longer-than-average thumbs.

Comment 4

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

(In reply to Cristian Nicolae (:xti) from comment #1)
> This feature will be noticeable for large screen phones (like Samsung Note
> 7000, Galaxy S2, Droid Razr, Galaxy Nexus) and especially for tablets. 
> For example Tab Menu button/Tab panel could be moved could be moved
> accordingly to the desired hand usage.

This has been my experience. The placement of the new tab button wasn't really an issue on my HTC Desire but the button is pretty much out of reach on the Galaxy S II.

Comment 5

[Les Orchard [:lorchard]]

This only frustrates me more, every day I use Nightly on my Motorola Photon. 

Would it be worth filing another bug to get "New tab" added to the menu, like it is in the stock Android browser? IMO, the top & corners of the phone are the worst placement for UI elements considering the overlap between either thumb's arc of reach. But, I can at least hit the menu softkey easily with either thumb.

I'd rather have something ambidextrous than the option to switch handedness - because I'd want to switch it all the time.

Comment 7

[Chris Pearce [:cpearce (Not reading bugmail)]]

I commonly use my phone with my right hand, and I find the close tab buttons a strain to reach with my right thumb. It seems to me that there's no one solution that would please everybody, W.R.T. button placement, so the ideal solution would be to enable switching between "important UI on the left" and "important UI on the right" modes.

Comment 8

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Maybe this would make a good project for a team of students or a highly motivated contributor, if someone is willing to mentor it...

Comment 9

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

See "Mobile Firefox RTL Support" here: http://ucosp.ca/projects/

Comment 10

[Danielle]

Hello, could you please assign me to this bug. I am a member of the RTL team that will be completing this bug as part of our UCOSP student project with Mozilla. 

Thanks, 
Danielle

Comment 11

[Danielle]

Mark: Thanks!

Comment 12

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

Hi,

I'd like to suggest having the RTL communities to participate in testing for RTL support. Please let me know if we (the Israeli community) can help with testing on various devices available on the local market.

Comment 14

[ferongr]

Has the assignee abandoned the bug? Fennec is almost unusable for left-handed users. This issue is exacerbated by the complete lack of tabswitching gestures (Chrome has some greatly working swipe gestures to switch tabs or open the tab card view).

Comment 15

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

I don't believe anyone is working on this or what happened to the work in progress here. There are further tab interaction improvements coming along sometime soon, maybe Ian can point this bug at some RTL considerations?

Comment 16

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to Aaron Train [:aaronmt] from comment #15)
> I don't believe anyone is working on this or what happened to the work in
> progress here. There are further tab interaction improvements coming along
> sometime soon, maybe Ian can point this bug at some RTL considerations?

Some of the newer designs are in the early stages, so I don't have much to share in that regard. However bug 909434 is about allowing users to open the tab tray by dragging down from the title bar. Actually not unlike what ferongr is describing here.

Comment 17

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

I don't think this blocks RTL work. RTL will involve some layout changes, but that's not the same as fixing this bug.

Comment 18

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.