703347 - Add a background image for the "void beneath" the web

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Attachment: Current grey background

Right now, if I scroll past the edge of the web view, I see a grey background. 

It'd be a nice design detail to reveal a subtle background texture, instead. I don't have an image yet, but can make one, if we can do this

Comment 1

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Attachment: Currrent background (previous screen shot was busted)

Comment 2

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Let's not do something that causes a performance regression though. The checkerboard in XUL caused a performance regression.

Comment 3

[Lucas Rocha (:lucasr)]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #2)
> Let's not do something that causes a performance regression though. The
> checkerboard in XUL caused a performance regression.

The "void beneath" the web page is not necessarily equivalent to the checkerboard I think. I guess Ian means the area that becomes visible when you scroll beyond the page boundaries.

I agree it would be a nice touch if we had a subtle texture there. One that doesn't impact performance, of course :-)

(This is P5 material though...)

Comment 4

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

We used to have a background there in the birch-pan-zoom patch queue, but it was taken out. Not sure why, I kind of liked it :)

Comment 6

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Do we still want this? Ian: if so, please add the desired texture to this bug and I can add it.

Comment 7

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Attachment: Background image for tiling

Hey kats, thanks for reminding me! Attached is an image you can try using in the background. Size as, tiled vertically and horizontally please :)

Comment 8

[Sriram Ramasubramanian [:sriram]]

Please place the texture in "drawable-nodpi/" folder so that it doesnt scale for different dpi's. Also, please rename it to very_dark_grey.png to be consistent with a change I'm planning to make in next few days.

Comment 9

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Attachment: Apply background image

ibarlow: I have a patch for this, but to be honest on my devices the texture isn't really visible, it's too subtle and just looks like a plain dark gray background. I had to draw a bright yellow rectangle on it while testing to verify it was actually getting drawn. Maybe a different texture would work better? I have a build with the texture applied at https://people.mozilla.com/~kgupta/tmp/bgvoid.apk if you want to try it out.

Also, I had to resize the texture to 128x128 so that it's a power-of-two size for tiling. I just use OS X Preview to do the resize; if scaling up with that is going to be a problem it would be better to generate the texture at 128x128 originally rather than 100x100.

Comment 10

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Hi Kats, thanks for the build. I agree, it's a little too subtle, so I'll make a new, granier image for you (at 128x128) and post it here shortly.

Comment 11

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Attachment: Background image for tiling

Hi Kats, here's an updated image that has a little more contrast applied, let's see if this looks better. It's also been sized up to 128x128

Comment 12

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Attachment: Apply background image

Comment 13

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Attachment: Apply background image

Same patch, but now also contains the binary for the image file (my git show alias was missing the --binary flag).

Comment 14

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Comment on attachment 589818 [details] [diff] [review]
Apply background image

Review of attachment 589818 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

r+, but I worry that this causes significant over-draw without any clipping. We probably needn't worry, given how simple our scene is though.

Comment 15

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/fd479cee8771

Comment 16

[[not reading bugmail]]

This cleanup seems nice and all, but I still don't see why we need it at all.  You can even pan the page off into this void of space.. it looks gross, left, right or top.   I understand if the checker boarding happens at the bottom of a page, but it just looks like a webpage in space and its not even zoomed out.  FWIW, The stock browser doesn't have this outer space beyond the webpage, and its one of the reasons I cannot stand to use fennec.  It seems were avoiding the real problem by covering up the terrible UX with a texture.

Comment 17

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

(In reply to Dennis "Dale" Y. [:cuz84d] from comment #16)
> This cleanup seems nice and all, but I still don't see why we need it at
> all.  You can even pan the page off into this void of space.. it looks
> gross, left, right or top.   I understand if the checker boarding happens at
> the bottom of a page, but it just looks like a webpage in space and its not
> even zoomed out.  FWIW, The stock browser doesn't have this outer space
> beyond the webpage, and its one of the reasons I cannot stand to use fennec.
> It seems were avoiding the real problem by covering up the terrible UX with
> a texture.

Feel free to subscribe to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=705246 to track the progress of this. Our current behaviour matches Samsung phones, but you're right, is incorrect for most every other Android phone if we want to feel 'native'.

I don't think I'd consider it *terrible* UX, however - iPhone users don't seem to mind and there are an awful lot of them.

Comment 18

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/fd479cee8771

Comment 19

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Comment on attachment 589818 [details] [diff] [review]
Apply background image

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #): none
User impact if declined: minimal; we show a gray background instead of a textured image
Testing completed (on m-c, etc.): on m-c
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): possibly a minor performance regression during paint

Comment 20

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Comment on attachment 589818 [details] [diff] [review]
Apply background image

[Triage Comment]
Mobile only - approved for Aurora.

Comment 21

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/d8a8902e6359

Comment 22

[Paul Feher]

Verified fixed on:
Nightly Fennec 13.0a1 (2012-03-06)
Aurora Fennec 12.0a2 (2012-03-06)
Device: HTC Desire Z
OS: Android 2.3.3