856438 - GPS fix notification in status bar

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[:gerard-majax]

Hello,

I started hacking a bit to add a notification when the GPS has a fix or not, in Gaia's statusbar. It works quite well, though I think it does not handle signal loss (i.e. loosing the GPS). In Android, it is handled with a timeout: if the GPS did not sent position for at least 10 secs then it states it lost fix. I'm taking any idea/help to perform this.

The notification itself is maybe not very nice from a UX point of view, but it's for demonstrative purpose mainly.

Please note that it gives good results on Nexus S.

Comment 1

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: Gecko part

Comment 2

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: Gaia part

Comment 3

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: New icons

Comment 4

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: New icons for HIDPI

Comment 5

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: screenshot

For the record, this has been uploaded from Firefox OS directly thanks to the new file picker feature :-)

Comment 6

[Kan-Ru Chen [:kanru] (UTC+9)]

(In reply to Alexandre LISSY :gerard-majax from comment #0)
> I started hacking a bit to add a notification when the GPS has a fix or not,
> in Gaia's statusbar. It works quite well, though I think it does not handle
> signal loss (i.e. loosing the GPS). In Android, it is handled with a
> timeout: if the GPS did not sent position for at least 10 secs then it
> states it lost fix. I'm taking any idea/help to perform this.

Currently we do not set any timeout if no clients request it. We could use a default timeout to detect the loss of signal but do not report it to clients.

Comment 7

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: Gecko part v2

New gecko part, now including a timer with a pref value specifying default timeout: geo.fix-timeout (in seconds, defaults to 10).

Comment 8

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

UX, could you please have a look on this ? I think this is a nce to have feature: to know when we're currently looking for a location but have not found it yet.

Comment 9

[Neo Hsieh [:neo]]

Sorry, I'm not following this topic.  Can anyone tell me this requirement in detail ? Any user stories?

Comment 10

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

AFAIK there is no user story, this is more a contribution from a volunteer (who is now an employee but Alex was not at this time ;) ).

Comment 11

[:gerard-majax]

(In reply to Neo Hsieh from comment #9)
> Sorry, I'm not following this topic.  Can anyone tell me this requirement in
> detail ? Any user stories?

As julien said, I came up with this change after dogfooding on Nexus S: using multiples applications at the same time and often using geolocation, I had the need to have a notification in status bar for when the gps fix has been acquired, as Android does.

There is no "user stories" as far as I can say, the code is here (not up to date, but I have updated patches on my local tree if you need them) just as a PoC of the feature and serving as a potential discussion basis for maybe including this feature.

Comment 12

[Stephany Wilkes]

Thank you, Neo. I suggest we ask Sandip if this is something he would like to be included in 1.2 in the GPS component area. I have added Sandip to needinfo for that reason. 

Neo, you can also feel free to advise on whether this is or is not generally in line with our UX plans for 1.2 and later.

Please let me know if I can help in any way.

Comment 13

[Sandip Kamat]

(In reply to Stephany Wilkes from comment #12)
> Thank you, Neo. I suggest we ask Sandip if this is something he would like
> to be included in 1.2 in the GPS component area. I have added Sandip to
> needinfo for that reason. 
> 

Yes, This is in line with what we are putting together for Location based services user stories for v1.2 and beyond (work in progress). This is very much in line with Mozilla's policies to empower users and be in control of their data (including location) at all times. Showing the user that the location is being tracked is critical in this regard. If/when this has been tested sufficiently and if we are comfortable with the code robustness etc, it may be a candidate for 1.1 as well (risk permitting). Has it been tested enough yet? Would like to give it a try myself.

Comment 14

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

Sandip, This has nothing to do with empowering users or them being in control.

This is a Feature. See comment #8.  Do not uplift lightly.


Alexandre, happy to review the patch when you're ready.

Comment 15

[Chris Lee [:clee]]

The feature doesn't sound complete so we'll likely want to hold off until we have some UX specs available to nominate.  

Stephany -- Given this is a contribution and the UX plate is pretty full, if there are cycles to take this on after our other priorities, that would be great.

Comment 16

[:gerard-majax]

(In reply to Chris Lee [:clee] from comment #15)
> The feature doesn't sound complete so we'll likely want to hold off until we
> have some UX specs available to nominate.  
> 
> Stephany -- Given this is a contribution and the UX plate is pretty full, if
> there are cycles to take this on after our other priorities, that would be
> great.

The feature is complete, it's been working quite well on my Nexus S for three months now. But you're right, the UX needs to be discussed :)

Comment 17

[:gerard-majax]

(In reply to Doug Turner (:dougt) from comment #14)
> Sandip, This has nothing to do with empowering users or them being in
> control.
> 
> This is a Feature. See comment #8.  Do not uplift lightly.
> 
> 
> Alexandre, happy to review the patch when you're ready.

Well the currently attached patch needs a little change to be ready, I have them locally but it needs a little rebase. Meanwhile, I'd like to get UX feedback on the feature itself, that is: notifying the user, in the statusbar, that an application that requested gps geolocation is now receiving fixes notifications. The way it is currently implemented from a UX point of view is by changing the geolocation statusbar icon from white to green, but I'm open to any suggestion on the final notification mean.

Comment 18

[Stephany Wilkes]

Flagging Jaime and Francis since I believe they're working on this and related.

Comment 19

[Stephany Wilkes]

Francis, this needs review for 1.2.

Comment 20

[:gerard-majax]

Josh, can you help me finding someone who can do UX review on this ?

Comment 21

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Alexandre LISSY :gerard-majax from comment #20)
> Josh, can you help me finding someone who can do UX review on this ?

Francis is the right person here. Switching needinfo to Stephany to ping Francis for an update.

Comment 22

[Stephany Wilkes]

I've pinged Francis again. :)

Comment 23

[vijayanand.hongal]

Attachment: Screenshot from 2014-02-19_settings.png

Settings page showing geolocation icon.

Comment 24

[vijayanand.hongal]

Hi,

Seeing the settings page, and icon for Gelocation, the icons for geofix in notification bar should be similar to the one used for geolocation. Attaching the screenshot in comment #23 for reference.

Comment 25

[:gerard-majax]

(In reply to vijayanand.hongal from comment #24)
> Hi,
> 
> Seeing the settings page, and icon for Gelocation, the icons for geofix in
> notification bar should be similar to the one used for geolocation.
> Attaching the screenshot in comment #23 for reference.

That was the case when I did the initial patch. Icon got changed with v1.3.

Comment 26

[vijayanand.hongal]

Comment on attachment 8378252 [details]
Screenshot from 2014-02-19_settings.png

removing the screen shot as it uses old icon.

Comment 27

[Francis Djabri [:djabber]]

Attachment: 2014-02-26-15-10-43.png

Eric, Przemek, 

Please could you advise on this status bar icon. To summarize based on my understanding of this bug, Alexandre has made to patch that turns the GPS status bar icon green when it gets a fix. I think it's nice to be able to give the user feedback that the device has received a fix. But personally, I'm not keen on turning it green, as the style in our status bar is generally not to use color, except for the battery indicator. For example, for downloading indicators, a download-in-progress is shown animating, and when the download has completed, it becomes static. I imagine that we should follow a similar convention here but it's firmly your call. 

As Alexandre mentioned in comment #24, the current style of the GPS icon is as per the attached screenshot. 

From an interaction point of view, I have concerns that the code does not seem to detect if a fix has been lost. I wouldn't be happy landing this unless the status indicator could accurately reflect state. Any updates on this, Alexandre?

Francis

Comment 28

[:gerard-majax]

The initial questions were:
 (1) Do we want to notify the user of a fix ?
 (2) If yes, how do we want to notify it ?

As far as I understand, you answer (1) yes, and (2) not with a green icon. But this does not answer the question: how to we notify it ?

Detecting that the fix has been lost *should* be okay. Nobody will ever land something knowing it is half-broken. Anyway, considering how long this has been waiting, the patch is probably to re-do right now.

Comment 29

[Eric Pang [:epang] UX]

(In reply to Francis Djabri [:djabber] from comment #27)
> Created attachment 8382594 [details]
> 2014-02-26-15-10-43.png
> 
> 
> Eric, Przemek, 
> 
> Please could you advise on this status bar icon. To summarize based on my
> understanding of this bug, Alexandre has made to patch that turns the GPS
> status bar icon green when it gets a fix. I think it's nice to be able to
> give the user feedback that the device has received a fix. But personally,
> I'm not keen on turning it green, as the style in our status bar is
> generally not to use color, except for the battery indicator. For example,
> for downloading indicators, a download-in-progress is shown animating, and
> when the download has completed, it becomes static. I imagine that we should
> follow a similar convention here but it's firmly your call. 
> 
> As Alexandre mentioned in comment #24, the current style of the GPS icon is
> as per the attached screenshot. 
> 
> From an interaction point of view, I have concerns that the code does not
> seem to detect if a fix has been lost. I wouldn't be happy landing this
> unless the status indicator could accurately reflect state. Any updates on
> this, Alexandre?
> 
> Francis

Hi,

Spoke with Przemek and we are thinking that the icon can be 100% opacity when in fix mode and showing it partially transparent when it's ON but not fixed. Similar to the way the blutooth icon currently works.

The 100% and transparent versions of the icons should both already be part of the status bar icon sprite.

Thanks!

Comment 30

[:gerard-majax]

Thanks Eric!

As soon as I have some free cycle or depending on triage, and if everyone agrees on this UX (and provides sprites, since you have been able to have an overview of my sketching skills :) ), I'd be happy to rework on this.

Comment 31

[:gerard-majax]

I'd like that we have this in 2.2, but maybe it should be in the backlog. Can UX provide the bits for the status bar itself?

Comment 32

[Stephany Wilkes]

Redirecting to Eric instead of the general UX ID, as earlier.

Comment 33

[Eric Pang [:epang] UX]

(In reply to Alexandre LISSY :gerard-majax from comment #31)
> I'd like that we have this in 2.2, but maybe it should be in the backlog.
> Can UX provide the bits for the status bar itself?

Hi Alexandre, what exactly is needed, ux wise?

Icon can be 100% opacity when in fix mode
Partially transparent when it's ON but not fixed (Similar to the way the blutooth icon currently works)
Let me know if the existing assets in the sprites can be used :)

Comment 34

[Kai-Chih Hu [:khu]]

Candice, can you help to follow up this topic? thanks.