1053402 - UX work - Surface addons in browser chrome

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Add-on Manager, defect)

Description

[Yuan Wang(:Yuan) – Mobile Firefox Design Lead]

Currently we don't really have a place in the browser chrome for the users to access their addons. About: addons page is for managing and controlling, not for quick access.

We should start thinking about how to surface useful addons(for example bookmarklets from other services) in the chrome, so users can access them in an efficient and memorable way.

Comment 1

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Attachment: Screenshot_2014-08-13-13-25-04.png

This is great because I've also been looking to give these about: pages a visual update/ clean up.

Here is what it currently looks like and bug 1007436 (although only loosely related) has some of the newer visuals that I've been trying out.

Comment 2

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

^ attached it to the wrong bug. -_- meant for Bug 1053397

Comment 3

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I'm not sure I understand the scope of this bug. Is it about creating some more APIs for add-ons to hook into different places in our UI?

I know Robin was starting to look into creating some UX guidelines for add-ons, and as part of that we can look for APIs that might be missing.

Comment 4

[Yuan Wang(:Yuan) – Mobile Firefox Design Lead]

Probably Robin has covered this one. Just putting my thoughts here. Feel free to duplicate this if you think there is overlap.

I wanted to explore whether there is a need to have a dedicated space for addons. On desktop, the users used to have an addon toolbar. And now addons can live on the main toolbar or menu panel. For certain addons, the users need to initiate requests, for example pin a page, or save an image for later, so having the addons visible make the action easy to perform.

So for certain addons that may require user actions with the page, there will be a place to access them all the time. The about:addons panel is good for managing and configuring addons, but not accessible for initiating actions.

I am not sure how many addons on mobile Firefox can benefit from this. But if this is a valid need, it'd be nice to reserve a dedicated place within the browser chrome. It could be one menu item or a context menu item that opens up an add-on launch panel. I think some addons have been doing similar things. But our goal should be establishing standards or having good practices for mobile addons. So addon developers can take advantage of the guidelines.