1060158 - New Tab customize menu options are inscrutable

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Attachment: current menu items

From Jesse:

Inscrutable #NewTabPage options:
☐ Enhanced
☑ Classic

How about:
☐ Prefer logos
☑ Prefer screenshots

Comment 1

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Jesse, to be clear here, "Enhanced" will replace history screenshots with logos and unhovered images and show Directory Tiles (default tiles that would have been empty otherwise). "Classic" turns off the screenshot replacing but will still show Directory Tiles.

Comment 2

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Also from Jesse: "sponsored" to mean "we showed you a logo instead of a preview" makes no sense at all

Referring to the [SPONSORED] next to mozilla.org tiles

Comment 3

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Aaron, can you review this and provide a recommendation?  Probably won't make the current release schedule, but could bump up for the next one.

Comment 4

[Aaron]

To make this clearer, perhaps we could say the following...

- Show Enhanced Tiles
- Show screenshots only
- Do not show tiles

Comment 5

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Matej, can you take a peek at this?

Comment 6

[Matej Novak [:matej]]

(In reply to Aaron from comment #4)
> To make this clearer, perhaps we could say the following...
> 
> - Show Enhanced Tiles
> - Show screenshots only
> - Do not show tiles

Could be even shorter:

Enhanced tiles
Screenshots only
No tiles

Comment 7

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

(In reply to Matej Novak [:matej] from comment #6)
> (In reply to Aaron from comment #4)
> > To make this clearer, perhaps we could say the following...
> > 
> > - Show Enhanced Tiles
> > - Show screenshots only
> > - Do not show tiles
> 
> Could be even shorter:
> 
> Enhanced tiles
> Screenshots only
> No tiles

The preliminary user testing showed that people generally don't understand »Tiles«. Can we come up with something closer to their world?

The other option would be to educate people about the word »Tiles« in which case we should probably use it even more frequently and consistently.

Comment 8

[Matej Novak [:matej]]

Can we change the last option to say "What are tiles?" (instead of "What is this page?")? We would also have to rewrite the following text a bit, but it would help give people an idea of what we're talking about.

Otherwise we could do something like this:

Enhanced view
Classic view
No images (or Images off)

Comment 9

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

(In reply to Matej Novak [:matej] from comment #8)
> Can we change the last option to say "What are tiles?" (instead of "What is
> this page?")? We would also have to rewrite the following text a bit, but it
> would help give people an idea of what we're talking about.
> 
> Otherwise we could do something like this:
> 
> Enhanced view
> Classic view
> No images (or Images off)

I like this direction, I rather continue to avoid using Tiles in the language.

Comment 10

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

(In reply to Bryan Clark (Firefox PM) [:clarkbw] from comment #9)
> (In reply to Matej Novak [:matej] from comment #8)
> > Can we change the last option to say "What are tiles?" (instead of "What is
> > this page?")? We would also have to rewrite the following text a bit, but it
> > would help give people an idea of what we're talking about.
> > 
> > Otherwise we could do something like this:
> > 
> > Enhanced view
> > Classic view
> > No images (or Images off)
> 
> I like this direction, I rather continue to avoid using Tiles in the
> language.

I agree. In this case we might want to reconsider the copy on this page:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox

Comment 11

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

We're going on two releases with this confusing languages. Any chance something can be done here?

How many pages will actually have enhanced tiles (given that the specification for letting any page do an enhanced tile isn't done).

As far as I know, there are maybe two?

Comment 12

[Terrell Kelley]

This is wrong. The whole point of the Classic tab is to shut off the sponsored tabs. That's what you find in any Google search where people ask to shut them off. The only reason people use Classic mode is to get rid of the stupid ads. 

Adblock Plus is the most downloaded addon for Firefox. And over half of users disable the "acceptable ads" feature. A significant portion of your userbase absolutely loathes ads, and do not want them embedded in their web browser like early opera. Without the ability to function normally without the ads, you have turned Firefox into adware.

You need to fix Classic mode to not show ads, and call it "Turn off ads."

You are a non-profit company that cares about its users, not a for-profit company that cares about money. You can put all the **** you want, but users have to be able to opt out, but still keep a fully functional browser.

Again, show some integrity and give people the ad-free they were promised when this was brought up.

Comment 13

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

(In reply to Terrell Kelley from comment #12)
> The whole point of the Classic tab is to shut off the sponsored tabs.
Where are you seeing documentation that says that? The official support page says you can turn off Enhanced Tiles (the functionality that replaces a history tile's screenshot) and switch to Classic or Blank:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-tiles-work-firefox

The only option in the customize menu right now to not see any default Directory Tiles is to switch to Blank. You could prevent Firefox from getting any default tiles by changing browser.newtabpage.directory.source

Adding that new functionality is separate from this bug though, but arguably this type of confusion is because the menu items are inscrutable.

If we change the menu to something like:

- show nothing [current Blank]
- show history screenshots [current Classic]
- show history logos [current Enhanced]
- show default links [nothing currently - turn off default links]

Not sure if there's any desire to split the last item to:

- show default mozilla links
- show default sponsored links

And arguably there's additional state/preferences to track for each option that needs to be tested and maintained, so we'll want to be careful about any pref explosion.

Comment 14

[Terrell Kelley]

Well, if you're actually going to engage with me in good faith, I guess I should, too. But let it be said that I still have a hard time trusting Mozilla after 33.1. Still, someone who doesn't lash out back when I lash out at them deserves respect and a civil response. They are clearly a better person than I.

I was not necessarily talking about official documentation, but what the public was told. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848017/how-to-get-rid-of-firefoxs-new-ads-on-the-new-tab-page.html is one example. That's the first article you get when you search Google for "remove ads new tab page Firefox". The documentation is less clear, saying only that "Classic" mode is unenhanced. But as one of the enhancements was the addition of sponsored links, it stands to reason that turning that off would disable that as well.

You describe the options as "inscrutable," but they aren't. They just describe something different from what you actually offer. You haven't offered a "Classic" mode at all, since "Classic" would mean "like things were before." And since ads are the main thing anyone objected to, obviously most users are going to be using "Classic" mode to remove ads. I'm not sure where Mozilla got the idea that people wanted screenshots rather than enhanced tiles. They just thought Mozilla was only offering enhanced tiles if you also accepted ads.

As I understood it, this is what was supposed to have happened: 

Mozilla noticed two problems: one, that the new tab screen was pointless for new users, as it contained nothing, and that thumbnails of screenshots were not all that effective at communicating the content of a site. So, in an attempt to improve user experience, Mozilla was going to aggregate data from other users' history and attempt to predict what websites a new user might want to get to when they first install. And the new tiles were going to use new icons and metadaya information instead of screenshots.

In this, the idea came about that you could also have sponsored tiles, where companies would pay to be on new users' new tab page. At some point, this changed to the idea that they would be on every user's new tab page (probably because content providers wouldn't pay just to be visible to new users). However, a lot of users objected to the sponsored content, and so an option to disable it was provided. Unfortunately, this also meant that all other enhancements had to be shut off as well.

I am unaware of any complaints about the idea of not using screenshots. There have been two complaints I've seen: one that people want the option not to share their history info, even with it being anonymized, and that people do not want sponsored (i.e. paid for) content in the front page of their browser. And that is what it was assumed you provided--an option to turn both of those features off, called "Classic."

-----

Now to address what to do about all this, which is what this bug seems to actually be about (rather than just renaming existing options). The options you need are a full version that includes everything, a "no sponsored tiles" one that still includes suggested content from Mozilla, and a "history only" option that only uses local history. And, of course, you'd probably want to keep the "blank" option.

An alternative would be to switch to using items with checkmarks. This would allow you to cover all options. The options would be "Allow Sponsored tiles," "Use Online Suggestions" and optionally a "Use screenshots" option if you think that would be useful. A "Use blank screen" option would be provided with a separator, and would gray out the other options when chosen. Hence the menu would look like this on first use:

 ✓ Allow Sponsored Tiles
 ✓ Use Online Suggestions
   Use Screenshots
-----------------------
   Use Blank Page

Comment 15

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

There's longer explanations added by bug 1158859.