1095905 - Get Add-ons searches local add-ons first which is very unintuitive

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Tim Kuijsten]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0
Build ID: 20141108030205

Steps to reproduce:

Go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Get Add-ons

Then enter a search on top of the page*  i.e. "Pinterest".

* I guess this is part of the problem, since the search is not really part of the "Get Add-ons" page as a user might have expected


Actual results:

Empty search result with the message "Could not find any matching add-ons".

A second look revealed that search was limited to "My Add-ons" by default. This is not clear at first sight, and I think someone who's on Get Add-ons shouldn't have to correct this behaviour and switch to Available Add-ons first.


Expected results:

It should know that I've clicked on the Get Add-ons page and so I'm looking for new add-ons and not start searching in My Add-ons.

For new users, coming from Chrome this is very unintuitive and leads to the first thought of "oh, Chrome had much more add-ons".

The search is misleading.

Comment 1

[Tim Kuijsten]

ps. the advice I currently give to users is to go to https://addons.mozilla.org. Since this gives a better experience than the fiddling in about:addons itself.

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to tim from comment #0)
> A second look revealed that search was limited to "My Add-ons" by default.
> This is not clear at first sight, and I think someone who's on Get Add-ons
> shouldn't have to correct this behaviour and switch to Available Add-ons
> first.

This isn't the default. Try creating a new profile ( https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles ) and checking there.

We will remember what you did the last time you opened the add-on manager, and reuse that the next time you open it. So it sounds like you've previously switched it to "My add-ons" and forgot about it.

Marking this as works for me.

Comment 3

[Tim Kuijsten]

mm.. as far as I know this was right after a new installation on OS X, I could be mistaken though..

Comment 4

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Dave, thinking about this more, is there any reason we even show the 'my add-ons' option for people with fewer than 5/10/20 add-ons installed, and/or don't just always go back to the 'available add-ons' case after about:addons is closed?

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #4)
> Dave, thinking about this more, is there any reason we even show the 'my
> add-ons' option for people with fewer than 5/10/20 add-ons installed, and/or
> don't just always go back to the 'available add-ons' case after about:addons
> is closed?

Consistency perhaps? Try UX

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #5)
> (In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #4)
> > Dave, thinking about this more, is there any reason we even show the 'my
> > add-ons' option for people with fewer than 5/10/20 add-ons installed, and/or
> > don't just always go back to the 'available add-ons' case after about:addons
> > is closed?
> 
> Consistency perhaps? Try UX

-> Philipp. :-)

Comment 7

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

> (In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #5)
> > (In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #4)
> > > Dave, thinking about this more, is there any reason we even show the 'my
> > > add-ons' option for people with fewer than 5/10/20 add-ons installed, and/or
> > > don't just always go back to the 'available add-ons' case after about:addons
> > > is closed?
> > 
> > Consistency perhaps? Try UX
> 
> -> Philipp. :-)

Yes, this is mostly about consistency.

I think the underlying point of this bug is that searching from different places in the add-ons manager is done with different expectations in mind. One possible way to fix this would be to make search context aware. I filed bug 1109477 about this.(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #6)