1097129 - [activities] support option to always shows menu of available activity handlers

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::System, defect)

Description

[David Flanagan [:djf]]

Bug 1095081 is a case where the user is trying to share images and videos combined in the Gallery. It turns out that Bluetooth is the only app that can handle the share (because it ignores the type) and when the user presses the share button in the gallery they immediately see a message about turning on bluetooth. This is not intuitive because they usually see a menu where they get to choose email, messages, or bluetooth.

For some activities (like launching the camera from gallery) we really want the activity to start without another click. But for activities like this one, I think the user should always see a menu of available aps (and a cancel button) before being taken to the handler app.

I propose that we add some new property to the MozActivity() request body that forces the system app to display a menu even when there is only on choice in the menu.

Comment 1

[David Flanagan [:djf]]

Needinfo Mike because he's cc'ed on the similar bug 1027824 and maybe his team could take this much simpler one.

Needinfo Jonas because I'm proposing a minor change to the Activities api and I don't know who is in charge of that these days.

Comment 2

[David Flanagan [:djf]]

Bug 1095081 has been nominated 2.1? If it is made into a blocker, then I'm probably going to nominate this bug for 2.1 as well, because fixing this bug is probably the best way to fix 1095081.

Comment 3

[Michael Henretty [:mikehenrty][:mhenretty]]

Thanks for the heads up David. This would probably be handled more by Tim's team since it involves an API change, but it would require some systemsfe work too and I can help coordinate here if you'd like.

Comment 4

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Should this be done on the activity *request* side, i.e. for the caller calling |new MozActivity|?

Or should this be done on the activity *handler* side, i.e. when registering as an activity handler in the manifest.

Put it another way, is there ever a case when we want to invoke a "share" activity and that it should automatically invoke the bluetooth handler without first asking the user?

Comment 5

[BMO Automation]

Firefox OS is not being worked on