1152021 - Add "Take a fullpage screenshot" as a customizable icon to the toolbar

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, enhancement)

Description

[Tobias B. Besemer [:BesTo] (QA)]

For developers there are a icon called "Take a fullpage screenshot" in the Dev Tools.
Making a screenshot is such a common task that I think having this still implemented feature as a possible icon for the toolbar would be nice.
So if the user customize his toolbar there should also be a icon for "Take a fullpage screenshot" under "Additional Tools and Features".

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Patrick, is the quality of the feature good enough that you think we could ship it with more visibility than "just" devtools? (feel free to redirect the needinfo if there are other people in the devtools team who are in a better position to comment on this)

Philipp, do you think we should?

Comment 2

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

This came up as something we'd want as part of the next iteration of Task Continuity.
Markus and Michael know more about the current state of the world there.

The high-level version is that we are thinking about unifying the save/share experience. Screen shots would be particularly valuable here since our research showed that many people already use this as a primary way to share and save information.

Integrating it into the additional tools could be a stepping stone, but let's hear from Michael and Markus first to make sure it aligns with what is planned.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(I'll point out as an aside that screenshots, being images, throw accessibility of the shared result out of the window, which is something I'd be very reluctant to do...)

Comment 4

[Markus Jaritz [:designakt] (UX)]

For our next step on Task Continuity we identified that providing more meta-data on saved objects and providing save/share-systems the user already knows/understands/uses can help us greatly improve the experience and likeliness that users will use our systems for their save/share tasks.
So yes, a screenshot can only fulfill one of those, but that is more than bookmarks currently do for users.
We know that meta-data is important and we are working on how we can integrate those requirements.
If we already have a screenshot-button it could be a good start to provide that until we optimize our solution. (e.g. take a screenshot and attach it to an email along with some meta-data to share)

Comment 5

[Tobias B. Besemer [:BesTo] (QA)]

Yeah, because Windows have no included function to make screenshots and if a Newbie have problems with anything ... ;-)

Comment 6

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #1)
> Patrick, is the quality of the feature good enough that you think we could
> ship it with more visibility than "just" devtools? (feel free to redirect
> the needinfo if there are other people in the devtools team who are in a
> better position to comment on this)
Sorry for the very long delay :(
The feature in itself is good enough, no problem there, but it's wrapped into layers of devtools specific stuff that might not make sense at browser level, and that might make it harder to use.
It's available through a devtools gcli command, and that command then goes through the devtools remote protocol to take the screenshot (in case we're dealing with a remote device or an e10s window).
Joe will know more about this.
The actual part of the code that takes the screenshot is simple though and could be extracted in a separate module, and used by the browser (through a frame script).

Comment 7

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

The code that actually does the screenshot is something like 50 lines of code:

https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/devtools/gcli/commands/screenshot.js#257

I agree with Patrick, while you'd be welcome to use the devtools mechanism, re-using those 50 lines of code would probably be much easier.

Comment 9

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

(Hmm, realistically, I'm not going to have time to mentor this. But I love the idea.)

Comment 10

[Markus Jaritz [:designakt] (UX)]

We currently plan to implement this feature with an add-on we recommend to users as part of our Add-on Discovery efforts. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_vaOV3zRdFxlozcQrKoLNyKAT84fRXPnyRa-HJaTkJs/edit
As it is a popular feature, and we have good add-ons for it on AMO it is a great candidate to help people learn about add-ons.

Comment 11

[Helen V. Holmes (:helenvholmes) (:✨)]

There's work being done in bug 1243525 around screenshotting and putting additional features as options in the Settings panel, including:

- a toggle for taking a fullscreen screenshot as the default behavior
- copying to clipboard as the default behavior

Comment 12

[Synetech]

is the quality of the feature good enough that you think we could ship it with more visibility than "just" devtools?

Think about it this way: people can already take screenshots of the visible page much easier and faster with the OS's built-in screenshot hotkeys; the only real value that the browser's screenshot function brings is in taking a full-page screenshot which the OS can't do (at least not more easily than the browser can), therefore the main reason to use the browser's screenshot function over the OS's is for full-page screenshots. Why should users be forced to take extra steps to do that (especially when the visible/fullpage selection isn't accessible by keyboard 🤦)?