1158152 - [meta] [UX][Breakdown] Identify areas where the browser is lacking touch-friendliness

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1334161

(Firefox :: Theme, task, P3)

Description

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

Firefox got slightly more touch-friendly with Australis, but we are still lacking in some areas. With many mid and high-level Windows laptops these days having touch screens, that is becoming even more important.

The objective of this ticket is to identify those issues and create bugs for them.

Comment 1

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

We invested time trying to make our desktop chrome touch friendly back when Windows 7 came out, we had little luck. You can chat with felipe on this, he did most of that work.

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

See also bug 806805, maybe?

Anyway, Philipp, is there stuff you would want to prio beyond the dep that I just added (which, IME, is pretty annoying when trying to use a touch-only device like the surface without a keyboard).

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Having used the surface a bit more: tab close buttons are too hard to hit.

Comment 4

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

I just added a couple more deps that have been on file already (the close tab button is one of them). That should cover most of our bases. We can keep this bug around as a meta though.

Comment 5

[Fusion Future]

Is Fx really going to improve Windows touchscreen experience? I'm excited now.

1. Smoother Pan on touchscreen!
Using Precison Touchpad (Type Cover) to control Firefox is not as smooth as mouse wheel does. IE does best. Chrome is a good example, too.

2. CSS Hover
Solution like Metro IE11.

3. Swipe Back and Forward
Workaround: use GestureSign to create custom touch gestures.

4. Easier way to close the current tab using touch gestures like 3-finger swipe down
Workaround: use GestureSign to create custom touch gestures.

Comment 6

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Getting this prioritized -- Philipp, do you perhaps want to treat this as a P2? But kinda depends on knowing how important touch is in general, which is data we don't yet have...

Comment 7

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Justin Dolske [:Dolske] from comment #6)
> Getting this prioritized -- Philipp, do you perhaps want to treat this as a
> P2? But kinda depends on knowing how important touch is in general, which is
> data we don't yet have...

We have telemetry - TOUCH_ENABLED_DEVICE. Currently about 12% of users running windows 8 and up have a touch capable device in the release channel. 

One thing I'll just throw out there, Edge and Firefox suck on tablets. I am hearing that people with Surface type tablets are downgrading back to 8.0 due to this (myself included). This may leave a large support hole a browser vendor can step in and fill if they choose to. We should try to research how many users this represents.

We invested a great deal of time and effort on a touch centric browser in metrofx, you might consider revisitng that. Trying to make a desktop browser designed for keyboard and mouse work for touch is doomed to fail imo. (I am a little biased of course but I also use this type of device every day via my living room surface pro.) The Windows 8 browser is the only real option available for surfing the web in a touch friendly way currently. Firefox desktop isn't going to cut it, neither is Edge.

Comment 8

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

(In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #7)
> We have telemetry - TOUCH_ENABLED_DEVICE. Currently about 12% of users
> running windows 8 and up have a touch capable device in the release channel. 
> 
> One thing I'll just throw out there, Edge and Firefox suck on tablets. I am
> hearing that people with Surface type tablets are downgrading back to 8.0
> due to this (myself included). This may leave a large support hole a browser
> vendor can step in and fill if they choose to. We should try to research how
> many users this represents.

That's interesting... Could you share some details on where Edge is falling short in your opinion?
Firefox is still below parity in terms of touch, in particular in those areas:
- Scrolling (slow, flaky)
- Text selection (can't change selection after the fact)
- Context menus (too small)
- Form controls (also too small)

I think there are bugs for most of those, except maybe for the last one (which I will file now)

Comment 9

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo from comment #8)
> (In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #7)
> > We have telemetry - TOUCH_ENABLED_DEVICE. Currently about 12% of users
> > running windows 8 and up have a touch capable device in the release channel. 
> > 
> > One thing I'll just throw out there, Edge and Firefox suck on tablets. I am
> > hearing that people with Surface type tablets are downgrading back to 8.0
> > due to this (myself included). This may leave a large support hole a browser
> > vendor can step in and fill if they choose to. We should try to research how
> > many users this represents.
> 
> That's interesting... Could you share some details on where Edge is falling
> short in your opinion?

A short list - 

- they ripped out touch centric favorites, now you have have a desktop type favorites sidebar.
- they ripped out swipe history navigation
- they removed the lower left back button
- they moved the address bar back to the top of the ui
- they removed the tab tray at the bottom of the ux
- they ripped out touch centric dialogs - file picker, color chooser, etc..

There's more I haven't noticed.

On the plus side they:

- kept good touch selection support, content repositioning for the skb, and apz scrolling.
- kept the nice touch friendly settings sidebar
- kept their touch friendly form inputs
- kept html5 skb input customizations based on form input type. This might be working in fx too.
- kept touch friendly context menus

> Firefox is still below parity in terms of touch, in particular in those
> areas:
> - Scrolling (slow, flaky)
> - Text selection (can't change selection after the fact)
> - Context menus (too small)
> - Form controls (also too small)
> 
> I think there are bugs for most of those, except maybe for the last one
> (which I will file now)

First off I'd suggest working on touch events support in desktop. Right now all these interactions are based on mouse input simulated in response to touch. Multitouch isn't supported either for features like two finger zoom. I would highly recommend taking metrofx or the old win8 ie for a spin to see what you're missing out on.

Comment 10

[Will]

the on-screen keyboard covers the Find toolbar https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1263062

Comment 11

[Will]

Also, URL bar suggestions are too close together for touch use. I regularly tap a suggestion above or below the one I intended to

Comment 12

[Will]

I'm having trouble finding the bug so I'll just describe it here: using a Surface Pro 4, I'm not able to reorganize tabs or tear them off (into a new window) using my finger on the touchscreen.

Comment 13

[Will]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1313912

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1344446

Comment 14

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Will from comment #12)
> I'm having trouble finding the bug so I'll just describe it here: using a
> Surface Pro 4, I'm not able to reorganize tabs or tear them off (into a new
> window) using my finger on the touchscreen.

bug 1362065

Comment 15

[Will]

no bounce or ripple when you hit the top or bottom of a webpage (touchscreen scrolling) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1393102

Comment 16

[Will]

another https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1393423

Comment 17

[Will]

Is there anything from the Metro Firefox that can/should be implemented in 'normal' Firefox? There are a lot of Windows touch laptops and Windows tablets these days

Comment 18

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Will from comment #17)
> Is there anything from the Metro Firefox that can/should be implemented in
> 'normal' Firefox? There are a lot of Windows touch laptops and Windows
> tablets these days

Jim, thoughts on this? :-)

Also, do we need both this and the tablet mode tracker? Originally, tablet mode was specific to the win10 functionality called 'tablet mode', but you recently added some more generic 'touch issue' style bugs to bug 1170714...

Comment 19

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to :Gijs (slow, PTO recovery mode) from comment #18)
> (In reply to Will from comment #17)
> > Is there anything from the Metro Firefox that can/should be implemented in
> > 'normal' Firefox? There are a lot of Windows touch laptops and Windows
> > tablets these days
> 
> Jim, thoughts on this? :-)
> 
> Also, do we need both this and the tablet mode tracker? Originally, tablet
> mode was specific to the win10 functionality called 'tablet mode', but you
> recently added some more generic 'touch issue' style bugs to bug 1170714...


Sure there are lots of areas we can improve on -

1) selection / copy paste / long press
2) swipe left/right to navigate
3) Lots of problems with secondary windows messing up state in tablet mode
4) touch input event support: UI elements in the main browser, various bugs filed.
5) improved open tab management

Good test case:

1) use safari on a ipad for a day
2) use firefox in tablet mode on a surface pro without a keyboard for a day

<compare experiences>

Comment 20

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Will from comment #17)
> Is there anything from the Metro Firefox that can/should be implemented in
> 'normal' Firefox? There are a lot of Windows touch laptops and Windows
> tablets these days

Note we don't have a lot of users who use touch devices. Probably a chicken or the egg scenario though, touch devices might be more common if Firefox provided a better experience. I'm hoping some of the "big target" work we did in the front end UI recently helps. Currently though users with tablets do not appear to use Firefox as their default browser in large numbers.

Comment 21

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Can we dupe this with fx-touch (bug 1334161) and move the blocking bugs over? It's not really helpful to have multiple metabugs for this topic.

Comment 22

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Also, I don't think this lives in the right component.

Comment 23

[Will]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1472317

Comment 24

[Will]

Does anyone know where the 'touchscreen-style' zoom bug is? That belongs here. (Edge and Chrome already have touchscreen-style zoom)

Comment 25

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Bug 789906, it's already blocking this.

Comment 26

[Will]

Wow, I need to start drinking coffee again. Sorry about that