Closed Bug 1173172 Opened 9 years ago Closed 3 years ago

Remove default bookmarks

Categories

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox for Android Graveyard
Component:
General
Platform:
ARM
Android
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(firefox41 affected)

Status:
RESOLVED INCOMPLETE
Tracking Flags:
Tracking Status
firefox41 --- affected

People

(Reporter: liuche, Unassigned)

References

Details

Default bookmarks are a legacy part of the code, made to populate the top sites panels for new users.

However, with Suggested Sites, we already provide links to most of these sites by default as in the top sites panel, so the default bookmarks are redundant.

We should consider removing these default bookmarks that are smaller for clicking, less visually appealing, and confusing for users who haven't bookmarked anything, and use that space for promoting something else (possibly something like "Set up sync to see your bookmarks from other devices").
I'm in support of this. As far as I can tell, default bookmarks don't provide the same level of value as they used to, now that we have suggested sites. And if we can replace these default bookmarks with a sync promotion, that seems like a good way to encourage people to create Firefox accounts.

We do support default bookmarks in distributions, but I feel like partners have been mostly interested in using that functionality for pinning top sites.

Karen, what do you think about this idea?
Flags: needinfo?(krudnitski)
+1 for removing.

I don't think these links have much value or are getting many clicks from this panel. Cleaning this up could inch us towards providing a "cleaner" impression/image to new users as well as giving us an incentive to close bug 1091826! :) 

Do we know how many people actually hit these links from this panel?
I'm not a fan of removing them, actually. Suggested Sites gets replaced by user behaviour, which means that a user wouldn't have a fall-back place to (intuitively) find Mozilla-owned content at the one moment they may need to.

I'm thinking mainly about our Support link and the Firefox:About link. 

Also remember that partners still see value is including default bookmarks because although they may not serve as the the most click-through areas, it's an easy way for users to get back to important information that they may need or want 'once in a while.'

It also provides some data in that panel that would otherwise be empty (unless a partner added some bookmarks). 

I'm comfortable removing the add-on and marketplace default bookmarks, leaving 2 Mozilla bookmarks (and allowing partners to add 2 of their own bookmarks) and using the rest of the space for adding a promo message for synced bookmarks. 

Good compromise?
Flags: needinfo?(krudnitski)
(In reply to Karen Rudnitski [:kar] from comment #3)
> I'm not a fan of removing them, actually. Suggested Sites gets replaced by
> user behaviour, which means that a user wouldn't have a fall-back place to
> (intuitively) find Mozilla-owned content at the one moment they may need to.
> 
> I'm thinking mainly about our Support link and the Firefox:About link.

Let's get some data to see if they are even used

> Also remember that partners still see value is including default bookmarks

This is more about Mozilla standard install, not a partner install.

> It also provides some data in that panel that would otherwise be empty
> (unless a partner added some bookmarks). 

We are suggesting that using the "empty" bookmarks to promote Sync, or teach people about the UI, would be more worthwhile than having some unused bookmarks:

(from comment 0)
> We should consider removing these default bookmarks that are smaller for
> clicking, less visually appealing, and confusing for users who haven't
> bookmarked anything, and use that space for promoting something else
> (possibly something like "Set up sync to see your bookmarks from other
> devices").
(In reply to Karen Rudnitski [:kar] from comment #3)

> I'm comfortable removing the add-on and marketplace default bookmarks,
> leaving 2 Mozilla bookmarks (and allowing partners to add 2 of their own
> bookmarks) and using the rest of the space for adding a promo message for
> synced bookmarks. 

I am not a big fan of adding more complexity to the UI
Bookmarks are matched by awesomebar searches and stick around forever for reference, including syncing to other devices.

As Karen notes, this is not the case for suggested tiles, so this isn't as simple as "we have tiles now".


Stepping back, let's figure out if the purpose of our bookmark defaults is now served by some other part of the UI:

Our default bookmarks right now are

  about:firefox                   -- Settings > Mozilla > About Firefox
  Firefox: Customize with add-ons -- Menu > Tools > Add-ons. Good enough?
  Firefox Marketplace             -- Menu > Tools > Apps. Good enough?
  Firefox: Support                -- obsoleted by Menu > Help.

If we're happy with the discoverability of Menu > Tools, then we can just kill all of these defaults.

My guess is that we're not happy with that discoverability, but perhaps having bookmarks for these is not an adequate solution anyway...
(In reply to Richard Newman [:rnewman] from comment #6)

> Stepping back, let's figure out if the purpose of our bookmark defaults is
> now served by some other part of the UI:
> 
> Our default bookmarks right now are
> 
>   about:firefox                   -- Settings > Mozilla > About Firefox
>   Firefox: Customize with add-ons -- Menu > Tools > Add-ons. Good enough?
>   Firefox Marketplace             -- Menu > Tools > Apps. Good enough?
>   Firefox: Support                -- obsoleted by Menu > Help.
> 
> If we're happy with the discoverability of Menu > Tools, then we can just
> kill all of these defaults.
> 
> My guess is that we're not happy with that discoverability, but perhaps
> having bookmarks for these is not an adequate solution anyway...

I was going to chime in to say what rnewman said here - that, yes, we already have links to these pages in the rest of our UI.

If someone is looking for support, are they really going to look in their bookmarks instead of a help menu? Likewise, if they want to know about the product, are they going to look at a bookmark instead of in the settings?

I don't think we should over-load bookmarks to serve both as a place to store your own stuff and a place for product features. If we think people need access to these items (which I would argue they don't really need that often), we should make it easier to get to them from within the existing UI we have for them.
Although I know there are other ways of finding both support and about: pages, it's not in an intuitive, industry-led way. My parents, for one, will go to the default bookmarks if they're looking for company info for that piece of SW because they know it will be in there (for the few times they need it). I think think cleaning out the default bookmarks is a bit of a red herring for... not sure what. If we want something cleaner, I'm happy to reduce from 4 to 2, but I don't want to increase frustration (or support costs) for a cleaner page. 

What initiated the proposed default bookmark clean-up? Was it to find more real estate to promote bookmarks sync? I'm trying to find the actual user problem here - because from my standpoint, ensuring our users have access to support-related sites  (for the one time they may need it) is rather important. It's not about frequency of use, but for that one time they need it (and not spend time looking around for it).
The user studies about first run indicated that users don't see the value in setting up Sync from first run because there's not enough context of value there: they've just installed a new app, they want to browse the web, and they don't feel the need to go through an account sign up process because they can just start browsing. "Why would I make an account when I can use Firefox without one?"

We should ask users to set up sync in a context where they have a specific need that Sync will help them fulfill - for people who use bookmarks, an empty bookmarks panel is a really good place to do that. I also don't want people to associate their bookmarks panel with "Mozilla" content, and start to ignore it.

I'm not sure why people would expect to go to bookmarks to find product-related help items, other than being trained by Firefox to do so - bookmarks are personal content that people have added, and asking for help should come from the product itself (like Settings menu under "Help"). We should consider doing things better, not just the same way.
Depends on: 1174830
This isn't about training users to find Firefox product information. This is about ensuring we have support links in places where users instinctively and intuitively know where to find it when they need it based on what's expected (look at Safari, UC). 

Plus when partners request bookmarks (which they all do), they'll have something populated in there anyway.

As stated earlier, reducing down from 4 to 2 is ok. I presume it's harder from a dev perspective to be able to add an extra note promoting syncing of bookmarks (as opposed to just an empty state version). However, could an overlay (like how Metro had guidelines) be used in some manner? Or some other notification mechanism?
I think it's time to revisit this bug.

iOS just did this, should we also do it?
Flags: needinfo?(bbermes)
Also lots of folks on desktop want to get rid of default bookmarks: Bug 1177516 Comment 11.
(I reached out to Chris Lonnen via email as well)

I'd like to get a sense if these URLs are being clicked on via the bookmarks panel on Fennec.

I've noticed that we've used an utm_source somewhere else in the code to link to a Mozilla (or Firefox) main domain (e.g. Menu->Settings->Mozilla->FAQs: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/mobile/popular-articles-android?as=u&utm_source=inproduct)

We could add a simular utm_source=inproduct to the following URLs

---
Firefox: Customize with add-ons: addons.mozilla.org/android
Firefox Marketplace: marketplace.firefox.com
Firefox: Support: support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/mobile/  
---
Flags: needinfo?(chris.lonnen)
I've followed up with Barbara in the email. She is set up to investigate this and similar problems, now.
Flags: needinfo?(chris.lonnen)
(was blocking the wrong meta)
No longer blocks: 1063058
See Also: → 1383498
See Also: → 1177516
We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 3 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
Product: Firefox for Android → Firefox for Android Graveyard
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