1178364 - (androidfxaqrcodes) [meta] Implement QR code -> configured Firefox Account flow in Fennec

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Firefox Accounts, defect)

Description

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

This ticket tracks implementing the Fennec side of an experiment to make it easier for new Desktop Firefox users to connect their Android devices to their Firefox Account.

The idea is that the Firefox Account sign up/sign in flow would offer a QR code scan.  Users could then scan the code, on their Android (or, in future, iOS) device, and be offered a Firefox install and then a red carpet to a connected Firefox Account.

Comment 1

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

This was raised  and discussed in https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/dev-fxacct/2015-June/001565.html.

Comment 2

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

Here's a bit of a brain dump:

* if I understand correctly, on the Android device we'd QR scan an Android intent URI with parameters.

* Firefox might not be installed.  Some investigation into whether we can pass QR code intent parameters *through the Google Play (or other store?) install process* and into the first run experience would be really helpful.

* conversely, the user might have multiple versions of Firefox installed.  That means that the QR code connect intent can't be Firefox-version specific; that is, all Firefox versions need to respond to the same intent name.  (This is like how all Firefox versions offer to open an Open Web App.)

* we want to include Account configuration details in the QR code intent, but we can't assume the intent is private.  That might be tricky.  It would be safe, I think, to have the QR code intent include an email address and some server configuration details.

* alternately, we could bake less of the account connection into the QR code, and focus on getting users into Firefox (via Google Play) and browsing a special "QR code sign-in" landing page on accounts.firefox.com.  Then we can do things like pre-fill email fields, etc, but use the "sign in from web" infrastructure tracked by Bug 1161234.  I think this is probably a better solution than baking in subtle QR code intent processing into Fennec.

* we have a Firefox Account state that is similar to this situation: MigratedFromSync11 [1].  It was added in Bug 1098667.  This new destination Account state would look very similar, but with modified messaging.

[1] https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/fxa/login/MigratedFromSync11.java

Comment 3

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

Sorry to talk to myself, but I only thought of sending QR code scanners to accounts.firefox.com during my brain dump :)  That's definitely an attractive approach:

QR code offer on Desktop
-> QR code scan on Android
-> potentially install Firefox
-> open accounts.firefox.com/login?qrcode_details=... in Firefox
-> quickly connect.

We'd need to understand if we can ask for the URL to be loaded in Firefox specifically (perhaps this requires a custom scheme?), and we'd need to ensure this played nicely with any first-run experience in Fennec.

Comment 4

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

There's a metrics component to this work, too.  We'd like to know:

* how many folks see a QR offer; (server-side)
* how many folks QR scan, and succeed or fail; (client-side)
* how many accounts get stuck in some "ScannedFromQRCode" state (if we add one);
etc.

Comment 5

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

FWIW, we've also talked about some kind of "text yourself a link to setup sync" flow, and it would be neat if that could re-use as many of the mechanisms discussed above as possible.

Comment 6

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

Bulk edit: moving potentially relevant issues from disabled Android Background Services product to Firefox for Android.

Removing priority to throw back to triage owners: please close these bugs if they're no longer relevant! Thanks!

Comment 7

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

We are approaching this from a slightly different direction.