1183601 - Switch to Material Design iconography

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Theme and Visual Design, defect)

Description

[Paul [pwd]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0
Build ID: 20150513191204

Steps to reproduce:

We're using the pre-MD icons, let's switch over to the Material Design icons.

Comment 1

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

Paul, do you have specific examples on where we can improve? I can see:
  * 3-dot menu should be round dots
  * Tabs tray button should have less dimensionality
  * Using system "x" button (which is an X surrounded by a circle)
  * System-themed check boxes in 3-dot menu (maybe surrounded w/ orange?)
  * If some tabs tray icons change (e.g. menu), some others may need tho change to fit in (e.g. plus)

We should be careful to keep our differentiation from Chrome, I think (e.g. don't just drop in their tabs tray button).

Comment 2

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

I think this bug's scope is too big. Material designs' icon pack is offered as a starting point, rather than an end game. 

Our iconography is part of our brand and it's quite a strong one. If you read Material guidelines, they're also encouraged. 

There are places in our UI currently where we use old stock icons so I propose that we start there. We should start with the Action Bar that gets triggered on long-press. There are the cut, copy, paste icons in there.

Comment 3

[Paul [pwd]]

Changing our system icons isn't a big deal here, while I appreciate the importance of the brand, when Firefox for Android launched, it launched as Native Firefox. We've stagnated in that regard and as a result we're now shipping a product that feels dated because of minor oversights like the one highlighted by this bug. Yes I appreciate the guidelines, but if you dogfood Fennec it feels like a third-rate guest.

We can match most of our system icons like for like, where Google has provided a minor tweak on how the buttons feel such as rounding off corners.

* 3-dot/kebab/overflow menu needs switching to the modern aesthetic
* tabs tray icon is fine
* They provide a simple slightly tweaked X without the circle
* Contextual toolbar buttons (select all, copy, cut, paste, etc) need updating
* AwesomeScreen buttons (scan, microphone)

The goal here should be to create the best native experience. Little tweaks like these facilitate that.

Comment 4

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

After playing with bug 1189272, our 3-dot menu looks really dated and I figured it'd be a good first step - Anthony, can I get new 3-dot menu icon assets?

Alternatively, I can try to copy it from the Android resources (or one of their sample apps).

Comment 5

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

Anthony pointed me to the 3-dot asset [1] and suggested I send him a build. NI self.

Concerns are the Material 3-dot doesn't open a Material menu. :(

Another area for improvement would be the text selection action bar icons.

[1]: https://www.google.com/design/icons/#ic_more_vert

Comment 6

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

Attachment: Material 3-dot

Looks pretty good, imo. :)

Let me get you a build...

Comment 7

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

As a prototype, this only works on L+ & phones:
  https://people.mozilla.com/~mcomella/apks/mcomella-1183601_01.apk

Comment 8

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Comment on attachment 8645252 [details]
Material 3-dot

I think this looks good. I like it but I feel like if we update this icon, we should give the user more reason to care about this change (i.e. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1140169). 

Especially since the only logical thing to do after noticing this icon change would be to get excited and press it :)

Comment 9

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

thoughts on the slightly increased scope?

Comment 10

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

(In reply to Anthony Lam (:antlam) from comment #9)
> thoughts on the slightly increased scope?

I like the refined menu and the scope creep isn't too large – I'll continue this work in bug 1140169.

Comment 11

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

(In reply to Michael Comella (:mcomella) from comment #10)
> I like the refined menu and the scope creep isn't too large – I'll continue
> this work in bug 1140169.

Didn't realize this was a meta – bug 1148550.

Comment 12

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

I think this is done now.