1212763 - Idea: Use snackbar look and feel for tab queues

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Overlays, defect)

Description

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

This is an idea I have been playing with for quite some time now. So I just file it here for discussion.

Idea: Instead of the current toast-like tab queue overlay, use an overlay that looks and behaves like a snackbar. I attached some screenshots that show how this will look like.

Why?

* A snackbar will look more like it is in the context of the current application. In fact it will look like Firefox is integrated into the current application.

* With more apps following Material design guidelines the snackbar overlay will harmonize better with other apps.

* The user knows (or will know?) snackbars and know how to interact with them. Having actions in a toast is an unusual concept.

* A snackbar inside an app is always at the bottom of the screen. It's easy to emulate this with an overlay.


Why not?

* Maybe the snackbar is not the best foundation for future tab queue features. I added screenshots of some variants that might be able to address some of those. However some of these variants stretch the guidelines for snackbars pretty much.

* According to the guidelines an app should always show only one snackbar. Showing a new snackbar will dismiss the previous snackbar. Of course our overlay can't guarantee this if the app is showing a snackbar itself. However it's very unlikely that the user will perform an action that shows an in-app snackbar and at the same time clicks a link in the app.

Comment 1

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Attachment: Snackbar overlay in other apps: Facebook, G+, Pocket, Twitter

Comment 2

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

Attachment: Snackbar overlay variants

Comment 3

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Sweet, these look pretty nice.

I think it would make sense to do this as part of a more general move towards snackbars.

Would this be something only for 6.0+, or could we use the design support library to implement this on older Android versions as well?

Comment 4

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

Just a small counterpoint to consider: Snackbars are typically shown from inside the app itself. I mean, Facebook would show it's own snackbars. This is a Firefox snackbar showing in Facebook (or other apps_. Do we need to make it clear which app is displaying the Snackbar?

FTR, Toasts suffer in the same way, so this would not be a "regression".

Comment 5

[:Margaret Leibovic]

There are also cases where apps design a very custom overlay UI, such as Pocket's "Saved to Pocket" toast:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r0auo6i15qbei2d/2015-10-08%2019.43.30.png?dl=0

Comment 6

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

Awesome work Sebastian.

This is actually something that I've been wanting to do as well but always thought of it as a part of bug 1157526.

I'd like to see us do this, as well as change all of our existing toasts and super toasts into snack bars (bug 1157526). This sets us up with a good baseline user experience. Then, we can explore "future tab queue features" on top of this foundation.

Comment 7

[Paul [pwd]]

This is without a doubt beautiful, but we'd be essentially faking toasts with this wouldn't we? Thus wouldn't it cause issues if there was an app specific toast displayed at the same time? The super toast has been superseded by Heads up Notifications. Also with Marshmallow drawing over other apps has become a pain in the neck. I recall someone saying that they were looking into whether or not we could use Heads Up Notifications for tab queues, I'd argue that they're a perfect due to being unobtrusive and low-effort not to mention low-maintenance.

Comment 8

[Paul [pwd]]

RE: drawing over other apps has become a pain in the neck: http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/09/07/android-m-begins-locking-down-floating-apps-requires-users-to-grant-special-permission-to-draw-on-other-apps/

And the Heads Up Notification idea is bug 1205597

Comment 9

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

That's not something we are going to do. And we can do better as soon as we work on v2: bug 1158260.