1219448 - Collapsed URL Browser Chrome on a Pinned site hides user access to Back/Forward navigation functionality.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::Browser, defect)

Description

[Martin Shuman [:Marty]]

Attachment: logcat_Browser-Chrome-Collapse.txt

Description:
If the user opens, or browses to a site that is Pinned to the home screen, the browser chrome will automatically collapse (implemented in bug 1168962) in order to provide the user with more screen real estate for preferred sites. However, this has the unfortunate side effect of removing visible access to the Back and Forward navigation buttons. On normal web pages, the user will be accustomed to scrolling back up the page to access the browser chrome after it has collapsed, but this functionality is specifically disabled on Pinned sites.  Back and Forward buttons are commonly used when browsing, and hiding these buttons can confuse and frustrate the user.

Note: The user can tap the collapsed search bar to open the browser chrome, but this is not easily apparent, and

Repro Steps:
1) Update a Aries to 20151028104739
2) Open the browser and Pin a Site to the Home Screen
3) Return to the browser and navigate to and from the pinned site
4) Note the Back/Forward buttons in the Browser URL Chrome.

Actual:
The Back and Forward buttons are not readily accessible to the user on the Pinned site.

Expected:
The Back and Forward buttons are easily readily accessible to the user on all websites.

Environmental Variables:
Device: Aries 2.5
Build ID: 20151028104739
Gaia: 2e89362de40a6c9c36525d36317fa1ae8e67e143
Gecko: fc706d376f0658e560a59c3dd520437b18e8c4a4
Gonk: 2916e2368074b5383c80bf5a0fba3fc83ba310bd
Version: 44.0a1 (2.5)
Firmware Version: D5803_23.1.A.1.28_NCB.ftf
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:44.0) Gecko/44.0 Firefox/44.0

Repro frequency: 10/10
See attached: Logcat, Video (URL)

Comment 1

[Martin Shuman [:Marty]]

This issue DOES occur on Flame 2.5
The Back and Forward buttons are not readily accessible to the user on the Pinned site.

Environmental Variables:
Device: Flame 2.5
BuildID: 20151028030421
Gaia: 2e89362de40a6c9c36525d36317fa1ae8e67e143
Gecko: fc706d376f0658e560a59c3dd520437b18e8c4a4
Gonk: 205ac4204bbbb2098a8046444acba551ba5dc75a
Version: 44.0a1 (2.5) 
Firmware Version: v18D
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:44.0) Gecko/44.0 Firefox/44.0

*****************************************

Pin the Web is not implemented in the Flame 2.2 branch

Comment 2

[Gregor Wagner [:gwagner]]

I believe thats by design?

Comment 3

[Ben Francis [:benfrancis]]

Yes this is by design, and this also came up in usability testing.

People have asked for a long time for a way to mimimise browser chrome for apps like Facebook and pinned sites provide this. The downside is that it makes the back button less accessible/discoverable.

For a future version the Alopex project is looking into adding a system back button which will greatly help with this. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox_OS/Alopex

I'm goign to mark this as WONTFIX for now as this is by design for 2.5, but this may change in future releases.

Comment 4

[Pi Wei Cheng [:piwei] (inactive)]

In my opinion there should be an option provided for users to whether they want to use expandable browser on the top and not just force minimized browser on pinned sites.

Also it was not mentioned anywhere on the Pin dialog that 'Pin site' will be using minimized browser and it will confuse users when they see they lose back/forward/URL bar/ellipsis functionalities when simply swiping down can't invoke them.