1221192 - Reconsider blocking lightweight theme management UI in FFB

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Add-on Manager, defect)

Description

[:Margaret Leibovic]

We are looking at adding a lightweight theme chooser during the first run for FFB (bug 1220251). However, we currently block access to the add-on manager, where themes are enabled.

Maybe we should still allow access to the add-on manager to install lightweight themes? We could still disable add-on installation.

Alternately, we could make a separate UI to manage themes, but that seems like a much larger and more difficult project.

Comment 1

[Barbara Bermes [:barbara] - NI please!]

I'd like to hear/discuss the separate UI to manage themes a bit more, pro's and con's. 

I believe the idea here was to not only restrict this to FFB mode but also to offer eventually to non-restricted profiles.

>> Maybe we should still allow access to the add-on manager to install lightweight themes? We could still disable add-on installation.

How would this be presented to the user, would this be awkward for them from a UX perspective?

Also how popular are themes? Is this something we should heavily or minimally invest in, especially around our newly defined themes?

Can we discuss this in our next leads meeting on Tuesday?

antlam, mfinkle, margaret...thoughts?

Comment 2

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

The current implementation is borrowed from guest profiles and controlled by DISALLOW_INSTALL_EXTENSION. If this is enabled then we:
* Disable extension installation
* Hide Tools -> Addons in menu
* Block accessing about:addons

Comment 3

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I don't think that re-enabling the add-on manager is the right call here, since it would be confusing that we still block normal add-ons.

In the long term, it might be nice to have more discoverable theme management that's not in the add-on manager, but in the short term, I think we should just have a way to get back to some similar UI to what we show in first run to let these users change their theme to another one of the built-in themes.

I imagine installing themes from AMO would still work, but that's not discoverable in restricted profiles, and once again, it's confusing that we block the rest of the add-on experience.

Comment 4

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

Sriram created an add-on for switching LWTs [1]. Maybe we could create a simple native UI in Settings to do the same thing.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/lightweight-themes-switcher/

Comment 5

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

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #3)
> I don't think that re-enabling the add-on manager is the right call here,
> since it would be confusing that we still block normal add-ons.

I agree. 

We shouldn't do this yet, until have a bigger story or more options with the rest of AMO/ add-ons.

> In the long term, it might be nice to have more discoverable theme
> management that's not in the add-on manager, but in the short term, I think
> we should just have a way to get back to some similar UI to what we show in
> first run to let these users change their theme to another one of the
> built-in themes.
> 
> I imagine installing themes from AMO would still work, but that's not
> discoverable in restricted profiles, and once again, it's confusing that we
> block the rest of the add-on experience.

To keep it simple for now, I think adding a way for the user to get back to the UX we choose to use in bug 1220251 is best. 

Perhaps a menu/settings item to re-launch that "first run" tour?

Comment 6

[Sebastian Kaspari (:sebastian; :pocmo)]

We had a bunch of ideas here.. but what are we going to implement? Relaunching the first run tour is (maybe..) the easiest one but this could be confusing (and we mess with telemetry and A/B testing?).

Comment 7

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I think that re-launching the first run tour would be pretty confusing, especially if we end up implementing the combined welcome/theme panel that's currently proposed in bug 1220251.

How about a Tools -> Themes menu item, which would open a dialog to pick from the built-in themes we're including? I know there's lots of room to improve on this, but something very basic would be a big improvement over giving users nothing.

Comment 8

[Barbara Bermes [:barbara] - NI please!]

I'm ok with Margaret's suggestion

Comment 9

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

WFM!

A dialog with radio options works. Are we able to supply images to those options or only text?

Comment 10

[:Margaret Leibovic]

We didn't land the lightweight theme chooser for FFB, so we don't need to worry about this.