1229636 - Remove new tab first time use message

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

Attachment: newtab.jpg

The first time a user opens the new tab, they are presented with a message that blocks them from using the search and tiles of the page. In first run user testing, my observation has been that most people instantly dismiss it or are slightly annoyed by it because it's blocking them from their task. It's also yet another message in a long list of messages that we show to users in a first session. This contributes to an overall impression of an overly complicated setup.

In addition, this message is confusing because it talks about updated functionality of a feature that the user has never seen.
* From the user's perspective, this is not an update.
* The user has no prior experience with the feature to be able to put the content of the message in context.

For these reasons, we would like to remove this message as part of our effort to make Firefox onboarding great.

Comment 1

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Attachment: MozReview Request: Bug 1229636 - Remove unused strings from newTab.properties. r?gijs

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/30211/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/30211/

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Comment on attachment 8705843 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1229636 - Remove unused strings from newTab.properties. r?gijs

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/30211/#review26991

Comment 3

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/cde67478357f

Comment 4

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Comment on attachment 8705843 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1229636 - Remove unused strings from newTab.properties. r?gijs

Review request updated; see interdiff: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/30211/diff/1-2/

Comment 5

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/cde67478357f

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Comment on attachment 8705843 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1229636 - Remove unused strings from newTab.properties. r?gijs

This doesn't work - you should either use a new bug or explicitly set an alternative identifier when pushing to mozreview, something like "bz://1229636/jaws-2", to get a second, separate review request for the same bug number.

As it is, this patch removes learn.link, which is still in use in other files, it seems, and has a number of references in the l10n comments in this file.

Comment 8

[Chris Karlof [:ckarlof]]

Verdi, in the future, please check with the product owners of a particular feature before requesting changes to the on-boarding of that feature. This tour also served as a mechanism to disclose a change to our privacy notice (regarding changes to the data collection we do on the new tab page), so it's not as easy as simply removing it (see bug 1234272 and bug 1238073).

You make good points regarding the on-boarding flow, but we may need to keep some sort of messaging for users that upgraded. I'm not sure what the best way to proceed is at this point, but the first steps is let Elvin know of this change.

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Chris Karlof [:ckarlof] from comment #8)
> Verdi, in the future, please check with the product owners of a particular
> feature before requesting changes to the on-boarding of that feature. This
> tour also served as a mechanism to disclose a change to our privacy notice
> (regarding changes to the data collection we do on the new tab page), so
> it's not as easy as simply removing it (see bug 1234272 and bug 1238073).
> 
> You make good points regarding the on-boarding flow, but we may need to keep
> some sort of messaging for users that upgraded. I'm not sure what the best
> way to proceed is at this point, but the first steps is let Elvin know of
> this change.

I can't see bug 1234272.

Do we need to roll this back, or at least roll back the strings, so we know that we're not going to ship without any disclaimer before 46 string freeze?

Comment 10

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #9)
> Do we need to roll this back, or at least roll back the strings, so we know
> that we're not going to ship without any disclaimer before 46 string freeze?

At this point the strings haven't been removed (see bug 1239418).

Comment 11

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Chris Karlof [:ckarlof] from comment #8)
> Verdi, in the future, please check with the product owners of a particular
> feature before requesting changes to the on-boarding of that feature. This
> tour also served as a mechanism to disclose a change to our privacy notice
> (regarding changes to the data collection we do on the new tab page), so
> it's not as easy as simply removing it (see bug 1234272 and bug 1238073).
> 
> You make good points regarding the on-boarding flow, but we may need to keep
> some sort of messaging for users that upgraded. I'm not sure what the best
> way to proceed is at this point, but the first steps is let Elvin know of
> this change.

Is this for strict legal reasons or because we just want to keep users informed? Seems pretty strange to spread such individual notices across the UI for specific features, compared to the global "know your rights" info bar (not sure if we still show that).

Comment 12

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

To add on to Dao's question, are we sending any data to the directory tiles service before that New Tab page has even been opened? Is the sending of the data predicated on the user clicking "Got it!"?

There really isn't an opt-out, so some of the data would be sent to the server before the user can do anything, since you can't disable from the modal. The user has to click on the gear button and select it from there. So unless we have some delay (likely a couple hours? who knows what would be best...) before we start sending data, this notice is less of an agreement and more of a warning, but the warning is too late for the user to do anything about it.

Comment 13

[Chris Karlof [:ckarlof]]

Gijs, I've added you to bug 1234272. We're likely going to roll it back.

Comment 14

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Let's not split discussion, this isn't the right bug for it. We're meeting shortly to understand what the requirements of the new-tab page are, and how to move forward.

Comment 15

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

I tested a backout locally -- it's a trivial backout with no conflicts. But I'm going to hold off on landing the backout, as if we do bug 1240245 promptly we can leave this in to ride 46. (And if not, we'll backout. I just want to avoid thrashing, and everything may work itself out simply in short order.)

Comment 16

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Just to tie up the loose end here -- bug 1240245 landed, which disables data collection, which eliminates the need to back this out. All done here!

Comment 17

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

Clearing my NI