1252316 - Determine what action clicking & long-clicking on a bookmark screenshot list item should take

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

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

Default is to open the file url in fennec in bug 1243558. Options:
* Open the website associated with the screenshot
* Fire an Intent to open the image in another application

We should also consider adding more buttons to do other actions (e.g. the camera button will open the associated website but clicking the row will open the screenshot directly).

What do you think, Anthony? Also NI Finkle because I know he has opinions here.

Comment 1

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

(In reply to Michael Comella (:mcomella) from comment #0)
> Default is to open the file url in fennec in bug 1243558. Options:
> * Open the website associated with the screenshot
> * Fire an Intent to open the image in another application
> 
> We should also consider adding more buttons to do other actions (e.g. the
> camera button will open the associated website but clicking the row will
> open the screenshot directly).
> 
> What do you think, Anthony? Also NI Finkle because I know he has opinions
> here.

A couple things inform my opinions here:
1. Firefox is a web browser and primarily displays web content. As such, we should default to displaying the page URL, not the screenshot.
2. One of our primary goals of tracking screenshots is to capture the "signal" and use the signal to add importance to the page URL associated with the screenshot.
3. We want to use the importance/signal to raise the page URL in frecency.
4. We want to allow the person to find a collection of important page URL - which right now is only screenshots, but could include shared and copied page URLs.
5. We should hand off showing the image (screenshot) to an appropriate Android application. We could have a secondary affordance (button or icon) in the row to launch the image viewer. This should only happen if the screenshot still exists.
6. We should not remove the page URL from the smart folder if the screenshot image itself is deleted. We want to make it easy to find those important pages again.

Comment 2

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

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #1)
> A couple things inform my opinions here:
> 1. Firefox is a web browser and primarily displays web content. As such, we
> should default to displaying the page URL, not the screenshot.

I agree, but I think two things:
 1) If the user touches the Link list item (the ones in Bookmarks, History, etc)
    - we should display the web content
 2) If the user touches the File list item (the ones currently in the "Screenshots smart folder")
    - we should display the image file/screenshot

> 2. One of our primary goals of tracking screenshots is to capture the
> "signal" and use the signal to add importance to the page URL associated
> with the screenshot.

Agree, I'm not entirely sure what this means in our UI ATM. But we should be doing this and using it to weight pages in our Awesomescreen suggestions for example.

> 3. We want to use the importance/signal to raise the page URL in frecency.

Agree, as above, we should do this but I'm not clear on what the frecency algo is like so I can't comment more specifically.

> 4. We want to allow the person to find a collection of important page URL -
> which right now is only screenshots, but could include shared and copied
> page URLs.

Yes, "Saved pages" might be what we call this smart folder that contains things like screenshots, copied URLS, downloaded PDF even. But that's not in the scope of this bug I think.

> 5. We should hand off showing the image (screenshot) to an appropriate
> Android application. We could have a secondary affordance (button or icon)
> in the row to launch the image viewer. This should only happen if the
> screenshot still exists.

I think we know switching between applications is a bad experience. Having played with this and used it for actual use cases in my day-to-day, I find opening in the browser the least jarring. 

If I need to leave, with the help of the Android icon in the toolbar, it's really easy. Jumping out to an images application to share this via whatsapp (for example) was really easy too.

Though, that being said, the alternative can also be true. 

That is, wf we know users want to jump out to the images app right away and don't mind that transition because they want the Share functionality of Google Photos (for example), then we should make that easy for them too.

I think some data could help us here. Can we get some telemetry on this "Android icon" interaction for these screenshot items? 

> 6. We should not remove the page URL from the smart folder if the screenshot
> image itself is deleted. We want to make it easy to find those important
> pages again.

If the image itself is deleted: 
   - No, we should not remove the page URL (link list item) from Bookmarks or History or anywhere.
   - We should remove the File list item from "Screenshots" smart folder though because it only throws up an error page since the file is missing. Being a shortcut to that item, if the item is removed, the shortcut is not useful anymore. 
   -- Bug 1255146

---

In summary, within the scope of this bug, if this item is in the smart folder, the behaviour should be:

Single touch > Open screenshot image inside Firefox
Long-press > Open context menu with options:
 - Open in New Tab
 - Open in Private Tab
 - Remove 

Where "Remove" will remove the item from this Smart folder but not actually delete the file. I don't think "triaging screenshots" is within the scope of this bug right now.

Comment 3

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

(In reply to Anthony Lam (:antlam) from comment #2)

> > A couple things inform my opinions here:
> > 1. Firefox is a web browser and primarily displays web content. As such, we
> > should default to displaying the page URL, not the screenshot.
> 
> I agree, but I think two things:
>  1) If the user touches the Link list item (the ones in Bookmarks, History,
> etc)
>     - we should display the web content
>  2) If the user touches the File list item (the ones currently in the
> "Screenshots smart folder")
>     - we should display the image file/screenshot

Don't you think it's a major disconnect to treat items in Bookmarks and History and every other place in the Home Panels as "web pages", except for items in the "Saved Pages" smart folder?

> > 4. We want to allow the person to find a collection of important page URL -
> > which right now is only screenshots, but could include shared and copied
> > page URLs.
> 
> Yes, "Saved pages" might be what we call this smart folder that contains
> things like screenshots, copied URLS, downloaded PDF even. But that's not in
> the scope of this bug I think.

Why would we want to start this as a file list and then change it later? Let's be consistent.

> > 5. We should hand off showing the image (screenshot) to an appropriate
> > Android application. We could have a secondary affordance (button or icon)
> > in the row to launch the image viewer. This should only happen if the
> > screenshot still exists.
> 
> I think we know switching between applications is a bad experience. Having
> played with this and used it for actual use cases in my day-to-day, I find
> opening in the browser the least jarring. 

But Firefox is a horrible image viewer. Don't we want to make it easy to get people into a decent image viewer?

> If I need to leave, with the help of the Android icon in the toolbar, it's
> really easy. Jumping out to an images application to share this via whatsapp
> (for example) was really easy too.
> 
> Though, that being said, the alternative can also be true. 

Exactly.

> That is, wf we know users want to jump out to the images app right away and
> don't mind that transition because they want the Share functionality of
> Google Photos (for example), then we should make that easy for them too.
> 
> I think some data could help us here. Can we get some telemetry on this
> "Android icon" interaction for these screenshot items? 

We have telemetry on the "Android icon". We should have telemetry on tapping items in the smart folder. Right, Mike?

> > 6. We should not remove the page URL from the smart folder if the screenshot
> > image itself is deleted. We want to make it easy to find those important
> > pages again.
> 
> If the image itself is deleted: 
>    - No, we should not remove the page URL (link list item) from Bookmarks
> or History or anywhere.
>    - We should remove the File list item from "Screenshots" smart folder
> though because it only throws up an error page since the file is missing.
> Being a shortcut to that item, if the item is removed, the shortcut is not
> useful anymore. 

The screenshot action does not create a Bookmark, although a History item should have happen at some point. I can understand you proposal here, because you feel this is purely a list of image files. I believe this should be a list of page URLs, which have an image associated. In that view, the page URLs in the folder shouldn't go away.

> In summary, within the scope of this bug, if this item is in the smart
> folder, the behaviour should be:
> 
> Single touch > Open screenshot image inside Firefox
> Long-press > Open context menu with options:
>  - Open in New Tab
>  - Open in Private Tab
>  - Remove 
> 
> Where "Remove" will remove the item from this Smart folder but not actually
> delete the file. I don't think "triaging screenshots" is within the scope of
> this bug right now.

You could add "Share" to that list.

It's obvious you want the Smart Folder to be a list of files. If we decide to use that model, it has to work for anything that we expect to put in the smart folder. I'd like you to think about this beyond screenshots. If you can create a proposal for treating everything we want in the Smart Folder as a file item, then you have a foundation.

If you can't, then we don't have a solid future for the feature. Please put some time into thinking about the bigger vision.

Comment 4

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

> > > 5. We should hand off showing the image (screenshot) to an appropriate
> > > Android application. We could have a secondary affordance (button or icon)
> > > in the row to launch the image viewer. This should only happen if the
> > > screenshot still exists.
> > 
> > I think we know switching between applications is a bad experience. Having
> > played with this and used it for actual use cases in my day-to-day, I find
> > opening in the browser the least jarring. 
> 
> But Firefox is a horrible image viewer. Don't we want to make it easy to get
> people into a decent image viewer?

Also, we always open an external PDF viewer to view "Save as PDF" assets.

Comment 5

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

> We have telemetry on the "Android icon".

I don't have much context on the analysis side of telemetry but I'm not sure how to correlate these presses with the screenshots.

> We should have telemetry on tapping items in the smart folder. Right, Mike?

Yep – loadurl.1, listitem, bookmarks-screenshot: https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?string=bookmarks-screenshot&find=mobile%2Fandroid&findi=&filter=^[^\0]*%24&hitlimit=&tree=mozilla-central

I don't see any numbers in Finkle's UI telemetry dashboard, however – I'm unclear why that is.

fwiw, I've found context switching to be a huge burden on me so I'm focusing primarily on Telemetry atm. NI me if you want me to be a part of this discussion.

Comment 6

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

I do see some "bookmarks-screenshot" telemetry data appearing in Nightly.

Comment 7

[BMO Automation]

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