1361678 - Keep bookmarks order consistent between different platforms

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Jing-wei Wu [:jwu]]

We should keep the order in bookmark panel consistent between different platforms:

In Android, we didn't display "Mobile Bookmarks", but show its children on top level and put "Desktop Bookmarks" as a child inside it.

However in iOS, we display "Desktop Bookmarks" on top level, and put "Mobile Bookmarks" as a child inside it.

Comment 1

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

(In reply to Jing-wei Wu [:jwu] from comment #0)
> However in iOS, we display "Desktop Bookmarks" on top level, and put "Mobile
> Bookmarks" as a child inside it.

That's not really true.

On iOS we display mobile bookmarks at the top level, and "Desktop Bookmarks" as a child inside it, just as we do on Android. The top-level bookmarks are indeed in a folder named "Mobile Bookmarks", exactly like Android, though of course you'll never see the folder title!

The difference is that iOS does not sync bookmarks bidirectionally yet, because desktop is working bravely through a long list of bugs to make bookmark sync reliable enough to flip that flag.

What you see in "Desktop Bookmarks" on iOS is a best-effort representation of _what's on the Sync server_, and _what shows on your desktop_. That includes a folder named "Mobile Bookmarks", just as you see on your desktop.

This is confusing, but it's perhaps better than trying to visually merge the two lists, which will imply to users that their phone's bookmarks have synced.

When we flip the flag to make iOS sync bidirectionally, that inner "Mobile Bookmarks" folder will be merged with the local "Mobile Bookmarks", and that folder will disappear.

You have two choices:

1. Rename "Desktop Bookmarks" to "Server Bookmarks" until bidirectional syncing is enabled, if you think it gives the user a better mental model.
2. Dupe this bug to Bug 1252469.

Comment 2

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Re-triaging per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473195

Needinfo :susheel if you think this bug should be re-triaged.

Comment 3

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.