1377347 - Tours(onboarding-notification-bar) obstructs the footer menus of about:home

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Tours, defect)

Description

[Alice0775 White]

Attachment: screenshot

It is annoying.
It seems on Nightly only.

Reproducible: always

Steps to reproduce:
1 open about:home

Actual results:
Tours obstructs the footer menus(Download Bookmarks History Add-ons etc...) of about:home

Expected results:
should not.

Comment 1

[Francis Lee [:frlee]]

hi Verdi,

could you please comment on this one? it should be considered as by design according to your spec, correct?

thank you very much

Comment 3

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

Unfortunately I think this is something we have to live with for Firefox 56. FWIW of those functions are available in other places.

Comment 4

[Francis Lee [:frlee]]

based on previous comment, WONTFIX

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Is this actually a WONTFIX or just something we won't fix for 56?

Comment 6

[Tim Guan-tin Chien [:timdream] (please needinfo)]

AFAIK this will be INVALID on Firefox 57 since about:home will be upgraded to the Activity Stream page.

Comment 7

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

(In reply to Tim Guan-tin Chien [:timdream] (please needinfo) from comment #6)
> AFAIK this will be INVALID on Firefox 57 since about:home will be upgraded
> to the Activity Stream page.

I *think* about:home will still exist but the default home page and new tab page will be activity stream so most people won't see it. So it might require the "fix" of having the tour and notifications no longer being displayed on about:home from 57 onward.

Comment 8

[Fischer [:Fischer]]

(In reply to Verdi [:verdi] from comment #7)
> (In reply to Tim Guan-tin Chien [:timdream] (please needinfo) from comment
> #6)
> > AFAIK this will be INVALID on Firefox 57 since about:home will be upgraded
> > to the Activity Stream page.
> 
> I *think* about:home will still exist but the default home page and new tab
> page will be activity stream so most people won't see it. So it might
> require the "fix" of having the tour and notifications no longer being
> displayed on about:home from 57 onward.
If from 57, both about:home and about:newtab will be Activity-Stream page, why don't show the onboarding tours on about:home?

Comment 9

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

(In reply to Fischer [:Fischer] from comment #8)
> (In reply to Verdi [:verdi] from comment #7)
> > (In reply to Tim Guan-tin Chien [:timdream] (please needinfo) from comment
> > #6)
> > > AFAIK this will be INVALID on Firefox 57 since about:home will be upgraded
> > > to the Activity Stream page.
> > 
> > I *think* about:home will still exist but the default home page and new tab
> > page will be activity stream so most people won't see it. So it might
> > require the "fix" of having the tour and notifications no longer being
> > displayed on about:home from 57 onward.
> If from 57, both about:home and about:newtab will be Activity-Stream page,
> why don't show the onboarding tours on about:home?

We should check again with the Activity Stream folks but AFAIK, about:home won't *be* activity stream. It will still be the same old about:home we have today. The difference is that the Firefox home page (and new tab page) will be set to activity stream by default. So Firefox will start up and show the home page which will now be activity stream instead of about:home. So I would think this makes people who need to see a tour on about:home an edge case and we won't need to support it anymore.

Comment 10

[Fischer [:Fischer]]

Hi Tim,

From 57, the about:newtab would be redirected to the activity stream page.

How about the about:home, would it be redirected to the activity stream page as well ?
Or it wouldn't, we will simply set the default home page to the url of the activity stream page ?

Thank you for the answer. This is going to affect our onboarding tour display decision.

Comment 11

[Nicole Yee (:nicoleyee)]

Hi Tim!

Any update on the decision making for the above questions?

Comment 12

[Tim Spurway [:tspurway]]

about:home will be directed to Activity Stream in 57, that is the plan, but there is a caveat.

That being said, we had some conversations with :bsmedberg and the existing about:home is being used for performance testing and we will need to be careful making changes to it.  There are a number of test cases that start Firefox and test the time it takes to render the about:home hero element.  There are both manual and automated tests for this that will have to be modified if we change about:home, and any performance regressions in this area will be under a great deal of scrutiny.

It would be prudent therefore to plan on about:home either remaining as-is for 57 or about:home being Activity Stream.  Ultimately, about:home will be AS, but it may have to remain the same until a future release.  For onboarding tour, it would be best to have in place a plan that could handle either outcome.

Comment 14

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

(In reply to Verdi [:verdi] from comment #3)
> Unfortunately I think this is something we have to live with for Firefox 56.
> FWIW of those functions are available in other places.

The "Restore session" function is not available in any other place, at least not that's apparent to me. And as of right now the about:home footer is still obscured on startup which makes it too hard to restore one's session. If about:home is going to be redirected to activity stream, what is the plan for allowing easy access to the "restore session" feature?

Comment 15

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Kartikaya Gupta (Away Sep02-Sep10) (email:[e-mail]) from comment #14)
> (In reply to Verdi [:verdi] from comment #3)
> > Unfortunately I think this is something we have to live with for Firefox 56.
> > FWIW of those functions are available in other places.
> 
> The "Restore session" function is not available in any other place, at least
> not that's apparent to me. And as of right now the about:home footer is
> still obscured on startup which makes it too hard to restore one's session.
> If about:home is going to be redirected to activity stream, what is the plan
> for allowing easy access to the "restore session" feature?

I can't speak for Verdi or to future plans, but in the meantime, you can use toplevel menu: history > restore previous session. The same option is also available via the history view in the library, and will soon move to be a toplevel item in the hamburger panel - I need to address review feedback in bug 1393343 and land the patch there (I was on PTO).

Comment 16

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Thanks, that more or less addresses my main concern. I'll leave the needinfo on Verdi for if he has anything to add.

Comment 17

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

There is also the option to "Show your windows and tabs from last time" on startup (Options > General). But the main way to access it in the future will be in the hamburger menu as Gijs describes.