1425941 - [tracking] Add UI language selection preference

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

As part of bug 1325870 we want to enable users to select a UI language when they have multiple installed.

We now have a clean and resilient set of APIs for it, and all we need is a UI in Preferences.

This bug is about adding a simple UI that shows just locally available locales. In the future we will want to extend this UX to allow for downloading/installing available languages from AMO, but that will go to a separate bug.

Comment 1

[Carlos [nohamelin]]

See bug 377881 for the "most recent" discussion here about UI language switching.

Comment 2

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Yeah. It took way longer than it should. I know! :)

I reworked the whole locale management in Gecko this year based on bug 1325870  to be able to do this. In bug 1352884 we're also working on adding WebExtensions API.

In this bug I plan to add just a simple UI that will only show up when you have more than one language available and allow you to select your requested locale between them + "use system locale" - much like we do in Fennec.

Comment 3

[Carlos [nohamelin]]

The behaviour from bug 62174 has not changed these years right? So this UI will need to manage a possible browser restart, something that with the WebExtensions API we will not get involved, probably.

Comment 4

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

> So this UI will need to manage a possible browser restart, something that with the WebExtensions API we will not get involved, probably.

I do not plan to include the restart in the behavior here. The change will only update the `intl.locale.requested` list. The good news is that with the flock of changes now every new window will use the new locale set (no need to fully restart the browser).

The bad news is that we'll have to wait for Fluent to fully fix the language update in the current window.

Comment 5

[Carlos [nohamelin]]

(In reply to Zibi Braniecki [:gandalf][:zibi] from comment #4)
> now every new window will use the new locale set (no need
> to fully restart the browser).

That has been the behaviour with the previous system too. The offer to restart the browser in some related add-ons is more a quick shortcut to apply the change to the current windows.

Now, I recall some about:* pages not switching the language of *parts* of its UI after switching the browser language and reloading those pages: the names of the main panes in the Add-ons Manager is one example that I remember. A full restart was necessary here again. Anyway, I guess these cases should be easy to fix, and can be tracked separately.

Comment 6

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

Attachment: POC of the UI

This is how I imagine the minimal UI to look like.

This row will show up only if the user has more than one language available (for example in result of installing a langpack).

The "Use system default" follows the same UX choice from Fennec. As we add ability to autoinstall langpacks as we follow the OS it'll be more useful.

Comment 7

[Tina Hsieh[:Tina_Hsieh] UX]

Hi Zibi,
The minimal UI looks OK to me. There're some minor tweaks we can do for keeping this option consistent with others:
1. Remove ":"
2. In Preferences, we usually have the drop-down button right next to the copy string. 

I'll suggest having a copy review from the content team to avoid using technical terms like "UI" and make it more sense to have the copy follow by the drop-down. 

Something you might know already: there is an ongoing project called "project Medley" from the add-ons team planning to move the language pack settings to about:preferences. Not sure how it affects this bug, but there will be some redesign of language settings in the future. :)

Comment 8

[Zibi Braniecki [:zbraniecki][:gandalf]]

(In reply to Tina Hsieh[:Tina_Hsieh] UX from comment #7)
> Something you might know already: there is an ongoing project called
> "project Medley" from the add-ons team planning to move the language pack
> settings to about:preferences. Not sure how it affects this bug, but there
> will be some redesign of language settings in the future. :)

Great! I didn't know that but that's very much in line with my planning around bug 1325870 (unify language selection) and bug 1425712 comment 1 (make it possible to trigger langpack installation when user selects a language).

I'll work on a new revision of the patch based on your feedback and ask the content team for review.

Comment 9

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Comment on attachment 8937602 [details]
POC of the UI

Looks like the ux request has already been handled, so dropping the request for review with an empty requestee. Please re-request if I'm wrong.

Comment 10

[Andy McKay]

cc'ing in Markus and Emanuela who are working on something similar and have mocks for this area.

Comment 11

[emanuela [ux]]

(In reply to Andy McKay [:andym] from comment #10)
> cc'ing in Markus and Emanuela who are working on something similar and have
> mocks for this area.

yep, we're already on this one!