1540174 - Firefox installation instructions aren't safe for users with strobe and/or visual motion sensitivities

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement, P3)

Description

[MarjaE]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:65.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/65.0 Waterfox/56.2.7

Steps to reproduce:

Installed Firefox 66.0.2 using the instructions here:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-download-and-install-firefox-mac

Actual results:

Upon opening, I was hit with painful animation.

It's hard to read the new opening page because of the painful animation. There's a lot of pain/animation on the left side, and at first, there's an expanding object on the right side. It hurts. If I wait, it stops on the right side but I still can't see the left side. If I click in the text fields on the right side, there's a blinking cursor. It hurts. If I type something into the text fiekds, I won't be able to see it or check it with the blinding cursor.

There's no indication about whether this can wait, until Firefox is configured and maybe configured so that this page is readable and not painful.

---

It's hard to read Preferences. I'll need to adjust preferences to try to set up Firefox so I can use Firefox.

There's a blinking cursor at the top. It hurts. If I type something up there, I won't be able to see and check it.

The page doesn't seem to respond to page down. It does respond to my scrolling software, but the left side doesn't scroll with the rest. I slip and get hit with sudden fast scrolling, it hurts, I can't see, I have to find my place again with that much worse of a migraine.

By default, "Use Autoscrolling" and "Use Smart Scrolling" are on. They are hidden at the bottom of the page, so if autoscrolling and smart scrolling are a problem, it's hard to disable them without getting hit by one or the other.

Try to add search engine. Hit by throbber for new tab. Pain hurts.

Page down now switches me to another preferences page. Still can't just page down the damn page.

Preferences still do not include settings to block blinking cursors, cosmetic animations, gifs and pngs, zooming images, the accursed throbbing painful throbbing tab throbber, etc.

Expected results:

I know some of these can be disabled in about:config, but these are key safety settings. Either Firefox should be set up, by default, to not hurt users, or it should include settings to stop it hurting users in an easy-to-access part of the preferences.

And some can only be disabled using userChrome.css and userContent.css, which are unreliable and unsupported.

For example, when I last used Firefox, I was unable to consistently block the throbbing tab throbbers using userChrome.css. I currently use Waterfox and am unable to block certain zooming images using userContent.css. For example, verywellhealth has images which zoom on mouseover, which triggers my migraines and is bad for my health.

Some possible improvements:

1. Expanded download instructions for photosensitive users, including ways to disable various flashing and animation.

2. An alternate download with minimum animation-- different starting about:config settings.

3. And with a prepopulated set of userChrome.css and userContent.css ready for what about:config can't protect against.

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

There's a bunch of information in here, and it doesn't sound like it was one single animation that was hurting MarjaE, but a whole bunch.

It's hard to read the new opening page because of the painful animation. There's a lot of pain/animation on the left side, and at first, there's an expanding object on the right side. It hurts. If I wait, it stops on the right side but I still can't see the left side. If I click in the text fields on the right side, there's a blinking cursor. It hurts. If I type something into the text fiekds, I won't be able to see it or check it with the blinding cursor.
There's no indication about whether this can wait, until Firefox is configured and maybe configured so that this page is readable and not painful.

That sounds like the first run page. I suspect we should add prefers-reduced-motion rules there.

It's hard to read Preferences. I'll need to adjust preferences to try to set up Firefox so I can use Firefox.
There's a blinking cursor at the top. It hurts. If I type something up there, I won't be able to see and check it.
The page doesn't seem to respond to page down. It does respond to my scrolling software, but the left side doesn't scroll with the rest. I slip and get hit with sudden fast scrolling, it hurts, I can't see, I have to find my place again with that much worse of a migraine.
By default, "Use Autoscrolling" and "Use Smart Scrolling" are on. They are hidden at the bottom of the page, so if autoscrolling and smart scrolling are a problem, it's hard to disable them without getting hit by one or the other.

I wonder if we should be smarter about defaulting to disabling autoscroll / smart scrolling if we notice that the OS is telling us that the user prefers reduced motion.

Try to add search engine. Hit by throbber for new tab. Pain hurts.
Preferences still do not include settings to block blinking cursors, cosmetic animations, gifs and pngs, zooming images, the accursed throbbing painful throbbing tab throbber, etc.

Okay. So here's my distillation:

1. The user is reporting that the various animations in Firefox hurt them, and that getting to the UI to even try to disable some of these is a painful experience due to the animations they have to get through to get to the right configuration settings.

2. The configuration settings are uneven - only some animation types can be disabled. The user would prefer that we cover more animations.