Open Bug 1641266 Opened 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Reader mode controls never fade out if reduce motion is enabled

Categories

(Toolkit :: Reader Mode, defect, P5)

defect

Tracking

()

Tracking Status
firefox78 --- affected

People

(Reporter: bgstandaert, Unassigned)

References

Details

The new reader mode design from bug 1637652 looks really nice, thank you!

Normally, the controls appear darkened and with a shadow when reader mode is first opened, and then fade out as you scroll down. However, if "reduce motion" is enabled, the controls never fade out, which makes reading the article somewhat distracting. What I would expect to happen is that either:

  • The controls still fade out when scrolling down (perhaps just with a simple switch from normal to faded, instead of an animation)
  • The controls appear faded out even before scrolling.
Depends on: 1637652

This was a deliberate choice on my part. People reduce motion because of a number of reasons, see bug 1478597 comment 17, and the discussion in bug 1585608. The appearance of shearing motion due to a fixed element in one place and a moving element next to it triggers migraines for some of these people, if there is no clear separation between the two portions of content (cf. bug 1610081). So I decided to keep the border around the toolbar when prefers-reduced-motion is turned on, to avoid causing this problem.

With more research, maybe there is a different solution that could be used here, but I don't think we can "just" apply the fading and the associated transitions when a reduced motion preference is expressed...

Severity: -- → S4
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Priority: -- → P5
See Also: → 1585608, 1610081

Interesting, I wasn't aware that was an issue. Perhaps it would work to keep the border around the buttons, but remove the box shadow? I think that achieves most of the effect of making it less distracting, but I'm not sure whether that would still create enough separation or not.

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