1649666 - Reader view is hard to read, due to fixed-position elements

Status: REOPENED

(Toolkit :: Reader Mode, defect, P3)

Description

[Stuart Cook]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:79.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/79.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open any website that allows reader view.
2. Scroll down while reading, and try to keep concentrating on the text.

Actual results:

The hovering controls at the left side of the view don't scroll with the rest of the page, immediately drawing attention and making it hard to concentrate on the text.

Expected results:

All parts of the page scroll at the same pace, making it easy to concentrate on the text.

Comment 1

[Stuart Cook]

This is an accessibility regression from previous behaviour.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 3

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

We can change https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/31d8600b73dc85b4cdbabf45ac3f1a9c11700d8e/toolkit/themes/shared/aboutReader.css#221 to only apply when prefers-reduced-motion is set to no-preference.

Comment 4

[Stuart Cook]

Locking this behind a far-reaching system preference seems like the wrong granularity for an accessibility feature.

Wouldn't it make more sense to let people choose the accommodations that make sense for them as individuals?

Comment 5

[MarjaE]

Duplicate: bug 1658211

Which is won'tfix.

Comment 6

[MarjaE]

Note that setting Reduce Motion to 1 does not reduce or kill this.

Comment 7

[MarjaE]

Regressed by: bug 1637652

Comment 8

[MarjaE]

Describe any areas of concern to which you want the accessibility team to give special attention:

The migraines.

Comment 9

[jscher2000]

(In reply to Stuart Cook from comment #4)

(In reply to Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me) from comment #3)

We can change https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/31d8600b73dc85b4cdbabf45ac3f1a9c11700d8e/toolkit/themes/shared/aboutReader.css#221 to only apply when prefers-reduced-motion is set to no-preference.

Locking this behind a far-reaching system preference seems like the wrong granularity for an accessibility feature.

Wouldn't it make more sense to let people choose the accommodations that make sense for them as individuals?

If you don't want to set this at the OS level, you can create a preference in Firefox instead. This preference affects several "animation" behaviors now. It won't have any effect on Reader View at the moment, but it could in the future if the style sheet is updated accordingly. It does take a little initiative to set up because this preference doesn't exist by default. If you want to try it:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste ui.prefersReducedMotion and pause while the list is filtered. If this preference was already created and shows a value of 0, skip to step D.

(C) On the bar with the preference name, click the radio button next to Number and click the + button to add the preference. Then Firefox should display the new value (typically zero).

(D) Set the value to 1 (double-click to edit if necessary) and click the blue checkmark button to save the change.

Comment 10

[MarjaE]

As discussed above, creating ui.prefersReducedMotion and setting it to 1 does not stop this.

Comment 11

[MarjaE]

Sorry jscher, misread your last post.

Stuart Cook, as a user-end fix, jscher also has css to stop this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/i1uhlh/how_can_i_remove_the_floating_buttons_from_reader/

Comment 12

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

(In reply to MarjaE from comment #8)

Describe any areas of concern to which you want the accessibility team to give special attention:

The migraines.

Hi. A11y-review requests are for review of new designs, code, etc. To request the accessibility team's assessment of impact, please simply add the access keyword. Thanks!

Comment 13

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me) from comment #3)

We can change https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/31d8600b73dc85b4cdbabf45ac3f1a9c11700d8e/toolkit/themes/shared/aboutReader.css#221 to only apply when prefers-reduced-motion is set to no-preference.

It's not clear to me that people who would be distracted by the fixed-position element are a close enough subset of the people who can be expected to opt in to reduced motion. In other words, this seems like a stretch and a potential misuse of the reduced motion setting.

Removing good-first-bug for now so we don't lure new contributors into what might be a dead end.

Comment 14

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

I'm otherwise not sure what we can do here without changing the UX design to move back to a horizontal toolbar that is docked at the top of the content area.

Comment 15

[Stuart Cook]

For anyone else who has this accessibility issue and is familiar with userContent.css, these styles will work around the problem:

@-moz-document url-prefix("about:reader") {
.toolbar-container {
position: relative !important;
}
.toolbar {
border-color: transparent !important;
box-shadow: none !important;
}
}

Comment 16

[Stuart Cook]

@-moz-document url-prefix("about:reader") {
  .toolbar-container {
    position: relative !important;
  }
  .toolbar {
    border-color: transparent !important;
    box-shadow: none !important;
  }
}

Comment 17

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Can this be really mentored if it's blocked-ux?

Comment 18

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

Looks like this got fixed in bug 1637652, which switched to a left-hand toolbar for reader mode.

Comment 19

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him) from comment #18)

Looks like this got fixed in bug 1637652, which switched to a left-hand toolbar for reader mode.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1637652 ***

I don't think so?

(In reply to Stuart Cook from comment #0)

The hovering controls at the left side of the view don't scroll with the rest of the page, immediately drawing attention and making it hard to concentrate on the text.

(emphasis mine)

Comment 20

[MarjaE]

It was caused by 1637652, not fixed with it.