1665439 - macOS trackpad pinch zoom, when triggered without knowing about it, is unintuitive

Status: NEW

(Core :: Panning and Zooming, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

STR

• Browser a website
• Use your trackpad

Expected

Page doesn't zoom in

Actual

Page zooms in. My issues with it:

• I didn't really understand what I did to make this happen (I only later inferred it occurs because of a two finger pinch zoom gesture, which I sometimes trigger accidentally. Note: I use a trackpad separate to replace a mouse in a desktop-like scenario, which might make it easier to trigger than built into a laptop)
• I struggle to clear the state:
  • I tried using cmd-+ and cmd-- to fix the issue but it only makes it worse. Same with View -> Zoom in the menu. afaict, there are no other zoom options in the menu (besides the unrelated max window size: Window -> Zoom). Two independent zoom systems are confusing
  • I tried refreshing the page but the zoom level stayed the same when the page returned.
  • The only solution I found was to copy the URL and open it in a new tab. This is really bad if I had unsaved state in the old tab.

I'm using Nightly 82.0a1 2020-09-15 on macOS 10.15.6

Comment 1

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

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

Comment 2

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

Note, the simplest way to "clear the state" is to pinch-zoom back out. As we don't currently allow zooming out past 100%, zooming out "as much as you can" will return you to 100% zoom.

As far as having two independent zoom systems: as far as I'm aware, both Chrome and Safari have the same behaviour here.

Comment 3

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

The component has been changed since the backlog priority was decided, so we're resetting it.
For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 4

[Kris Taeleman (:ktaeleman)]

@Martin: What do you think a good way should be to indicate to the user that a zoom happened and how to reset?

Comment 5

[Martin Balfanz [:mbalfanz]]

I consulted UX a while ago, they made it clear that they don't want an indicator in the UI. I think bug 1660054 will help users a lot as it makes cmd+0 and view -> zoom -> actual size reset both zooms.

That said, I'd like to keep this bug open as an enhancement reminder.

Comment 7

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

I consulted UX a while ago, they made it clear that they don't want an indicator in the UI.

The first time I discovered pinch to zoom was actually an accident (similar to OP), and I thought it was a viewport bug (or something similar). Hopefully this can be reconsidered in the future.