1704337 - Synced Tabs UI difficult to find

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Sync, enhancement, P3)

Description

[bobbuun]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:87.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/87.0

Steps to reproduce:

Be signed in to Firefox with same account on multiple computers.
Have tabs sync.
Attempt to open synced tabs on other device.

Actual results:

There is no longer a useful menu to get to synced tabs. Only place to find it is in hamburger -> account -> synced tabs

Expected results:

Synced tabs should have remained an item in the compact "library" menu button (and from the file, edit, etc, menus up top too).

Comment 1

[bobbuun]

I did see the Firefox 87 patch notes mentioned this was intended behavior. But this orphans synced tabs to the point that the feature may just as well be removed entirely from the browser and account.

Comment 2

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Sync' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

needinfo Ana, our product owner.

Comment 4

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

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1689405

Comment 5

[Jeronimo Torti (Please send NI request to Brindusa Tot)]

Hi,
thank you for taking the time to submit this bug report.
I was able to reproduce on Windows 10, on Firefox Nightly 90.0a1 (2021-04-23) (64-bit) and Release 88.0 (64-bit) versions.

Accordingly, I'll mark this ticket as NEW.

Regards,
Jerónimo.

Comment 6

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

This is an enhancement request rather than a regression.

Comment 7

[bobbuun]

(In reply to Marco Castelluccio [:marco] from comment #6)

This is an enhancement request rather than a regression.

Is it? The regression is right up there. Library used to include the functionality and then it was removed for no good reason.

Comment 8

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Synced tabs can be accessed through:

• The Firefox account toolbar button
• The Hamburger menu > Firefox account
• On the customize pane you can select "Synced tabs" and drop it to your toolbar

I'll mark this bug as "won't fix" to reflect the fact that we don't intend to introduce further entry points to sync tabs on desktop but please re-open if you believe there is an improvement that could improve accessibility of synced tabs beyond currently available options (whilst not regressing the user experience of the majority of users who don't sync tabs).

Comment 9

[bobbuun]

(In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #8)

For future planning, is the goal to remove the "library" feature entirely? Someone went through active effort to remove Synced Tabs from Library [a great place for them] after they were already there, work already done later erased.

Comment 10

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

We need to make the library view way better, not remove it in my opinion but this is a large undertaking that has to be weighted against other priorities.

Comment 11

[bobbuun]

Understood. Might I suggest making the library view better by including downloads submenu, returning sync and pocket to it? Or eliminating it altogether replaced with custom "overflow style" buttons that can have arbitrary collection of sub-buttons (and an icon selected for the parent).

(I'm referring to library button, not library window -- which, lord help us when the Proton designers ruin that too.) The library button is just useless now, since it's really only bookmarks button + history button (which are easily accessed separately in numerous ways [sidebar, menu, their own buttons...] as described for pocket and sync), and I continue to be baffled at the race to feature removal for no good reason or replacement. But I will refrain from any further 'advocacy' here.