1710310 - Notifications like "Close tabs and exit?" have non-native look and behavior

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit Graveyard :: Notifications and Alerts, defect)

Description

[Patrick Storz]

In the current developer version (89) and a local build of central the "Close tabs and exit?" window uses a non-native look on my Windows 10 machine.

Also the behavior is non-native: The whole window is grayed out, which is not something any Windows application would do.

I assume other platforms might be affected as well.

See screenshots for examples.

Comment 1

[Patrick Storz]

Attachment: Non-native look in build of central

Comment 2

[Patrick Storz]

Attachment: Native look in current stable Firefox 88

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

This is a deliberate design decision, not a bug.

Comment 4

[Patrick Storz]

I see, may I ask what the rationale for this decision is?

I'm a bit puzzled by this answer for two reasons

• it looks unprofessional (and I doubt Firefox should do unprofessional).
• it actually has significant UX implications. When I saw the dialog first I though something was wrong, because not a single application I ever used on Windows used modal dialogs that resembled anything close. People are used to native behavior. Showing a dialog that does not resemble anything a user has ever seen is bound to be disruptive for their workflow. This is especially true as the "dialog" is shown on top of the whole window and blocks interaction, while not being movable and also having none of the usual well-known controls. This is amplified by the graying out of the window: No Windows application does that, unless it hangs and needs force closing.

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Patrick Storz from comment #4)

I see, may I ask what the rationale for this decision is?

Bugzilla is a poor place to explain decisions around product UX, and I didn't design these items, but I guess I can try.

I'm a bit puzzled by this answer for two reasons

• it looks unprofessional (and I doubt Firefox should do unprofessional).

I can't tell if you're referring to my response or the change itself. "unprofessional" doesn't seem like a useful way of describing any UI, no matter how amazing/terrible. There is no clear agreed-upon concept of "professional" or "casual" UI or anything like that... it's a bit like saying a piece of art looks "inefficient". The two concepts don't map.

• it actually has significant UX implications. When I saw the dialog first I though something was wrong, because not a single application I ever used on Windows used modal dialogs that resembled anything close.

Actually, "modern UI" Windows 10 dialogs look pretty similar in terms of colours and aesthetics (e.g. the new-ish Windows Terminal app shows a white box with rounded corners and rounded buttons for "Do you want to close all tabs?", the Photos app shows a similar dialog if you try to delete a file, etc. etc.). The font size is smaller in our dialogs, for various reasons, one of which is that Windows does not expose the same font sizes used for modern UI in a way that is easily accessible from win32 apps, and attempting to use font scaling on the font sizes it does expose led to various UI issues so it got descoped for 89. We've been waiting for Windows to expose native APIs for some of the more modern theming since the pre-releases of Windows 8, ten years ago (!) and it keeps not happening, so now we've had to emulate something ourselves that at least doesn't make Firefox look like it's stuck in the 90s.

Note also that the website dialogs like alert/prompt/confirm and the before unload ("This page is asking you to confirm that you want to leave...") dialogs all used completely custom UI before, which already didn't look like the native dialogs. Those now use the same backend, and they look similar (though their positioning is different to emphasize which dialogs come from Firefox and which come from the website, and there's a globe icon + domain in the title of the dialog).

People are used to native behavior. Showing a dialog that does not resemble anything a user has ever seen

Intentionally or not you just moved the goal posts. Windows native styles are not the same as "anything a user has ever seen", and this style of dialog or variations on it is also used by websites, by mobile apps, and by other browsers (Edge, Chrome, whatever).

is bound to be disruptive for their workflow. This is especially true as the "dialog" is shown on top of the whole window and blocks interaction,

The old style of dialog did exactly the same thing - it was shown on top of the window and blocked interaction with the window behind it.

while not being movable and also having none of the usual well-known controls.

This has changed on Windows, but on macOS the dialog wasn't movable before, either. Either way, I don't think this is critical for usability reasons - the user has to make a choice, the modality of the dialog (which did not change) requires it, and moving the dialog is not going to help make that choice. In the edgecases where the dialog happens to obscure some critical piece of information, cancelling it, checking whatever information is there, and then deciding to re-initiate the closing action is probably easier than trying to click-drag to move the dialog out of the way. Again, modern UI windows apps use the same style of immovable dialogs.

This is amplified by the graying out of the window: No Windows application does that, unless it hangs and needs force closing.

Modern windows UI apps use semi-transparent white or black filters for this too, see the examples I gave earlier. And again, I don't think Windows' classic native UI is the only allowable reference point here that users understand.

Comment 6

[Patrick Storz]

OK, thanks for clarification.

If Windows is indeed moving in that direction (just tested the Windows Terminal) so be it.
Seems Microsoft themselves are driving this then, which is sad, as it obviously causes inconsistency throughout the environment. (Except for the Windows Terminal app I apparently did not use any "modern UI" apps so far, which might be descriptive for the usefulness of apps making use of that "modern" style for me personally).

With "unprofessional" I certainly did not mean the answer, but the fact that the design seems out-of-place and inconsistent with standard dialogs on Windows (the current design at least tried to match the style, even if it did not use native APIs to create the dialogs). Obviously if Microsoft is actively driving this inconsistency, the fault is more on their end. Personally I don't consider it professional if every app in a desktop environment looks differently. It's particularly bad, because it is (as you say yourself) quite hard to make use of "proper" WinUI, which will only increase the inconsistency over time.