Help users discover newly installed extensions' toolbar buttons
Categories
(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P3)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: alexeiatyahoodotcom+mzllbgzll, Unassigned)
References
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:100.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/100.0
Steps to reproduce:
- Install an extension that comes with a toolbar button
- See the Private browsing permission doorhanger
- See the extension onboarding/welcome page, if the extension comes with one
Actual results:
The extension's toolbar button gets quietly added to the toolbar. Less experienced users tend to miss that there is a new button on their toolbar.
Here is a related Privacy Badger issue:
https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadger/issues/2781
Expected results:
Extensions can partially work around this issue by showing an onboarding page that explains that this extension comes with a button and where the user can find it. However, it would help the entire Firefox extensions ecosystem if the browser (Firefox) itself highlighted newly installed extension's toolbar buttons.
If an extension comes with a browser action, Firefox could add a graphical emphasis (a halo?) to the new toolbar button, as well as show a doorhanger that points directly to the new button and encourages the user to click it. Something like, "[EXTENSION_NAME] was successfully installed! Click the button above to use [EXTENSION_NAME]."
There is the question of how to handle the Private browsing permission hanger. (Multiple hangers is probably too much.)
While the exact solution is unclear, my big picture point here is that many users need help finding extension icons, and Firefox can help. This will help all (toolbar button-enabled) extensions on Firefox, and help Firefox be the more user friendly browser (consider the opposite, negative user experience in Chrome with automatic extension icon hiding inside the puzzle piece menu).
Note that extensions are more limited than the browser in ways of highlighting their browser toolbar buttons.
|
||
Comment 2•4 years ago
|
||
The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Toolbars and Customization' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.
|
||
Comment 3•4 years ago
|
||
Setting this enhancement to NEW in order for it to gain visibility.
|
||
Comment 4•4 years ago
|
||
Moving to the right component for the next bug triage.
I'm also linking bug 1558336, since the onboarding page that you mentioned would currently be closed if the user grants private browsing access, which breaks the ability to do proper onboarding at the moment.
|
||
Comment 5•4 years ago
|
||
This will probably be fixed by bug 1558336, we're bumping the priority of that one.
@Tomislav This issue is about helping users discover extension buttons, for extensions that come with a button. Will the fix for bug 1558336 help guide users to the just-installed extension's button and encourage them to click it?
|
|
||
Comment 7•4 years ago
|
||
No, sorry I meant the issue with onboarding/private browsing hangers will be addressed by bug 1558336, the rest of this bug is an enhancement that we would like to see happen, though is not the top priority for our limited team resources at this time.
Description
•