Make Home screen with an actual tab
Categories
(Fenix :: Homepage, enhancement, P2)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: cpeterson, Unassigned)
References
Details
(Whiteboard: [fxdroid])
From github: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20012.
Has bugged me for ages and the new Home and "Jump back in" buttons, while welcome, really accentuate the issues.
Fenix works differently from any other browser I know,
1 - tapping the "new tab" button doesn't open a new tab, it just takes me to the Home screen, and
2 - tapping a Top Site always opens it in a new tab1 is weird to me and 2 is annoying, both seem counter-intuitive
The "Jump back in" button accentuates the issue for me:- now I can open the Tabs tray, hit the New Tab FAB (which doesn't actually open a new tab), then I can Jump back in to my previous tab. Hey, I thought I'd opened a new tab? Very, very confusing
For consistency with other browers and lack of confusion, perhaps
- the New Tab FAB should always open a new tab, increment the tab counter, and move me to the Home screen. Tapping any shortcut on that Home screen should then open in the newly created tab. Jump back in could be re-labelled as "Cancel new tab"
- tapping Home should not open a new tab or increment the tab counter but should just move me to the Home screen. Tapping any shortcut on that Home screen will open the site in the tab from which the Home screen was accessed.
I don't think this is a new complaint ;) see eg #19930 and probably some otheres
Thanks & keep up good work
┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task
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Comment 1•2 years ago
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Heads up: there is a lot of deeper feedback in the comments on the github issue.
Also see the post "On Firefox mobile, make home page links open in current tab" at connect.mozilla.org for more user feedback on this issue from a slightly different angle.
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Updated•2 years ago
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Updated•2 years ago
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Comment 3•2 years ago
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If you are looking for good tasks to work on, check out this list of bugs labeled "good-first-bug": https://mzl.la/3KGb6bu
This particular task is a major architectural change and we don't have a spec for the work yet. The issue is set to priority P2 so that we can evaluate how to proceed.
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Comment 4•2 years ago
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As a further consequence of this issue, Android's back button/gesture doesn't work as expected when going back from a page opened from the homepage.
The back button is supposed to mean "I don't want this page to be open anymore. Take me to the parent page of my browsing history." In other words, pop the page from the browsing stack. That's how the button works for most of the browsing in Fenix, and for the back button of pretty much every other browser since Firefox 1.0. But for a page opened from Fenix's homepage, the behavior is different. Pressing the back button doesn't close the page. It's not popped from the stack. It's still open in a tab, just not visible on the screen. And opening another page from the homepage opens it in a new tab.
When I tap a link to open a page, press back, tap a link to open another page, press back, tap a link to open another page, and press back, I don't expect 3 new tabs to have been opened. If I perform that sequence of actions from any normal page in Fenix, no additional tabs are opened. But if I perform that sequence from the homepage, 3 tabs are opened - 2 more than I need for browsing. This behavior is different from Firefox for the desktop, and different from every other Android web browser that I'm aware of (certainly Chrome and Opera).
All of this behavior stems from the fact that Fenix's homepage is a special page existing outside of any tabs. If the homepage is really a page (and that's what Fenix's UI calls it), I should be able to open that page in a tab, just like any other page.
Also, if I am on the homepage and I tap a link to open a page and then press back, I see Fenix's homepage. If I press back again, I get out of Fenix and to the Android launcher. But then if I launch Firefox again, I get the last opened tab instead of the last thing I saw before pressing back, which was the homepage. It's just another inconsistency stemming from the homepage not being a page in a tab.
And as previously mentioned, the new tab (plus sign) button doesn't actually open a new tab. It just takes you to the homepage, which would seem to be the same action as pressing Fenix's home button. Having two different buttons for the same action is confusing. For that matter, pressing the home button and then pressing back doesn't take you back to the page you were looking at. It exits Fenix.
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Comment 5•2 years ago
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The back button is supposed to mean "I don't want this page to be open anymore. Take me to the parent page of my browsing history." In other words, pop the page from the browsing stack. That's how the button works for most of the browsing in Fenix, and for the back button of pretty much every other browser since Firefox 1.0. But for a page opened from Fenix's homepage, the behavior is different. Pressing the back button doesn't close the page. It's not popped from the stack. It's still open in a tab, just not visible on the screen. And opening another page from the homepage opens it in a new tab.
Another problem related is that if you have closed a tab's parent page, then pressing back at that tab will not close that tab but go to homepage. You need to open tab tray and swipe it out to close. This causes different behavior with closing a tab having parent page exists and confuses users.
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