1813731 - The collapsed "Inactive Tabs" button looks like a title that's describing all of your actually-active tabs (which are listed directly below it)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android :: Tabs, defect)

Description

[Jeff Boek [:boek]]

From github: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/23189.

Steps to reproduce

1. Have Firefox configured to hide inactive tabs (in Settings|Tabs, "Close tabs: never" and "Move old tabs to inactive: [enabled]".
2. Have some inactive tabs (unviewed for 2 weeks) (I'm not sure if this is required or not for the inactive tabs section to show up, but I'm guessing it might be).
3. Open some new tabs with e.g. news articles.
4. Look at your tab list (e.g. by tapping the tab icon in the location bar), and scroll to the top.

Expected behaviour

The UI shouldn't be confusing about which tabs are vs. aren't considered inactive.

Actual behaviour

Right now the UI is confusing, and it looks like it's saying all my tabs are inactive.

At the top of my tab list, there's an outlined area (that kind of looks like a header/title) which says:
[Inactive tabs v ]

And then below that is a list of all of my tabs, including the ones that I opened today (which are definitely not inactive).

If I tap that header (which I didn't initially realize was something that I could do), then it expands into an area which actually contains the truly-inactive tabs. So it seems this "header" is actually an autocollapsed section, which contains the inactive tabs. But it very-much looks like a title for the tabs below it (particularly given the v downarrow, which I think we intend to be a "click to expand" signal, but it looks like it's just pointing to the list of things that follow).

Device name

Google Pixel 4a

Android version

Android 12

Firefox release type

Firefox Nightly

Firefox version

98.0a1

Device logs

No response

Additional information

No response

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

Change performed by the Move to Bugzilla add-on.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Per https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/23189#issuecomment-1383242702 , I can still reproduce this bug -- last tested on Jan 15th 2023, in current Firefox Nightly (version 110 at the time), on Android 13 with a Pixel 6a phone.

Comment 2

[Nicholas Poon (redirect NI to [e-mail]) [:Nick]]

Thanks for reporting this bug, Daniel! After the Tabs Tray rewrite, it seems that there is now a larger space between the Inactive Tabs dropdown and the rest of the tabs. Can you please confirm if this is still an issue?

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: image.png

It looks a bit different, but at a high level, the same potential-for-misunderstanding is still there. It kinda looks like we've got an "Inactive tabs" title above the user's active tabs, with a "v" that looks a bit like a downarrow pointing at them (though really it's a meant to be a signal that the section is expandable)

See screenshot for what I'm seeing from today's Nightly.

Having said that, I'm not a UX designer and it's possible that this is ~fine, and users who are confused will figure it out if/when they tap the Inactive Tabs button.

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(I won't be offended if this is closed-no-change; I defer to the folks working on this UI on whether this is actually a problem or not.)

Comment 5

[Nicholas Poon (redirect NI to [e-mail]) [:Nick]]

Thanks for your input, Daniel! I will forward the NI to Noah to see what he thinks about this.

Comment 6

[Noah Bond [:007]]

I agree with the issue of potential UI ambiguity of the Inactive tabs' section. This is part of a larger UI consideration for Inactive Tabs, and I've actually brought a concern like this to UX/product earlier this year.

I'm going to close this as we're tracking ideas to enhance the Tabs Tray (and inactive tabs) over in Bug 1881848.