1889384 - Tab scroll button tooltips say "Scroll up" and "Scroll down" but the tabstrip is horizontal so scrolling actually goes left/right

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect, P3)

Description

[:Gijs (he/him)]

These tooltips were added for accessibility reasons. It's good that the buttons are now usable by folks using assistive technologies! But it's a bit confusing for a sighted user that they say "up" and "down" when the buttons in fact cause horizontal movement to happen.

We should probably ask content design what to use for these tooltips. "Scroll left" and "Scroll right" are options, but also "Scroll backwards" and "Scroll forwards" and such. Or something tab-specific ("Scroll tabs to the left"), for which we'd need to come up with some dependency injection mechanism such that the arrowscrollbox code (optionally) takes its l10n IDs for the scroll buttons from the specific consumer.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Hey Anna, how did you come up with the strings for bug 1873049? Was content design consulted?

I agree "up" and "down" feel a bit odd when scrolling horizontally, although I could see how these labels could work "metaphorically" if that makes sense. I'm not a native speaker though, so I'm not sure about this.

Comment 2

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi] ⚠️ Online half days through May 23]

Thank you for catching this up, :Gijs!

:Dao, I stemmed the string offered from the class names and did not consulted the design at that time, but I bet the UX team could help with finding the better names.

I'd vote for the backwards/forwards wording over left/right since this would make the component more universal even if tabs are vertical, plus, left/right are relying on sense of these sides which may be a bit more confusing for some users with limited cognition.

I think, this component is also used in the DevTools tabs, which is also horizontal, so the labels would be beneficial for that instance too. For vertical components, I am not aware of any upcoming components to use the scroll arrows (plus, vertical scrolling is nowadays more expected without arrows even when the scrollbar is visually hidden by default).

Comment 3

[Meridel [:meridel]]

Hi Brent, can I ask you to take this triage task, please? Thank you.

Comment 4

[Brent]

No problem, Mer.

Anna/Gijs, do you mind sharing a visual so I can be certain of the context?

My slack is @Brent if that's easiest.

Thanks.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: Screenshot from 2024-04-17 14-19-28.png

Comment 6

[Brent]

Thanks, Dao.

I agree with Anna: "Scroll forwards" and "Scroll backwards" makes sense here.

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: Bug 1889384 - Update scroll button tooltips to better work for horizontal arrowscrollboxes. r=gijs

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/7d0b3fbf58cc
Update scroll button tooltips to better work for horizontal arrowscrollboxes. r=Gijs,fluent-reviewers,bolsson

Comment 9

[tszentpeteri]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7d0b3fbf58cc