400883 - Larry UI: add a close box

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Larry UI: add a close box

even with the fix for bug #395314, I claim it is not obvious how to dismiss the larry ui.

spun off from bug #395314 comment #27

Comment 1

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Copying a comment over from bug #39514

>even with this fix, I claim it's not obvious how to close the larry popup once
>it is open.
>
>I see we have one bug (#395174: Identity pop-up should disappear as soon as I
>start typing in the location bar) about closing.  
>
>Do we have any about adding some sort of close box?  (I didn't see any.)
>
>perhaps faaborg can also comment on what would be best?

Madhava and I were actually just talking about this today.  Larry is one of at
least 6 instances of this type of UI (which we call a contextual dialog). 
Another example of a contextual dialog is the bookmark UI you get when clicking
on the star.

These were designed so that clicking anywhere outside of the contextual dialog
dismisses it, which is an incredibly large and super easy to hit target area.

However, this interaction also isn't discoverable, you literally have to guess
that you can do it, try it, and see that it works.  This will feel like a bad
UI the first time you encounter a contextual dialog, because you may be
confused.  Some users might even get up and find a friend to ask "how do I make
this thing go away."

So why not just add a close button?  We certainly could, but the reason that
both Madhava and I are wary of doing so is this: if the user learns to close
the window by clicking on the 12x12 X icon the first time, they may proceed to
do this every time they interact with the user interface.  On my monitor, the
target area for closing a contextual dialog is 1900x1200, which is 15,833 times
larger than a 12x12 target area.  So we are looking at trading discoverability
on the first interaction, for the possibility of the user wasting a few seconds
of target acquisition and mouse movement on every single subsequent
interaction.

We haven't totally decided yet, but those are the issues we are currently
considering.

Comment 2

[Gregory Pappas [:gregp]]

No longer applicable