Closed Bug 414933 Opened 17 years ago Closed 16 years ago

Return star to a one click bookmark action

Categories

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect, P1)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Bookmarks & History
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED
Milestone:
Firefox 3 beta4

People

(Reporter: tracy, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: regression) 

caused by check in to bug 393509. This completely defeats the point of the "Star" to be able to single click add a bookmark. My expectation here was that we'd put up a notification "message" to let the user know that they just added a bookmark. 

I think the notification "message" should be just that, a message describing 
what just happened. Perhaps have the message fade out after 5 seconds (allowing clicking away to dismiss it as well) Also, add a check box to "Don't show this message again" so users that come to  understand what single clicking the star does can choose to never see the notification again.

I understand this change was "by design" in bug 413051, but I think it's a regression of the original intention of the "Star" to be able to single click bookmark a page.
Flags: blocking-firefox3?
Yup, this is a good point. We've been iterating quickly with Mano on this and hadn't got around to filing the bug.

The confirmation is important feedback, but as currently implemented it's doing as much harm as good. The ultimate design will be to have the confirmation fade away.

Not sure about having a "never show this again" button, as opposed to a pref somewhere, as opposed to no pref whatsoever. My instinct is that if we get the fade timeout right (Alex had proposed 1s delay, 3s fadeout) it will remove all annoyance.

(fwiw, clicking away currently *does* dismiss it).
Sorry, I have to say this it's my job.

Timeouts are considered bad for accessibility. There are a lot of users that will not be able to deal with in 3 seconds.

This includes anyone who easily gets cognitive overload -- many people with cognitive or physical or learning disabilities, elderly uesrs, etc.

This is what they found with ATM machine timeouts. Even 30 seconds is sometimes not enough.
(In reply to comment #2)
> (fwiw, clicking away currently *does* dismiss it). 
That is still one click too many ;)

I feel the star turning yellow is enough notification.  If Mozilla spent more time informing users of new features and how to use them, we wouldn't run into these sorts of problems.  First run start pages with screenshots and brief explanations instead of the same old two page long texts about mostly useless crap.

But anyways, I think the best solution could be a one time notification (like we currently have) and notify the user that in the future look for the yellow star to know the page has been successfully bookmarked.




>defeats the point of the "Star" to be able to single click add a bookmark

The idea was to create an model of action and response, you give the star a
single click, and your computer confirms back "ok, page bookmarked."  If it
replied "do you want to bookmark this page, Yes/No/Cancel" that would totally
defeat the purpose.  Either way, I agree that the current UI of the
notification feels too heavy.  

>Timeouts are considered bad for accessibility.

The timer doesn't totally break functionality for people who can't respond in
time, since clicking the star always gives you the dialog back.  However, I can
certainly see this being annoying if you are trying to get there in time and it
disappears shortly before you get to it.

An alternative is to only fade the appearance of the dialog when the mouse is
not directly over it (but it doesn't totally dismiss).  This would help to
provide a visual affordance that clicking will dismiss, and make the
interaction appear more lightweight.

I think a lot of the weight of this interface will be determined by visual
styling, so we should consider if it still feels too heavy after we have that
in.  Also, I think we need to cut the text "Firefox will always remember this
page for you."

Another idea: also cut the buttons, and clicking anywhere on the notification
takes you to state 2.

I think of this everytime something is dumbed down like this.  Why don't we
spend some time educating the users on a new feature instead of dumbing it down
to a point that you are wasting minutes/hours/days over the lifetime of the
feature because all the extra clicks add up.  In other words, have the user see
the notification once and inform them that it will only be shown once!  Make it
a freakin paragraph if need be, the 30 seconds it takes to read and comprehend
the paragraph will save an extra second or two everytime that user has to click
somewhere just to dismiss (in this case) the current notification message.
For the purpose of using this notification to reinforce the idea that stars ==
bookmarks, a first run notification would work fine.
(In reply to comment #7)
> For the purpose of using this notification to reinforce the idea that stars ==
> bookmarks, a first run notification would work fine.

That would be great!  

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here but I just want to make sure I get my point across and I just keep thinking up other ways to reinforce my feelings.  

Say I bookmark 500 sites in the next year or even a few years, that is 500 extra clicks I had to do because I was notified every single time that my page was bookmarked.  After about the 5th time, I'd say to my self "no crap, what do you think I clicked the freakin button for and watched it turn yellow?"  I get annoyed by stupid stuff like this but a notification eveytime is not needed.  Just like we don't get notified everytime we send out an email or instant message that the email has been sent or the message has been recieved.


Tweak to my proposal.

Click star: one time notification message letting user know that page has been bookmarked and to click the star in the future to do this for any page and the notification message won't be shown again. This notification should not be dismissed other than a close button or some sort so the user does not miss this box the first time.

Ctrl+d and all the other ways to bookmark: should always show the notification message and ask if the user would like to be notified in the future.

Reason why I changed my proposal is because the user may right click in the bottom left of the screen and not notice the star turning yellow and may wonder why they don't get some sort of notification...but when the user specifically clicks the star, the mouse and the users eyes are already at that location and will notice the notification.
I agree with Kurt for the most part, not so sure about control+d.
I disagree with Kurt that CTRL+D should always give the notification. I think CTRL+D should remain untouched. It is the same as clicking the Star twice and thus doesn't need that extra dialog.

However, I do also have a thought regarding a key binding to the Star:
Assume for  a moment that there is a key binding to the Star. A notification is being given for the first usage only, just like for a mouse user. In the future, pressing that keystroke would never give a reaction other than the star changing color. A blind user would never know if the press of the keystroke was actually successful.
In other words, a key binding to the Star would only make sense if it would give a reaction similar to the "Do you want to remember this password" alert, that would *always* give a reaction that a screen reader could evaluate. Giving that "alert" reaction also when clicking the star with the mouse would be undesirable. So we could in theory enhance the feature as follows:
An alert would be given if the page was starred using the keyboard, but not if it was starred using the mouse. That way, we could have a one-keypress starring of a page, similar to a one-click starring, with the difference that the keyboard user would get an alert that would fade away either when the keystroke, or CTRL+D, would be pressed again, or the user would visit another page.

What do you think?
OK, first, Kurt, fwiw, you should make your point once and only once in a bug. Anything beyond that is spam, and not appreciated. Clicking outside will dismiss the dialog at the moment, but I wasn't suggesting that this should remain as the only way to get rid of it. Your points about doubling the click requirements are bang on.

Second, we are *not* changing the behaviour of CTRL+D - it will bring up the full dialog, and will cancel the operation (removing the bookmark) on ESC and apply on ENTER. Just like it does in Firefox 2. Also, that's not what this bug is about.

Finally, with regard to Aaron's comment, there are a few ways we could do this such that timeouts aren't onerous on those sorts of users: one is as Alex mentioned in comment 5, only fading out when the mouse moves out of the dialog. Another is increasing the timeout length so you're happy with it. I prefer the former.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of a show-once UI, that always seems like a kludge to me. Besides, this is an action-confirmation, providing feedback to the user. That's important.

The solution I would like to try first is:

 - remove the buttons
 - change string to:
      Page Bookmarked
      Firefox will always remember this page for you.
      (Click again to see more properties)
 - show for 500ms, fade out over 3000ms
 - clicking anywhere on the popup goes into edit mode

This keeps the action one-click, retains confirmation, and makes it clear how to see more details. The dialog fades away quickly. The user's mouse will be near the star, so clicking again to edit doesn't involve a seek-to-target. We lose the ability to quickly undo, but I don't think that's a really common feature, and the "Remove Bookmark" button is close to the top of the edit dialog which is easy to call up with a second click.

(Aaron: yes, that's a quick fade away, but as Alex points out, the functionality remains by clicking the star and we increased the size of the target.)

(In reply to comment #11)
> that "alert" reaction also when clicking the star with the mouse would be
> undesirable. So we could in theory enhance the feature as follows:
> An alert would be given if the page was starred using the keyboard, but not if
> it was starred using the mouse. That way, we could have a one-keypress starring
> of a page, similar to a one-click starring, with the difference that the
> keyboard user would get an alert that would fade away either when the
> keystroke, or CTRL+D, would be pressed again, or the user would visit another
> page.
> 
> What do you think?

I think this ends up being really inconsistent. If the confirmation goes away, on its own, it won't be at all onerous and will end up being a pleasant interaction, like the sorts of CSS-background-colour fades you see in a lot of Web 2.0 apps when you create/remove items.
Flags: blocking-firefox3? → blocking-firefox3+
Priority: -- → P1
Target Milestone: --- → Firefox 3 beta4
No one has so far mentioned the new 'remove bookmark' undo functionality that has been introduced with this dialog. In the case of an unintentional star click it is really nice to have the option to undo the bookmarking. This undo functionality would be removed in a one time notification. Erroneous star clicks can happen either from missing the address bar drop down button with the mouse, or just from clicking on the star to find out what it does. A timed fade out seems a good compromise, has it been dismissed entirely due to accessibility reasons? Would it be possible to map escape or ctrl-z to undo functionality even if no notification was given (not very discoverable though).
Forcing the edit dialog open for those relatively few times someone made a mistake is not worth the extra clicks for all those times when a user means to single click add a bookmark. If you accidentally added a bookmark by single click and you want to remove it, then click the star once more.  You'll be presented with the edit bookmark dialog which will have the button to remove the bookmark.
It would be nice if there was context menu option for the star to remove the bookmark.  
Is there anyway to make the current one-click dialog to fade away? So there's a notification with optional buttons to edit or remove, and it fades away after a few seconds if the mouse is off the notification or the user clicks elsewhere.
For what it's worth, the way we've been doing in Flock (we've been having a star button and one-click bookmarking for more than 2 years) is:
* Click on the "off" star once creates the bookmark, shows a notification to explain what happens
* The notification has a "don't show me this again" checkbox
* Click on the "on" star brings a properties dialog
* There is a pref to show the properties dialog on the first click, for people who like to sort their bookmarks right away (basically deactivating one-click bookmarking)

We didn't do real user testing of it, but so far it's been working fine.

What if I want to click the star and have the Bookmark options pop up?  I say when you click the star, the same menu should pop up as when you hit Ctrl-D, but with the initial location being the Unfiled folder.  If you are cool with that, you go about your business, as any further click removes the menu.  But if you want to place it in a folder, no more extra clicks like clicking on that darn Edit button.  This works for both groups of people, and doesn't confuse anybody by showing them an extra different menu popping out of the star.

The only people who shouldn't like what I am suggesting are the ones who don't want a menu to pop up at all.  However, why does that matter to you if your next click has the menu disappear with your intended results, and there are therefore no wasted clicks for anyone?
Blocks: 393509
I would like to suggest to possible solutions not mentioned here:

1. Use notification in the form of "Download complete" which would stay a bit longer and allow one to click on link on it and edit bookmark or undo bookmarking

2. Use infobar. Infobar should probably also have and option "don't show this again"

I prefer first solution.

I think that current dialog just won't work as it covers part of web page and will always turn to be annoying.
I agree with Tracy 100%. The current change is driving me crazy and I have to work with Places every day.

The removal dialog with the giant "undo" button in it is also complete overkill. If I've just clicked on a button to delete the bookmark, showing me a one button dialog with "undo" in it as delete confirmation is completely unnecessary and pretty ugly.
>I agree with Tracy 100%. The current change is driving me crazy and I have to
>work with Places every day.

It's driving all of us crazy, I'm totally for killing the initial confirmation (which seemed like it might be a good idea in an non-interactive mockup), and beltzner is completely on board as well, marking this bug as blocking.

>giant "undo" button
>pretty ugly

I should note that we still haven't styled these interfaces (bug 403157, bug 403158, bug 403155).
Progress update:

 - the "Page Bookmarked" confirmation state after the first click on the star is being removed by attachment 301315 [details] [diff] [review] on bug 414933; that will fix this bug.

 - I will be filing a follow up bug to cover the suggestions about a fade-out confirmation (comment 12), as I still believe (quite strongly) that user confirmation is important, and that it will help explain the "once-to-create, twice-to-edit" interaction
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Mike, you have referenced the same bug. Could you update your comment and say which bug really fixed this issue? Thanks
It was bug 393509.
Verified with Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko Minefield/3.0b3pre ID:2008020421
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
I for one don't see a reason to add any kind of notification to star. Confirmations make sense in operations that could make damage or annoyance, multiple bookmark deletions or such, in this case I find all star dialogs superficial as adding bookmark and removing it is just one click away anyway.

Star that changes color is enough of visual confirmation, some kind of sound event would be nifty and may help visually impaired people, double-clicking giving out full edit dialog of course.
That's my opinion, hope I haven't bother anyone with it :)
Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv
Component: Places → Bookmarks & History
QA Contact: places → bookmarks
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