461184 - Location bar self-describing text should also indicate being able to type an address

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[u88484]

Spun off from bug 396816 comment 48.

The string for 396816 has already landed but patch to show the text has not yet.  The string will read "Search Bookmarks and History" but does not let the user know that the location bar's main purpose is to type in an address to go to a website and it should.

Suggestions:
Type in an Address or search Bookmarks and History
Search Bookmarks and History or type in an Address

Alex, any suggestions here?

Comment 1

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

Since the original idea (which has kind of been lost because this did not make 3.0) was to make the new feature more discoverable, I think your second choice is probably the better one, although I prefer the following wording as you obviously don't have to type it in.  And I think I like the Opera wording of Web address.  You don't put a street address here and usually not an email address either.

Search Bookmarks and History or Enter a Web address

Now it seems a tad long however. :-(

Comment 2

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

First let me qualify this comment by noting that I'm really not sure I'm correct, and I haven't even completely convinced myself either way, but here are my current thoughts on the description.

Let's say you break our user base into two populations:

A) users who know you can enter a location into the location bar
B) users who have never used the location bar

I'm not sure the relative sizes of each group, but that isn't necessarily important to the following logic:

-Using the string "Enter a Web Address" doesn't really help population A, because they already knew about this functionality.

-Using the string "Enter a Web Address" doesn't really help population B, because parsing that phrase requires additional background knowledge, like what a Web address is, or knowledge of a more direct way to get to things that doesn't involve first going to Google.  However, user population B is familiar with the concept of Search.

So using that logic, the phrase "or Enter a Web Address" ends up helping no one, and simply bloats the UI, making it less likely that either group will even read the description.

My primary goal with the phrase "Search Bookmarks and History" was to get population B to consider giving the location bar the focus and to try typing something in (which, since they don't know about full URL's, would likely match against title or the domain name).

One legitimate reason to still include the phrase "or Enter a Web Address" would be that if it is missing, population A might incorrectly conclude that you can no longer enter a specific location.

We could perhaps leverage the fact that bookmarks are a subset of history, and shorten to:

"Search History, or Go to a Web Address"
"Go to a Web Address, or Search History"

Another consideration is our long term plan to eventually expose Ubiquity functionality in the awesome bar.  If we wanted to expose that functionality in the self describing text, we are now looking at combinations like:

"Search Bookmarks and History, or Enter a Command"
"Search Bookmarks and History, or Go to a Web Address or Command"
"Go to a Web Address, Search History, or Enter a Command"

Comment 3

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> First let me qualify this comment by noting that I'm really not sure I'm
> correct, and I haven't even completely convinced myself either way, but here
> are my current thoughts on the description.
> 
> Let's say you break our user base into two populations:
> 
> A) users who know you can enter a location into the location bar
> B) users who have never used the location bar

Your entire argument depends on an assumption that people who  know you can enter locations into the location bar. somehow magically figuring out this is still the location bar despite the new label that idicates that is is something completely different.

Comment 4

[u88484]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Another consideration is our long term plan to eventually expose Ubiquity
> functionality in the awesome bar.  If we wanted to expose that functionality in
> the self describing text, we are now looking at combinations like:
> "Search Bookmarks and History, or Enter a Command"
> "Search Bookmarks and History, or Go to a Web Address or Command"
> "Go to a Web Address, Search History, or Enter a Command"

That is for the future so lets not worry about Ubiquity right now which I think is a stupid idea anyways since if we can't get people to type in a url...how the hell do you expect them to type in a ubiquity command?  Leave it as an extension but that is for another bug.

Any other wordsmiths we could summon to this bug to see if anyone could come up with something short and sweet?  I do like the following suggestions though and if agreed upon, the 'Go to a Web Address' part should be first since that is the main purpose of the location bar.

"Search History, or Go to a Web Address"
"Go to a Web Address, or Search History"

Comment 5

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > Another consideration is our long term plan to eventually expose Ubiquity
> > functionality in the awesome bar.  If we wanted to expose that functionality in
> > the self describing text, we are now looking at combinations like:
> > "Search Bookmarks and History, or Enter a Command"
> > "Search Bookmarks and History, or Go to a Web Address or Command"
> > "Go to a Web Address, Search History, or Enter a Command"
> 
> That is for the future so lets not worry about Ubiquity right now which I think
> is a stupid idea anyways since if we can't get people to type in a url...how
> the hell do you expect them to type in a ubiquity command?  Leave it as an
> extension but that is for another bug.
> 
> Any other wordsmiths we could summon to this bug to see if anyone could come up
> with something short and sweet?  I do like the following suggestions though and
> if agreed upon, the 'Go to a Web Address' part should be first since that is
> the main purpose of the location bar.
> 
> "Search History, or Go to a Web Address"
> "Go to a Web Address, or Search History"

"Search History, or Go to a Web Address"

I would go with that one as exposing the new feature and not confusing people who are loking for the location bar.

My problem with the original text wa that it not only confused people looking for the location bar, but also confused people looking for the searchbar.  Kind of made it look like there were 2 searchbars without enough distinction between them and the location bar had somehow disappeared from your toolbar.

Comment 6

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

As for the command aspect of comment #2 I would also "Search History or enter Web command" to be more acceptable than the current test.

Comment 7

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

Actually the real issue has to do with neither of the groups described in comment #2.  That is kind of the whole issue. Those seem to be the only 2 groups that are ever considered when making UI changes.  Believe it or not, there is still a large population of people who have never used a browser.  This "feature" makes it much more confusing to a novice to learn how to use a browser.  Kind of to the point that it makes it much easier to introduce a new user to the Web using any browser other than Firefox.

Comment 8

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

>Your entire argument depends on an assumption that people who  know you can
>enter locations into the location bar. somehow magically figuring out this is
>still the location bar

I made several contradictory arguments, including that specific point.

>Believe it or not, there is still a large population of people who have never
>used a browser.

Those people are in group B as well.  If you were to take someone who has never encountered the Web (like a clone of Einstein raised in a sealed room), initially asking them to enter a Web Address is pointless, because they don't know what that is.  Later during usage the location bar contains actual locations, and they see that URLs are being matched against as they type, so the functionality becomes self describing.

For what it's worth Chrome's omnibox which combines a location bar, bookmark search, history search, and Web search, uses the self describing text:

"Type to search"

Not that just because they did it, it's the right approach, but it is possible to create a simple browser for people who type "yahoo.com" into any text field they encounter, and don't know why people keep referring to some guy name Earl.

I'll give this some more thought, right now I'm leaning towards "Search History or Go to a Web Address"

Comment 9

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

(In reply to comment #8)

> I made several contradictory arguments, including that specific point.
> 
> >Believe it or not, there is still a large population of people who have never
> >used a browser.
> 
> Those people are in group B as well.  If you were to take someone who has never
> encountered the Web (like a clone of Einstein raised in a sealed room),
> initially asking them to enter a Web Address is pointless, because they don't
> know what that is.  Later during usage the location bar contains actual
> locations, and they see that URLs are being matched against as they type, so
> the functionality becomes self describing.

If you took those people and tried to expain to them that the way you enter a new place you want to go visit is to enter the address into a field that says it is supposed ot be for searching history and bookmarks that would most likely confuse them to the point that they would give up.

But, as it turns out, it does not matter at all, because the patch that landed th eself describing thing is so lame that it appears ot only doit if you actually enter about:blank int he addressbar.

It does not show if you configure the browser to start with a blank page, nor does it show if you either open a new tab or a new window from the file menu (at least under Linux, I have not tried under any other OS).

Comment 10

[Victor Bielawski]

IMO, the text should be in sentence case if it is to be any longer than the current "Search Bookmarks and History"; otherwise it looks like a random incoherent sequence of words. Besides, using sentence case complies with at least two HIGs (Windows and GNOME).

Comment 11

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Dao: What should the location bar say now that we have actual ui preferences in the privacy page that say..

When using the location bar, suggest:
History and Bookmarks
History
Bookmarks
Nothing

Comment 12

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Something like:
"Search History and Bookmarks",
"Search History or go to Web address",
"Search Bookmarks or go to Web address" or
"Go to Web address", depending on the pref?

Comment 13

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

Boriss and I are both kind of stumped on this bug because it seems like every
option isn't optimal.  The descriptions could be:

1) Short (good), incomplete (bad), and internally inconsistent (bad)
2) Short (good), incomplete (bad), and internally consistent (good)
3) Long (bad), complete (good), and internally consistent (good) 

==1==

"Search History and Bookmarks"
"Search Bookmarks"
"Search History"
"Go to a Web Address"

==2==

"Search History and Bookmarks"
"Search Bookmarks"
"Search History"
""

==3==

"Search History and Bookmarks, or go to a Web Address"
"Search Bookmarks, or go to a Web Address"
"Search History, or go to a Web Address"
"Go to a Web Address"

Comment 15

[Liam K.]

Is Mozilla's strategy just to verify bugs and leave them as-is for a year? That seems to be happening on a lot of bugs I report or vote on...

Comment 16

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

In our defense we do have half a million bugs to track.

Comment 17

[u88484]

Alex, I'll create the patch if you or Borris can come up with an optimal description.

Comment 18

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

I'm thinking probably just "Go to a Web Site"

Boring rationale:
at this point most users should be familiar with the search behavior added to the location bar (which was not true back when the bug was filed).

Also, on the new home tab the content area google search field will likely still have the focus on launch, and if we use the term search in the location bar we are going to conflate local personal search with global web search.

"Go to a Web address" is also reasonable, but we tend to call them locations instead of addresses, and "go to a Web location" just seems awkward for some reason.  We tend to use the phrase site in the product a bit (for instance "site identity" and in general it seems like people speak of sites more than specific pages on sites.

If other people disagree significantly we can tweak the string again before shipping.

Comment 19

[u88484]

Attachment: Patch

Changes the location bar's empty text to read "Go to a Web Site" in lieu of "Search Bookmark and History", per Alex in comment 18

Comment 20

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 440891 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch

So "Go to a Web Site" if you get suggestions from bookmarks and history, and "Type a Web address" if you don't? And "Search Bookmarks" / "Search History" if you get suggestions from bookmarks only respectively history only? These distinctions don't make a lot of sense to me.

Comment 21

[u88484]

(In reply to comment #20)
> (From update of attachment 440891 [details] [diff] [review])
> So "Go to a Web Site" if you get suggestions from bookmarks and history, and
> "Type a Web address" if you don't? And "Search Bookmarks" / "Search History" if
> you get suggestions from bookmarks only respectively history only? These
> distinctions don't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm pretty sure Alex meant that the text should always read "Go to a Web Site".

Comment 22

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Your patch doesn't implement that, though.

Comment 23

[u88484]

(In reply to comment #22)
> Your patch doesn't implement that, though.

Currently when you open a new tab and the location bar's focus is lost, gray text is added to the location bar that says, "Search Bookmarks and History".  Alex, suggests the text should now read "Go to a Web Site".  My patch changes "Search Bookmarks and History" -> "Go to a Web Site" as Alex suggested in comment 18.

Comment 24

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

The text changes depending on what the location bar suggests, as described in comment 20...

Comment 25

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

>The text changes depending on what the location bar suggests, as described in
>comment 20...

Yeah, we will no longer have to do that changing with the generic text "Go to a Web Site" the reason I changed my mind on this is that it is hard to describe the difference between local search with Web search, and ultimately regardless of what the location bar is searching against, you are ultimately going to go to a web site.

Comment 26

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Kurt, do you understand why your patch is wrong?

Comment 27

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Kurt, ping?

Comment 28

[u88484]

Sorry, I got very busy...had to travel for work, vacation and now busy again at work and home life so I won't be able to work on this for at least a few more weeks.

Someone else please fell free to take this over.  This link should help someone else.  Sorry, I didn't have time to point to the correct places using mxr.
https://bug544657.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=425639

Comment 29

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: patch

Comment 30

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Dao: ... who decided to kill that feature? Did you talk about it with ux?

Comment 31

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #30)
> Dao: ... who decided to kill that feature? Did you talk about it with ux?

See comment 25.

Comment 32

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Comment on attachment 447800 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

r=mano.

Comment 33

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ea4e623e936d

Comment 34

[Daniel C]

(At risk of bikeshedding)

I think the old behaviour was reassuring to people who altered the pref and was helpful in telling all users what will be searched when typing. That a URL can be typed is less important to tell the user in my opinion. This is because the URL is already displayed there when viewing web pages. The awesomebar functionality is less obvious, and the old text was a good way to let users discover it.

There will be people who have never used a browser before, but there are a billion people who have, and this bug removed functionality that was useful.

I do agree that the location bar should mention the ability to type addresses, and I also agree that a suitable wording is difficult to come up with, but I don't think this is the right solution.

I guess an omnibar would go some way to solving the problem, removing the distinction between places you've been and places you haven't been. Just type where you want to go. Aside from that, I suggest reverting this patch, and going with the "Long (bad), complete (good), and internally consistent (good)" approach.

Comment 35

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

>there are a billion people who have

The set of people who have changed their awesome bar prefs will be extremely small.  But we will have about 400 million people looking at the unfocused location bar when on the start page, and many of them believe that they have to enter URLs into a Google search to navigate to a Web site.  Discoverability of the location bar seems silly to us, but it's actually a usability issue.

Comment 36

[Daniel C]

(In reply to comment #35)
> >there are a billion people who have
> 
> The set of people who have changed their awesome bar prefs will be extremely
> small.  But we will have about 400 million people looking at the unfocused
> location bar when on the start page, and many of them believe that they have to
> enter URLs into a Google search to navigate to a Web site.  Discoverability of
> the location bar seems silly to us, but it's actually a usability issue.

When I said "a billion people" I was trying to say that they have used a web browser without being told by the location bar that you can enter an address into it. Obviously the people changing the pref is a small percentage, and you shouldn't target the small percentages. However, I feel that the people who will see this text and not already know that you can type an address are themselves a small percentage.

Considering someone who has never used a web browser before, if they do not know about typing in the location bar, I feel that they are unlikely to ever see this text. I'm finding it hard to imagine them ending up in a situation with a blank, unfocused location bar. Therefore, I feel that this text can actually be targeted at people who already know about typing there. I think users who are opening new blank tabs are more likely to benefit from discovering the awesomebar behaviour.

From your comment 18 "at this point most users should be familiar with the search behavior added to the location bar"

I don't think this is true, and will be less true now having removed the useful discovery text.

What do you mean when you say "the start page"? An unfocused location bar on http://www.google.com/firefox/ will show the URL. This makes it self describing, as you said in comment 8.

To be honest, I don't actual feel particularly strongly about this. I just thought I would provide some reasoning for why I thought the old behaviour was more useful than the new behaviour.

Comment 37

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

>What do you mean when you say "the start page"? An unfocused location bar on
>http://www.google.com/firefox/ will show the URL.

We will be locally hosting the start page (and potentially even making parts of it out of chrome instead of content), so we will likely suppress the URL entirely instead of displaying about:home, causing the self describing text to appear

Comment 38

[Daniel C]

(In reply to comment #37)
> >What do you mean when you say "the start page"? An unfocused location bar on
> >http://www.google.com/firefox/ will show the URL.
> 
> We will be locally hosting the start page (and potentially even making parts of
> it out of chrome instead of content), so we will likely suppress the URL
> entirely instead of displaying about:home, causing the self describing text to
> appear

OK, fair enough. I think that is bug 563723 for anyone who is interested. The location bar doesn't have a tooltip. Would you consider adding one to give more information about the awesomebar capabilities? If so I'll file a bug and attempt a patch. Something like "Type here to search bookmarks and history, or go directly to a web site" maybe.

Comment 39

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

yep, a tooltip would be great.  Perhaps these alternates based on the pref:

Search bookmarks and history, or go directly to a Web site
Search bookmarks, or go directly to a Web site
Search history, or go directly to a Web site
Go directly to a Web site

the "type here" part should be self explanatory, and the strings are already a bit long even for tooltips.

Comment 40

[Liam K.]

Kind of OCD of me, but is it valid to bring up that the most common spelling is "website"?