516352 - Improve UI of new Clear Recent History functionality

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

I was asked by my wife yesterday where the function to clear cookies went in Firefox 3.5. She's a tech savvy person and couldn't find the option in the new Clear Recent History dialog. I also looked at it and didn't realize until talking to Whimboo that you have to click that "Details" button to get an option to clear cookies. Compared to Firefox 3.0 where you had a button that told you "Here's where you clear your cookies", this is a big usability and discoverability regression.

This bug is to request that we improve this UI so that the options that are available are also discoverable again. I pripose to:

a) expand that list of checkable items by default when that dialog is opened (preferred), or
b) rename the button to something more useful than just "Details". From talking to people over the years, they're either scared of something called "Details", giving them a feel that they could break something or that this is something for the high-end techie folks, or they don't deem it important enough to look at what might be behind it. Even I who is a member of the MOZQA team didn't expect the option to clear cookies to pop up behind that button.

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2] (away July 24th - August 16th)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> b) rename the button to something more useful than just "Details". From talking
> to people over the years, they're either scared of something called "Details",

Wouldn't it be better to call out the action which can be done on this button? We could display "Show Details" and "Hide Details" depending on the state. That would make it more discoverable for the majority part of users.

Comment 2

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > b) rename the button to something more useful than just "Details". From talking
> > to people over the years, they're either scared of something called "Details",
> 
> Wouldn't it be better to call out the action which can be done on this button?
> We could display "Show Details" and "Hide Details" depending on the state. That
> would make it more discoverable for the majority part of users.

That wouldn't address the problem, as Marco didn't seem to think that the details couldn't be shown. Instead, it was unclear that they contained the option to only clear cookies.

Comment 3

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

In Firefox 3.0 the big button was in the preferences menu, not the Clear Recent History function. That button has been replaced with a link to the cookies manager, still in the same place (Options > Privacy)

All respect to your tech-savvy wife, but requiring that users understand what cookies are is not strong UI. The goal is to clear recent history, and the task is accomplished by going to that function. If someone - tech-savvy or otherwise - wants to know the details of that action, the option is clearly available.

I disagree that this is a usability and discoverability regression.

Comment 4

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Strongly agree with beltzner here, clearing just cookies is a much more tech-savvy action, and it's fine to have it live in either a) prefwindow or b) as a detail to a broader action.

This is really more WONTFIX than INVALID though, since it's a request to make the details more obvious, and we don't want to do that.

Comment 5

[u88484]

I beg to differ.  Please see the metrics team blog posts: http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2009/09/03/getting-help-when-using-firefox-part-i/
http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2009/09/09/getting-help-when-using-firefox-part-ii/

Cookies seem to be a huge issue and user can't figure out issues relating to them and end up on SUMO.

Comment 6

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

From those two posts, it seems like the most common issues are "how do I disable third-party cookies" and "what are cookies?" and "why is a site saying these are blocked?"

Clear recent history is almost certainly not the right solution or action to solve those issues.

Comment 7

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

I agree with the Mikes, users shouldn't need to know what cookies are, this isn't the best UI to clear them, and clear recent history is primarily about clearing your recent history.

However, we actually are looking into making the task of clearing cookies easier with a redesign of Firefox's options.  The short version is that we are going to do a much better job of displaying all of the options related to each site (passwords, cookies, image blocking, etc), in a unified way, instead of having these all in isolated Windows.  This will make it considerably easier to clear the cookies for a particular site, or all sites, and will also be more discoverable (complete with a iconic fortune cookie image [1] with a bit of paper sticking out).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_cookie

Comment 8

[SoerenBindinger]

This is the feedback I gave this maorning after not having found the emptyCache button. My propositions, seconding Alex', in the lower part. BTW, the Tools-> Clear recent history MenuItembelongs to this too, doesn't it? I think its ridicululous there's no hint that this wil NOT only dlete your history....  

Quoting myself:
"Hi, the article about "how to empty the cache is oK. But, the fact that it is needed, and probably it IS needed by many people, is because Firefoxes UserInterface concerning those things is deplorable,  imho.

The way I would suggest as a sensible arrangement of those settings:

a) ALL privacy&security actions AND ACTION OPTIONS should be accessible in an Options -> "Privacy&Security" dialogue ((hence called "here")). 
So: move here the "OfflineStorage" and "Update" parts (Cache) from "Advanced-network", move here "Passwords" from Security ((move the rest of that one to "Advanced" ))
((but: no need to have the locationBar setting here - that should be in "Main", shouldn't it?))


b)the various privacy&security elements should each have their own Tabs under "Privacy&Security", with decreasing precariousness from left to right (for R2L codepages, that is). 
Maybe: Update, ActiveLogins, Passwords, FormHistory, Cache, Cookies, SessionHistory, BrowsingHistory, DownloadHistory, SitePreferences.

All those tabs should have, in their upper part, and uniformly designed, entries for "delete now", "keepOnlyUntilFirefoxIsQuit", "keep only for n Days" "blockAltogether" "Exceptions"  -- just grey out -don't omit- entries not applicable. AND: HIGHLIGHT recommended defaults. Additional settings, being different from tab to tab, in the lower part. Maybe tooltip warnings for some (e.g. password or cookie deleting)

I do think, this way many would not get the impression they had to delete their histories to empty the cache .... and take the time to at least have a look at those settings.

Greetings
SoerenB