615435 - Relocate the Home button to the right side of the browser

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

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

This change is likely to be controversial, but I believe we should relocate the Home button to be to the left of the bookmarks button.  This button was never meant to be part of Firefox 4 (we were transitioning to the home tab), so the fact that it is still in our UI at this stage is a bit unplanned.

Cons:
-Breaks consistency with previous versions of Firefox
-Will move to the left again in Firefox 4.x or 5 when we introduce the home tab, which is a bit chaotic

Pros:
-External consistency with the bulk of non-Firefox market share (IE7/8/9)
-Nice mapping with the bookmarks menu (home is basically a super bookmark)
-Users who hit home in order to do a google search (most of them) will potentially discover the search bar, which is now right next to the home button
-No consistency violation with Chrome (doesn't have a home button by default)*
-No consistency violation with Safari (doesn't have a home button)
-Reduces the visual complexity of the back/forward area back to the original Firefox 4 mockups

Mostly it feels like the arguments not to move the control mostly come down to trying to reducing how much we change our UI.  Users can of course always customize the button position to wherever they would like to place it.

[* depending on what day of the week it is, and how the stars are aligned.  I really can't figure out their position on the home button.]

Comment 1

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

It would be good to get this change in for beta 8 if possible, so that it is just late, instead of super late, in the ship cycle.

Comment 2

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Attachment: patch

This moves the home button between the search box and the bookmarks menu button in the default configuration. If the navigation toolbar has been customized, it performs a one-time migration, moving the home button (if it exists) to the immediate left of the bookmarks menu button.

Comment 3

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Comment on attachment 494502 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Looks good to me, I agree that we should ship a beta with this and see how it works out. External consistency with the only browser that ships with a Home button (IE) makes sense, and it also makes the UI cleaner.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 494502 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

>+        currentset = currentset.replace(/(^|,)home-button($|,)/, "$1$2").
>+                                replace(/(^|,)bookmarks-menu-button-container($|,)/,

Nit: move the trailing dot to the start of the second line:

currentset = currentset.replace(...)
                       .replace(...

Comment 5

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Gah, missed an edge case:

When the bookmarks menu button has been customized away (manually dragged out of the navigation toolbar, not just by clicking View Bookmarks Toolbar), where should the home button go?
1. The home button is like a gigantic bookmark, so remove it too. (Current patch does this.)
2. Move it to the rightmost end of the navigation toolbar.

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

We shouldn't just remove it. Those who've removed the bookmarks menu button would have been capable of removing the home button.

Comment 7

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Attachment: patch v2

Comment 8

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

In that case, let's go with this slightly modified patch.

It simply moves the home button to the rightmost end of the navigation toolbar, if the bookmarks menu button had been manually removed.

Comment 9

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 494960 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v2

>+          currentset = currentset += ",home-button";

This moves the home button after fullscreenflex and window-controls.

Comment 10

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(And I assume you meant currentset += ",home-button"...)

Comment 11

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Attachment: patch v3

Now accounts for fullscreenflex.

Comment 12

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 494961 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v3

fullscreenflex isn't removable, so the last branch should never be entered.

Can you just do nothing if bookmarks-menu-button-container isn't found?

Comment 13

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

(In reply to comment #12)
> Comment on attachment 494961 [details] [diff] [review]
> patch v3
> 
> fullscreenflex isn't removable, so the last branch should never be entered.
> 
> Can you just do nothing if bookmarks-menu-button-container isn't found?

If you look at the migration code for adding the bookmarks menu button, there's a branch for the case where fullscreenflex isn't there. I suppose if we migrate from a very old version, then we may hit that. I don't know when fullscreenflex was added.

Considering that the main reasons for moving the home button are not really valid if the user already knew how to remove the bookmarks menu button, we can just do nothing in that case. Patch coming up.

Comment 14

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Attachment: patch v4

Comment 15

[Norman Paschke]

>Cons:
>-Breaks consistency with previous versions of Firefox

Counts four times in my opinion.

Why moving it to the right if you plan to move it to the left again, this time as a home-tab? People got used to its current positions.. I for instance moved the home button to the left of the tab-bar just to get used to its new place. Putting it on the right that far tho, is not helpful at all I think.

Comment 16

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

>this time as a home-tab?

I should note that the Home Tab will behave differently than the current home button, since it will be associated with Firefox specific UI.  The current notion of "home page" will be the which tab is shown when the browser launches (so creating a home page is essentially the same thing as creating a new app tab, that will be shown on launch).

Comment 17

[Valerio]

Attachment: example of the combined button

Now that you have decided to move the home button to the right ("home is basically a super bookmark"), you could merge it with the bookmarks button (they do similar function)

Comment 18

[Frank Yan (:fryn)]

Pushed.

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7284451662bf

Comment 19

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

Just FTR, if this regresses, we'll backout before we fix.

Comment 20

[shawn.sumin]

Bug 640531 - Home Button needs to be on the Left of URL Bar by Default

Home Button needs to be on the Left hand side of URL Bar by Default.

No need to frustrate non technical users by changing location to right hand
side.

Non technical users will not know that it is customizable, View ==> Toolbars
==> Customize, as it is not apparent unless you have read somewhere
(instructions). That you can drag and drop other stuff i.e. home button, as it
is not in the window which opens when you click customize.

There are 4,056 Messages when you search "home" in the Beta feedback:
http://input.mozilla.com/en-US/beta/search?product=firefox&q=home , and most
are confused why it was moved to the right.

Comment 21

[Ferenc Magyar]

Why FF developers always moving around all toolbar buttons? Put all back to the top left side please, like was in FF 3.6.x Navigation buttons on left, refresh on middle, home button on the right side? Totally absurd! Very uncomfortable.
For example if I want to set a new "Home Page" it was so easy to drop the page favicon to the Home Page button what was in FF 3.6.X just 1 cm away to left, but now in FF 4 if I want to do the same I have to grab the favicon throght the whole screen.
Yeah, I know its easy to customize the toolbar , but it would be better if all buttons would be the most logical place by default.
Thanks!

Comment 22

[Vlad [QA]]

Verified fixed on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110405 Firefox/4.2a1pre

Comment 23

[shawn.sumin]

Home Button needs to be on the Left hand side of URL Bar by Default.

No need to frustrate non technical users by changing location to right hand
side.

Non technical users will not know that it is customizable, View ==> Toolbars
==> Customize, as it is not apparent unless you have read somewhere
(instructions). That you can drag and drop other stuff i.e. home button, as it
is not in the window which opens when you click customize.

There are 4,056 Messages when you search "home" in the Beta feedback:
http://input.mozilla.com/en-US/beta/search?product=firefox&q=home , and most
are confused why it was moved to the right.