644480 - "Tabs from other computers" menu item is missing

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 716271

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[legit.anon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

Under the new Firefox button (the bright orange button in the top left), the History menu does not have the "Tabs from other computers" menu item.  This item is only available from the History menu in the menu toolbar.  This seems odd - aren't the two the same?  And isn't the default to use the new Firefox button?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click the orange Firefox button in the top-left
2. Open the History menu
Actual Results:  
"Tab from other computers" is missing

Expected Results:  
"Tab from other computers" should be present

Comment 1

[aravindm]

Confirmed on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110323 Firefox/4.2a1pre

"Tabs from other computers" Option is missing in Firefox button->History menu. Able to see the option is normal Menu Item.

Comment 2

[Oliver Henshaw]

I encountered this myself, but "Tabs from other computers" seems to be available from the 'List all tabs' button (the downward pointing arrow to the far right of the tab bar) on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1

Presumably the logic is that this belongs with other tab options more than it belongs with history options, which makes sense to me at least.

Comment 3

[legit.anon]

That's true - its not really part of the history.  I don't use the "List All Tabs" button and use the Tab Mix Plus extension to hide it, so my personal preference is to have it in the Firefox button.  Perhaps you could make it as a separate menu entry?  Of course, I'm not the only user, so do whatever you think makes more sense.

In any case, it should either be present in both, or absent from both.

Comment 4

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

I remember that at some point "Tabs From Other Computers" was removed from the History submenu on Windows (or maybe it was never added?). Either way, this situation has rendered the feature nearly undiscoverable for Windows users, as demonstrated by various support questions (including one phone call by Walt Mossberg). AFAICT it's only available via the All Tabs drop down menu on Windows.

CCing Faaborg to see if he can shed some light on this issue. I know we want to combine Tabs From Other Computers with Panorama, but until we get there, can we make it a bit more discoverable on Windows?

Comment 5

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

It's currently in the same location on every platform, in the tabs menu.  Platforms that use the traditional menu bar also have it in the history menu for keyboard access (as an accessibility concession, since the tabs menu isn't keyboard accessible).

We want to keep it next to panorama since when we remove it entirely that's the command that will take over the same functionality.  The fact that it is in the history menu is just because we didn't get bug 597308 and bug 611571.

Comment 6

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

The removal from the classic History menu (bug 611571) will add some consistency, but will make the feature just as undiscoverable on Linux and OS X as it is on Windows. The keyboard shortcut (bug 597308) will hardly be a discoverability win.

I realize that the long term goal is to combine this with Panorama, but isn't there something we can do in the mid term?

Comment 7

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

We aren't really interested in increasing discoverability that much, accessing a tab through this mechanism is slower than just navigating to it with the awesome bar (assuming you know what you want).  Also, users expect to have a single tab set across their machines, and we don't want them to start to rely on this interface that much right before we pull it out.

Comment 8

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

Then we should probably not advertise tab syncing so much.

Comment 9

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

I haven't read how we are promoting this too much, but isn't it usually in the context of pulling desktop tabs onto a mobile device?  That's considerably more discoverable with placement on the home screen of fennec.  But if we are focusing on desktop to desktop tab access, then yeah I agree that we should scale back focusing on that.