689904 - 'Clear private data' button returns to active shortly after clearing the data

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P4)

Description

[Peter Retzer (:pretzer)]

When clearing private data via the button in the preferences, the button turns incative for 5 seconds and then just returns to be active again. This behavior was implemented by bug 491885.

In my opinion this can cause the impression for users, that their browser is generating private data without any interaction from their side.
With Firefox taking the users privacy as a top priority and from a UX-standpoint this seems semi-optimal.

Comment 1

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

I don't exactly follow what comment 0 is talking about. "their browser is generating private data" - ?

Comment 2

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #1)
> I don't exactly follow what comment 0 is talking about. "their browser is
> generating private data" - ?

The fact that the button remains enabled after initial use I suppose.

Comment 3

[Peter Retzer (:pretzer)]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #1)
> I don't exactly follow what comment 0 is talking about. "their browser is
> generating private data" - ?

Okay, I have to admit that did not really make myself clear here. 

What happens here is basically this:
A user hits the button to clear his private data. The button turns inactive, to give the user some feedback that something actually happened here (purpose of bug 491885). All fine until here.
Now 5 seconds after that the button turns active again, which might lead to users thinking "there must be some new private data, why else would it turn back to active? but where did the data come from?".
Of course there is no actual new private data. But the average user might think that, and since they have not interacted with the browser by themselves, they might blame someone else for it, namely Firefox. 

All in all this is not the best user experience in my opinion. As I understand it, it's not that easy to detect the time where actually new private data is stored. So maybe instead of reactivating the button simply after 5 seconds, just wait until the user has left the prefs window? That would already be an improvement in my eyes.

Comment 4

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Waiting until the user leaves the preferences window sounds good to me.  We could do this by replacing the timeout here:
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/982a5835fba1/mobile/chrome/content/browser-ui.js#l1297

with code that adds an event listener to wait until the next time the prefs panel is opened or closed.

Comment 5

[Peter Retzer (:pretzer)]

This bug is no longer valid in the new NativeUI implementation, therefore I'm closing it. Or do I need to keep it open, because it still applies to the XUL tablet UI, which will be shipped for a bit longer? If yes, please REOPEN.