689987 - Tracking Bug: Tablet v /m site Experience

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[mcbmoz]

Currently, tablet users are hitting the /m site. Now that we have a navigation option for them (Bug 683209), let's serve them the full site, which is a much better content experience on those devices.

Thank you!

Comment 1

[Steven Garrity [:sgarrity]]

Not sure I'm the best person for this bug. Jason, do you know much about how we sniff out mobile browsers for /m?

Comment 2

[mcbmoz]

(In reply to Steven Garrity from comment #1)
> Not sure I'm the best person for this bug. Jason, do you know much about how
> we sniff out mobile browsers for /m?

Oy! Sorry Steven, assigning to James, he did the device/browser sniffing last quarter.

James feel free to reassign to Anthony.

Comment 3

[Jason Grlicky [:grlicky]]

One thing to note here is that for Android tablet users, we'll need to change the download button on the homepage to go to Mobile Firefox on the Android Market, instead of the desktop download.

I'm not sure what the right course of action would be for iPad users - are we still promoting Firefox Home for them?

Comment 4

[mcbmoz]

(In reply to Jason Grlicky [:grlicky] from comment #3)
> One thing to note here is that for Android tablet users, we'll need to
> change the download button on the homepage to go to Mobile Firefox on the
> Android Market, instead of the desktop download.
> 
> I'm not sure what the right course of action would be for iPad users - are
> we still promoting Firefox Home for them?

Jason,

Excellent catch! 

~cb

Comment 5

[Anthony Ricaud (:rik)]

It's obviously a nice to have functionnality. A few comments:

- AFAICT, we can't distinguish mobile from tablet with Firefox. The user agent only says "Firefox Mobile"
- We don't have a version of Firefox for tablets yet. IIRC, the tablet UI will be released in 12 weeks.
- I have a lot of other bugs that seem higher priority at the moment.

Comment 6

[mcbmoz]

(In reply to Anthony Ricaud (:rik) from comment #5)
> It's obviously a nice to have functionnality. A few comments:
> 
> - AFAICT, we can't distinguish mobile from tablet with Firefox. The user
> agent only says "Firefox Mobile"
> - We don't have a version of Firefox for tablets yet. IIRC, the tablet UI
> will be released in 12 weeks.
> - I have a lot of other bugs that seem higher priority at the moment.

Anthony/James,

Would it be possible to do detection based on something like, if the user is using Fennec & the device is greater than 500 pixels wide it's likely a tablet and serve the tablet-friendly experience v. the /m site?

Or, even just detect if 500 pixels or more wide then .... and go tablet?

Thoughts?

Comment 7

[James Long (:jlongster)]

(In reply to mcbmoz from comment #6)
> 
> Anthony/James,
> 
> Would it be possible to do detection based on something like, if the user is
> using Fennec & the device is greater than 500 pixels wide it's likely a
> tablet and serve the tablet-friendly experience v. the /m site?
> 
> Or, even just detect if 500 pixels or more wide then .... and go tablet?
> 
> Thoughts?

I don't have the full context of this bug, but we certainly can't detect the width of a user's browser server-side to redirect them appropriately.

Comment 8

[Anthony Ricaud (:rik)]

Clarification. We can detect iPad and the default Android browser on the server side. This would be 90% of the tablet users (or more).

It will only be a problem for Firefox that currently doesn't expose the type of device in the user agent. See bug 680886.

We can detect that through JavaScript and do the redirection. It may involve more downloads and maybe a flash of the mobile page content.

Also for devs, that means another part of our code knows about redirection. So it has to be well commented so we don't forget about it.

Comment 9

[mcbmoz]

(In reply to Anthony Ricaud (:rik) from comment #8)
> Clarification. We can detect iPad and the default Android browser on the
> server side. This would be 90% of the tablet users (or more).
> 
> It will only be a problem for Firefox that currently doesn't expose the type
> of device in the user agent. See bug 680886.
> 
> We can detect that through JavaScript and do the redirection. It may involve
> more downloads and maybe a flash of the mobile page content.
> 
> Also for devs, that means another part of our code knows about redirection.
> So it has to be well commented so we don't forget about it.

Great thoughts Anthony! 

Client-side a media query (<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen and (max-device-width: 480px)/>) should be able to detect if 480 pixels or more wide then .... and go tablet?

Steven, want to give this a try?

Comment 10

[Steven Garrity [:sgarrity]]

(In reply to mcbmoz from comment #9)
> Client-side a media query (<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
> media="screen and (max-device-width: 480px)/>) should be able to detect if
> 480 pixels or more wide then .... and go tablet?
> Steven, want to give this a try?

Well, probably don't want to do a client-side redirect on mobile, where round-trips to the server are so expensive. Hopefully when we have a more mobile-friendly site in general, we can rely more on client side behaviour (responsive design via media queries, etc.)

If I understand Rik's comments correctly and we can detect tablets (as opposed to phones) on Android (and iPad/Safari), why don't we start with that?

Comment 11

[mcbmoz]

(In reply to Steven Garrity from comment #10)
> (In reply to mcbmoz from comment #9)
> > Client-side a media query (<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
> > media="screen and (max-device-width: 480px)/>) should be able to detect if
> > 480 pixels or more wide then .... and go tablet?
> > Steven, want to give this a try?
> 
> Well, probably don't want to do a client-side redirect on mobile, where
> round-trips to the server are so expensive. Hopefully when we have a more
> mobile-friendly site in general, we can rely more on client side behaviour
> (responsive design via media queries, etc.)
> 
> If I understand Rik's comments correctly and we can detect tablets (as
> opposed to phones) on Android (and iPad/Safari), why don't we start with
> that?

Steven, thanks for catching that - I didn't even think of the cost of the round trips to the server.

Let's definitely start with Anthony's suggestion. (Anthony, thanks for figuring this out with us).

What else do you need to proceed?

Comment 12

[Steven Garrity [:sgarrity]]

I actually haven't worked on any of the mobile redirection code. Anthony, would you be able to take this?

Comment 13

[Anthony Ricaud (:rik)]

I think we need to split this into 3 bugs:

- Don't redirect tablet users (should be easy)
- Change the download button to give a different download based on the user agent (this might be tricky to do since product-details is an old piece of code)
- Figure out the best way to redirect Firefox tablet users.

I'm gonna try to take a look at the first issue this week but I can't promise anything.

Comment 14

[Laura Forrest]

Chrissie - Can you sync up with Anthony on the priority of this bug? It's been open for a while now and don't want to keep moving it from milestone to milestone if it's not going to get done. Thanks!

Comment 15

[mcbmoz]

Anthony, per your request, I've made this the tracking bug to 3 bugs:

bug 699285
bug 699287
bug 699289

Looking forward to your solution!

Comment 16

[mcbmoz]

Anthony, can you update with progress and put into the right milestone for an upcoming release?

Comment 17

[Laura Forrest]

@Chrissie - THANK your for filing the individual bite-size bugs above.

Since this is now basically a tracking bug, I'm going to place this in the "Future" release. 

Anthony - please up the individual bugs and place into the appropriate milestone.

Comment 18

[mcbmoz]

Anthony, setting this for the 4.10 release, the individual bugs are set for 4.7, 4.8, and 4.9 releases.

If it's not possible, please update in the bug as to why and the steps you will take to get it into X.X release (fill in with the release).

Comment 19

[Anthony Ricaud (:rik)]

All blocking bugs have been fixed so closing this one.

Comment 20

[mcbmoz]

hooray! thanks Anthony!