712970 - Show 'tabs from last time' in about:home

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect, P2)

Description

[Jaclyn Fu]

Web page or screen you were on when you saw the issue: about:home

What you expected: Be able to easily access last open tabs rather than most frequented sites. Since a lot of times I'm on-the-go and need to get off my phone quickly then resume browsing later, having the frequented sites on about:home isn't useful for me. It would be cool to have an option to either set your frequent sites or recent tabs on about:home. 

Has user studies shown otherwise?

Comment 1

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Tabs should automatically be restored (either by Android staying in memory or via session restore if killed), so I assume this bug is for when the user explicitly chooses to Quit.

What exactly do we want here? A list of tabs on about:home where the user can reopen each individual tab like in XUL Fennec, or do we want a single "Restore Last Session" button like we have on desktop? If the former, should this be in addition to, an alternative to, or a replacement for the frequent sites we currently show on about:home?

Comment 2

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

I think we want something like XUL Fennec: The list and a "open all"

Comment 3

[Jaclyn Fu]

+1 to what Mark said - however I don't have user data to suggest whether this would be a larger use case and can't determine if it should be replaced. I was envisioning it as an alternative, having an option to either display top sites or the last tabs open.

Comment 4

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Attachment: patch

Comment 5

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Attachment: patch v2

Fixed issue where last tabs can't be clicked.

Comment 6

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Attachment: patch v2 (second attempt)

I'll even upload the modified patch this time.

Comment 7

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

Comment on attachment 587911 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v2 (second attempt)

>diff --git a/mobile/android/base/AboutHomeContent.java b/mobile/android/base/AboutHomeContent.java

> public class AboutHomeContent extends ScrollView {

>+    public interface JSONReadCallback {
>+        public void callback(String json);
>+    }

Do you use this anywhere? I assume you might have wanted it for a more async loading of JSON. This might be a good idea if the performance of showing the page is regressed.

>diff --git a/mobile/android/base/locales/en-US/android_strings.dtd b/mobile/android/base/locales/en-US/android_strings.dtd

>+<!ENTITY abouthome_addons_browse "Browse all &brandShortName; Add-ons">

"Browse all &brandShortName; add-ons"  <-- lowercase 'a' in add-ons

r+, let's see if this affects performance at all. also, start thinking of how we would write a robotium test for this.

Comment 8

[chris hofmann]

this should be P1 since it blocks us on localization too, right?

Comment 9

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

So, to confirm:

- this is only when we're not restoring tabs automatically, because the user explicitly quit or we crashed on startup multiple times (the "well, this is embarrassing" case)
- this becomes a section on about:home with a header like the "Add-ons for your Firefox" that appears after the "top sites" section
- the section is a list of tab titles with favicons at left

Comment 10

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

getting a screenshot of the WIP in here sooner than later would be great, by the way, so we can course correct on the UI.

Comment 11

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

This is removing hard-coded strings in about:home, which we'll need to deal with one way or the other. Tracking 11+ says to me that we want to use this way to fix the hard-coded strings, but that does have an impact on when we actually string freeze, if we're still in uiwanted.

Comment 12

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Attachment: screenshot (1 last tab)

Comment 13

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Attachment: screenshot (2 last tabs)

Comment 14

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

(In reply to Madhava Enros [:madhava] from comment #9)
> So, to confirm:
> 
> - this is only when we're not restoring tabs automatically, because the user
> explicitly quit or we crashed on startup multiple times (the "well, this is
> embarrassing" case)
Yes (although we don't yet handle the startup crash loop - that's bug 701092).

> - this becomes a section on about:home with a header like the "Add-ons for
> your Firefox" that appears after the "top sites" section
> - the section is a list of tab titles with favicons at left
Yes and yes (see attached screenshots).

Comment 15

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

I'd cut the URL line -- tab title should be enough.

I think Ian will have some visual styling comments.

Comment 16

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Attachment: mockup

Hi Brian, this is looking great. Couple comments on the visual design here:

1. Let's change the url colour to #666666, it's showing up a little too light at the moment.
2. Nudge the url about 2px closer to the page title
3. Apply the same margin to the right of the screen as the left, so the URL doesn't run so close to the edge before getting truncated

Thanks!
Ian

I've attached a mockup for reference

Comment 17

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Attachment: patch v3

patch with ui fixes

Comment 18

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Attachment: screenshot (ui fixes)

Comment 19

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Comment on attachment 589313 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v3

r+ previously from mfinkle; new patch contains layout tweaks.

Comment 20

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

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/2f3527e85663

Comment 21

[:Ms2ger (he/him; ⌚ UTC+1/+2)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/2f3527e85663

Comment 22

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Comment on attachment 589313 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v3

[Approval Request Comment] 
adds last tabs to about:home. low risk.

Comment 23

[Catalin Suciu [:csuciu]]

Testcase available at:
https://litmus.mozilla.org/manage_testcases.cgi?testcase_id=43045

Comment 24

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

Comment on attachment 589313 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v3

[Triage Comment]
Mobile only - approved for Aurora.

Comment 25

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/9a60d5d8b01e

Comment 26

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Verified on M-A & M-C
Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.0.3)

20120126053754
http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/9d5ede8cb11a

20120126031113
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/402b394b6623