728697 - Provide Application Menu on AwesomeScreen

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Paul [pwd]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:13.0a1) Gecko/13.0a1 Firefox/13.0a1
Build ID: 20120219031223

Steps to reproduce:

On the awesomescreen if you press menu, you currently get nothing. There is an assumption that the user won't need these options, however things like quitting the app, opening the settings, navigating to add-ons are things a user should be able to do/access at any time.

Comment 1

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

Ian, won't fix?

Comment 2

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

We're very deliberately pushing the awesomebar into a more focused, modal experience to help users complete the task of filtering their history and searching for new things. 

On newer phones without hardware menu buttons, we actually eclipse the menu icon entirely when you launch the awesomebar. The next round of tablet UI designs will hide all chrome except for the awesomebar and url bar.

Also, having to back out of a mode in an app to access other app controls isn't at all uncommoon on Android.

Comment 3

[Paul [pwd]]

No one minds the AwesomeScreen being more focused, however the desire is for a fully functioning App within that screen. More than half of the functionality of Fennec is lost. You can't quit, you can't access add-ons nor cam you access the application settings. The AwesomeSreen should be a WOW factor not a nuisance.

Comment 4

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

I can see that. I just contacted our user research team, they recently did a mobile heatmap study on how people use fennec, so I will have a look at how frequently people try to traverse the app through the menu, while in awesomebar mode.

Comment 6

[Paul [pwd]]

Did the research team ever get back to you on this Ian? I for one would still love to have full app control even within the awesomescreen.

Comment 8

[Paul [pwd]]

One place this is especially relevant is in regards to clearing history. In order to get from your history to the settings where you can mass clear history and private data, users are forced to go back to a webpage first.