738545 - Provide opt-in installation of Marketplace Application upon loading of Firefox for Android at a common Firefox for Android location (about:home?)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Web Apps (PWAs), defect, P1)

Comment 1

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

Bug 697309 adds support for launching web apps in tabs. The Marketplace is just a web app. How is this bug different?

Comment 2

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

"Mozilla Marketplace" runs the market set in settings in WEBAPP mode, but should be an additional launcher activity to make it available on install.

Comment 3

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

Just to clarify, this bug is about adding the launcher activity to AndroidManifest.xml such that an icon is installed for the marketplace when Fennec is installed

Comment 4

[Andreas Gal :gal]

Does this create a separate icon?

Comment 5

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

(In reply to Andreas Gal :gal from comment #4)
> Does this create a separate icon?

Yes, it would.

Comment 6

[Andreas Gal :gal]

Are we sure this is what we want? This is pretty close to crapware installation (toolbar install, anti-virus scanner). Is there an opt-in? opt-out? I can't find the feature page for this. If you have a link for me that might answer all my questions already. Thanks

Comment 7

[Ragavan S [:rags]]

(In reply to Andreas Gal :gal from comment #6)
> Are we sure this is what we want? This is pretty close to crapware
> installation (toolbar install, anti-virus scanner). Is there an opt-in?
> opt-out? I can't find the feature page for this. If you have a link for me
> that might answer all my questions already. Thanks

This is not installing a separate application, but an icon that launches Fennec directly into the marketplace. This is not too different from having two icons on the B2G home screen for Camera and Gallery that both launch the same app (which I've heard articulated as a use case). 

The requirement we're addressing is the ability for a user to go directly to the marketplace without having to first launch a browser. Given various constraints (both technical and operational), this was the best compromise that allowed us to both ship one app while also addressing this requirement. 

If you're aware of other ways to address this requirement while still dealing with all of the constraints (which I'm sure you've read/discussed over the last 2 weeks or so), let us know and we can consider them.

And yes, we are sure this is what we want - to allow users who are mostly(only?) interested in apps and the marketplace, but not in a general purpose browser.

Comment 8

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Mark - In bug 741464#c1 you mentioned something about there being an issue with removing app icons during uninstall of Fennec Native. Could this be a possible issue with the marketplace as well?

Comment 9

[Andreas Gal :gal]

I am not concerned about installing an extra icon for users who explicitly chose to install the marketplace. They clearly want the icon. Thats an opt-in flow.

The part I don't understand is whether default fennec starts installing an unexpected icon. Does it?

Comment 10

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

Jason: The issue mentioned in bug 741464 only concerns dynamically created shortcuts to app-tabs. The Marketplace should [1] be implemented as launchable Activity, therefor hard-coded in the AndroidManifest and will be installed/uninstalled with Fennec.

[1]: An alternative install-path that was discussed, was to to create the Marketplace icon also as shortcut dynamically on first launch, which would have made the onboarding flow even harder.

Comment 11

[Andreas Gal :gal]

At install time or first-launch time, we have traditionally not shipped/installed bundled software the user didn't clearly asked us to install. This case is even worse because it sounds like there is no opt-in or opt-out. If a user doesn't like the marketplace, uninstalling fennec is the only option. The right solution for me is to wait for user intent to install the market place. Such as:

- When a user installs a web app from the browser for the first time, ask whether we should install the marketplace icon.
- When a user navigates to the marketplace website, we offer to install an icon.

I would like to make sure we have buy-in from the Firefox product team and project for the current plan. I can imagine others will have similar concerns as the ones I have outlined in this comment.

Comment 12

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Would a check-box or a prompt during the fennec native install process be possible for choosing to install marketplace or not at the same time? For example, something like:

Install Fennec?

(Checkbox) Install marketplace with fennec

Or another way:

User clicks install for fennec native

Prompt appears - Would you also like to install mozilla marketplace?

Brian Dils - Could you comment here on what you think the best workflow is?

Comment 13

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

The can disable the Marketplace activity by default and enable it on demand. A solution that we did covered during the UX sessions on installation but with the assumption that we would just put a shortcut on the homescreen when enabling the Marketplace. But Android actually has an API to enable/disable an activity dynamically [1].

Flow: The user starts the Marketplace the first time from inside Fennec. This can happen from about:home, awesomebar, menu, or automatically when the user downloaded Fennec to get an app, tracking referrals. The user will get prompted to enable Marketplace as a launcher. We could also do it automatically as its hard to communicate the action; user opt-in by using the Marketplace?

[1] setComponentEnabledSetting: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/PackageManager.html#setComponentEnabledSetting%28android.content.ComponentName,%20int,%20int%29

@jsmith: We can not prompt anything in the installation process, that's all Android Play territory. We take over when the user launches Fennec the first time.

Comment 14

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

(In reply to Jason Smith from comment #12)
> Would a check-box or a prompt during the fennec native install process be
> possible 

no

Comment 15

[Andreas Gal :gal]

comment #13: I think the general expectation is to ask the user. "Do you want to install the Firefox Market Place icon on your homescreen?" is pretty straight forward, even for not-so-technical users.

Comment 16

[Ragavan S [:rags]]

(In reply to Andreas Gal :gal from comment #15)
> comment #13: I think the general expectation is to ask the user. "Do you
> want to install the Firefox Market Place icon on your homescreen?" is pretty
> straight forward, even for not-so-technical users.

We don't ask the user whether they want a Firefox icon on their homescreen. This is the problem with the marketplace and Firefox both being the same application. If they were distinct applications, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We either have separate applications each installing their own icon or we have a combined application that installs two icons. We are going for the latter.

Comment 17

[Tony Chung [:tchung]]

FWIW, the kindle Fire doesnt permit multiple icons to get dropped on its device dashboard.  Nor the Apps list either.   We tried this with an early version of Soup (it had a dashboard and marketplace icon), and early version of bundled fennec native and Android Sync.

Result was, only one version of Soup appeared, and only Fennec appeared.  the bundled icons never showed up anywhere.   

Kindle Fire runs some sort of custom Android 2.3 build.  As far as i know, no other Android devices we've encountered has hit this problem.

Comment 18

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

(In reply to Tony Chung [:tchung] from comment #17)
> FWIW, the kindle Fire doesnt permit multiple icons to get dropped on its
> device dashboard.  Nor the Apps list either.   We tried this with an early
> version of Soup (it had a dashboard and marketplace icon), and early version
> of bundled fennec native and Android Sync.
> 
> Result was, only one version of Soup appeared, and only Fennec appeared. 
> the bundled icons never showed up anywhere.   
> 
> Kindle Fire runs some sort of custom Android 2.3 build.  As far as i know,
> no other Android devices we've encountered has hit this problem.

In those situations, we'll need to depend on UI in Firefox to show the Marketplace. We already have support for about:apps, which can manage webapps. We could put the Marketplace there as an app too. We could also add menus, preference and about:home links too - like we do with Sync.

Comment 19

[Irina Sandu]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #5)
> (In reply to Andreas Gal :gal from comment #4)
> > Does this create a separate icon?
> 
> Yes, it would.

This raises some concerns from the marketing and communications stand point, as well. Can we discuss before we implement this? At the least, we would need to adjust messaging for FX mobile if we do get a second icon, but our recommended approach is that we don't and investigate in-product and other ways of surfacing the Marketplace.

Comment 20

[Ragavan S [:rags]]

> This raises some concerns from the marketing and communications stand point,
> as well. Can we discuss before we implement this? At the least, we would
> need to adjust messaging for FX mobile if we do get a second icon, but our
> recommended approach is that we don't and investigate in-product and other
> ways of surfacing the Marketplace.

Combining Marketplace with Firefox does indeed make things complicated. I'm currently digging into our current Fennec plans with Madhava on UX and Patrick/Jaclyn on the GTM side. I'll follow up with options and recommendations soon via email and we can update this bug once we come to a decision.

Comment 21

[Sheila Mooney]

Still needs closure from product on whether or not we are doing this. Ragavan, can you follow-up?

Comment 22

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

As far as Dev is concerned, the plan we have moving forward is:
* Firefox is the only app in the Google Store. We will not be pursuing a separate Marketplace App.
* Firefox will have in-product UI to get to the Marketplace. A menu (like "Add-ons") and a potenital link on about:home would link to the Marketplace website

Once these are in place we will look at adding a "icon" to the Marketplace website/webapp in the Android Apps list.

Comment 23

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #22)
> As far as Dev is concerned, the plan we have moving forward is:
> * Firefox is the only app in the Google Store. We will not be pursuing a
> separate Marketplace App.
> * Firefox will have in-product UI to get to the Marketplace. A menu (like
> "Add-ons") and a potenital link on about:home would link to the Marketplace
> website

Why not have a "install marketplace application" on about:home? Or are we taking the concept of having a marketplace open web application completely out of scope (just going against the k9o spec here - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Kilimanjaro/ProductDraft#Mozilla_will_deliver_a_compelling_device.2Fsystem_un-boxing_experience, if this should change, then let's get it up to date). Just thinking about if having a mozilla marketplace open web app in general is in-scope or out of scope.

> 
> Once these are in place we will look at adding a "icon" to the Marketplace
> website/webapp in the Android Apps list.

Could you clarify in more detail what you mean here?

Comment 24

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

(In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #23)

> Why not have a "install marketplace application" on about:home?

I assume this would "install" the webapp version of Marketplace? If so, this would be fine too. It would add the webapp to about:apps (for better or worse) and add an icon to the homescreen.

> Or are we taking the concept of having a marketplace open web application completely out of scope?

Having a webapp of the Marketplace is in scope. We just need a good flow/UX for creating it. Your example above is one possiblility.

> > Once these are in place we will look at adding a "icon" to the Marketplace
> > website/webapp in the Android Apps list.
> 
> Could you clarify in more detail what you mean here?

The was talk a while ago of adding the icon to Android as part of the AndroidManifest.xml, although I am not 100% sure that is easily done as a webapp intent. We'll need to investigate but promise nothing at this point.

Comment 25

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Should we still keep this bug around then? Or open another bug when consider the option again?

Comment 26

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

(In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #25)
> Should we still keep this bug around then? Or open another bug when consider
> the option again?

I think we should be more focused on bugs that implement the items in comment 22 and comment 23. If that means this bug is closed, I am fine with that.

Comment 27

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #26)
> (In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #25)
> > Should we still keep this bug around then? Or open another bug when consider
> > the option again?
> 
> I think we should be more focused on bugs that implement the items in
> comment 22 and comment 23. If that means this bug is closed, I am fine with
> that.

Okay. Ragavan - Can we close this bug as won't fix?

Comment 28

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

Blocking because we need to resolve this one way or the other. So, blocking on the decision.

Comment 29

[Erin Lancaster [:elan]]

I'm following up with Product on this.

Comment 30

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Resolving this bug as a won't fix, as there's no strong indication to go forward for this right now. Please reopen if there is a firm decision to take this forward.

Comment 31

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Reopening for re-evaluation.

Comment 32

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Should we still block on this for the 1st release then, given https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=741621#c10 indicates support in Q4 for one of the pieces connected to this bug? Are we able to ship without this or bug 741621 complete?

Putting this into the re-triage queue.

Comment 33

[Erin Lancaster [:elan]]

Decision made: the installation of the app marketplace icon will be opt-in, likely via about:home screen in fennec. Maria is working on UX for this. We won't support separate binaries for this rev (Q3). We need tracking bugs for the rest of this work to obtain scope and evaluate risk.

Comment 34

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Resolving as a won't fix to clean up the bug confusion. Future work is being tracked in bug 778914, bug 778913, and bug 741621.