743613 - [New Tab Page] Add more intuitive way to disable new tab page

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect)

Description

[tabmix.onemen]

When user sees the New Tab Page for the first time on Firefox 12, there is no intuitive way to disable it.

I don't think that the small 9 dot button on the upper right corner is enough.

Comment 1

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

I learned about this button from this bug. I was surprised there's no such preferences in the... tabs preferences pane.

Comment 2

[A Capesius]

I too learned about the feature from the bug. I completely overlooked it in the interface.

The preview "feature" should be considered a security issue as well. Previews can leak information on shared systems, and potentially expose data to passersby.

Comment 3

[jam]

I as well, have learned about the temporary hiding button in the top right from onemen.one.

I might as well switch to Chrome, as it also does a good job of reminding me about the pornography I've masturbated to a few hours ago.

Comment 4

[Chris Mahoney]

I saw the 'Show the new tab' button in the top right of the new tab page, but did not intuitively assume that it would enable/disable the page globally. This should certainly be another checkbox on the Tabs tab in Options, I'm considering biting the bullet and starting to contribute with this relatively easy add... (I'd hope!) :-)

Comment 5

[Chris Mahoney]

Attachment: Added checkbox to preference pane and in-content Tabs section to enable/disable display of New Tab Page.

Made changes to tabs.js and tabs.xul for preference pane and about:preferences. Also added necessary 'Display New Tab Page' to tabs.dtd for en-US locale.

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Comment on attachment 631149 [details] [diff] [review]
Added checkbox to preference pane and in-content Tabs section to enable/disable display of New Tab Page.

thanks for the patch, Chris! I'm redirecting your review request to the right people...

Comment 7

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Comment on attachment 631149 [details] [diff] [review]
Added checkbox to preference pane and in-content Tabs section to enable/disable display of New Tab Page.

Review of attachment 631149 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I don't think this will need UX review. Thanks for the patch and also for making sure to add this in both preference implementations :)

I'll check this in for you in just a little bit.

::: browser/components/preferences/in-content/tabs.xul
@@ +84,5 @@
>            preference="browser.taskbar.previews.enable"
>            class="indent"/>
>  #endif
> +<checkbox id="showNewTabPage"
> +label="&showNewTabPage.label;"

Spacing issue here. I'll fix this when checking it in.

::: browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/preferences/tabs.dtd
@@ +22,5 @@
>  
>  <!ENTITY showTabsInTaskbar.label          "Show tab previews in the Windows taskbar">
>  <!ENTITY showTabsInTaskbar.accesskey      "k">
> +
> +<!ENTITY showNewTabPage.label          "Display New Tab Page">

Let's go with "Show the new tab page" since that is the button text used for re-enabling the new tab page when the page is disabled.

Comment 8

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Thanks for your contribution and your first patch :)

I've checked this in to mozilla-inbound, which should get merged to mozilla-central within a day or two.

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/4c6587af0ec6

Comment 9

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

One nit-pick - let's change the string "Display" to "Show" for language consistency (see item above it)

Comment 10

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

I backed this out from mozilla-inbound until I get sign-off from the UX team on the wording here as well as the necessity of a preference in the Tabs pane.

Perhaps we could go with:
"Show site-preview thumbnails when opening a new tab" or
"Show a list of commonly accessed sites when opening a new tab"

Comment 11

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/e2e32b584809 for the backout.

Comment 12

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

Jared and Gavin made the good point on IRC that even with New Tab page is disabled, it's still titled "New Tab," thus the name "New Tab Page" may be confusing.  Let's go with "Show website previews when opening a new tab", since the word website and new tab are both consistent with our language here

Comment 13

[Chris Mahoney]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Since I'm new here, is this something you'd want me to resubmit with the approved label, or would something like this occur during the check-in to inbound?

Glad to be of help, looking forward to getting more acquainted with FF. :-)

Comment 14

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Chris,

Can you make the changes that I did in the patch that I pushed to inbound as well as change the string to the one that Borris requested? After doing that, then follow the steps at http://blog.bonardo.net/2010/06/22/so-youre-about-to-use-checkin-needed to update the commit message as well as adding your name as part of the patch author.

You can then reupload the patch and request review from me.

Comment 15

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Comment on attachment 631149 [details] [diff] [review]
Added checkbox to preference pane and in-content Tabs section to enable/disable display of New Tab Page.

Review of attachment 631149 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: browser/locales/en-US/chrome/browser/preferences/tabs.dtd
@@ +23,5 @@
>  <!ENTITY showTabsInTaskbar.label          "Show tab previews in the Windows taskbar">
>  <!ENTITY showTabsInTaskbar.accesskey      "k">
> +
> +<!ENTITY showNewTabPage.label          "Display New Tab Page">
> +<!ENTITY showNewTabPage.accesskey      "a">
\ No newline at end of file

We should probably change the name of the these entities now that the string is specifically about website previews. Maybe "showThumnbailsOnNewTabPage.label" and "showThumnbailsOnNewTabPage.accesskey"?

Comment 16

[Chris Mahoney]

Sure thing, I'll make those changes shortly and review that link to submit again.

Comment 17

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Ugh, prefs. Has UX considered if there's a way we can just improve the UI (for disabling) on the newtab page instead?

Comment 18

[Chris Mahoney]

Attachment: Revised patch, changed entity name/string and fixed spacing issues.

Here we go, made the changes in the original check-in to inbound.

Comment 19

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Comment on attachment 631233 [details] [diff] [review]
Revised patch, changed entity name/string and fixed spacing issues.

Looks good. I'll land it tomorrow unless someone else gets to it before.

Comment 20

[tabmix.onemen]

few remarks
1. the wording on the new tab page (nine dot on to left) is still "Show\Hide the new tab page" - it should be - Show\Hide website previews.
2. I was hoping for a better UI on the new tab itself to Show\Hide the previews.
3 The new UI in the tab pane is useless when browser.newtab.url is not about:newtab - i think it is better to add also browser.newtab.url as an option to the tab pane and only enable browser.newtabpage.enabled option when browser.newtab.url is about:newtab

Comment 21

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 631233 [details] [diff] [review]
Revised patch, changed entity name/string and fixed spacing issues.

(In reply to onemen.one from comment #20)
> 1. the wording on the new tab page (nine dot on to left) is still "Show\Hide
> the new tab page" - it should be - Show\Hide website previews.

true

> 3 The new UI in the tab pane is useless when browser.newtab.url is not
> about:newtab

Good point. At the minimum, the option should be hidden in that case.

Please always get explicit UI review for pref UI additions.

Comment 23

[hawran]

I do NOT want that tab at all.
In other words, I do NOT want any thumbnails of my most recently/frequently visited sites at all.
I would like to see an option to switch completely this "feature" off.

Comment 24

[rkalyana]

I usually wait on sidelines and my silence is appreciation of the quality of your job. Unfortunately, I see this feature triggered me to register my opinion. I do not like seeing thumbnails from the new tabs, though many users may prefer them. I seek a way to TOTALLY disable thumbnails from showing up in new tabs. I strongly recommend such a provision to disable changes in all case when user experience is tested.

Comment 25

[hawran]

(In reply to rkalyana from comment #24)
> I usually wait on sidelines and my silence is appreciation of the quality of
> your job. Unfortunately, I see this feature triggered me to register my
> opinion. I do not like seeing thumbnails from the new tabs, though many
> users may prefer them. I seek a way to TOTALLY disable thumbnails from
> showing up in new tabs. I strongly recommend such a provision to disable
> changes in all case when user experience is tested.

FYI:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763271

(in case you use the Tab Mix Plus add-on):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/reviews/356686/

Comment 26

[Michelle Knight]

I would like to add my voice to the view that there should be an option to stop a new tab from displaying any thumbnails whatsoever. 

While multi-tasking, I have found that the thumbnails have distracted me to the point where I've had to think to recall why I opened a new tab in the first place.

Comment 27

[Kyle]

Please get rid of this so-called "feature".  I set my home page to be blank because I want blank tabs.  When I get a sheet of fresh paper out of a ream, it's blank.  When I tell my text editor to create a new file, it's blank.  When I create a folder on my desktop, it's blank.  But now in Firefox 13, when I create a new tab, it's filled with junk.  It's a bunch of sites that I don't care about and haven't been to in months.  (If you're going to force this "feature" on me then it should only list websites that I've been to in the past month.)  At least this patch above will create an interface for disabling it (those dots in the corner don't count--you can't call that an "interface" and keep a straight face).

I realize that I'm feeling extremely hostile, and I'm sure that you don't want to read my whining (especially not the people who worked on the new tab page--sorry), but I really don't see any use for this.  None whatsoever.

Comment 28

[Lcstyle]

>>>>Comment #27
I already have my most visited sites on my bookmarks toolbar.

Comment 30

[spamboxxx]

Since the inception of tabs, a new tab was synonymous with a new window. There has always been a setting for the location used for a new window. The location used for new tab should be set in exactly the same place. Ideally, they are the same unless the user chooses specially to have a different location for new tab vs new window.

With tabbed browsing in heavy use, the setting for new window is essentially unused. For most cases, only a totally fresh browser has a new window. After that it's usually always new tabs, except popups or URLs from apps (without the open new window as new tab option on) which means there is already a desired location.

I find it rather difficult to see any reason to have new tab and new window separate. Considering the precedent, putting the more often used newtab into a hidden settings seems like a concerted effort to change browser behavior against the will of the user. It is a minority that go to the effort to figure out how to fix this which the majority are just annoyed by one more thing.

Personally, I always have a location in mind when I open a new tab/window. I wouldn't open one if I didn't already have somewhere I wanted to go different than the current tab/window. Loading anything other than a blank page is a waste of resources and potentially slowing down the browsing experience if it takes too long to load some junk I care not for before I can type into the address bar without significant lag or missed/duplicated keystrokes.

Comment 31

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Mass-move to Firefox::New Tab Page.

Filter on new-tab-page-component.

Comment 32

[Jessilyn Davis]

Hello!

This bug has been closed due to inactivity and/or the potential for this bug to no longer be an issue with the new Discovery Stream-powered New Tab experience.

Please help us triage by reopening if this issue still persists and should be addressed.

Thanks!