769838 - FF Android needs to uninstall the app when a user removes the app shortcut from the homescreen

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 785504

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

Description

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Fennec native needs to remove app profiles when it detects that the app shortcut has been removed from the android homescreen.

Comment 1

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

Sounds like we want to completely uninstall the app if the shortcut is removed, not just remove the profile.

Comment 2

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

... or am I wrong?

Comment 3

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #2)
> ... or am I wrong?

You are right. Let me update the title to reflect that...

Comment 4

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4668396/how-to-detect-shortcut-in-home-screen

Comment 5

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Doesn't this go against user-expectation of how the Android home-screens operate?

Comment 6

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Aaron Train [:aaronmt] from comment #5)
> Doesn't this go against user-expectation of how the Android home-screens
> operate?

Hmm, that's a good point. Most times I see shortcuts as a pathway to the app, not the actual installation of the web application. Perhaps this isn't the right way to go about this. What does UX think we should do with uninstalling a web app on Android?

Comment 7

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

One idea I had was that we create little dummy apps directly on the device that will do nothing but launch the right web app intent; they'll show up as normal apps in the list and can be uninstalled.  Fennec can listen for the uninstall notification and remove the corresponding web app.

This requires users to have non-market sources enabled, though; if that's not enabled, I don't think there's anything that we can do.  We can hide/show multiple icons from Fennec in the launcher, but not in Android's app mgmt otherwise -- and those multiple icons have their names/icons fixed at build time, so it's not useful for web apps.

Comment 8

[Vladimir Vukicevic [:vlad] [:vladv] (needinfo me, slow to respond)]

We should be able to listen to the uninstall_shortcut intent broadcast ourselves and handle this, but our mapping of shortcut <-> installed app is always going to be flaky on android since we're not really installing an app in the android sense.  Might be confusing for the user (e.g. they install an app they use occasionally and don't want a shortcut on the home screen... how do they get to it?).

Comment 9

[Lawrence Mandel [:lmandel] (use needinfo)]

(In reply to Aaron Train [:aaronmt] from comment #5)
> Doesn't this go against user-expectation of how the Android home-screens
> operate?

As Aaron said in comment 5, uninstalling when a shortcut is removed is not consistent with the expected behaviour on Android. We need a clear uninstall story and I don't think that this is it.

Comment 10

[Tom Lowenthal]

[Speaking as a user who just tried to install some apps in today's test day.]

As an Android user, I'd find it really odd if the app were removed when I delete the shortcut. I expect apps to remain in the apps drawer/list even after I remove the shortcut from the homescreen. I only want my most frequently-used apps on my homescreen. I was frustrated when I deleted an app's homescreen shortcut and then couldn't find it in my apps drawer. The whole thing defied my expectations.

I think that comment 7 expresses the desired experience: when I install an app, I should see it in my apps drawer, and be able to un-install or modify it through the normal Android functions (as well as through the Firefox apps management interface, as needed). It should feel like I'm installing an app. Right now, it doesn't.

Comment 11

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

As an Android user, I also find it odd.  But Ragavan has noted that most Android users are not like me and you, and they don't find it odd, because they don't distinguish between "on homescreen" and "installed".  The two states are one and the same for them.

Comment 12

[Lisa Brewster [:adora]]

A related problem I'm having when removing shortcuts is that after I've removed one, the Marketplace still thinks the app is installed.  I have no idea how to really delete the app so I can redownload and get the icon to appear on my homescreen again.

Comment 13

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

(In reply to Lisa Brewster [:adora] from comment #12)
> A related problem I'm having when removing shortcuts is that after I've
> removed one, the Marketplace still thinks the app is installed.  I have no
> idea how to really delete the app so I can redownload and get the icon to
> appear on my homescreen again.

That's actually this bug you are describing.

The UX for uninstall isn't good at all right now, so I fully expect loud noises on our apps-feedback channel to occur during the marketplace aurora process. The challenge with the uninstall experience is we really need align the following elements to figure this out:

- The technical constraints of what you can and can't do on Android
- An understandable UX for uninstalling a web app

The current proposal states that a user only really uninstalls a web app from firefox for android through about:apps by hard pressing the app and selecting uninstall. The idea in this bug was to uninstall the web app if the shortcut was removed, but there's a problem with this idea - Android's definition of shortcuts when removed doesn't equate to uninstalling an app. So there's a misalignment with the Android definition of apps vs. our definition of apps if we removed apps when removing the shortcut.

Alas, this is a tough issue to solve. The technical constraints of Android really puts a hit on UX possibilities here.

Comment 14

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

It would be nice if this had UX input. Here's my opinion, the dashboard should be consistent with the add-ons manager where this isn't an issue.

CC'ing UX.

Comment 15

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to Jason Smith [:jsmith] from comment #13)
> The idea in this bug was to uninstall the web app if
> the shortcut was removed, but there's a problem with this idea - Android's
> definition of shortcuts when removed doesn't equate to uninstalling an app.
> So there's a misalignment with the Android definition of apps vs. our
> definition of apps if we removed apps when removing the shortcut.

Android also defines apps as things that show up in the list of installed apps, but ours don't show up there.  It's not so much Android definitions that matter here as user expectations.

Back when we originally discussed this issue, Ragavan suggested to me that most Android users equate apps with the shortcuts on their home screen (even though savvy users like us know differently), so uninstalling an app when a user removes its shortcut from the home screen is more in line with user expectations, even if it's less consistent with native apps.

Comment 16

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

I'm going to dup on the generic bug that I modified to track the general case of figuring out a better uninstall UX flow.