775945 - How can we be more efficient with image use in our UI?

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

This has been a recurring theme for a while now, and a number of conversations have bubbled up in the last few days. Let's use this bug as a platform to discuss some possible solutions. 

I've cc'd Sriram, Mark, Matt, Lucas, and Madhava -- feel free to add more participants too

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THE PROBLEM
We have an unholy amount of images we use in our Android UI. This is partly due to
* A lot of UI customization we do to build on and enhance standard Android conventions
* Supporting multiple screen resolutions (mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi -- and soon ldpi for armv6)
* Supporting portrait and landscape action bar sizes, and using unique assets for each
* Using textures and shading that make it harder to draw colours and backgrounds with code

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
* We've talked about drawing our UI with code (SVG, etc)
* We've talked about adding our noise/texture in a different way, like using a transparent overlay

Other ideas?

Comment 1

[Sriram Ramasubramanian [:sriram]]

The tabs button takes way too many forms.
There is a cropped version for the one in phones without menu.
There is a tailed version for the ones in phones with menu.
There are these versions for 7" tablet.
(2 images * 2 states * 3 resolutions * 3 orientations) = 36 images

There is a cropped version for the tablets which switches sides.
(2 states * 3 resolutions) = 6 images

So a total of 42 images just for the tabs.

There is menu button in ICS phones, an "add tab button" background, taking similar amounts of images.

Comment 2

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Sriram, what about removing orienation-specific assets, and just making one set for Portrait mode and scaling them down for landscape? 

Would that be terrible?

Comment 3

[Sriram Ramasubramanian [:sriram]]

Yes, that wouldn't look good.
But.. the landscape part is only for ICS+ phones. We have a choice to use 48dp on landscape mode too, as we don't use action-bar anymore. Just that we won't be like stock android apps using action-bar.

Comment 4

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.