827565 - MWC2013: Custom About:Home Content

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Theme and Visual Design, defect)

Description

[Erin Lancaster [:elan]]

In order to fortify conversations with individual carriers during MWC, we would like to have brand-centric, customized content for each of the targeted carriers (including one generic one that is spanish friendly). This bug covers the about:home content and layout.

Custom about:home landing page designs. The design elements being requested are:
1) Unique color scheme & logo based on brand and *language*
2) A fluid Layout that will be friendly and allow space for each Operators' "Portal" to link to carrier-specific content, a "Portal" consists of
   • Snippets (a start-up page promotion space akin to the marketplace promo)
   • Unique, Pre-installed bookmarks
2a) Bookmarks will lead to carrier-specific content such as:
   • Customer Care Website
   • App Market
   • Ringtones
   • "Marketing Stuff" <== Sam Mott can shed light on this one

3) The list of languages include: english, spanish, polish, german, and japanese

Outline of Carriers:
1) Generic (english, spanish)

2) Deutsche Telekom (english, polish, german)
   * http://www.telekom.com/home

3) ATT&T (english)
   * http://www.att.com/

4) NTT Docomo (english, japanese)
   * http://www.nttdocomo.com/

Comment 1

[Karen Rudnitski [:kar]]

Preamble as per other related bug: I'm looking to clarify this request, as well as outline some structure / guidelines (that we can work on writing up / formalising BEFORE we get into customisation talks with partners) around how far we want and should go with this in the first instance (ie demo).

For context, if a carrier or partner sees that we can and are willing to give the world over to them, they'll demand it. Therefore we need to show what we ARE willing to give up from a branding standpoint, and stay strong on what still constitutes a 'firefoxy' experience that is not compromised for our users.

Saying that in this context. 

about:home 
- I think what's needed are the top two sites that would be of utmost importance to a potential partner that we would want 'pinned' in the about:home screen. Of course, they would remain editable, but we could 'pin' them to ensure they get the visibility required. In my view, this would be to the partner's portal (where they host their own content, typically via a wap page) and maybe their customer care page. The other thumbnail spaces would remain as we had intended by design - to be filled up by top / frequented sites by the user. 
- [I personally don't feel comfortable giving up our entire real estate to partners here and I want to ensure it's clear what we are willing to give up.]
- I would see us wanting to rotate our snippets messaging to INCLUDE a partner message / link as needed. Again, I'm not comfortable giving up that whole real estate, but I am willing (and think it prudent to dangle this in front of partners for a volume price!) that we include them in our rotating cycle of snippet messages. For the sake of the demo, we should show them what's possible, but it must be clear that it doesn't wholly replace our own messages, nor do they 'own' that whole real estate. It's shared. We must be cognisant that we can't be seeing as an advertising billboard for our partners.
- the question of layout: I'm not sure this should or needs to be changed, and I'm looking for clarification on this request. I think we can and should be working with our implementation to ensure it's partner-friendly, but not sure reworking out layout is the intention?
- I'd be looking to Ian for some of his thoughts on how we could co-brand with icons on here (and also run this past our brand team BEFORE we build anything / show anyone) to ensure we're happy with how it looks / any real estate we're giving up. We do not want to (nor should we) replace our logo with a partner's logo. This will still be a Firefox browser and that's how (and why) it's being loved so much by our users. We don't want to lose our brand, but rather enhance it with larger volumes. Therefore we'll need to be smart in our design and area that we'd allow for co-branding to take place.

default bookmarks
- I understand that this would be part of the 'distribution file' that we would want created (and would need to be implemented). I think it's reasonable to have a few default bookmarks in addition to our own, but we'll need to limit them to ensure they don't scroll on too long and that they are seen as partner bookmarks (and not our own)

Especially with this request, I think we're screaming for some customisation guidelines. I'll look to try to put a start of these guidelines together and start socalising it about, although I do think there are aspects of this bug that should be looked into so we can get implementation right and start lining our ducks up in a row.

Who is making the call about what default bookmarks to use / logo to use / portal info? Should be simple enough: grab an existing partner's phone variant, but just someone to get their hands on said variants and pass along the info!

(Sorry for the length, but I had a lot to say on these.... probably not surprising in this instance though!)

Comment 2

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Thanks for this clarification, Karen. In terms of UI edits, this is more or less how I've been looking at the problem, too. 

I should have some mockups that we can discuss in the next couple of days.

Comment 3

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

From a technical point of view, this bug consists of:
* Add custom default bookmarks (include favicon). Adding a default thumbnail is out of scope for this bug, but a nice to have for any default bookmark, even our own.
* Custom snippet/promo. We currently have Sync and Marketplace promos hard coded. We'd like to add support of downloadable snippets.

I do not think we should support a custom logo. I don't want to allow for any layout changes. Bookmarks, thumbnails and promos all appear in the same location. I do not want need to support any custom build changes. Moving things around on the page would likely require true custom builds and source code changes.

The "distribution" method used by desktop firefox uses a set of files, repackaged into the release. The files are loaded during the first run and add preferences, bookmarks, search engines and addons.

I'd like to use the same style for android. I'll file bugs for downloadable snippets, custom bookmarks, and preferences. We can add more as needed.

Comment 4

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

Technically, this bug does not depend on bug 834681, because we can implement bookmarks and lightweight theme customizations without it. But I wanted the bug linked as an FYI.

Comment 5

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

Bug 786334 is the bug for downloadable/dynamic content in the about:home promo area.

Comment 6

[Erin Lancaster [:elan]]

This work has been done. Thank you, thank you for the special build(s).