831608 - Have Start and All Apps screen tiles for both Firefoxes

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Metro Graveyard :: Firefox Start, defect)

Description

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Attachment: UC-1-7 Have Start and All Apps screen tiles for both Firefoxes

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Moving out to a later version. We'll get the desktop Frefox tile on Windows Start working in a later release.

Comment 2

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

I'm very concerned about launching without some sort of fix for this.  It seems like a serious UX regression for Windows users who prefer the desktop UI.

Consider the point of view of a Windows 8 desktop user who opens Firefox by clicking its tile.  One day, that user tries to open Firefox, but instead of the familiar desktop interface they are plunged into the unfamiliar Metro interface.  All of their bookmarks, history, and add-ons are gone.  There is no obvious way to get them back.  Even if they manage to figure out what happened, it's not immediately obvious how to put desktop Firefox back on the start screen.

I might be wrong about how bad this is, since both IE and Chrome have some similar issues.  But Chrome at least makes it relative easy to choose whether its tile launches the desktop browser or the Metro browser.  And IE's Metro interface is introduced to users when they are first learning Windows 8, rather than in a silent auto-update at some later date.

Anyway, I hope we can do some extensive user testing before launch to avoid turning off a huge number of Windows users with our Metro launch.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Matt, you might be right.

A user who prefers desktop Firefox has launchers for desktop Firefox on the desktop.

Do we think that enough people are mostly resident in Metro but regularly want desktop Firefox rather than Metro Firefox, or that enough desktop resident people are using Windows Start as their launcher / Start menu replacement?

Comment 4

[Brian R. Bondy [:bbondy]]

I prefer to add a Desktop option for how activation works like in IE10 and WONTFIX this one. 
The problem is that if we have 2 icons for the same app, then you set some other app as default (IE10 or chrome), then we have 2 launchers that go to the same place.

Comment 5

[Matt Brubeck (:mbrubeck)]

Bug 849690 might be an alternative to this story.

Comment 6

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Mass close of bugs in obsolete product https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1350354