906674 - Add settings option to disable dynamic toolbar

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 944925

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[miroslav]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android; Tablet; rv:23.0) Gecko/23.0 Firefox/23.0 (Nightly/Aurora)
Build ID: 20130730111902

Steps to reproduce:

Since v23 Firefox for Android has dynamic toolbar enabled by default. I was looking for a settings option to disable this behavior as it's not that useful on my tablet. (and also potentionally less secure - see bug #888690)


Actual results:

I had to search for the solution, turns out there's option in about:config to disable dynamic toolbar: browser.chrome.dynamictoolbar, however that's not really user friendly.


Expected results:

There should be an option under Privacy&Security settings - somewhere near the title bar settings to enable/disable dynamic toolbar.

Comment 1

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Do we want to disable this on tablets?

Comment 2

[miroslav]

Might not be tablet-specific. I would imagine, that people with 5.5+" mobile screens would like to keep the toolbar visible all the time as well.

Comment 3

[Karen Rudnitski [:kar]]

I am not yet convinced that in general, this is something we should do. I'm asking our feedback channels for any other user comments specifically on this topic to see if we can get more in-field comments.

I am loathe to put extra fields in our settings menu for fear of over-complicating settings for the majority of our users, but will consider if we can get more info from our users.

Comment 4

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

From a UX perspective, I don't want to bubble this up into Settings until it sounds like this need is coming from a lot of our users. Full screen browsing is a deliberate design decision we made as part of an effort to get our UI out of the way so users can be more immersed in the thing they are reading online. 

The people who always want to show the title bar -- *particularly* the ones who understand the concept of 'trusted UI', which most of our users don't -- are generally technically savvy enough to find the pref in about:config. 

We have to be careful here: the more stuff we jam into Settings, the more confusing it becomes to our average users. Resolving as wontfix for now. But we can keep an eye on feedback, and if it's something a lot of our users start asking for, I could see changing our stance here.

Comment 5

[miroslav]

Thanks for your time Ian. Should I create another bug report to resolve the usability issues on tablet then? Most of the other tablet browsers are one, sometimes two clicks away to switch between tabs. With the dynamic toolbar I usually have to swipe up thus adding another step.

Comment 6

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

That would be great, thanks

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

I'm not seeing alot of feedback from tablet users responding negatively to this. There was user confusion in general when we launched the feature, but it's dying back down as users adjust to the new way of doing things. While yes, I agree, tablets probably don't need this enabled (at least 10 inch tablets), and the security risk is interesting, there isn't alot of user backlash against this feature.

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I'm on an s3 user and I find this change bad. This is not a lot of real estate we're talking about and it turned the simple act of switching tabs into a ton of work. 

What was the justification for this?

Comment 9

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

We changed our mind. Fx 28 will have a user visible preference.