907249 - Unable to expose location bar/tab chooser with touchpad gestures

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Metro Graveyard :: Input, defect)

Description

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

You can expose the tab chooser and location bar by swiping from the top or bottom of the screen, but the touchpad gesture of swiping from the top doesn't do anything. This feels incongruous (the same gesture works in Internet Explorer and in other apps where swiping from the top exposes something).

Comment 1

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

not blocking.

Comment 2

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

Are you sure this shouldn't block? If you were using the metro browser on a machine without a touch-screen, there's no obvious way to expose the location bar (I'm posing that ctrl+l isn't obvious, and that the gesture is obvious, as it otherwise works system-wide).

Comment 3

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Chris Lord [:cwiiis] from comment #2)
> Are you sure this shouldn't block? If you were using the metro browser on a
> machine without a touch-screen, there's no obvious way to expose the
> location bar (I'm posing that ctrl+l isn't obvious, and that the gesture is
> obvious, as it otherwise works system-wide).

You can bring it up with edge swipe, win-z, or right click. Not sure why we would need even more ways to display this?

Comment 4

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

(In reply to Chris Lord [:cwiiis] from comment #2)
> Are you sure this shouldn't block? If you were using the metro browser on a
> machine without a touch-screen, there's no obvious way to expose the
> location bar (I'm posing that ctrl+l isn't obvious, and that the gesture is
> obvious, as it otherwise works system-wide).

Our requirements are ensuring that all features are accessible to non-touch users, but we are absolutely not optimizing for non-touch experiences. 

Right-click is the standard mouse equivalen. Win+Z is the standard keyboard equivalent. We've also got Ctrl+L. Between the three of those, we've more than sufficiently covered this case.

For future versions, we can and should consider better trackpad support. That's going to be a struggle though because different OEMs are handling trackpads differently. As the industry settles more on trackpad edge gestures, we can evaluate full trackpad support as a requirement. Unfortunately, this is not as cut and dried as it is on Mac where you don't have five or six PC vendors with 3 or four major trackpad suppliers using many different drivers.

Comment 5

[Chris Lord [:cwiiis]]

I'd naively assumed there was some Windows API for this, so fair enough if there isn't.

I think relying on Win+Z or Ctrl+L is a bad idea (I had no idea about the former and I'd bet most users don't know either), but I guess a right-click is kind of discoverable. It does make it feel weird when this shortcut works practically everywhere else though (and Windows 8 teaches you these gestures on first boot too).

Comment 6

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Chris Lord [:cwiiis] from comment #5)
> I'd naively assumed there was some Windows API for this, so fair enough if
> there isn't.
> 
> I think relying on Win+Z or Ctrl+L is a bad idea (I had no idea about the
> former and I'd bet most users don't know either), but I guess a right-click
> is kind of discoverable. 

> It does make it feel weird when this shortcut works
> practically everywhere else though (and Windows 8 teaches you these gestures
> on first boot too).

Which shortcut / gesture are you referring to?

Comment 7

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Jim, Chris is talking about trackpad gestures.  Some Windows 8 machines are shipping with equivalents to the touchscreen edge gestures built into the trackpad. The implementations of this vary across devices.

Comment 8

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Asa Dotzler [:asa] from comment #7)
> Jim, Chris is talking about trackpad gestures.  Some Windows 8 machines are
> shipping with equivalents to the touchscreen edge gestures built into the
> trackpad. The implementations of this vary across devices.

Ah, of course. Winrt should be handling this for us, I wonder if there's something we aren't listening for.

Comment 9

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

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