909533 - Tapping on urlbar while on about:home should show the search screen

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

I think a lot of the new about:home's default behaviour is up for debate, but it seems like, if I'm staring at the bookmarks page and tap the urlbar, I probably don't see what I want on the bookmarks list and we should show the search ui. Right now we just keep showing bookmarks, and it feels a bit like a bug.

Comment 1

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

There's a difficulty with making this interaction any different: there are two ways to enter the awesomescreen. (1) from about:home and (2) from clicking the URL bar of the current tab. We probably don't want to have two different interaction paradigms for these screens because it can get confusing.

If we enter from about:home (1), I would agree with you that it seems somewhat weird. However, if we enter from the current tab (2), the keyboard is already displayed and if we show the search UI, how do you get to your bookmarks? It's not very intuitive to have to press back (and even then, since you never saw your bookmarks, it breaks Android's back button paradigm). Also, the search screen would be blank as there is nothing to search. Thus, without having two paradigms for the awesomescreen, we can't really show the search UI.

Alternatively, we might want to switch to the history screen from about:home (1) when the URL bar is pressed since we're going to be showing the user a subset of this anyway and entering the URL bar from the current tab (2) also shows the History pane.

Comment 2

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

From ibarlow on bug 908569:
> I would however like to try changing the "tap URL bar"
> behaviour to land the user on Bookmarks instead of History.

I guess that nullifies my alternative suggestion. :)

Comment 3

[Lucas Rocha (:lucasr)]

(In reply to Wesley Johnston (:wesj) from comment #0)
> I think a lot of the new about:home's default behaviour is up for debate,
> but it seems like, if I'm staring at the bookmarks page and tap the urlbar,
> I probably don't see what I want on the bookmarks list and we should show
> the search ui. Right now we just keep showing bookmarks, and it feels a bit
> like a bug.

What do you mean by "search UI"? Switching to History panel and Most Visited tab when you tab on URL bar?

Comment 4

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

I meant showing the BrowserSearch fragment, but the history UI might kinda work.

I wonder if we moved the BrowserSearch fragment to be more of an "overlay" on top of about:home (i.e. like the Firefox Awesomebar or Chrome's search), it might mitigate some of this. We could show both it and the Bookmarks list at the "same time", and its similar to what happen when you touch the search box in things like the PlayStore.

Comment 5

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