933210 - Should the customization UI be uncloseable? Should it be a tab at all?

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 939943

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Lucas Rocha (:lucasr)]

Question mark is intentional. Just wondering. I'm filing this bug to start some discussion. Again, my apologies if this was thoroughly discussed before!

On one hand, you want tabs to behave consistently, no matter what kind of content they display e.g. tabs with about: pages should behave just like any other tab. On the other hand, the customization UI is not actually a 'tab'. It's more like 'mode'. From this perspective, it doesn't make much sense to be able to 'unclose' it (Ctrl+Shift+T).

That brings a wider question: should the customization UI be "in a tab" at all? Things like about:addons and about:home are a good fit for the tab model because they simply present a special type of content. But the customization UI completely changes the behaviour of the UI. Having it in a tab almost feels like exposing an implementation detail to the user.

There are advantages of having it in a tab, of course: for one, it's a bit easier to figure out how to leave the customization UI i.e. just close the 'tab'.

In any case, I'm curious about the rationale behind the current design :-)

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Setting needinfo on self to make sure this gets answered.

Comment 2

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to Lucas Rocha (:lucasr) from comment #0)
> 
> That brings a wider question: should the customization UI be "in a tab" at
> all?

Not sure this is anything in the way of a justification, but there's definitely a concerted effort on the front-end team to eliminate dialogs. The Downloads window, for example, was just retired. Preferences and Library dialogs are two of the last holdouts, and work has already begun to retire the dialog version of the former and put it into a tab.

There are a number of reasons this is desirable:

1) Dialogs can be confusing to users because they can get lost behind other windows. We've observed this again and again, where a window will get moved into the background, and the user will think that the window has "disappeared" or been closed. For some reason, window navigation really doesn't come naturally to some people. Strangely, tab navigation (at least in Firefox) seems to be much more natural. (Which is weird, because the Windows task bar might be considered a tab-strip of applications).
2) More windows means more window objects, means having to jump through more hoops in order for these windows to communicate with one another.

The UX team probably have more justifications that I haven't brought up here, but basically, the drive is: Windows bad, tabs good.

> Things like about:addons and about:home are a good fit for the tab
> model because they simply present a special type of content. But the
> customization UI completely changes the behaviour of the UI. Having it in a
> tab almost feels like exposing an implementation detail to the user.

I agree with you. about:customizing is a strange case because it's a full-on mode-switch for the browser. The UX team thinks that the transition and behaviour we have right now is clear enough, but they might be wrong. I think we'll know more once more people use it.

> In any case, I'm curious about the rationale behind the current design :-)

Mostly the above. We don't make new windows / dialogs anymore.  Not sure if madhava or shorlander want to weigh in, but I've Cc'd them on the bug.

Comment 3

[Lucas Rocha (:lucasr)]

Thanks for the reply, Mike :-) 

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) from comment #2)
> (In reply to Lucas Rocha (:lucasr) from comment #0)
> > 
> > That brings a wider question: should the customization UI be "in a tab" at
> > all?
> 
> Not sure this is anything in the way of a justification, but there's
> definitely a concerted effort on the front-end team to eliminate dialogs.
> The Downloads window, for example, was just retired. Preferences and Library
> dialogs are two of the last holdouts, and work has already begun to retire
> the dialog version of the former and put it into a tab.
> 
> There are a number of reasons this is desirable:
> 
> 1) Dialogs can be confusing to users because they can get lost behind other
> windows. We've observed this again and again, where a window will get moved
> into the background, and the user will think that the window has
> "disappeared" or been closed. For some reason, window navigation really
> doesn't come naturally to some people. Strangely, tab navigation (at least
> in Firefox) seems to be much more natural. (Which is weird, because the
> Windows task bar might be considered a tab-strip of applications).
> 2) More windows means more window objects, means having to jump through more
> hoops in order for these windows to communicate with one another.
> 
> The UX team probably have more justifications that I haven't brought up
> here, but basically, the drive is: Windows bad, tabs good.

Just to be clear: I wasn't trying to make a point in favour of a dialog/window-based approach. I agree they don't provide a good UX.

What I was wondering about is whether showing the customization UI as a tab makes sense or not. My impression is that the interaction model for the customization UI should follow more of a 'mode' style instead of a 'tab'. For instance, I wonder if it looks obvious enough that closing the tab is the way to exit the customization UI — given how different the tab strip looks while customizing.

So, maybe the more concrete question I'd ask is: what if, instead of a tab, we simply switched to the 'Customize Firefox' mode with super obvious way to exit? Something like a big 'Done' button at the top-right corner of the screen?

I kinda feel the current tab-based approach feels a bit too complex. But maybe that's just me? :-)

Comment 4

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Lucas Rocha (:lucasr) from comment #3)
> So, maybe the more concrete question I'd ask is: what if, instead of a tab,
> we simply switched to the 'Customize Firefox' mode with super obvious way to
> exit? Something like a big 'Done' button at the top-right corner of the
> screen?

Given this redefinition of the question in the summary, this seems like a dupe of bug 939943. Would fixing that bug address your concerns?

/gijs, who is uneasy with bugs whose summaries are questions :-)

Comment 5

[Lucas Rocha (:lucasr)]

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #4)
> (In reply to Lucas Rocha (:lucasr) from comment #3)
> > So, maybe the more concrete question I'd ask is: what if, instead of a tab,
> > we simply switched to the 'Customize Firefox' mode with super obvious way to
> > exit? Something like a big 'Done' button at the top-right corner of the
> > screen?
> 
> Given this redefinition of the question in the summary, this seems like a
> dupe of bug 939943. Would fixing that bug address your concerns?

Yes, bug 939943 would cover a big part of this bug. Feel free to close this bug if you and the team are confident enough that representing the customization UI as a tab is the way to go to (the mockup in bug 939943 still has it as a tab).

> /gijs, who is uneasy with bugs whose summaries are questions :-)

This was just me trying not to be too assertive on the topic i.e. "Customization UI should not be a tab" would sound too self-righteous :-)