998009 - Add a Clear History control to the history panel

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Attachment: mockup

We seem to be getting a fair bit of feedback around users wanting to be able to clear their browsing history more easily. 

Currently a user has to dig their way into Settings to do this. Maybe we can make this easier by adding a control to the homepage. A mockup is attached.

Comment 1

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

How would one reveal the item again when it's hidden? Would the 'Clear Recent History' be revealed again on next pane access or only after scrolling? 

The mock-up interaction looks kind of confusing, just by guessing the flow.

> Currently a user has to dig their way into Settings to do this

What about just re-arranging or make the preference one of those bottom footer things like what Chrome does maybe, http://fs03.androidpit.info/userfiles/4774964/image/AndroidPIT-Chrome-History-2.jpg so it stands out

Comment 2

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Sorry for the confusion. This would be better represented by some kind of animated prototype, I can make one if others are also struggling with this. 

The idea is that the Clear History item is simply another row in the list, so a user can always scroll back up to reach it. The reason we show it for a moment and then auto-scroll it up is that we want a way to show users it's there if they need it, but not have it take up valuable screen area that is otherwise occupied by actual history items.

Comment 3

[:Margaret Leibovic]

As a first pass, I think we should just try adding this item at the top of the list, then worry about the animation afterwards.

However, an animated prototype might be helpful in figuring out the feel of this interaction. I feel like animating the list after the user swipes to it could be jarring, especially if it's something that happens every time.

Comment 4

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Since we see users complaints about not knowing how to clear their history, I think we should get this on the roadmap for a release.

Comment 5

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #3)
> As a first pass, I think we should just try adding this item at the top of
> the list, then worry about the animation afterwards.
> 
That sounds fine

Comment 6

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

I'm just curious ian, can you give some reasoning for this design. It worries me a bit to have this look so much like just another history entry.

Initially when I saw this go up, I assumed we'd do something in the bottom bar, similar to Chrome's implementation. However, it doesn't fit really well into our current set of items there (Recent History and Normal history). I was hoping we'd see that bar morph into a more typical split actionbar. Then clear history could flow into a (second?) overflow menu, or perhaps we could collapse the "History" and "Recent history" into a "Sort" button of some sort... with (longer term) sections for sorting by Date/Session?/Alphabetical etc.

Way longer term, being able to add actions to a split actionbar might be useful for panels that wanted to add actions as well. For instance, Margaret's Wikipedia addon could allow switching between different modes within one panel.

Comment 7

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

A split actionbar is something UX has played around with in the past, so I don't think it's totally off the list of possibilities. That said, you point out a good reason why it's not the easy choice: It would call for a complete refactor of the current UI.

I am not 100% in love with the current mockup either, mainly because of how it blends into the list. I think UX could look at visually setting it apart. Note that we have something similar to this in the "Tabs from last time" list: "Open all tabs from last time"

Comment 8

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #7)

> Note that we have something similar to this in the "Tabs from last time"
> list: "Open all tabs from last time"

We could try something like that. 

Having said that I am getting nervous about how much stuff we're adding to the top and bottom of the screen with a solution like this though. Maybe it's worth considering making a separate "recent tabs" panel to add that row space back at the bottom. We've even been talking about that in bug 1004850

Comment 9

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

What if we start with just a Super Toast?

[History deleted | Clear All]

It's much less obtrusive (I think) and might be enough as a lightweight starting point. We could open the "Clear Private Data" dialog. Thoughts?

It might be a little weird if we open a way to clear all private data (downloads, history, passwords, etc) when you start from History.

Comment 10

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

I don't want to do a super toast. People are asking for this enough where the flow to clear history should be a direct experience. 

"Long tap >> context menu >> clear history >> toast >> toast button >> clear all history " is not discoverable, or direct. I imagine the people who want this feature will be interacting with it relatively often. Let's not force them down a rabbit hole of long taps and menus.

Let's try Mark's nice idea of putting a clear history control in a bottom bar, styled the same way as the one in the 'tabs from last time' section. http://cl.ly/image/0M2p1m3b0o2R

--

This crowds the list a little bit more, but Margaret is working on pulling the "tabs from list time" list out into its own panel in bug 1004850. Doing this will free up space at the bottom of this panel, since we won't need the tab switcher anymore. If we can land both that bug and this at around the same time, this feels like a solution that could work.

Comment 11

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I'll take this, since it overlaps with my work in bug 1004850.

Comment 12

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #10)

> Let's try Mark's nice idea of putting a clear history control in a bottom
> bar, styled the same way as the one in the 'tabs from last time' section.
> http://cl.ly/image/0M2p1m3b0o2R

I can make a prototype to test this out, but one concern I have here is that the history list can be much longer than the "tabs from last time" list, such that it would take more scrolling to get to the bottom. That being said, we limit the query to 100 items, so it's not like it's an infinite list.

Comment 13

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #12)
> (In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #10)
> 
> > Let's try Mark's nice idea of putting a clear history control in a bottom
> > bar, styled the same way as the one in the 'tabs from last time' section.
> > http://cl.ly/image/0M2p1m3b0o2R
> 
> I can make a prototype to test this out, but one concern I have here is that
> the history list can be much longer than the "tabs from last time" list,
> such that it would take more scrolling to get to the bottom. That being
> said, we limit the query to 100 items, so it's not like it's an infinite
> list.

No no -- this would be like a fixed position thing at the bottom of the UI.

Comment 14

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #13)
> (In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #12)
> > (In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #10)
> > 
> > > Let's try Mark's nice idea of putting a clear history control in a bottom
> > > bar, styled the same way as the one in the 'tabs from last time' section.
> > > http://cl.ly/image/0M2p1m3b0o2R
> > 
> > I can make a prototype to test this out, but one concern I have here is that
> > the history list can be much longer than the "tabs from last time" list,
> > such that it would take more scrolling to get to the bottom. That being
> > said, we limit the query to 100 items, so it's not like it's an infinite
> > list.
> 
> No no -- this would be like a fixed position thing at the bottom of the UI.

Oh, my mistake, I was confused with the new UI I was playing around with for bug 1004850. Since this already exists for the "Tabs from last time" panel, this should hopefully be straightforward to implement.

Comment 15

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Attachment: Add "Clear browsing history" button to history panel

Basically just copied the last tabs panel.

Comment 16

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Attachment: (Part 2) Give background color a more generic variable name

A little clean-up.

Comment 17

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Comment on attachment 8429429 [details] [diff] [review]
Add "Clear browsing history" button to history panel

Review of attachment 8429429 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: mobile/android/base/home/MostRecentPanel.java
@@ +135,5 @@
> +        mClearHistoryButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
> +            @Override
> +            public void onClick(View v) {
> +                final ContentResolver cr = getActivity().getContentResolver();
> +                BrowserDB.clearHistory(cr);

On IRC, the issue was raised that this should show some sort of confirm dialog. Going to work on that now.

Comment 18

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Attachment: (Part 1 v2) Add "Clear browsing history" button to history panel

This adds a confirmation dialog, and uses a string that ibarlow suggested on IRC.

Comment 19

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Attachment: dialog screenshot

This is what the dialog looks like with my most recent patch.

Comment 20

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Comment on attachment 8429525 [details]
dialog screenshot

We discussed simplifying the string to just "Are you sure you want to clear your history?" for now. f+ with that change.

Comment 21

[Brian Nicholson (:bnicholson)]

Comment on attachment 8429524 [details] [diff] [review]
(Part 1 v2) Add "Clear browsing history" button to history panel

Review of attachment 8429524 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Nice, looks good.

Comment 22

[:Margaret Leibovic]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/d00889307594
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/626f73b5a4f8

Adding keywords so that the world will know about this glorious new feature!

Comment 23

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/d00889307594
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/626f73b5a4f8

Comment 24

[Teodora Vermesan (:TeoVermesan)]

"Clear browsing history" is at the bottom of the page and after tapping it, the notification "Are you sure you want to clear your history?" appears, so verified fixed on:
Build: Firefox for Android 32.0a1 (2015-05-29)
Device: Alcatel One Touch (Android 4.1.2)

Comment 25

[u421692]

Verified as fixed on Firefox for Android 32.0a2 (2014-06-16) on LG Optimus 4X(Android 4.1.2)