Firefox/UX index

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An overview of the areas where we are looking at improving the user experience, and where we already have directions and decisions.

For upcoming releases, check out UX priorities for Firefox

The UX index

A list of the things we're currently looking at improving, independent of releases.

Content Creation & Input

Caps Lock indicator in password field

Similar to the Mac OS X login screen, we should indicate whether caps lock is enabled in password fields.

File upload indicators

We should supply a standard way of showing progress on file uploads via forms, people are using Flash to do this right now, and it sucks.

Easier Undo, Global Undo

For closing tabs, closing windows, clicking links, etc. (boriss)

Resizable input boxes

Already being worked on in bug 167951, related blog post.

Provide a great, default UI for contentEditable

Everyone constructs their own UI on top of contentEditable at the moment, we should supply a good default implementation, like we do for video controls.(faaborg, limi)

Improve contentEditable UI in general

Table editing in particular: The inner workings of contentEditable need some love too. (limi)

"Delete this element" in a page

Being able to selectively remove elements in a page. Related to our "GreaseMonkey" capability (the name escapes me at the moment)

Saving web pages in a way that doesn't suck

Receipts, offline reading (“read later”), backup of bookmarks (faaborg)

Add-ons / Plug-ins / Extensions

Better missing plugin experience

Shorter path from "there is a missing plugin on this page" to working content, the browser taking more work away from the user (boriss)

Better add-on installation and upgrade experience

Better indicators of the state of addons (upgrade available, out of date, etc), no restarting if possible, better "first run" addons experience which makes it clear where addon lives and what has changed. Less loose dialog boxes relating to addons appearing, more notices in content space (boriss)

New interface primitives for extensions

combine the multitude of hook-in points to a single interface (iPhone-like icon approach, you give us the shape, we render it?) (faaborg)

Enable/disable multiple add-ons/themes

(shorlander, boriss)

Improved add-ons manager

What do I have? What needs an update? what are my options? language that makes sense to the user (difference between extension and plugin?), easier paths to better addons/ways to modify (boriss)

Plug-in settings

Render (Always|when clicked|never) (limi)

Better out-of-date addons dialog with Firefox upgrade

Possibly check for updates, don't mention if addon still works, make sure first message & interaction after upgrade isn't a bad experience (boriss)

Tabs

Volume per tab

Some way to indicate "which tab is making noise" indicator (boriss)

Home tab

Replace the home button with a more functional Home Tab. (faaborg, limi, boriss)

Sidebar tabs

A power-user interface that gives you better control of large number of open pages. Partial thumbnails, grouping, filtering. blog post #1, blog post #2 (limi)

App tabs

A special class of tabs that can can remove the chrome, have notifications, are “sticky”/“pinned”, only show icon (similar to home tab) (faaborg, limi, boriss)

Tab tearoff animations

Improve the visual experience of what happens when you move a tab around. (boriss)

Visual navigation of tabs

(Ctrl tab, etc) (boriss)

Awesomebar tab name matching

Open tabs should have an entry in the AwesomeBar. Handle opening new vs. open existing. blog post (limi)

Easier access to recently closed tabs

(put them in the tabs menu?)

Get data on new tab position behavior

(boriss, limi)

Ability to create shortcuts via tearoff

Clearer, implemented (boriss)

Too easy to accidentally create new window on drag

Needs threshold (boriss)

Thumbnail view on Page Info “Media” tab

? (shorlander)

Install/update

Improve installer experience on the Mac

Currently, a lot of people launch FF from the disk image. Blog post, bug 516362 (limi)

Visual design of the update dialog

(faaborg)

Improve “stickiness” of the install

If you have launched FF 5-10 times, we ask you whether you want it as your default.

Improve upgrade experience

Check for updated extensions before we complain. (boriss)

Don't import the standard bookmarks

We currently import bookmarks from IE (Windows Marketplace, Windows Update, etc) that aren't even usable from Firefox, and that the user didn't add. Filter these out when importing.

Improved Native Behaviors

Native OS X

<select>, dropdown menu should look like OSX dropdown menus rather than windows (shorlander)

Mac unified toolbar improvements

Doesn't scale gracefully currently (shorlander)

New Windows default theme

Blog posts(shorlander)

New Mac default theme

(shorlander)

UI/Widgets

Eliminate unneeded windows

We have a lot of dedicated windows that add complexity for window management. Downloads, View source, etc should be rendered as tabs, then you can pull them out as dedicated windows if you want, and we should remember this decision. (limi)

Preferences rethink

Preferences card sort + revisit how things are grouped and handled (Mike: “I don't want a cookie manager, I want one location that manages everything related to a site — cookies, geolocation settings, etc”). Also: Why do we have separate add-ons window? (limi)

about

config improvements: Make it easier to reset to defaults, to view only changed values, and make boolean values checkboxes instead of text labels, add autocomplete for “about:”(After typing the :, we should offer an autocomplete to aid with discoverability). (limi)

Make it easier to tell if a website is trusted

Improve Larry, make it easier to identify brand (boriss)

Improve toolbar customization

Currently clumsy/ugly, needs improvement (shorlander)

Reduce interface clutter

Merge stop/reload, location/search, hide menubar, remove statusbar, unify add-ons entry points (faaborg, boriss, limi, shorlander)

Menu cleanup

(limi, boriss, shorlander)

Firefox/Projects/Eradicate Startup Dialogs

Startup dialogs significantly impact the amount of time it takes users to get on the Web and retrieve a piece of information or complete a task, which is Firefox's primary purpose. (faaborg)

Downloads

Improved download manager

Eliminate separate easily-lost download window & put in place a download manager that's both non-distracting and easily trackable. Possibly a download tab for in-depth handling of downloads (search, sorting, clear logs, stats, etc) (limi, boriss)

Fix default behaviours to optimize for common actions

e.g. downloading a zip, playing an mp3, open a PDF

Better file-handling

If OS knows how to handle a file type, let it! If user chooses to download with custom parameters (“Download as…”), let them get full control of action + location of the file

Fix mime type declarations

“Stuffit file” for zip, etc

Better indication of file type

Show the file type you're about to download in the cursor icon when hovering over binary downloads + PDFs (“the land mines of the internet”, no surprises when navigating) (faaborg + limi on the download side)

Process improvements

Visible “Feedback” button

We should add a very visible feedback button in the alpha/beta releases. (limi)

A Labs tab in Prefs

On nightly builds that gives you features that are experimental, and advertises what other builds are available (e.g. Taskfox). (faaborg)

“Places” improvements

History as a parallel timeline

Better indication in human terms and navigation of sites in history (wei's sprint wei's video Simile Timeline Slife (limi)

Can't edit “Smart” bookmark folder

(shorlander)

Adding people to places

Sync my contacts across sites, let me use my Facebook people elsewhere, autocomplete people (with faces) (boriss)

Library/bookmark/history management

Better navigation of places, separate window fail, make navigating all content as easy as awesomebar. Places in the content area: search + browse actions (“Bills”) (boriss, faaborg)

Get rid of URLs when displaying favorites

Vista/Win7 explorer-like interface for navigating favorites

(faaborg, limi)

Content

In-browser PDF display

Duh. It's 2009 already. (boriss)

Better progress indicator

Better indicator for how much of a page is downloaded, maybe even separate indicator for page vs resources on the page? (limi)

Zoom indicator

When the zoom level deviates from the standard, we should show an indicator (limi)

Built-in translation

Capability of selecting text and translating it (we're probably doing this as part of the Taskfox work) (boriss)

Show the file type in cursor

If the link you're about to click is a binary file download (based on extension or mime type), show the file icon in the cursor when hovering. Especially useful for binary downloads + PDFs (“the land mines of the internet”, no surprises when navigating) (faaborg, boriss, limi on the download side)

Visual improvements to “find text in page”

(boriss)

One input / Taskfox

Combine URL and search bar

We should make common actions available in the location bar. Bugs (limi)

Improve custom search creation

Attach “add custom search” onto search form completion dropdowns (possibly with threshold, detect search fields, 3rd time etc) (limi)

Share link in location bar

Move the "Send Page" to the URL bar with a share icon, rename to "Share" (email, Facebook, etc) (faaborg, limi)

Performance

Web page quick look

User-triggered way to get an idea of where a link will go, possibly show a preview or some information about where a link leads (limi)

Resource Packages

Provide alternative to CSS sprite insanity and make browsers faster by packaging resources in a .zip + manifest file. (limi)

Per Tab Network Prioritization

Choose possible priorities in loading, or save loading resource-heavy content for when there's time (limi)

Start new session

/ restart / redraw / refresh — Provide an easier way for users to make faster what they already do: quit Firefox and reopen it to make it faster (boriss)

Look at memory management defaults

“I closed all my tabs, but the browser is still taking up 2GB” (limi)

Preloading HTML pages on hover

(limi)

Separate process for update, watching hangs, feedback for automatic recovery

(faaborg)

about;perf

Locally log UI performance metrics, button to submit information (faaborg)

Notifications

Make notifications more readable, larger text

“Oops, this is embarrassing” is insanely small (shorlander)

No umprompted dialogs

Don't interrupt the users' workflow by introducing notifications, updates, etc (faaborg)

Security

(do this as part of Weave?)

Can we have timeout for SSL form saves?

(faaborg)

Let people set master password without having to enter it when starting FF

(limi, faaborg)

Better management of logins

What is my username? What accounts do I have here? Do I have a passwords saved? How can I change what is saved for this site? (boriss)

More far-out ideas

RTS scroll model for fullscreen

(faaborg)

Ability to define certain sites as using the IE6 rendering engine for Enterprise deployments

(limi)

Expose platform-native widgets for web apps that work like client apps + Prism

Flick navigation with UI feedback

(for fullscreen?) (faaborg)