FirefoxSummit/2006/ProposedSessions/ExplorableUI

Session Title

Explorable User Interface: Exposing Firefox's Hidden Features

Session Leaders

Jay Goldman (Radiant Core), Alex Faaborg - and hopefully others! Beltzner?

Summary

Firefox includes a lot of very powerful/great shortcut/cool user interface features which are not immediately obvious. A great many of these are only discovered through other users who already know about them, while others are found entirely by accident. For example, did you know that Google's Suggestion list will include the result of calculations as the first item? Try typing "3 feet in cm" into the Google search bar. Or did you know that you can double-click on empty tabstrip space to make a new tab? Or drag and drop tabs to re-order them? Or scroll in the tabstrip with your mouse's scroll wheel?

Agenda

• What are the hidden features?
• Which hidden features should be more exposed?
• Some features are intended more for "power users" and exposing them might make the UI difficult to use for novices. Where do we draw the line?
• How might we modify Firefox's UI in Fx3 to make them more obvious?
  • Is there anything we can do before Fx3 to test our ideas?

Interested Attendees

• Jay Goldman (Radiant Core)
• Basil Hashem
• Frederic Wenzel
• Dria
• Sheppy
• Ken Saunders
• Asa Dotzler
• Alex Faaborg
• David Rolnitzky
• Gavin
• Majken Connor
• Jesse Ruderman
• Steve England