Extension Manager:UI Update
Background
This wiki will serve as a planning page for a redesign of the Addons Manager for Firefox 3.7.
The addons manager has been largely unchanged in Firefox, while the scope and functionality of addons has increased dramatically. Especially in light of new addons functionality and projects, such as Personas and Jetpack, the addons manager could be improved and redesigned in order to better assist users personalising their browsing experience.
Current Addons Manager
Positives
- Pre-populated Featured Addons
- The current design's constant inclusion of five featured addons provides a benefit especially to new users, by giving them both an idea of what addons can do and possibly suggesting one he is interested in downloading. This also provides a huge benefit to the developers whose addons are featured
- AMO-wide Search
- The addons manager allows users to search through all addons on AMO, get search results back within the addons manager, and install them - all without visiting AMO. This is excellent functionality for people who know exactly what addon they want to install. Unfortunately, because this feature is not very discoverable, many experienced users are not aware it exists.
Negatives
- Category confusion
- Addons are currently categorized by terms such as "extensions" and "addons," which are similar to each other and not necessarily meaningful to users. While some separation of addons by category is probably necessary, expanding the correct category is currently the only way to find a desired addon. This leads to the common current user behavior of clicking categories until he finds the addon he is looking for, rather than finding it obvious where the desired addon will be.
- Finding an addon is difficult
- related to the above, currently category selection and then scanning is the only way to locate a particular addon. In many cases, the user knows exactly the name of the addon he wants to find, but not what category it is in. Compounding this problem, users sometimes go to the Preferences page first, which handle similar issues as many addons.
- Little room for addon information
- Addons are currently displayed in one line each, with a one sentence description. Potentially useful information such as the author, size, or options for an addon are not displayed.
- Redundancy, especially in installing updates
- Currently the category pages say if updates are available, and a separate Updates tab does as well. A "Find Updates" button on category pages links to the Updates page.
- Inconsistency
- The current addons manager looks very much unlike other parts of Firefox's UI. The user encounters interactions in the addons manager that they do not see anywhere else in Firefox, leading to the user taking longer to complete a task.
Past work
Madhava worked on redesigning the addons manager in 2007, and posted his work here. He also designed much of the current addons manager for Firefox 3, which is largely unchanged today.
Madhava's goals for the project were similar to ours, with major goals including better integration with amo, greater task orientation, and increasing consistency in the design. His minor goals focused on information hierarchy and prominence of items, as well as giving the user more useful information about their addons and addons inventory.
Madhava's recommended design was a two-panel window which showed addon inventory on the left, and detailed information about a selected item on the right. He simplified the category names of addons into more intuitive words: features, players, languages, search engines, and themes.
(moar)
Priority Areas to Improve
There are five main areas of the addons manager that this redesign will involve:
- 1. Maintaining and Configuring
- Allow users to quickly locate the addon they want to inspect
- Provide simple, usable controls for basic addon operations such as disabling and uninstalling
- Allow new forms of addons, such as jetpacks and personas, to be maintained and configured easily alongside traditional addons
- (at best) Provide users with a consistent place to go for a particular addon's preferences, or (at worst) provide users with a consistent place to go to launch a particular addon's preferences
- User questions addressed:
- "What addons do I have installed?"
- "Do I have Foxmarks installed?"
- "How do I disable Flash?"
- 2. Updating
- Indicate to the user that updates are available without blocking the startup of Firefox
- Allow the user to choose silent updates if they prefer, and for those updates to happen without interfering with browsing
- User questions addressed:
- "What addons have an update available?"
- "Is there an update available for Flash?"
- "How do I keep my addons up-to-date automatically without getting notices?"
- 3. Installing
- Streamlining the install process to as few steps as possible
- Providing the user with a clear indication of the process and what actions are needed, especially in the face of possibly differing install experiences per addon (restart required vs not)
- User questions addressed:
- "How do I install this addon?"
- "What is the next step to install this addon?"
- "Did my addons install successfully?"
- 4. Discovering
- Providing a compelling first run experience to new addons users, including showing what addons can do in a way that makes sense to non-technical users
- Allowing users to search for addons from within the Addons manager, only requiring a visit to AMO when greater community involvement or information is sought
- User questions addressed:
- "What are addons?"
- "Why would I want to install an addon?"
- "What addons can help me with my 5000 tabs?"
- 5. Troubleshooting
- (possibly) Provide a way to rank addons by size, RAM, etc to see if disabling one would give a significant performance boost
- (possibly) Use some heuristics to determine if a particular addon is causing problems
- Give clear communication and instructions if there is a security problem with an addon
- User questions addressed:
- "Is an addon causing Firefox to crash?"
- "Are there any security vulnerabilities in my installed addons?"
While a cohesive redesign will likely touch all of these areas, the first iteration of the addons manager redesign will consider tiers of importance in where to direct efforts and design.
|
Tier One: |
Tier Two: |
Tier Three: |
| 1. Maintaining and Configuring | 2. Updating | 4. Discovering |
| 3. Installing | 5. Troubleshooting |
The goal of this project is to substantially improve the basic functionality of the Addons Manager (tier one), turn current "interruption" areas into integrated parts of the browser (tier two), and provided added functionality that will benefit addons users (tier three).
A successful but less ambitious redesign in the first stage would substantially improve basic functionality and fix current problems, but would leave added feature enhancements to future versions.
The minimum level of success would be to substantially improve the basic functionality of the Addons Manager, while developing a plan of action for fixing current problems and adding new features.
Redesign Themes
Distraction and Interruption
A large theme in the addons redesign will be the attention of the user - especially when to insist on it and to what degree.
A common criticism of the current addons manager design is that it demands the attention of the user too often, and especially when the user is engaged in another task. For instance, when the user launches Firefox, he often is presented with an addons manager window announcing that updates are available and suggesting that the user download them at that moment. Since the user is launching Firefox, it's reasonable to assume he has a task in mind to perform and that his intention is unlikely to be installing addon updates. The appearance of the addons manager window over the main Firefox content area presents a break in the users' workflow by forcing him to take an action before he can begin the task he intended.
The balance of when the addons manager should be prominent and when it should recede from focus will be a challenging one to strike. The management of addons itself can be thought of as a "background" task, removed from everyday browsing, much as the Preference menu should be. Aside from some maintenance and configuration of a user's addons, the user should expect addons to perform their intended function without requiring much care or maintenance on their part.
As with bookmarks, preferences, and many other parts of Firefox, some users will want to optimize and micromanage their addons manager to tailor-make the best browsing experience for them. Others will want to install a few addons and never have to deal with the addons manager ever again. A successful addons manager redesign will allow an addons user to be on either side and have a good user experience. The current addons manager could be said to cater to the micromanaging addons user: it often alerts users of new updates and provides many configuration options for individual addons. Ideally, if a user wants updates for a particular trusted addon to be installed silently and automatically, he should have this option.
Some of the addons manager functions should not disrupt the user unless summoned, other should give notifications subtly, while others need to divert the attention of the user to them.
Functions that should not disrupt the user:
- The appearance of the addons manager itself. While there may be links to the addons manager within the browser (for instance on the Home Tab), the user should not see the addons manager unless they've summoned it.
Functions that should give notifications subtly:
- When updates are available. The availability of updates should not get in the way of user's browsing experience or present obstructions that force the user to act. The user should be given the ability to make updates for a particular addon or all addons install automatically.
Functions that should actively seek the user's attention:
- Steps in the addons installation process. Each step should actively focus the user's attention on the next step. Anyone should be able to install an addon after four shots of whisky.
- Confirmation that a user has chosen to uninstall an addon, as well as any warning about preferences that will be lost as a result.
- Notification that an addon has been automatically disabled or uninstalled because of a security vulnerability, as well as a link to more information about the specific case.
One way current applications handle the tasks which should give notifications subtly is by providing a small cue which, if the user choose to act on it, launches into a dedicated task related to the notice. This way, once a user sees the cue, they can choose to ignore it or switch tasks to find out more about the cue. In the addons manager redesign, this would be the transition from a subtle notification to the addons manager itself. The balance to strike is to not make the cue too distracting for users who want to ignore it, but to also make it noticeable enough for users who wish to act on it.
Focus on Tasks rather than Addons
Addons are one of the biggest benefits of using Firefox over other browsers. While other browsers are beginning to offer addons and develop communities around them, none of them yet come close to approaching the diversity and scale of Mozilla's addons community. However, only about 30% of Firefox users currently have any addons installed.
While getting every Firefox user to install addons is not the goal, making them more accessible to more users would benefit both users and developers. A common criticism of the current addons manager is that it is easy to find an addon by name, but less so by functionality. This redesign will seek ways for users to find addons based on how they browse or functionality they want rather than only by addon type.
Team
- Sprint lead
- Boriss
- Development
- Mossop
- AMO liaison
- Nick and Fligtar
- Other contacts
- Jetpack:
- Atul, Aza
- Personas:
- Suneel Gupta, Amy Zehren(?)
Planning
Target Release
Firefox 3.7
Status
This project is currently in the planning and early design phase. The participants in the Sprint are gathering requirements and meeting with Addons, Jetpack, and Personas developers and planners to determine what changes need to be made to the addons manager to reflect the longterm goals of Firefox.
Mossop is currently rewriting the whole motherfucking API.
Reference
Links: Madhava's past wiki redesign
Bugs:
- 256509 install without restart
Extra Images
Wireframes
Basic two-panel accordian design - gives expanded information and additional addon actions in right panel, with inventory on left.
Progressive disclosure - a more minimal design with expands an addon's information from an inventory list
Windows manager style - like navigation in the operating system, similar to current design ideas for better bookmark and history management
Two-panel design, in content or not
Notification on two-panel design, in content or not
Transition with animation from subtle notification to addons manager in an update notification
Mockups
Styled like amo for comparison - what a design based on web content rather than Chrome could look like. The problem is that it's not obvious the user is on a preferences page rather than a website.
Chrome-styled design without prefs, similar to current addons manager
Breadcrumb links
Minimal white website style
Top of breadcrumb trail
Full top-down prefs and addons rough mock
