Firefox/Features/UX Priorities

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Want help make the user experience of Firefox the best it can be? Here are the top priorities identified by the UX team. They are in order of priority, grouped under new features, revised features, and polish/cleanup.

If you want to help out with any of these, get in touch with Alex Limi to coordinate, limi@mozilla.com.

New features

1. Sharing (UX tracked in bug 642684
2. Identity (UX tracked at http://areweprettyyet.com/5/accountManager for now)
3. Home tab
4. New tab page
5. Taskbar Web Apps
6. In-content preferences (including unifying customization/appearance/themes, eliminating unneeded windows)
7. In-browser preview + Save of common content (PDF, cd:attachment, mp3, etc)
8. Add-ons: Standardized toolbar/doorhanger (pane) support
9. Tab multiselect: bug 566510

Feature revision

1. Install/Update: Channel switcher, bug 644517
2. Install/Update: Silent updates & on shutdown where we can't do silent
3. User control of extensions & plugins, bug 596343
4. Panorama groups should persist, load on-demand
5. In-line autocomplete, bug 566489 — how quickly a user can get to a site is a key part of the perceived performance, we also need to do a better job with the audience that “speaks URLs”
6. Opt-in activation for plugins that are unknown/slow (similar to Flashblock), better missing plugin experience, ability to soft-block 0-day using click2play
7. Improved progress indicator (perception of speed)
8. Panorama improvements
9. Download Manager
10. Find-in-page cleanup
11. OS X 10.7 features: scrollbar, full screen mode, three-finger gestures
12. Self-sharing feature for F1, aka. "For Later"
13. Install/Update: Mac improvements
14. Install/Update: Stub installer
15. Install/Update: Easier fresh install
16. Add zoom controls to the Firefox menu: bug 592147
17. Default UI for contentEditable, cleanup, make it output better code
18. Improved discovery pane in add-ons manager
19. Backgrounds and themes view in the add-ons manager/live preview
20. Sync Promotion
21. Private browsing windows open without restart
22. Private browsing theme change (darkened)
23. Import dialog doesn't offer Sync import or Chrome import
24. Don't let add-ons that are not compatible with an unsupported version of Firefox stop you from upgrading: bug 597598 — i.e. an add-on that doesn't work with 3.6 nor with 4.0 shouldn't stop you from upgrading your Firefox 3.5 to 4.0

Polish/cleanup

1. Overall UI responsiveness and drawing operations
2. Tab animations: tab close behavior, tab open behavior, tab drag (bug 455694) tab detach (bug 485105), eliminate redundant title text (bug 583890)
3. Location/Search bar cleanup, bug 592909
4. App tabs: chromeless app tabs, bug 585445
5. App tabs: Global app tabs, bug 587873
6. Fix Firefox menu rendering, bug 594821
7. Make Search local to the tab (at least for tabs-on-top): bug 565740
8. AwesomeBar results visual design
9. File type cursors
10. Display the domain in black and the path in grey: bug 451833 — makes domains more readable and prominent, parity with other browsers# Papercuts: Flash stealing focus, copy/paste rich vs plain text
11. Doorhangers + modal dialogs cleanup, keep eliminating notifications (e.g. update -> Home tab): httpauth bug 567804, Popups blocked bug 588317, XPI install bug 588266
12. Expose prefs that made it too late (tabs-on-demand, DNT, always restore tabs)
13. List All Tabs menu should list closed tabs/windows for more obvious undo: bug 597593
14. Improved about:sessionrestore
15. Context menu cleanup
16. Extract PDF to main menu (windows)
17. Better about:config
18. Remove the flash message on new tab on open
19. full screen on windows (display the firefox button, normal window controls)
20. Update default fonts

Infrastructure (with no UI)

Projects we care about that have UX impact, but little to no UI.

1. Bundle Flash with Firefox
2. JägerMonkey for UI
3. Resource Packages
4. jemalloc support on Mac
5. Reusable grouping API for tabs (so other extensions, e.g. VerticalTabs, can reuse Panorama groups)
6. Gmail/GC + Netflix
7. Reinstall experience: a way to ask if they want fresh settings or keep their old ones

Research projects

Projects we need to get started early, since they need more data and/or design explorations.

1. Unify bookmarks/history/tabs and make the transition between them more seamless, browse/search UIs for this
2. Ability to manage hundreds of tabs in low memory situations (serialization, freeze JS, etc)
3. Tablet UI
4. Improved content authoring/editing
5. Merge folders & tags
6. "The Vault", a way to save/freeze content, save encrypted to Sync container, and have them follow you around (receipts, tickets, etc)
7. Combine URL/search bar, support actions
8. Multiuser support, logging in to your browser, sandboxed secure profiles
9. Collecting people/locations/time, service discovery, navigable pages in the browser include meta-pages of location, people, etc.

Tool & process improvements

• community for design discussion?
• omnigraffle stencils for awpy
• new nighly build icon
• visualization tool for progress on a feature over time: treadmill
• HTML bugmail / new bugzilla theme