Labs/F1/Roadmap

F1-icon-128.png F1 2011 Roadmap
Owner: Bryan Clark Updated: 2011-03-30
User Goals:
  • Create a fun, fast, and reliable system that encourages people to share
  • Embrace the different types/levels of sharing people are comfortable with

Platform Goals:

  • Create a trusted partner for people to share links through
  • Standardize pieces of the link sharing activity, open it up to more players
  • Reduce the sharing NASCAR effect on sites
    • Work with sites to provide mutually beneficial user interactions
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Overview

Mozilla F1 is a simple and fast sharing service designed to enhance the sharing experience of the browser, Firefox, when sharing web sites.

name
The name F1 is a project name that is not necessarily the final name when compared with more standardized/branded names like Firefox Share.
tech
The project is both a hosted service and an add-on to Firefox. The hosted service acts as an OAuth proxy service which the add-on uses to push shares through.

Components

F1 has 3 bugzilla components for bug tracking

Timeline

Here's a timeline of goals and the items needed to complete those goals.

Firefox 5

Due: April 13th 2011

Project Management

Item Bug Status ETA
Agreement w/ Twitter regarding API usage bug 645909 in progress -
Agreement w/ Facebook regarding API usage bug 645910 in progress -
Agreement w/ bit.ly regarding API usage bug 646273 in progress -

User Experience

UX Tracking Bug bug 642684
Item Bug Status ETA
Figure out experience for failure cases bug 642653 in progress -
Sharing preferences bug 645802 needs bug 646243 -
Disable share during private browsing bug 644769 waiting on UX -
Panel should act like other panels, close w/ ESC bug 644182 waiting on UX -
Use disabled icon when sharing is not possible? bug 643994 finished -

Q/A and Test

Unit Test Tracking Bug bug 642681
Item Bug Status ETA
Document FFShare and Panel APIs and behaviour bug 642646 - 2011-03-18
Test plan and harness bug 642648 - 2011-03-25
Functional test plan and harness bug 642651 - 2011-03-25


FF Integration

Item Bug Status ETA
Get rid of hashchange, switch to postMessage bug 642655 - 2011-03-25
Introduce API version number in path bug 642652 - 2011-03-25
Measure startup time, ensure no measurable impact bug 642674 - 2011-03-25
Turn dump() calls into proper logging of sorts bug 642679 - 2011-03-25
API for storing oauth tokens and account profiles bug 642660 - 2011-04-01
Need to fetch all Google Contacts bug 644404 not started -
Sometimes FF4 jumps to 100% CPU bug 642629 not started -
Use idle time to pull in the web UI bug 642671 not started -

Post-Firefox 5

tracking the next set of items which are important to land after FF5 integration


Project Management

Item Bug Status ETA
- - not started -


User Experience

Item Bug Status ETA
- - not started -


Q/A and Test

Item Bug Status ETA
- - not started -


Development

Item Bug Status ETA
- - not started -

People

An out of date list of many of the people involved
Bryan Clark
Project Management
Andy Chung
Visual Designer
Stephen Horlander
UX Designer
Laura Mesa, Mayumi Matsuno, Caitlin Looney
Product Marketing
James Burke
Client side developer
Shane Caraveo
Server side developer
Philipp von Weitershausen
Client / Server developer
Mike Connor
Services coordination
Yvan Boily
Server side security review
Curtis Koenig
Client side security review
Jonathan Griffin
Q/A Integration
Philippe Chiasson
Service side operations

Problems Use Cases

These are the existing use cases that exist and we believe F1 helps to solve.

Copy & Paste

Alice finds a hilarious LOL Cat she wants to send to her friends. Now she enters the precarious world of focus, selection, and the clipboard.

Here is the only route of success (assuming no keyboard shortcuts):

  1. Single click into the URL bar — this should focus and select the entire URL
  2. Click the Edit Menu to open the menu
  3. Click the Copy Menu Item to copy the text to the clipboard
  4. Open a tab with your sharing service — either a new tab, reusing an existing tab, or using the current tab
  5. Focus / Open the services compose interface — compose message, what's on your mind?, what's happening, etc.
  6. Click the Edit Menu to open the menu
  7. Click the Paste Menu Item to paste the URL into the text entry

At each of these steps exists a number of ways to fail, we'll only cover a few major ones here.

1 focus
with anything more than a single click into the URL bar a user will not be selecting the entire URL which will block the rest of the steps
2,3 selection
when the user goes to copy the URL they risk changing the focus/selection of the URL which will block them from copying or make them copy the wrong text
4,5 transition
if the user doesn't already have the service open they will now have to load the page which can be slow and systems like often are not ready for immediate sharing.
6,7 focus
And finally if the user clicks anywhere else besides the text entry as they are choosing to paste there will be no notification of the failed state they entered.

NASCAR of Sharing

Beth uses Digg.com to share all her links but the LOL Cat site she likes doesn't include a "digg this" link as one of it's service.

John needs to scan through a long list of icons for various services he's never heard of to find the service he uses. Each site lists the services differently so he always needs to hunt for the service he uses.

On the other side of the coin site designers must either include all the icons of all possible (of an infinitely expanding list of) services to create a "NASCAR" effect or limit to a few popular services.