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mozilla-mobile / fenix

⚠️ Fenix (Firefox for Android) moved to a new repository. It is now developed and maintained as part of: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android
Mozilla Public License 2.0
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As a user, I find the tab experience to be horrible and frustrating #11833

Closed uniquePWD closed 4 years ago

uniquePWD commented 4 years ago

User Story

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Acceptance Criteria

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

AmyYLee commented 4 years ago

@topotropic for UX feedback

Pajn commented 4 years ago

I agree about the new tabs UI and much preffer the older one. This change is unfortunately pushing me back to Chrome.

phildenhoff commented 4 years ago

I have to agree. The new pop-up tab design is a much worse experience than what existed before, and it's super unclear when you open a new tab what's going on.

julKali commented 4 years ago

Yes, as soon as I downloaded 5.2.0, I went to GitHub to open an issue just like this one. I have multiple problems with this layout:

  1. the popup tray bar doesnt fit the style. It is, in my opinion, too light-weight, too flat, too sharp-edged to fit in with the rest of the UI elements
  2. to get to the main screen with collections and favorite sites, you have to click on the add new tab button ... what?
  3. the tabs now take much more screen real estate, so it takes longer to check which tabs are open
  4. the new tab buttons in normal vs private tabview are extremely inconsistent. not only is the word "private" in the private tab view unnecessary, the two buttons are also not of the same height.
  5. i dont think that normal and private browsing should be listed in the sort of "horizontal menutab list" as it is now. with normal and private browsing, there exists a duality, which cannot be changed. there is only this or that. the menutab design as it is now, would suggest that there may be more than the two browsing modes. i prefer the previous version, because there was a toggle button that would enter an "alternate" UI view that was very much the same as the normal view but with different colors. the toggle button made clear that it is this or the other, no third option allowed.
  6. such a design with having normal and private next to each other in this menutab view is also highly frustrating as you cannot swipe between them. this is not possible because the swipe to delete gesture on individual tabs is already in place, so adding a swipe to left gesture on the tab list would make gestures ambiguous. this leads to having to press the "private" menutab at the top which is, on mobile devices, particularly painful, as such a layout is virtually almost done with swiping. On top of that, because the menutab is on the left side of the screen, it is further away from the thumb than the private browsing toggle button in the old version, so you have to stretch across the screen even more.
  7. Previously I had to tap two times to open a new tab: first on the tabview button in the toolbar, and then on the search field on the home screen. now, i have to tap three times: first, to open the new tab tray, then on the plus button and lastly on the search bar.

I have the feeling, whoever came up with this design doesn't use fenix, at least not as their main browser. Usually, change is good. But sometimes, things are already good enough. There are a number of issues that are actually annoying in daily app use and could be fixed with rather little effort. The tab view, however, was refreshingly simple, well-arranged and I valued fenix for it. Please don't destroy what is good, just to change something.

uniquePWD commented 4 years ago

Let me just add, I like the bottom sheet in concept. Just feel it needs some tweaking. Though, as with the above comments, the simplicity and intuitiveness of the previous tab management experience is one that should be considered when moving forward.

JoGarWeb commented 4 years ago

I agree new tabs UI SUCKS!! 🤮🤮🤮🤮 It's very annoying 😠🤬

vrubleg commented 4 years ago

I loved the simplicity of the previous UI. The new version looks ugly and confusing.

yoasif commented 4 years ago

I think the best way to respond to the feedback here is to focus the address bar on new tab creation, and to include the home page content on that screen.

Right now, the biggest regression from the pre-tab tray version of Fenix is that that version focused the address bar on new tab. This matches desktop, FWIW, but is unlike other Android browsers.

I think that as a matter of consistency with mobile browsers on Android, it initially made sense to not focus the address bar on new tab. However, upon review (and feedback here) it really does make the Fenix UI feel a lot faster/productive (especially if the use case the user is trying to accomplish is to open a new tab to a new URL or search).

Ideally the flow would look like:

  1. Tap tab switcher icon (or open tab switcher menu)
  2. Tap new tab FAB or new tab context menu
  3. Fenix opens Fenix Home with address bar focused
  4. Address bar page dispenses with "this time search with" content and instead includes items from home
  5. User can touch the content area to access Home directly (move focus from address bar) OR they can tap back to close the keyboard

Samsung Internet, Edge and Opera all show some piece of the home page content when their address bars are focused - the only difference here would be that Fenix would focus the address bar automatically.

signal-2020-06-24-160705_003 signal-2020-06-24-160705_002 signal-2020-06-24-160705_001

I think that the tab tray continues to make sense, because the home page isn't really a tab switcher (or it ought not to be, imo) - the tab tray is purposely designed to just be a tab switcher, but because the prior iteration of the tab switcher (home page!) had a + icon where the tab switcher icon was, it felt a lot faster to go to a new page.

My suggestion here allows users to go back to the two tap method of opening a new tab and focusing the address bar on open (like desktop and pre-tab tray Fenix).

The larger issue with the old design was that opening a new tab never actually opened a new tab unless you navigated to a new page in the address bar "interstitial", which the new design helps along.

uniquePWD commented 4 years ago

Let me just add, I like the bottom sheet in concept. Just feel it needs some tweaking. Though, as with the above comments, the simplicity and intuitiveness of the previous tab management experience is one that should be considered when moving forward.

I will add that currently it's too many taps/too confusing to open a new tab. I honestly believe that adding "Open New Tab" to the context menu will mitigate most of the issues. Having collections and homescreen shortcuts on the public and private new tab page will help loads too. Perhaps even adding contextual recent tabs would help also.

vrubleg commented 4 years ago

A story. Years ago all browsers had separate address bar and search bar. Now they are merged into one universal entity, because Google was brave enough to advertise it as their main feature. A funny fact: Firefox (Phoenix) v0.1 had the same feature in 2002, years before Chrome. But the developers weren't brave enough to elaborate this idea, and the separate search bar was added before v1.0 was released. Today, everybody thinks that it was introduced in Chrome. Just because Google advertised it as their main feature.

Same thing here. It was really a great idea to put the tabs list to the main page. Probably, the best idea for a mobile browser in a decade. If Mozilla is not brave enough to advertise this new cool thing as their main feature, somebody else will do it one day, but it will be too late for Mozilla.

cadeyrn commented 4 years ago

It was really a great idea to put the tabs list to the main page. Probably, the best idea for a mobile browser in a decade.

I would definitely not go that far. It was a nice idea but not "the best idea for a mobile browser in a decade". FWIW I really like the new tabs tray (modulo some things that should be improved, of course). At first I liked the tabs on the start screen, too, but now I am no longer convinced and think it's better not to have tabs on the start screen. I agree that the opening of new tabs can be improved but I am not against the tabs tray at all.

If Mozilla is not brave enough to advertise this new cool thing as their main feature, somebody else will do it one day, but it will be too late for Mozilla.

Even if this were true it wouldn't be "too late" only because someone else already did this. I don't know why you think it's important to be the first. If it's really "the best idea for a mobile browser in a decade" then most browser will adopt in the near future. If not, well, then not.

vrubleg commented 4 years ago

Chrome was released in 2008, 6 years after the Mozilla Phoenix v0.1. The idea became widely adopted only after it was advertised by Google. I wouldn't like to wait another 6 years until somebody else will do something similar to the previous Firefox Preview.

Most of people needs explanation and some time to get used to some new great ideas, to understand why it is really so great. Eventually, everybody understood how convenient to use the address bar for searching. Return back to a separate search bar? No way! This unnecessary entity just increases complexity without adding any real value. Address bar (if you remember about the keywords feature, which allows to to search in any search engine just by using a short prefix) even more powerful than the old dedicated search bar.

These days there are no major browsers which use a separate search bar by default. But people were blind from 2002 to 2008. Just because nobody at Mozilla even tried to promote this idea, to explain why it is so cool. Google did it in 2008 and later. Today, many people consider Firefox as a Chrome rip-off. Just because Google noticed some really good ideas, put them into the front, and advertised them as much as they could, people loved these ideas, and other browsers had to follow.

julKali commented 4 years ago

@cadeyrn can you elaborate on why you didn't like the old view? In my opinion, the main page now gets obsolete because collections and favorite sites aren't enough for one entire view. f.e. when i open firefox, i see a lot of unused space because i dont have any collections. In my view, the new tab tray just adds a lot of complexity because it introduces new UI without clear benefit (to me). This is why I am genuinely curious about why this change was made in the first place. What is better now in terms of UX?

vrubleg commented 4 years ago

@julKali I also don't use collections at all. I tried, but they seems useless for me. I just kept all frequently used pages always opened in tabs, so I didn't even use bookmarks, because the tabs were so convenient to be used for everything.

This approach won't ever work on desktop, but it seems like a genius idea for a mobile browser. I loved it almost immediately after I tried the Firefox Preview, and I was proud of Mozilla that they tried to innovate something really new.

julKali commented 4 years ago

@vrubleg yes, I used it exactly the same way! No thinking about collections, no having to open any history, library, etc, just a bunch of links that I want to revisit sometime later, neatly aligned as soon as I open the app. You can scroll through the list, know immediately what every tab was about and when you need a new one, you can just click on the search bar right next to your thumb - easy! And from any open web page it's just one click to the main screen. I, too, was very much delighted about this novel approach and it would indeed be a shame to move away from all of that :(

worg commented 4 years ago

Having the list of tabs missing from the start page was (still is) confusing (and frustrating), tab management was really cool that way, and I really hope you reconsider bringing it back (along with keeping the drawer with improvements)

kannan936 commented 4 years ago

New tab management is worst

vrubleg commented 4 years ago

An addition. Tabs are the most important part of the browser after the address bar, and they must be really easily accessible, as much as possible. Collections and top sites could be removed from the browser completely. Just allow to pin some opened tabs to the top of the list of opened tabs, and allow to reorder opened tabs and making groups of them (by moving one tab on another, as you do folders on Android home screen). The group of tabs could be collapsed and uncollapsed by tapping on the header of the group. So, if anybody finds the idea of collections useful, they'll use this simple UI to create such collections right in the list of tabs. This way, you keep the most important things on the first places, and won't loose any other functionality you have on the main screen now. Just because tabs, top sites, and collections are merged into one entity on the main page of the browser which is always one tap away from you. And you don't even need to think if you want to keep some tabs open: just keep it open if you think that you'll return back. It works as bookmarks also! The browser don't need to keep all the opened tabs in memory. Firefox already unloads the unused tabs, so no need to change anything here.

So, you just merge a lot of entities into one very powerful and intuitive thing. The whole structure of opened tabs in the mobile browser could be synchronized with the cloud, and it can appear as a root directory (next to Bookmarks Menu, Bookmarks Toolbar, etc.) in the bookmarks panel of the desktop browser. If the user has many phones with Firefox, all of them could use the same list of tabs, or could have separate lists (which appear as different root folders in the desktop browser), you can let the user to decide what they want.

This great idea could be really elaborated into something, which will attract people by being simple, but still very powerful. But if you lose this simplicity and make something similar to other browsers, you just lose your advantage.

ghost commented 4 years ago

I want to say that I like the new Tabs Tray a lot than the old one. It makes the homescreen less cluttered. And I can access other features of the browser easily like Top Sites and Collections and other features that'll coming to the homescreen eventually.

The Top Sites and the Collections have become really important features for me! And I don't want to have my homescreen cluttered with a lot tabs let's say more than 30 or 50, it'll make it harder to reach the top or bottom of the homescreen and I'll have to scroll and scroll and scroll...! . Of course there are some issues with the new tabs tray but they can be solved (I haven't able to pinpoint the issue yet, but for some reason it feels a little unintuitive when interacting with it when opening the first new tab). I think the new Tabs Tray behaviour should not be removed but instead improved upon the usefulness/intuitiveness it had in the old tabs layout.

Tab management is a one of the central features of a browser as our @vrubleg say and I agree with them (you can see that I have filed some issues regarding this as well), they need to really easy to use since everyone will use them a lot!

And please @vrubleg don't tell that it's the same situation as merging the search and the address bar. It's not!

And there are some rules that have to be followed all the time such as the Material Design guidelines; most apps follow them; do you know why? It's because if they orient too much from that it'll definitely confuse the users who have become accustomed to that design language across the Android app ecosystem, and it's the reason why Firefox Preview also follows them! This is how other browsers handle tabs and I think it should be same in the Firefox Preview as well since it'll make it harder to use the other useful features of the browser that are on the homescreen! Benifits must always outweigh the negatives only then the new changes should be brought! And I don't think that this is the case with the new Tabs Tray!

You could say that Google also changed the designed language from Holo Design to the new Material Design language but do you know why most users didn't complain? It's because the upgraded design language almost felt so intuitive and also felt connected to the Holo language that never felt alienating to me! It just felt like a natural upgrade rather than a completely new and an unfamiliar one! And I think this was the case with most of the users.

ListeningGarden commented 4 years ago

The previous behavior of the tabs existing within the main screen was one of the smoothest parts of the experience with Fenix - when the browser was booted up, it allowed me to choose what page to load first instead of assuming the last page I had open was what I wanted, and there were less button presses involved in order to perform certain actions like entering the URL for a new tab.

Right now, there is a bit of a regression with the new tab tray in that I now require 3 taps instead of 2 in order to begin the process of a new tab, as well as a disconnect between the iconography and the expected behavior compared to what the button actually does.

Old method: Click on tabs button in bottom corner of the UI, tap URL Bar. I can now begin to enter my URL. New method: Click on tabs button in bottom corner of the UI, tap the new tab button, confusingly be taken to the collections tray/main screen instead, require an additional tap to access URL bar. I can now begin to enter my URL.

Collections are certainly important to Fenix's identity, so the user will still need a way to access those, right? But, when I click on the "+" button in the tab tray, I expect to be taken directly to a URL bar so that I can quickly and more fluidly access the site I wish to visit. In order to provide a fair experience to users who both wish to enter a URL directly, as well as those who wish to access their collections & topsites, two buttons should be available on the tab tray if the tab tray must be kept. One button, the "+" button, would take the user directly to the URL prompt and bypass the main screen entirely. The second - the iconography of which would need to be determined to provide a natural metaphor to match the behavior - would take the user to the main screen, allowing them to access their collections and topsites. This way, we trim the redundancy users experience in wanting to visit a new site or require manually entering or pasting a URL, without hiding or obscuring the way to access collections & topsites.

Ideally, things would be designed to require as few steps as possible for the user to initialize the action they desire at any given moment. The current tab tray could still work quite well, but it requires a bit more designing to feel less sharp (the old tabs were round and kinda cute, without being unprofessional imo for those who prefer a more "serious" look for their browser) and fit the overall aesthetics of Fenix better while also ensuring UX does not take a step backwards when trying to accommodate for potentially complex use cases and feature access.

That said, overall I feel as though the old way got it right and provided the smoothest experience for how I personally use the browser, so I wouldn't mind too much if tabs and collections were merged again and the main screen behaved closer to how it once did without the additional tab tray. My two cents on a complicated, behavioral issue!

ghost commented 4 years ago

Right now, there is a bit of a regression with the new tab tray in that I now require 3 taps instead of 2 in order to begin the process of a new tab

I agree with you here. Something in the new Tabs Tray feels really unintuitive to me. And this could be it!

vrubleg commented 4 years ago

@SS1113 did the users of the Firefox Preview complain about the previous tab management system on the main screen much? Or they just were happily using it? If all the browsers use the same UX approach, what is the point of existence of Firefox? I would just use default browser in this case. And I was using the default browser before Firefox Preview.

Firefox Preview doesn't have anything else useful on the main page. Collections and top sites can be merged into the tab list, I already mentioned it. There is nothing else. If Mozilla wants to add some garbage like "latest news" and advertisements, they could just put it to a separate page which is accessible from the main page. It could be just a small button next to the Firefox logo on the main page. Even better: it could be just an item "Latest News" in the main menu. Even better: it could be an extension which I could disable completely.

julKali commented 4 years ago

@SS1113 you talking about your situation with having to scroll through many tabs in order to reach your collections made me realise what the intentions behind this change were. However, as collections are undoubtetly less used by the broad userbase than tabs, I think it would make more sense to instead move collections somewhere else where they can be accessed more easily. One could think of a swipe-to-left gesture that would open a sidebar-like panel that contains a user's saved collections. I strongly believe that moving the tab list instead was the wrong approach.

As has been mentioned, the new tab list is also annoyingly uninnovative. It frustrates me to see Fenix surrender to the Android layout guidelines instead of nudging users into a more creative but, in my case, convenient way of using tabs. I noticed that seeing all the tabs at startup, I closed much more unneeded ones than with previous browsers. This is because tabs were always hidden and you would maybe see the top few tabs once in a while. While I easily reached 100 tabs in the old Fennec, I now have roughly 12 open at any time.

ghost commented 4 years ago

@vrubleg

did the users of the Firefox Preview complain about the previous tab management system on the main screen much?

I didn't like it that much but I feel what you are saying; after getting accustomed to using the old tabs layout and finding it really useful and now you have to use the new layout suddenly! I get you!

If all the browsers use the same UX approach, what is the point of existence of Firefox?

To provide you and me and others with the control and the choice over how we browse the Web!

Collections and top sites can be merged into the tab list

Please don't do that! I like it how it is right now!

But I still get what you are saying about the new tabs tray. And if and when Mozilla reverts to the old tabs tray layout, I want to make it clear that please make it optional so that I can go back to using the new Tabs Tray layout! I have already become used to the new Tabs Tray now and I like it very much!

uniquePWD commented 4 years ago

If I'm honest, I'm flabbergasted that such a poor feature as collections continues to get the support it does. It would be one thing if they were working properly. i.e. Collections should act like dynamic tab groups, not bookmark folders. But they're actually just fundamentally rubbish. They're glorified bookmarks. They should not be front and centre of any design or marketing decisions.

But I digress. The new bottom sheet tab draw is in line with modern Android design. Addressing the suggestions in the first post fixes most usability issues. I say this as someone that's been using them on nightly since they were hidden behind the five tap experiment thing. I realise that it's easy to assume that this was just a knee-jerk reaction to the stable release, so I wanted to clear that up.

Regarding the landing page of the app or the new tab page, wherever you'd like to call it. I have considered some of the feedback here and would like to raise a suggestion. What about that page featuring recent and synched tabs sections?

ghost commented 4 years ago

I'm honest, I'm flabbergasted that such a poor feature as collections continues to get the support it does.

I'll be honest with everyone here, I also didn't like the Collections at all but once I started using them I got used to them and now I use them daily!

And I'm also not getting why everyone is just focusing on the Collections. I'm saying that they're other features as well on the homescreen, and/or more will be added in future!

uniquePWD commented 4 years ago

Bookmarks remain a highly useful browser feature. Rebranding them as collections though... 😒

jensrutschmann commented 4 years ago

I'd like to add that the new tab (+) button is very hard to reach when the url bar is placed at the top rather than bottom. This combined with the extra tap for creating a new tab also makes using the new version quite annoying.

Previously I just had to tap the tab icon and the the url bar the start typing. Done.

Now I need to tap the tab icon, move my thumb all the way to the bottom (and hold the precious huge modern phone with the other hand so it doesn't fall to the floor), tap the plus button, move the thumb all the way back to the top.

Working with tabs is very important to me and I just switched from chrome to fenix because of the smooth experience even though I lost pull-to-refresh and swiping on the url bar for switching tabs.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant but I was just so happy about the UX of fenix. It was the perfect android browser (just lacking those swipe gestures). And then came tabs tray ... 😞

hollmmax commented 4 years ago

Feels like someone was unhappy with the old tabs and decided to redesign them, so now he's happy with his tabs. And that's fine, the old tabs weren't perfect. But here's the thing, whoever did the redesign completely ignored what made the old tabs great for many of its users, so instead of improved tabs for everybody, we ended up with maybe better tabs for someone, but surely worse tabs for me and everyone else in this thread. I want the old tabs back, and to have a discussion about what the goal of this was, so we can find a solution, that doesn't screw up the user experience.

cadeyrn commented 4 years ago

Feels like someone was unhappy with the old tabs and decided to redesign them, so now he's happy with his tabs. […] whoever did the redesign completely ignored

Such comments are not helpful at all…

surely worse tabs for me and everyone else in this thread

It's totally okay to say that you don't like it but please don't talk for me - I am part of "everyone else in this thread" and since I already said that I am not against the tabs tray this statement is simply wrong. Sure, there are things that can and should be improved but it doesn't mean that the old implementation has to be restored.

yump commented 4 years ago

@vrubleg Combining the search and URL bars by default was a huge mistake. Google did it because it let them collect a few characters of every URL typed, and infer a bunch of information about their users' habits. Firefox did it because users who didn't understand why Google did it, or were too complacent to care, demanded it. When both are configured securely, separate boxes is much more convenient, because you can have instant suggestions in the search box.

ekager commented 4 years ago

Thanks for your passion and feedback! If you want specific issues about tabs tray addressed please open individual issues for each bug or feature suggestion. Large feedback lists like this are difficult to parse.

ekager commented 4 years ago

You can long press the tab icon in the toolbar and open a new tab now (#11569 )

Opened https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11958