# Summary When users try to open DevTools for the very first time, we would like to prompt them for a confirmation first, displayed in an onboarding page.
The main goal is to inform new users about DevTools, and avoid accidental or malicious usage. A secondary goal is performance related. Some code paths can be optimized if DevTools are disabled. For example, we can turn console.log calls into “no-ops”, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1382377 . Onboarding is also a requirement of the project to move Devtools into an addon, which will reduce Firefox’s installer size and eventually will allow the team to use GoFaster as shipping mechanism. # UI The onboarding page will be opened in a tab after a user triggers any DevTools entry point (menu item, key shortcut, etc…). It will explain why it is being displayed and what DevTools are, and it will have a button to "enable" DevTools. After the user clicks on the "enable" button, we will display a confirmation message and more detailed information about DevTools. After that, the onboarding page will not be displayed anymore. # Additional information We will assess the impact with a shield study on the Beta channel, measuring the click-through rate of the onboarding page and engagement metrics with the various panels. Our hypothesis is that this will not block developers from using the tools but cuts out accidental usage. We need to define which profiles are exposed to the onboarding. Current plan: - Nightly and DevEdition: Developer tools enabled by default, onboarding flow disabled - Beta and Release: onboarding flow enabled for profiles that never used DevTools. We want to detect such profiles by looking at existing preferences or recent telemetry (will be determined with a follow-up study). The onboarding flow should also be disabled when users pass a DevTools specific command line argument to start Firefox (e.g. --devtools, --jsdebugger etc…). The feature will be behind a preference: "devtools.onboarding.enabled". # Bugs and documents Meta bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1408969 Initial discussion and mockups at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ku6Jn12XdTFNno0phhLjlBD2 H43k5NYswALYnA_UVBA/edit#heading=h.czol3ydlw299 <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ku6Jn12XdTFNno0phhLjlBD2H43k5NYswALYnA_UVBA/edit#heading=h.czol3ydlw299> # Target release We plan to perform a study in Beta 58, and will decide about a target release depending on the results. # Other browsers - Safari completely hides developer options unless explicitly turned on in the preferences. - Edge hides the Inspect Element and View source context menu items if F12 Developer Tools were never used. They also show an introductory message when Developer Tools start for the first time. - Chrome doesn't implement anything similar. Feedback welcome! _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
