As a user, I'm very confused about the tab bar in Firefox for Android.
It's seems it's different on every device, and it doesn't work well on
any of them.
I use tabs a lot. E.g. when I make a Google search, I open each
interesting search result in a new tab, then go through the tabs one by
one. At other times, I open the same page in 2 different languages and
switch between them. This means tab switching must be efficient.
Actual result:
* On a mobile phone with 800x480 screen, I get a dynamic toolbar, with
a tabs button ("+") at the top right (!).
That means I need 3 clicks/taps just to change the tab, which is
highly cumbersome and annoying, to the extend that Firefox usage
feels unpleasant.
* On my 7" tablet with 1280x800 screen, I get the same UI as on the
mobile phone.
* On my Sony Xperia Z 10" with 1920x1080 screen, the tabs button ("+")
is on the top left, and in portrait mode, the tab bar stays open
until I press the tabs button again.
That's working very well - I can show and hide it easily as needed.
Only problem is that the tabs bar is too wide, making up 25% of the
width.
* On my Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1" 2014 with 2560x1600 screen, the
tabs button is at the top left and the tabbar does not (!) stay
open. Essentially, I get the same UI as on a mobile phone (just that
the tabs button is somewhere else), although this device clearly has
more screen space than the Sony tablet.
Concrete problems:
* Dynamic toolbar on tablets makes no sense to me - there's enough
space, and the extra click for everything (tabs, bookmarks etc.) is
annoying. Worse, I can't open the toolbar and do any of this without
scrolling the page I'm on.
* Tab bar closes, which makes it difficult to change tabs.
* Tab bar is too large, because the individual tabs are too large.
When you have a bunch of forum threads open, the thumbnails don't
help at all. They should be much smaller. Particularly in portrait
mode, they are too wide.
Expected result:
* Toolbar:
o Static on tablets
o Simple UI pref to change from static to dynamic
(backend pref "browser.chrome.dynamictoolbar") on any device.
* Tabs button "+"
o On top right of toolbar, because this is where right-handed
people hold it and can easily tap it.
o Toggles open/close of tabbar
* Tab bar open/close
o Stays open until closed. Closing happens with the same tabs
button that I use to open it, so that I can easily open and
close as needed based on the situation. I.e. this aspect should
be the same currently is in Firefox on my Sony tablet.
o Simple UI pref to choose whether tabbar closes automatically or
not, on any device.
o On mobile, by default, tabbar closes automatically.
* Tab bar position
o On along the small axis, i.e. Landscape: on left, Portrait: on top
o Simple UI pref or drag&drop to choose where tabbar appears,
configurable on any device in any orientation.
* Tab bar content
o Tab bar must not use more than 10% of the screen space
o Small thumbnails (much smaller than now)
o Page title, in small font
* Landscape vs. portrait
o UI prefs above can be changed separately for landscape and
portrait modes.
o E.g. I can put my tabbar always on top, in any orientation.
o E.g. I can enable dynamic toolbar in landscape mode, but static
toolbar in portrait mode.
Ben
xref (this is not what I propose above):
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=817728
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