Thanks for your feedback, Ben. Your email is well timed — in fact the UX team is in the early stages of planning a design refresh of the tablet browser interface, that will likely address most if not all of the needs you’ve expressed in your email in one way or another. I can’t go into much detail yet as we are still scoping out the work, but expect to see more details on this in the coming months.
Now, this is a longer term project so it will be some time before you start to see any changes. So meanwhile, there is work underway to provide the ability to “pin” the tab bar open on tablets — https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=817728 — which will make frequent tab switching more comfortable in the current interface. You can also fix the position of the browser titlebar in about:config, by flipping the browser.chrome.dynamictoolbar toggle to false. Hope this helps for now. Like I said, stay tuned for more updates as we work through the details of the design refresh :) Ian On Nov 8, 2013, at 2:37 PM, Ben Bucksch <[email protected]> wrote: > 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: > Static on tablets > Simple UI pref to change from static to dynamic > (backend pref "browser.chrome.dynamictoolbar") on any device. > Tabs button "+" > On top right of toolbar, because this is where right-handed people hold it > and can easily tap it. > Toggles open/close of tabbar > Tab bar open/close > 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. > Simple UI pref to choose whether tabbar closes automatically or not, on any > device. > On mobile, by default, tabbar closes automatically. > Tab bar position > On along the small axis, i.e. Landscape: on left, Portrait: on top > Simple UI pref or drag&drop to choose where tabbar appears, configurable on > any device in any orientation. > Tab bar content > Tab bar must not use more than 10% of the screen space > Small thumbnails (much smaller than now) > Page title, in small font > Landscape vs. portrait > UI prefs above can be changed separately for landscape and portrait modes. > E.g. I can put my tabbar always on top, in any orientation. > 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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