<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div>Hi Mike,<br><br></div>Looking good! I'm glad to see you have truly taken most of our concerns on board.<br><br></div>I'm still worried about the addon bar, though. There have been a number of addons which force place a button somewhere on the UI - this button is not movable using the standard customize UI. Is it possible you could disable this behaviour? Also, is it possible for addons to place non-buttons (like, a button plus some text, like ghostery's display) in a toolbar, and have it customizable? I would assume addon authors place forced widgets because they can't make them customizable. Can any changes be made to disallow forced buttons, or allow non-buttons to be made by addons and customized?<br>
<br>
</div>I still prefer my way - easy reversal button on warning popup when making 'user-unfriendly' customizations, as described elsewhere on this mailing list - because it doesn't tread on anyone's toes. This proposal still treads on some toes, but it's drastically better. I have a heavily customized browser that I love dearly - <a href="http://i.imgur.com/QRTbDyc.jpg">http://i.imgur.com/QRTbDyc.jpg</a> - and this proposal only requires me to get an addon to replace my addons bar. I hope.<br>
<br></div>Small icons mode is not mentioned, does this mean it's back in? (Please say yes!)<br><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 8:13 AM, Mike Conley <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mconley@mozilla.com" target="_blank">mconley@mozilla.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hello all,<br>
<br>
There's been a lot of really great discussion here. Thanks for proving that firefox-dev can be a venue for constructive criticism and collaboration. :)<br>
<br>
I've got a second draft of a proposal for changes to customization. Here goes:<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
==== Customization Proposal - V2 ====<br>
<br>
# Goals<br>
<br>
* Lower the barrier to entry for customizing the UI - make it an experience that more users would want to try<br>
<br>
As a caveat, this means protecting the user from customizationsthat break the browsing experience. We get a ton of hits on <a href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigation-buttons-missing" target="_blank">https://support.mozilla.org/<u></u>en-US/kb/navigation-buttons-<u></u>missing</a>. Resetting Firefox is a ham-fisted solution, and so we're going to try to make it harder for these critical bits of UI to disappear<br>
<br>
<br>
* Make it easier for add-ons to add buttons to toolbars on installation<br>
<br>
<br>
* Do our best effort to allow power users to retain their heavily customized UIs. In some cases, certain customizations will need an add-on to manipulate some UI.<br>
<br>
------------------------------<u></u>------------------------------<u></u>------------<br>
<br>
# List of proposed changes<br>
<br>
* Join the Stop and Reload buttons into a single button for customizing, like the back / forward buttons.<br>
<br>
There's quite a bit of magic with the stop and reload buttons. If they're in the order of Stop + Reload, they merge into a single button. If they're next to the URL bar in that order, they merge into the URL bar. If they are in the Reload + Stop order, they stay as separate buttons. They can also be set on opposite sides of the browser window. The two buttons' enabled state is mutually exclusive. This is an attempt to reduce some of those hacks by getting rid of a case (Stop and Reload in a different order from one another).<br>
<br>
This change could be undone with an add-on by hiding the combined stop/reload and supplying two discrete new buttons.<br>
<br>
<br>
* Prevent back, forward, url bar, stop and reload buttons from leaving the nav-bar or overflowing out of view, while still allowing them to be re-ordered.<br>
<br>
A popular SUMO page is: <a href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigation-buttons-missing" target="_blank">https://support.mozilla.org/<u></u>en-US/kb/navigation-buttons-<u></u>missing</a> - it is far, far too easy for users to move these critical items into collapsing toolbars, or into the palette.<br>
<br>
This change could also be undone with an add-on.<br>
<br>
<br>
* Remove the ability to hide the Navigation Toolbar<br>
<br>
Users who are seeking to match the IE9+ theme (navigation controls inline with the tabs) will need to install an add-on.<br>
<br>
<br>
* Toolbars that are collapsed will not be visible while customizing<br>
<br>
<br>
* Remove the add-on bar from the core product<br>
<br>
This helps to cluster tools into the top portion of the browser by default, and avoids incurring an entire toolbar when a user only has a couple of addons installed<br>
<br>
The add-on bar could be re-inserted with another add-on.<br>
<br>
<br>
* Remove primary UI for adding custom toolbars<br>
<br>
>From anecdotal user data, this is not a heavily used feature. This feature could also be restored with an add-on.<br>
<br>
------------------------------<u></u>------------------------------<u></u>------------<br>
<br>
# Possibly Asked Questions:<br>
<br>
Q: List for me all of the areas in Firefox that will be customizable.<br>
<br>
A: Where "customizable" means "I can drag and drop toolbar items while in customize mode", the following areas will support this activity out of the box<br>
<br>
<br>
* The entire nav-bar (including areas to the left of the back, forward, URL bar, stop and reload buttons) will be customizable (with the exception that the back, forward, URL bar, stop and reload buttons cannot leave the nav-bar, and cannot overflow)<br>
<br>
<br>
* The tab strip - although the tabs themselves will not be moveable by default.<br>
<br>
<br>
* The entire menu bar if not autohidden (as is currently the case, the File | Edit | View menu will not be removable)<br>
<br>
<br>
* The entire bookmarks bar if not autohidden<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Q: If I've moved my back, forward, URL bar, stop and/or reload button out of the nav-bar, what happens when I suddenly start using this new version of Firefox?<br>
<br>
A: Your back, forward, URL bar, stop and reload buttons will be clustered together and put back into the nav-bar. An add-on will need to be written in order to move those items out of the nav-bar.<br>
<br>
<br>
Feedback?<br>
<br>
-Mike<br>
<br>
On 2013-04-17 6:29 PM, Mike Conley wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hello folks,<br>
<br>
So the Australis project is chugging along nicely (if you haven't tried<br>
the UX branch build[1], you should check it out).<br>
<br>
One of the things we've started to work on is improving how users can<br>
customize Firefox. We want customization to be easy and pleasant to do,<br>
and hard to get wrong (ie, hard to break the browser).<br>
<br>
Customization is a hot-button topic, and it's not surprising that once<br>
we start fiddling with it, users who customize their browser UI are<br>
going to get concerned. So I wanted to open up the discussion here so we<br>
can perhaps discuss those concerns, and ideas for mitigating them.<br>
<br>
For those who aren't familiar with the project[2], I'm going to try to<br>
summarize the high-level changes to customization that we're proposing.<br>
I should emphasize that while we've started to write these things down,<br>
nothing is set in stone. It's just a place to start.<br>
<br>
Anyhow, so here are our thoughts:<div class="im"><br>
<br>
1. We want to introduce more specific customization targets into<br>
Firefox's UI. An example of a customization target would be a box<br>
immediately to the right of the AwesomeBar, or one to the right of the<br>
tabstrip, or one in our new menu panel. These boxes are places where<br>
toolbar items can be dragged to and from.<br>
<br></div><div class="im">
2. We want to remove (or deprecate) the add-ons bar<br>
<br></div><div class="im">
3. We want to have an in-content customization palette to replace the<br>
old window palette<br>
<br></div><div class="im">
4. We're introducing a fixed Menu button at the end of the toolbar which<br>
opens the "menu panel". The menu panel will contain one or more<br>
customization targets.<br>
<br></div><div class="im">
5. We're considering moving the back, forward, URL bar, refresh and stop<br>
buttons to the start of the nav-bar, and making them immovable when<br>
using the customization mode.<br>
<br></div>
We're going to need to migrate incompatible customizations over to this<br>
new world. Jared and I have started talking about that, and we wrote our<br>
initial plan down here:<br>
<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=860814#c3" target="_blank">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/<u></u>show_bug.cgi?id=860814#c3</a> - again, not set<br>
in stone.<br>
<br>
<br>
So, let's chat. In particular, I'd like to hear from the UX team in case<br>
I've forgotten something or made a mistake in my outlining of these<br>
points. But I'd also like to just hear from the firefox-dev community at<br>
large in case what we're looking at doing is in need of more tweaking.<div class="im"><br>
<br>
Sorry for the long post,<br>
<br></div>
-Mike<br>
<br>
1: <a href="http://people.mozilla.org/~jwein/ux-nightly/" target="_blank">http://people.mozilla.org/~<u></u>jwein/ux-nightly/</a><br>
2: a UI prototype to illustrate:<br>
<a href="https://people.mozilla.com/~bwinton/australis/customization/mac/" target="_blank">https://people.mozilla.com/~<u></u>bwinton/australis/<u></u>customization/mac/</a> and a<br>
spec to read:<br>
<a href="http://people.mozilla.com/~zfang/Customization/AustralisCustomization_Q4Spec.pdf" target="_blank">http://people.mozilla.com/~<u></u>zfang/Customization/<u></u>AustralisCustomization_Q4Spec.<u></u>pdf</a><div class="im">
<br>
<br>
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