[UX] [Meta] Make the most useful content easily accessible on the homescreen

[vesta0]

User Story

As a user, I want my browser homescreen to show me content that is most relevant and useful to me, such as my frequently-accessed types of content (bookmarks, history, recent tabs, top sites, synced tabs, collections, pocket) or relevant updates or tips about the product, so I can easily navigate to them with the least number of taps required

Feature Brief: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GQ7ncFM_UcThSx6CldbrkuQRPxXsJ13rHXNPXI1_qoQ/edit

For UX: Please consider the following issues as you work on this:
#11453
#6510
#9328

Acceptance Criteria

• I see my most frequently-accessed types of content on my homescreen by default. Note: Collections and Default top sites should always show up by default (order to be determined) until user decides to turn them off.
• Navigating to my most frequently-accessed sites should not take more than 2 taps.
• I can customize my homescreen to only show types of content that I want to access frequently.
• My homescreen provides me with the type of information that is relevant and useful to me.

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

[data-sync-user]

➤ Adam Bitner commented:

[~bfleming@mozilla.com] This is the home screen story that should be moved over to the Sour Patch board. Not sure if there are other related home screen stories that should come with.

[dglttr]

Something akin to the options available in desktop Firefox would be very nice for customizability and consistency.
Pasting the section here for reference:

[madb1lly]

Hello @vesta0 and @apbitner,

By "2 taps" where do you mean from? If from the homescreen itself then Please make so only one tab is needed to load a frequently accessed site, i.e. these sites are shown on the homescreen.

Cheers 🙂

[maverick74]

Hi @vesta0 thanks for your feedback.

I would like to manifest that it would be nice that either this would also apply to the edit-URL-screen or that the edit-URL-screen would go to the so called "homescreen".

I ask this because, when I'm done with a webpage, I would like to be able to not only search for something else from that tab, but also to use the same tab and substitute that same webpage (which no longer interests me) by some other bookmarked site or top site.

I can elaborate more if I'm not clear enough.

Thank you all

[madb1lly]

Hi @maverick74,

That sounds to me just like how the Awesomescreen ( home screen) on Fennec works!

Cheers 🙂

[madb1lly]

Hi @maverick74,

I not sure why you reacted like that to my comparison. In the current (or old now?) Firefox for Android, codenamed Fennec, when we select the address bar we get the "Awesomescreen" which can be used for all the things you suggest - search, new address, bookmarks, top sites, as well as frequently used sites, history, synced tabs, even pocket recommendations and personalised highlights.

I'm still very confused as to why Fenix did not start with this design as a default because it still seems to me to be the slickest way to include all these things on the homescreen. Only collections is missing, and that would be very easy to add to one of the available panes or add as a completely new pane perhaps.

@vesta0, can you explain what's wrong with the Fennec homescreen? Is there some document/explanation from the early history of Fenix that explains this?

Thanks 🙂

[maverick74]

@madb1lly sorry, I pressed the wrong emoji.
Yes, I don't understand that either. I was a heavy user of that homescreen

[vesta0]

We couldn't just start with the old design because we actually built the new Firefox from scratch. My goal for creating this user story was to make the Firefox home screen as useful as possible and AFAIC that could very possibly result in rebuilding parts of the old Firefox homescreen that users loved and found useful, without making it too cluttered which users certainly didn't like. Our UX team is investigating this.

[madb1lly]

Hi @vesta0,

Thanks for the explanation. I think you could have started with the old design but you would have had to build it from scratch, so in fact you took the opportunity to see if you could improve it, which is good.

Personally I didn't find the Fennec homescreen cluttered, which may be why I find the current design to waste a lot of screen space.

Maybe a way to find the happy medium would be to make the homescreen very dense with features and see what the feedback is then. I'm sure there will be some negative feedback, so you can just reduce the density until people are generally comfortable with it.

However I know that screen object density has accessibility aspects, so I know it's not as simple as I'm suggesting.

The main point is that I miss the utility of the Fennec homescreen, it really did make everything much more quickly accessible than the Fenix homescreen does.

Cheers 🙂

[Alighierian]

One way to reduce the clutter would be in the customisation. It's inevitable that people want different things from their browser. To a point I'd certainly agree the base has to be good. After all, if the base is lousy, users might not even bother into looking how to customize.

I would argue, however, that a bookmark browser rates higher in basic accessibility necessity than the tab groups/collections function, especially since you have to manually set the latter up, tab by tab.
In terms of clutter, a collapsed default look might do the trick, just like the collections are by default. As customisation there could be a toggle to have it expanded by default, so it's a user choice in how much they clutter and with what.

[gerdwagner]

I agree with the complaints about no progress on the bookmarks issue.

I rolled back my installations to version 68.11.0 (loosing all my former bookmarks) and have been checking my Firefox Nightly test installation for a long time now being disappointed each time.

[mirko77]

Updated to 85.1.1

While I appreciate the effort, please see the attached screenshot.

When I open a new tab, since I increased the size of my keyboard for accessibility and there is an extra row taken by the scan button, half of my top sites are hidden. The overlay is gone so my experience is worse than before: instead of tapping anywhere, I am forced to use the back button to hide the keyboard.

What I dream of is a toggle in the settings, like "Show keyboard when opening new tab" so I can switch it off for good. Some people will keep it on, so it would be a win-win.

Also giving users the choice to hide that extra row with the scan button would be great. How many times will someone use that in a lifetime?

[violasong]

Thanks for the feedback; we should take settings like this into account.

We do have a bug in progress that removes the scan bar and integrates it with the address bar: #16659

[navid-zamani]

What is the primary thing preventing this fix from happening, say, … within one week?
Clearly there are people who could do that. It seems to depend on what they are assigned to work on.
So what decides that assignment? Users, money or ideology?
Clearly not users, or most UI changes would have never happened. So …

Can it be expressed as a sum of money? Because if yes, setting up some Kickstarter or something to get it financed should be no problem in, probably less than 24 hours. :)
Nobody cares what the exact design is, right now. As long as it offers a list of bookmark titles that, when tapped, open the link, it’s good. Lipstick can come later. :)
@violasong: How much for you to come back an fix that, including compensation for all the consequences to you, no matter what anyone else assigned you? Or is there somebody else who's better suited?
Or is it just ideology and neither money nor users play a role? (I want to highly doubt that. :))

[maverick74]

Sorry, I have to complain that bug #6437 (which was to be addressed as part of this one) is still not addressed in any way!

I'm always getting 100+ tabs open because I still can't reuse my current tabs. I can't, for example, click on the address bar and navigate my bookmarked pages to choose one to load on the current tab I'm in (without having to type it's name)

[vesta0]

Closing this issue as a duplicate of other related features we are currently working to make the homescreen more useful.

[nbmrjuhneibkr]

Closing this issue as a duplicate of other related features we are currently working to make the homescreen more useful.

Duplicate of what, exactly? What are those "other related features"? Why aren't they at least linked here?

[mirko77]

Agree with all the above, please link the proper thread.

In the meanwhile, I am still dreaming of a day when my freaking keyboard will not popup each time I open a new tab. 🦄

[mduchev]

@mirko77 I actually quite like that feature and use it every time. However, I can see some cases where you may want to now show it, so it would be good for some users to have some option to disable this, since it isn't that much of a development effort.

[klint]

The related features are the ones mentioned in the first post of this issue and most of them, not to say all, are now implemented in the nightly builds :
"As a user, I want my browser homescreen to show me content that is most relevant and useful to me, such as my frequently-accessed types of content (bookmarks, history, recent tabs, top sites, synced tabs, collections, pocket)" __

[klint]

And they can be enabled or disabled 😉

[twaalewijn]

Are you referring to the the "Recent bookmarks", "Recent searches" sections etc. that are currently in nightly?
Then I just want to say that closing this issue with those as the solutions to having bookmarks and history on the homescreen is pretty disappointing to say the least.

I might be wrong but the "Recent bookmarks" section appears to only be there if you've bookmarked something within the last 10 days: #20484
So if I do not bookmark anything within that period I am also not going to be able to hit "show all" and navigate to what I actually want to see on my homescreen.

What happened to those promising looking MVP designs from over a year ago in this thread?

I just want all my bookmarks back on the homescreen like I had in Fennec.
And looking at this thread and the issue tracker I'm hardly the only one.

The past year I have sort of been getting by with having a bunch of collections that I treat as my bookmark "folders" containing most of my bookmarks as freshly opened tabs. E.g. open a bunch of bookmarks from the library view (don't need to create a new tab because they still do not open in the same one if you just tap on the bookmark itself) and then save that as a collection.

But that has some drawbacks.
The ones I have personally encountered a whole lot over last year:

• I cannot edit the name of an item inside a collection like I can with bookmarked items.
• For most of the sites I visit I do not actually care about the session data that is remembered when using collections such as previous/next pages within that tab that I was on before I added it to the collection.

The second point comes up because I don't navigate very deep into the sites usually so to get back to the home screen I just want to hit the back button on my phone a few times. But that only works if you added the tab to a collection when it was still on the first page or else you are going to be navigating through all the previous pages that were open when the tab was saved.

I guess with the new home button in nightly that might become less of an issue, maybe.
Haven't really used it a whole lot since I prefer the address bar on the top of the screen.

So I would like to ask: please re-open this issue because the bookmark situation, in my opinion, is not going to be fixed by the recently added features.

And if you are not willing to re-open it then maybe you could please add a little more context as to why you think/feel that the additions cover the lost functionality/workflows from last years update?

Seems like a waste to have someone make designs over a couple of months to bring features back that a lot of users were angry about losing last year, collecting/linking all their separate issues to this one and then closing it after 8 months without updates.

[klint]

Are you referring to the the "Recent bookmarks", "Recent searches" sections etc. that are currently in nightly?

Yes, I am

I might be wrong but the "Recent bookmarks" section appears to only be there if you've bookmarked something within the last 10 days: #20484 So if I do not bookmark anything within that period I am also not going to be able to hit "show all" and navigate to what I actually want to see on my homescreen.

That is correct, but then, if bookmarks are so important for a user, then it is rather likely that they regularly add new bookmark ;)

I just want all my bookmarks back on the homescreen like I had in Fennec. And looking at this thread and the issue tracker I'm hardly the only one.

IMHO, the current implementation is an acceptable solution to start with. Better than before for a user bookmarking intensively.

The past year I have sort of been getting by with having a bunch of collections that I treat as my bookmark "folders" containing most of my bookmarks as freshly opened tabs. E.g. open a bunch of bookmarks from the library view (don't need to create a new tab because they still do not open in the same one if you just tap on the bookmark itself) and then save that as a collection.

But that has some drawbacks. The ones I have personally encountered a whole lot over last year:

• And last but not least, collections are not synced yet, if I remember correctly... that is the main reason why I don't use collection at all. Speaking of which, I wonder whether grouped tabs and inactive tabs are synced.

So I would like to ask: please re-open this issue because the bookmark situation, in my opinion, is not going to be fixed by the recently added features.

Actually, the recently added features do answer the current issue to a large extent. Maybe you're not pleased by the implemented solution, but they do answer. So, better open specific bugs based on the new implementation.

And if you are not willing to re-open it then maybe you could please add a little more context as to why you think/feel that the additions cover the lost functionality/workflows from last years update?

I don't think the question is for me. I'm just a user ;)

[nbmrjuhneibkr]

but then, if bookmarks are so important for a user, then it is rather likely that they regularly add new bookmark

Wrong. The lack of new bookmarks doesn't make existing bookmarks any less important. Usually new bookmarks aren't added just for the sake of it - their main purpose is to be accessed again and again, maybe even on a daily basis.

There needs to be a way to keep content such as bookmarks and history on the home screen permanently, rather than let Firefox hide it depending on some arbitrary factors.

[klint]

Use the top sites then, instead of bookmarks. Are you really accessibles tens of bookmarks a day? Another alternative is to put your most used bookmarks as shortcuts on the Android launcher.
I never use bookmarks actually, because the other alternatives are far more efficient 😊

[Matth7878]

Use the top sites then, instead of bookmarks. Are you really accessibles tens of bookmarks a day? Another alternative is to put your most used bookmarks as shortcuts on the Android launcher. I never use bookmarks actually, because the other alternatives are far more efficient 😊

Please maybe you don't use bookmarks but I assure you there are really useful.
For instance I have bookmarks I access only once in a while so it makes no sense to use them as top sites (which are not customizable on number despite long standing issue about it)

Other alternative ? Which one ? Top sites for bookmarks you access once in a while? Collections which are basically bookmark dumbed down, not syncable and that you can't organize? Shortcuts on launcher screen, but is is logical for user to put all their existing bookmarks ?
Besides if it is so much more efficient why on desktop those solutions are not implemented or why other browsers don't remove bookmarks in their favors?

My goal is not too sound aggressive (pardon me if I do) but really a lot of users are asking for improvement about usability. All that happens in term of UI are features that are far less critical in every day use (tabs group, inactive tabs, and so on) 😟

[klint]

No offense taken, don't worry. And I don't want to sound agressive either :)

To start with, I agree that there is a big problem with collection. As long as they are not synced, they are useless, whatever their purpose is (which I haven't understood yet :P).

Now, regarding bookmarks, I do use them, especially on the desktop. But mainly because that's all what we have there.

On an Android phone, for the most frequently used bookmarks, it's a different world : on the Fenix home page, we have pinned top sites, we have pinned most used sites, we have useless (so far) collections. We have "recent bookmarks" now. And we have the tab tray, which is an alternative way to store frequently visited sites (in list view to show more info).
And on the phone launcher itself, we have shortcuts that we can very easily sort and order in groups and pages, leveraging the power of launcher. .

And for the more seldom used bookmarks, we have the bookmark page in Fenix, which is now only one click away from the home page. But as these are less used bookmarks, one more click is not death, isn't it?

Ok, it is not like it used to be in Firefox 68. But that is life, evolution, change of paradigm from time to time. And we have to adapt. :)

Of course, not everything above is perfect, as issues are remaining, and some of them for a long time. For instance :

• collection are not synced (issue Sync collections (restore in Fenix) #4424)
• when a site can be installed as PWA on the launcher page, it cannot be installed as a page shortcut, which is a real burden (issue Always allow "add to home screen", even if the site can be installed as a PWA #15450)
• I haven't checked whether the new "Recent bookmarks" section gets empty after a while, but if that was the case, a simple feature request to turn it into "most recent bookmarks" would solve the problem ("most recent" would include the latest bookmarks, even if they are 1 year old). Don't hesitate to file a ticket for that if needed.

[madb1lly]

Hi all,
Clearly no attention is being paid to this closed issue any more so the only thing to do about continuing usability problems is to raise new issues.
Cheers 🙂

[nbmrjuhneibkr]

If anyone is going to submit new related issues - please link them here too.

[DragoCubed]

Why was this closed?

[mirko77]

@DragoCubed @nbmrjuhneibkr @madb1lly I gave up and switched to Kiwi Browser

[cadeyrn]

Why was this closed?

[Imold]

@DragoCubed Because they don't care about us, or our needs. I only use the browser on my phone if I don't have my laptop, so bookmarks are the most important thing for me, because they sync. Mozilla doesn't care about power users any more, they just want to attract the chrome user base. That's why I switched to Waterfox on PC.

@mirko77 Thanks for the info it's nice to know that there's another mobile browser that supports extensions. Unfortunately I need a browser that uses Firefox sync,

@cadeyrn But they didn't provide a link or even a number for the issue that this is a duplicate of. You can't close this as a duplicate with out stating what the duplicate issue is so we can follow it.
Therefor this must have been closed because they don't want our input on what we think would make the homescreen more useful. They already decided what they want the homescreen to be and they're not going to change it, we're supposed to just shut up and use it the way they want us to, not tell them how we want to use it.

[Imold]

@cadeyrn Really, your just going to respond with a thumbs down. Your not going to dispute my claims?