I've been using the new homescreen for a few weeks now to follow its
progress and also to try Pin The Web. I won't comment on PTW since it's
still too early, but the homescreen itself looks relatively stabilized.
Some background first: with the vertical homescreen, I was using 4 sections:
One for apps I use very often, one with apps I use less often, one with
about 10 sites I read daily, and a last one with sites and apps I use
once in a while. The second and last sections were usually in collapsed
mode. That was a nice personalized layout, with everything important
easy to reach.
I tried to reproduce a similar setup with the new homescreen, but this
was not possible:
- there are no sections anymore, just one big list of icons. That has 2
consequences for me: 1) it's impossible to collapse icons I don't use
often, so I end up with a very busy homescreen. 2) anytime I add a new
icon, I can't move it around the screen without disorganizing the ones
after it. It's super annoying when you have spent time moving the ones
you use more to the right of the screen.
- the scroll snapping is useless. It prevents me from scrolling to a
point where the icon I want to tap is right under my thumb, by jumping
away from me.
There are improvements also, especially the way we enter and exit "move
& delete" mode. Much easier than the small [x] target from the previous
homescreens!
While this is based on a statistical sample of 1 user, I'm worried that
we may be about to ship a homescreen with usability regressions.
I'd like to get answers to some questions:
- why did we start from scratch instead of improving the vertical
homescreen?
- do we still have time to fix some/all of the usability issues for 2.5?
Fabrice
--
Fabrice Desré
b2g team
Mozilla Corporation
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