On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 5:30 AM, Michael Henretty <[email protected]> wrote: > So I write this email today as sort of an opinion poll. Personally, I think > it's time we bring back the browser chrome into Firefox OS apps. I think we > should encourage developers to write URL-based apps, to not be afraid of > browser chrome navigation, and therefore to build their Firefox OS app as a > standard website + some experimental (or proprietary :/) APIs.
For me, those are two different things: 1) Should apps be developed with URLs in mind, where a "back" can be done either via a browser chrome button or an app button that calls history.back()? Yes, this should be done, and we do not need to wait on UX for this, this should be a plumbing change in an app. Existing app back buttons can call history.back(). This can be done with "single page web apps" or individual page approaches. 2) Should apps rely solely on browser chrome for back button UI? This is less clear, since it depends on a few factors. I expect UX will be better able to answer the question once they have concrete designs for gaia apps and the Alopex efforts, and get user testing. Some factors that come to mind. Feel free to skip this part, I'm sure UX has a better list of factors: a) Does the device have a physical home button? If so, then taking up vertical space with another bar makes less sense, particularly since many "pages" in an app likely have headers/persistent UI that can afford some horizontal space for a back button more economically than taking a full horizontal row for browser nav. "Smart hiding" of the browser persistent chrome in this case to try to mitigate the space consumption will likely be confusing, it will require new user learning/behavior. It would be disorienting to stare at a screen and not see a way to get out of the current app's state. b) Will the app be used in other containers besides Firefox OS, like a phonegap-wrapped container? Then the app should have the back UI. c) "Back" is not always the clearest expression of navigation flow. For overlays, using an "x" or "close" button can be clearer. Maybe the app is more vertically oriented, so "back" is really "up". It may be that some apps want to explicitly disable a browser overlay chrome, games in particular, so ways to disabling it might be useful, particularly if the device has a physical home. Or perhaps a way to inform the browser chrome if back should be shown, or maybe allow changing of the back arrow to some other icon, like "x" or "up" if it is persistent UI. Also to reiterate a comment already made, whatever is done, it should not be the Android back button. That one provides too much uncertainty to be trustworthy to the user. If the behavior of the back button cannot be predictable, we should not show it. James _______________________________________________ dev-fxos mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos
