First of all, thanks for bringing this up. DISCLAIMER: I am just a foxfooder (that is, an enthusiastic user who sometimes reports a bug) with no experience whatsoever in software developement or UI design. Still I'd like to contribute my two cents. My considerations mostly derive from my experience as a Flame user and, marginally, from reading this design article https://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name (that is, my opinion is greatly non-qualified).
My main concern reguarding FxOS is the Homescreen, as it's the user's first point of contact with the OS and greatly influences its judgement. I most dislike Homescreen's edit mode. I think it's an overengineered solution and that is counter-intuitive, while basically all of the other parts of the OS are beautifully simple, obvious and self-explaining. I was amazed when, briefly, it was lacking from the new Homescreen (although that brought up other issues); everything felt much simpler and more natural. I have no good suggestions for the Homescreen: I understand how difficult a problem that is! If I were forced to provide one, though, I think I would start from what is obvious for the user: tap an icon to run the app, drag and drop an icon to move it. If I want to trash an app, I should then drag and drop that into a trash bin, and since while I move an icon around I don't need the search bar at the top, that would be where I would place the trash bin. That would mean losing the possibility of changing a pinned site's name from the Homescreen, forcing the user to open the site, open the browser's menu and re-pin the site. I think this is more sensible than it sounds, as it's a relatively uncommon operation to change a site's name. Another issue with the Homescreen is the lacking of widgets. I'm not saying widgets are necessary nor intrinsically good, and I don't think it's a good idea to just mimic more popular OSs. Though, FxOS Homescreen is bare bone in comparison to Android, Windows 10 or Ubuntu Touch. I remember my first reaction to Firefox OS, two years ago, was "alright, there are no widgets, so it must be somewhat behind Android Gingerbread." Things haven't changed much up to now, in this reguard. While a comprehensive widget solution should be furthering Firefox OS's vision, not just copying Samsung's Touchwiz, there are a few smaller issues which need intervention: unread count on messages, E-Mail, Phone etc...; Calendar icon should display the right day's number, not constantly '1'; Clock icon should be a working clock, not a static icon. This shows how a Homescreen made of just static icons is limited. Other issues with the Homescreen were briefly discussed in this thread: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/pin-the-web-homescreen-no-more-drawers-and-scrolling-issues/5418 In general, I am excited to see progresses along the line drawn by the Alopex initiative: I like the direction FxOS is taking and I would love to see corageous choices and innovative designs, first of all the fusion of Homescreen and browser app. Another small area I would love to see improvements in is system messages: they appear on a full-screen grey background, alienating the user from what it was doing. I think a more refined design would be more pleasant to look at. I also have something it's puzzling me, but I can't manage to put my finger on it. Much has been said about an Android-style back button: there's even even an add-on to add that to the homebar. Let's call this a 'navigation' back button, as it brings you to the structurally-previous view inside an app. Then there is the 'history' back button implemented in the browser. At last, there is the 'Ctrl-z-style' back button, as described in https://www.fastcodesign.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-design-a-bad-name as a great feature Apple dismissed. Each OS has to implement (or dismiss) these three kinds of back functions, which are somewhat similar but still different. Is there a sensible way to implement this all in a structural way? How this plays with FxOS and its agenda? I have no answer here, but maybe some of you have. Finally, I think the single most important thing for FxOS (and any other OS as well) is receiving updates and support for a long time. There have been painful failures in this sense: had everything worked as it should, now thousands of people would be using FxOS 2.2/2.5 instead of being stuck with 1.3! Each of those outdated devices is a missed chance. That would also be a huge point for FxOS over Android. Thanks for bearing with me. I have been talking about stuff I don't really know, so I'm expecting I said debeatable things at the very least. Nonetheless, it's good to share and maybe receive feedback, so this time I didn't shy away! _______________________________________________ dev-fxos mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-fxos
