Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[David Rajchenbach-Teller]

Looks promising.

Are you in touch with Noidart, the developer of Profilist (the other
profile switching add-on)?

Cheers,
 David

On 18/12/15 18:17, Andrea Marchesini wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> This week I landed a set of patches to introduce 'about:profiles'.
> This page shows the list of existing profiles and gives the possibility to
> create new ones, delete them, rename them, change the default one.
> 
> I wanted to work on this feature because I think having multiple profiles
> and manage them with a simple UI is extremely useful and it's important for
> web developers who want to test a websites with different logins, people
> who care about privacy and want to have different profiles for different
> use-case, and so on.
> 
> This page/feature is not meant to be a replacement of containers:
> containers have a completely different workflow, it's a major feature of
> firefox and I want to see it enabled by default on nightly :)
> 
> I also landed a replacement of the existing ProfileManager, built on top of
> about:profiles: instead having a XUL UI, we show a XUL browser element
> rendering |about:profiles?manage|. This new profile manager offers the same
> features of the previous one.
> 
> There are still a couple of open issues, and maybe more will come. But I'm
> working on them and I'm having good feedback.
> 
> b
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Ben Kelly]

I really like being able to manage my profiles within a normal firefox
tab.  Awesome!

The replacement for the ProfileManager probably needs some UX work,
though.  It was not clear to me which profile was actually going to be
launched if I clicked the "Start Nightly" button.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 12:17 PM, Andrea Marchesini  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> This week I landed a set of patches to introduce 'about:profiles'.
> This page shows the list of existing profiles and gives the possibility to
> create new ones, delete them, rename them, change the default one.
>
> I wanted to work on this feature because I think having multiple profiles
> and manage them with a simple UI is extremely useful and it's important for
> web developers who want to test a websites with different logins, people
> who care about privacy and want to have different profiles for different
> use-case, and so on.
>
> This page/feature is not meant to be a replacement of containers:
> containers have a completely different workflow, it's a major feature of
> firefox and I want to see it enabled by default on nightly :)
>
> I also landed a replacement of the existing ProfileManager, built on top of
> about:profiles: instead having a XUL UI, we show a XUL browser element
> rendering |about:profiles?manage|. This new profile manager offers the same
> features of the previous one.
>
> There are still a couple of open issues, and maybe more will come. But I'm
> working on them and I'm having good feedback.
>
> b
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about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Andrea Marchesini]

Hi all,

This week I landed a set of patches to introduce 'about:profiles'.
This page shows the list of existing profiles and gives the possibility to
create new ones, delete them, rename them, change the default one.

I wanted to work on this feature because I think having multiple profiles
and manage them with a simple UI is extremely useful and it's important for
web developers who want to test a websites with different logins, people
who care about privacy and want to have different profiles for different
use-case, and so on.

This page/feature is not meant to be a replacement of containers:
containers have a completely different workflow, it's a major feature of
firefox and I want to see it enabled by default on nightly :)

I also landed a replacement of the existing ProfileManager, built on top of
about:profiles: instead having a XUL UI, we show a XUL browser element
rendering |about:profiles?manage|. This new profile manager offers the same
features of the previous one.

There are still a couple of open issues, and maybe more will come. But I'm
working on them and I'm having good feedback.

b
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Jason Duell]

I think we need to compact the new UI.  The old profile manager shows me up
to 5 profiles that I can simply click on to launch the browser.  With the
new UI the info for the first profile fills up the whole popup window, so
launching other profiles now requires me to scroll down, then click.  That
sounds minor (and in some sense it is) but 95% of the time the profile
manager is launched to select which profile to run (versus trying to find
where the profile is stored on disk, etc), so making that a slower
experience seems like a step backward.

It's great to see it running as a normal tab, though!

Do we have any plans to make Profile manager more prominent in our user
experience?  I've used it for years now to keep one instance of firefox
running with work stuff, and one for personal use.  But it remains a buried
secret, when it's really handy for a lot of use cases (people sharing a
computer, etc).  I know a lot of people who wind up using different
browsers to achieve the same thing, which seems like a waste.

Jason


On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 12:54 PM, Andrea Marchesini  wrote:

> >
> >
> > The replacement for the ProfileManager probably needs some UX work,
> > though.  It was not clear to me which profile was actually going to be
> > launched if I clicked the "Start Nightly" button.
> >
> >
> Right. This is one of the bug I'm working on (bug 1233032). The new UI has
> been written but, definitely, and we still need some UX work.
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-- 

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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[noitidart]

Thanks Yoric for the note here! :)

Hi @Andrea, I was also working on HTML version since I heard that XUL is going 
to go away soon. I used React. Here is a preview of the GUI, the filter feature 
(by default profiles are sorted alpha-numerically ascending, that can be 
changed in the options page) (preferences can be set to affect across all 
profiles, or just the current one).

Heres a quick screencast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziTbU9RzZYU

Also @Andrea are we going to change how profiles.ini is used?


I used react in html, and I've been working on getting react to work in the xul 
scope so I can drop this menu item brainlessly into the main menu panel as in 
Profilist v1 and v2.

Thanks I hope I can work closely with you here.

On Friday, December 18, 2015 at 9:22:49 AM UTC-8, David Rajchenbach-Teller 
wrote:
> Looks promising.
> 
> Are you in touch with Noidart, the developer of Profilist (the other
> profile switching add-on)?
> 
> Cheers,
>  David
> 
> On 18/12/15 18:17, Andrea Marchesini wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > This week I landed a set of patches to introduce 'about:profiles'.
> > This page shows the list of existing profiles and gives the possibility to
> > create new ones, delete them, rename them, change the default one.
> > 
> > I wanted to work on this feature because I think having multiple profiles
> > and manage them with a simple UI is extremely useful and it's important for
> > web developers who want to test a websites with different logins, people
> > who care about privacy and want to have different profiles for different
> > use-case, and so on.
> > 
> > This page/feature is not meant to be a replacement of containers:
> > containers have a completely different workflow, it's a major feature of
> > firefox and I want to see it enabled by default on nightly :)
> > 
> > I also landed a replacement of the existing ProfileManager, built on top of
> > about:profiles: instead having a XUL UI, we show a XUL browser element
> > rendering |about:profiles?manage|. This new profile manager offers the same
> > features of the previous one.
> > 
> > There are still a couple of open issues, and maybe more will come. But I'm
> > working on them and I'm having good feedback.
> > 
> > b
> > ___
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> > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
> >
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Ehsan Akhgari]

On 2015-12-18 5:43 PM, Stephen Horlander wrote:

The current profile manager certainly doesn't meet our UX standards, so we
shouldn't try to make the replacement meet them either. That being said, we
should make sure it's no _less_ usable than the old one.


I might disagree that we should take the status quo as a reason to not do 
better ;) But yes, my concerns are mostly around regressions. In its current 
state I think there are several ways the new profile chooser is less usable 
than the old one.


Please file bugs for those.  We'll definitely fix
any regressions from the current UI.  (And I would say that if you have 
further ideas for fixes that are not mere regressions you should file 
those too!)


Note that there have been a few bugs already filed and some of them have 
been fixed on inbound.  At least some of those bugs can be found in the 
dependency list of bug 1179129.

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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Kartikaya Gupta]

Note that there are add-ons such as "Profile Switcher" which allow you
to display the profile manager dialog without touching the
command-line. I don't know if that qualifies as "user facing" or not.
It's certainly an advanced user feature that most people will never
see.

kats

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Bobby Holley  wrote:
> I believe he means that the current profile manager isn't really
> user-facing, since it needs to be enabled on the command line (at least
> once): http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager
>
> The current profile manager certainly doesn't meet our UX standards, so we
> shouldn't try to make the replacement meet them either. That being said, we
> should make sure it's no _less_ usable than the old one.
>
> bholley
>
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Stephen Horlander 
> wrote:
>
>> On Friday, December 18, 2015 at 4:52:00 PM UTC-5, Benjamin Smedberg wrote:
>> > As it stands, this is not intended to be product code and so I
>> > specifically advised Andrea not to spend UX/product time on this. It is
>> > still a strict replacement for the old profile manager code which was
>> > very difficult to maintain.
>> >
>> > It's unlikely that we'd use this code as a base for any production
>> > version of multiple-user Firefox.
>> >
>> > --BDS
>>
>> I am not sure I understand. Does "not intended to be product code" mean
>> that this won't be riding the trains and shipping in a general release of
>> Firefox?
>>
>> - Stephen
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Benjamin Smedberg]

On 12/18/2015 4:07 PM, shorlan...@mozilla.com wrote:


Hi Andrea,

This looks like a promising effort to improve profile management.

I work on the on the Firefox UX team and I do have some concerns about the 
current design.

Can you tell us some more about next phases of this work before it would go 
into the product?

Have you consulted anyone from the Firefox front-end or Firefox UX team about 
this already?


As it stands, this is not intended to be product code and so I 
specifically advised Andrea not to spend UX/product time on this. It is 
still a strict replacement for the old profile manager code which was 
very difficult to maintain.


It's unlikely that we'd use this code as a base for any production 
version of multiple-user Firefox.


--BDS

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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Stephen Horlander]

On Friday, December 18, 2015 at 4:52:00 PM UTC-5, Benjamin Smedberg wrote:
> As it stands, this is not intended to be product code and so I 
> specifically advised Andrea not to spend UX/product time on this. It is 
> still a strict replacement for the old profile manager code which was 
> very difficult to maintain.
> 
> It's unlikely that we'd use this code as a base for any production 
> version of multiple-user Firefox.
> 
> --BDS

I am not sure I understand. Does "not intended to be product code" mean that 
this won't be riding the trains and shipping in a general release of Firefox?

- Stephen
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Tanvi Vyas]

Very cool baku!  Thank you! I just tried it out, and although I'm sure 
there are many things we could do to enhance the UI/UX, this is much 
better than what we had before.


On 12/18/15 9:17 AM, Andrea Marchesini wrote:

Hi all,

This week I landed a set of patches to introduce 'about:profiles'.
This page shows the list of existing profiles and gives the possibility to
create new ones, delete them, rename them, change the default one.

I wanted to work on this feature because I think having multiple profiles
and manage them with a simple UI is extremely useful and it's important for
web developers who want to test a websites with different logins, people
who care about privacy and want to have different profiles for different
use-case, and so on.

This page/feature is not meant to be a replacement of containers:
containers have a completely different workflow, it's a major feature of
firefox and I want to see it enabled by default on nightly :)

I also landed a replacement of the existing ProfileManager, built on top of
about:profiles: instead having a XUL UI, we show a XUL browser element
rendering |about:profiles?manage|. This new profile manager offers the same
features of the previous one.

There are still a couple of open issues, and maybe more will come. But I'm
working on them and I'm having good feedback.

b
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Bobby Holley]

I believe he means that the current profile manager isn't really
user-facing, since it needs to be enabled on the command line (at least
once): http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

The current profile manager certainly doesn't meet our UX standards, so we
shouldn't try to make the replacement meet them either. That being said, we
should make sure it's no _less_ usable than the old one.

bholley

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Stephen Horlander 
wrote:

> On Friday, December 18, 2015 at 4:52:00 PM UTC-5, Benjamin Smedberg wrote:
> > As it stands, this is not intended to be product code and so I
> > specifically advised Andrea not to spend UX/product time on this. It is
> > still a strict replacement for the old profile manager code which was
> > very difficult to maintain.
> >
> > It's unlikely that we'd use this code as a base for any production
> > version of multiple-user Firefox.
> >
> > --BDS
>
> I am not sure I understand. Does "not intended to be product code" mean
> that this won't be riding the trains and shipping in a general release of
> Firefox?
>
> - Stephen
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[shorlander]

On Friday, December 18, 2015 at 12:17:42 PM UTC-5, Andrea Marchesini wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> This week I landed a set of patches to introduce 'about:profiles'.
> This page shows the list of existing profiles and gives the possibility to
> create new ones, delete them, rename them, change the default one.
> 
> I wanted to work on this feature because I think having multiple profiles
> and manage them with a simple UI is extremely useful and it's important for
> web developers who want to test a websites with different logins, people
> who care about privacy and want to have different profiles for different
> use-case, and so on.
> 
> This page/feature is not meant to be a replacement of containers:
> containers have a completely different workflow, it's a major feature of
> firefox and I want to see it enabled by default on nightly :)
> 
> I also landed a replacement of the existing ProfileManager, built on top of
> about:profiles: instead having a XUL UI, we show a XUL browser element
> rendering |about:profiles?manage|. This new profile manager offers the same
> features of the previous one.
> 
> There are still a couple of open issues, and maybe more will come. But I'm
> working on them and I'm having good feedback.
> 
> b

Hi Andrea,

This looks like a promising effort to improve profile management.

I work on the on the Firefox UX team and I do have some concerns about the 
current design.

Can you tell us some more about next phases of this work before it would go 
into the product?

Have you consulted anyone from the Firefox front-end or Firefox UX team about 
this already?

Thanks!
- Stephen
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[Stephen Horlander]

On Friday, December 18, 2015 at 5:16:00 PM UTC-5, Bobby Holley wrote:
> I believe he means that the current profile manager isn't really
> user-facing, since it needs to be enabled on the command line (at least
> once): http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

It's true that it isn't a feature that is widely accessible, especially due to 
it's "hidden" nature. We do however have a support article on how to enable it 
on SuMo 
(https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles)
 and we recommend enabling it to developers on MDN 
(https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Multiple_Firefox_Profiles). 
In addition to that there are many 3rd party websites that illustrate how to 
enable it. You can find them by searching for "Firefox Profiles".

So it is still a shipping feature that at least some amount of people will 
encounter.

> The current profile manager certainly doesn't meet our UX standards, so we
> shouldn't try to make the replacement meet them either. That being said, we
> should make sure it's no _less_ usable than the old one.

I might disagree that we should take the status quo as a reason to not do 
better ;) But yes, my concerns are mostly around regressions. In its current 
state I think there are several ways the new profile chooser is less usable 
than the old one.

- Stephen
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Re: about:profiles and the new profile manager

[David Rajchenbach-Teller]

In that case, perhaps the first thing to land and let ride the trains
would be a clean profile API to let add-on developers (including Andrea
and GoFaster) experiment with implementing prototype profile managers?

Cheers,
 David

On 18/12/15 22:51, Benjamin Smedberg wrote:
> As it stands, this is not intended to be product code and so I
> specifically advised Andrea not to spend UX/product time on this. It is
> still a strict replacement for the old profile manager code which was
> very difficult to maintain.
> 
> It's unlikely that we'd use this code as a base for any production
> version of multiple-user Firefox.
> 
> --BDS
> 
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