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Firefox Test Pilot

testpilot.firefox.com

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Re: Firefox Test Pilot

#21

Post by jgruen »

kibwen wrote: post #4

Is the "Tab Center" feature a prototype for an official version of tree-style tabs, perhaps? I've seen that Servo/browser.html was experimenting with tabs-on-the-side, I'd love to see this graduate to more than just an experiment.

We don't know exactly what's going to happen with Tab Center--or any of these experiments--in the long run. Our goal here is to get feedback from our users to drive successive UX and engineering iterations.

Once experiments have incubated in Test Pilot for awhile, we will have a number of options depending on each experiment's overall success. We may push them over to AMO, or integrate them directly into the browser. If an experiment is really unsuccessful, we may simply cut our losses and walk away. Test Pilot should help us make these decisions more quickly and effectively.

We'll be blogging more about the overall Test Pilot pipeline in the weeks to come. Stay tuned!

Re: Firefox Test Pilot

#22

Post by Aldo_MX »

6a68 wrote: post #14
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #7

Mozilla, please implement HTML5 input types. Thanks, frontend web developers.

You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)

Fine print: CCing a bug doesn't mean it will be addressed in a timely manner, it may take 10 years[1] but in the meantime you'll receive 2,147,483,647 mails of other people "me too"-ing and discussing about the bug.

[1] Not exaggerating: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936

Re: Firefox Test Pilot

#23

Post by chuckharmston »

chongli wrote: post #18
chuckharmston wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially! The simple story is that the current tabbing model in was designed to save you from needing half a dozen browser window open. It just doesn't scale well past a dozen tabs or so, and we know that some users have dozens or even hundreds open at the same time. Tab Center is taking a fresh look at the problem with that in mind.

The whole problem of a tab UI for power users with hundreds or even thousands of open tabs (like me) is mindblowingly daunting. I don't know that tabs on the side is the solution. For a long time I'd been using Tab Groups but I've been frustrated with its limitations. Ideally, I think I'd like something similar to the spatial system of the Classic Mac OS Finder, which I coincidentally expounded upon recently in anoth…

I agree, it is a daunting problem.

Another problem is that it's hard to experiment in the browser; the stakes are very high when bugs or poorly-conceived ideas quite literally break the internet for users. As a result, the development cycle is righteously slow (~18 weeks), the cost of landing code in Firefox is righteously high, and it's just a difficult environment to try new things.

On Test Pilot we aren't trying to build the solution, we're trying to find it. It's a different model of product development than we've historically had at Mozilla. In this case, side tabs are the start, but you can expect new features and concepts to start coming down the pipeline as we start gathering feedback and data about how people use them.

Re: Firefox Test Pilot

#24

Post by 6a68 »

lol768 wrote: post #13

Not entirely sure why this requires a Firefox account. It appears possible to install the mentioned add-ons manually: Tab Center appears to be available from http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ Universal search: (edit: link here was incorrect) Activity streams: https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.ht...

Hey, that's actually the wrong link for the search add-on.

What you've downloaded is a deprecated earlier prototype that may not work at all--you're looking at the wrong github repo. (I just took down the built add-on, so other people don't make the same mistake.)

Test Pilot is about reconnecting desktop Firefox with its community; it's about more than just whatever add-ons are available today. We have feedback forms now, we'll have Discourse user forums integrated soon, and I hope we can eventually start building ideas that come from the community, with the help of the community. You should give it a try :-)

Re: Firefox Test Pilot

#25

Post by callahad »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #22
6a68 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)

Fine print: CCing a bug doesn't mean it will be addressed in a timely manner, it may take 10 years[1] but in the meantime you'll receive 2,147,483,647 mails of other people "me too"-ing and discussing about the bug. [1] Not exaggerating: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390936

You can adjust what events trigger an email at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email

Re: Firefox Test Pilot

#27

Post by callahad »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #20
6a68 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)

Great! So now in like 2 years, hopefully I can simply use type="time" instead of implementing a half baked JS time picker or time validator. It's frustrating seeing them spend so much time on Firefox OS, Hello, etc. and not on making Firefox a really good, standards compliant browser.

You asked us to implement X. We confirmed that we've begun work on implementing X and provided a way you can follow the progress.

You then chose to respond with sarcasm and disdain. What productive outcome could we possibly reach from that exchange?

Re: Firefox Test Pilot

#28

Post by jgruen »

While this isn't integrated into the Test Pilot site UX for the time being, we have Discourse forums set up for all of the experiments in Test Pilot.* If you'd like to register questions or feedback ton Discourse, team members and community moderators will be monitoring the forum.

https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/test-pilot

*Yes, you'll need to sign in with Persona ;)

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