Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

About the text vs. icon thing:
In another post - maybe not even in this thread, I can't remember exactly - I wrote how UI design is balancing conflicting goals. Like: Efficient workflows vs. pretty looks. Easy to learn for a first time user ("intuitive") vs. easy to use for somebody who already knows the application. Etc. etc.

Icons vs. text is one of these battlegrounds. Most people find an icon they look for much quicker in a list of icons than a certain text in a text-list. Therefore, an icon is by far superior to text if you want to provide quick access for experienced users, for those who use each and every function twice a day.

OTOH, if you don't even know which functions are available, how are you supposed to know what "yellow rectangle with little star on the top left corner" is supposed to do? Is it related to "yellow folder with plus symbol on upper right corner"? Or is it similar to "3 yellow rectangles above each other"?
You would need a manual. But everything that needs a manual is a bad GUI by definition.
(And even though we all assume it doesn't: It does apply to so called "well known" icons such as the RSS-icon or a star for favorites. A lot of people just do not know what these things are.)

So what's The Right Thing to do? If your application is for geeks and experienced users who have fun exploring it by trial and error, use symbols. If not (and that's what we normally have), use text. If there's room for it, use both or give the user an option in the settings. That's what most applications do.
It's no use discussing a wrong or right here as a matter of principle. But I guess it's obvious Fennec is not aimed at the geeks among us, so text should be the better choice as a general rule.

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

I personally am encouraged by the beta. Its not fully usable...you lose keyboard after going fullscreen(?) but its a good concept.

I'm just a touch discouraged that there are so many pieces that are half-delivered for the Nokia...I want it all now!

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

What I meant was: "Oh, it's too hard to translate these two lines of text into all the languages we want to deploy the application in, so instead of doing that, let's just try to explain it in icons and let the users figure it out."

Yet icons need to be translated too, because there are cultural implications on those as well. Take for example the PSP: in the East "X" is an acceptance symbol, like checking off something you want. in the West, "X" is to cancel. So when games are translated to English, the Circle and X actions are always swapped.

So you can't always avoid doing translations, and icons are never 100% universal.

But standardization, specifically international bodies like ISO and IEC are the ones that made that happen. The icon, on its own, is not very intuitive (My in-laws' printer has the word "power" labeled under the button, even though the button has the icon on it, for example). To an engineer, a circle with a line in it might read as a broken circuit; When I first saw it introduced on a PC I thought it was a reset button and not an on/off toggle. It's supposed to be an abstraction of a physical toggle switch in the "up" position. I've seen plenty of people never see this, just like people don't immediately see the faces instead of the vase (in that optical "illusion"), if you know what I mean. Most people will muddle past an icon's meaning as long as they can associate the image to the desired action.

Yeah, but that documentation *is* text, and in this case it doesn't exist in the app. (E.g., there's no "help" menu.) Again, I just think we need more instruction on this page. If I'm an regular user, odds are I've set a new home page for the app and I'm not seeing this startup ever again. By illustrating a drag, that's what they think they are doing; If you just wanted to remind me the panels are there, point to the edges with an arrow and illustrate the panel's contents.

Basically, the experience my wife had left her unsatisfied with it and I would suspect less likely to want to try using it again, since the browser came off as being more complicated than it needed to be. An explicit instruction on how to use the panels would have solved the confusion immediately.

See http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/10-use...ps-and-tricks/

It's tip #1.

Yeah, again, there's nothing inherently *wrong* about what's there, it just needs some more clarity.

The compass is mostly right, although the important part is making sure it matches the acceleration of the drag action. I may want to slightly reposition the page to center something and would want the fine control. But if I perform a fast drag, then the fine control should be switched off and I should "throw" the page in the primary angle created by the drag and not through every fine point within. The compass would be used to create magnetic paths that keep the drag in a good direction when the drag is fast enough to not be a "fine-tuning."

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Hilarious statement. If you look at European traffic signs they are mostly symbols (compare to US). You have to learn these symbols. Once you know them you recognize them quicker because as you say it is quicker processed than text. You also notice consistency. Example: a round sign with red on the outside and white on the inside has a black symbol in it. It means something is not allowed. This is all part of a HIG which was harmonized between EU countries because of inconsistencies.

The first time I heard the term 'browse' or 'bookmark' I didn't know what it was either. Or 'Netscape'. Or 'Mozilla', for that matter. I thought it was some kind of digital cheese. :D

I suppose MobileSafari is for geeks and experienced users then.. but do explain how these users became experienced and how they started to use it before iPhoneOS 1.0..

And, I suppose a command line is for noobs.

Hell froze over... you got it all backwards as far as I'm concerned...

Yes although in our case there is no room for both. Just like there is no room for stylus and finger.

:confused::rolleyes:

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Honestly, if this touch UI can't stand up to someone who has previously used/touched/seen an iPhone, then we have bigger problems than just "should we just have written 'swipe left for tabs' under the icon." :)

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Gestures are also used in conversations and meetings. They're very useful. Although I can't find a good English website about it... http://www.lichaamstaal.com/english/...l?meeting.html

That is what it means here too. We use 'x' or 'v' or a circle around the option for that here. Usually it tells you what to do in the description, with an example. Last time I made such a test was recently during an IQ test. Conveniently, it also explained me I should not try to make sure the whole checkbox was filled because that'd take too much time.

True, but it is something to capitalize on. Because this marked is young it is also something to perhaps set standards on there where there aren't standards. I'm referring to UI hence HIG standards; not W3C or ISO.

Yes, here too on the printer. It has both. This also teaches the user the meaning of the icon. Or it teaches the user the meaning of the English word power. Japanese people are not able to speak English. But they can read it just fine.

Oh! The way I saw it was like a '1' and a '0' in one symbol, with the round not complete, but if you take the '1' away it is complete. This represents, to me this: != (IsNot). I forgot the name of it.

Yes, or documentation in general, or getting the user to the documentation. The video is not text btw.

Ah yes, with it dark from light (black to light grey) this seems like a shadow. So you know in which direction it goes.

I see. I had it before, but I thought what I'd do was drag that bar from top to down. Because it is very small. Since I enabled Dock after jailbreak this didn't function anymore because now this was a sunburst gesture.

This becomes very complicated. Especially when keeping in mind the different resolutions and devices. This is landscape, but there are also portrait devices such as mobile phones with touchscreens. In that regard the chance you want to merely scroll from left to right on the screen is small. If there is no scrollbar visible it is 0. (Here I assume Fennec developers will implement a translucent scrollbar.) This is also not explained by the picture when you fire up Fennec. And it'd be hard to explain it.

That the bar pops up quickly, and is there fully, while the rest disappears again is also not logic. This has to be changed, but I don't know what the intention is. You could indeed explain the user to swipe harder instead. But maybe all the user wanted was the location bar. Which is then not usable. If you had multitouch you could use a second finger to touch the location bar. But lets be realistic here: this is getting too complex for practical usage.

When compiling data for bug reports and feedback you have to be precise.

Not losing what you typed in a form after a crash is a great feature of Shiretoko. Crashing however, is not.

My point was not that it makes her experience invalid. Heck, by now there is a representable group of people who have used touch UIs. My point is merely that it scews her expectations. If we'd have a questionaire we'd make sure (using a box for crossing a 'v' or 'x') to differentiate those users who have previously used touch UIs from those who are new to touch UIs. And perhaps make sure we also leave room for the many middle grounds inbetween.

If the goal of Fennec was to be a clone of MobileSafari and have the same gestures then it'd be a very valid concern. Fennec however is not MobileSafari. Maybe some features of MobileSafari are better or make more sense. But we should give Fennec a chance. We should not try to clone MobileSafari. We should root a better product than MobileSafari. In my opinion it already has some nice benefits. Such as NoScript extension. This is what I say about RX-51 and Maemo 5 as well. We shouldn't make it an iPhone clone. We should learn from the good aspects of the iPhone and iPhoneOS instead. So that doesn't mean we suddenly ditch Hildon and start using GNUstep as base.

There is one goal of Fennec which is clearly different from MobileSafari. Fennec gives a full screen experience of the web site, but tries to make it easy for the user to get more control back. If you think of it this is great when you have web applications running. It is not good if you want to have oversight about page load, https, and quick access to buttons like 'fav', 'rss', 'back'. On the other hand if you read a few posts back I describe S60browser with all its texts about RSS and... my goodness. I can't even remember all the options it has. They're in Dutch too, while I normally browse in English and have OS in English except on my phone. Because Symbian is relatively well translated in Dutch.

So please, do not think I said the experience is invalid. That is not my opinion and not what I meant to express.

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

This is probably why scrolling doesn't work while loading a page (from Ars Technica):

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Touché ;)

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Write-up on Ars Technica:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/n...ta-release.ars

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

They are mostly going in the right direction here, but still.

Most disappointing line in Ryan's article: "The ARM port of TraceMonkey doesn't deliver the same kind of performance boost as the x86 version, but it does quite well."

damning with faint praise...

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

i suspect its firstly coded on x86, and have massive optimizations for that architecture..

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

And the fact that JIT actually works on x86.

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Never. My posts may be inconsistent because I keep mixing my point of view as an end user with that of the UI designer in me (and the two of them don't always agree), but my arguments never fail. It's me, after all. How could I be wrong? :D
The way I see it, we have progress because people identify problems and solve them. And we have progress because people are trying to solve the secrets of the world surrounding us.
There is a faint possibility of progress by just fooling around for no purpose (in fact, that's what nature does: evolution), but if we took this way for comuters, we'd still be using punchcards as a UI.
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. You know the game:
The market is driven by hypes and media attention rather than by reason. Consumers don't make choices. Managers do. And they choose every media's darling du jour for integration in their next devices. Letting the hype build up and not at least trying to speak some words of warning (like: "Do you know which functions you use on your browser? Did you check if Fennec offers these basic functions at all? Copy/Paste, anyone?") is grossly negligent.

All the people who are mesmerized now because they can slide the internet to the left an to the right... You need to ask them now if this is want they want a browser to do. Or if they'd rather want a possibility to copy a phone number over to their SIP clients, send a link via email, save the time tables for offline viewing in case they won't have 3G access later when they need them.... and so on.
If they answer: No, sliding left and right all day long is fun, and I've never copied anything from a browser to another applicaton anyway, then it's fine. Really. But for those who do need any of these functions (or others Fennec lacks, but MicroB offers) it might have been important that the topic was raised and they were reminded of their actual needs.

That's what party poopers like me are for.

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Yeah, its all just hypes. Multi touch is useless. Using your finger as pointer device is useless. Nokia is following an Apple hype. We should all go back using stylus, or better yet keep 2 with you in case you want to eat some rice :D

You mostly just flame with your scroll from right to left. Cut it out.

I'd just use Weave and copy/paste it there. Or write it over. I can't figure out copy/paste on Symbian either. Certainly I haven't missed it just like I would not miss MMS on my phone. Yet others miss it. Maybe rightfully so.

Since we're speaking open source software here instead of Church of Corporation.. did they whine on forums? Or file a bug report? I think the latter is a very useful thing to do if it frustrates you this much...

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Well, remember, it's not that she immediately tried to drag things around like it was Safari -- in fact, that would have started revealing panels. Her expectations that a touch UI lets you drag canvases around should have helped her.

The interface simply DID NOT give her a clear and salient starting point to work with. Her main expectation was that it should look like a web browser (e.g., with a location bar) when it first starts up. It didn't and that was the problem.

The question here is how big of a problem is this really? It's not -- there aren't that many people who would randomly just download Firefox Mobile without reading a bit about the new touch UI first on the page they download it from. Hell, it's likely the reason why they WILL try it.

Again, the default state isn't *broken,* it's just poor (i mean literally, as in the opposite of rich), and testing a "cold start" with someone was just my way of providing evidence that there is room for improvement.

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

Just noticed this (although there is a Mozilla bug report filed) -- Fennec has a big problem with active sites like Google Docs & Google Maps. These sites want to define certain behaviors for double-click / double-tap and dragging for other purposes, but that fails b/c Fennec wants double-tap to zoom and dragging to pan the browser window. I wonder how many other sites have this problem? Probably any other map sites for starters.

Oopsie. :o

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

theillien:

I'm having the same problem with passwords. In Gmail by example, I can enter my user ID but the password field remains blank no matter what I try to type. Handwriting won't work either.

I'm using a N800. Did you manage to solve this problem?

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

I experience the same problem, on both Google and Yahoo sign-in.

Re: Firefox Mobile BETA 1
 

How to use mouse cursor in Firefox beta 5 or 6 ?