New Firefox 4.0 theme and conservative users
Pavel Cvrcek
as long time contributor to Mozilla project and person which has
experience with end user support I expect that some conservative users
won't be happy with new Firefox 4.0 theme.
I think that new Firefox 4.0 theme is right direction but in the end we
don't loose conservative users too. Do we have some idea how we will
solve this problem?
For example: conservative user will update from FF 3.6 to 4.0 and will
be surprise with new theme (no menubar, tabs above awesomebar etc.).
Will we offer some option to switch to "old Firefox" in one step for
such user? Will be such option easy discoverable?
I can remember upgrade from FF 2.0 to 3.0 when some users had problem
with new awesomebar and autocomplete from bookmarks which they didn't
want and they didn't know how to change it. I think new Firefox 4.0
theme is bigger change and I expect familiar problem.
Regards,
--
Pavel Cvrček <pcv...@mozilla.cz>
http://www.mozilla.cz/
Alexander Limi
> I think that new Firefox 4.0 theme is right direction but in the end we
> don't loose conservative users too. Do we have some idea how we will solve
> this problem?
>
Yes. :)
> For example: conservative user will update from FF 3.6 to 4.0 and will be
> surprise with new theme (no menubar, tabs above awesomebar etc.). Will we
> offer some option to switch to "old Firefox" in one step for such user? Will
> be such option easy discoverable?
>
You should be able to revert any settings you don't like to a 3.6 setup,
that's been a guiding principle all along.
Also note that a user on XP won't get the new single-button menu by default,
whereas a user on Windows 7 will. This should minimize the "conservative"
users' issues — as most of these are on XP. You can always enable the new
menu on XP, but it won't be the default.
Of course, how much of this is ready for beta1 isn't known yet, but when the
final version ships, this is how it should work.
I can remember upgrade from FF 2.0 to 3.0 when some users had problem with
> new awesomebar and autocomplete from bookmarks which they didn't want and
> they didn't know how to change it. I think new Firefox 4.0 theme is bigger
> change and I expect familiar problem.
>
Yes, I think that was a timing issue — later releases made it possible to
disable showing these entries in the URL bar, and I agree that these should
probably have shipped when 3.0 came out.
We're definitely trying to keep the upgrade experience in mind.
--
Alexander Limi · Firefox User Experience Team · http://limi.net
Pavel Cvrcek
> You should be able to revert any settings you don't like to a 3.6 setup,
> that's been a guiding principle all along.
I know but how easily available? Will be option revert all major changes
in one step? If no then we have a problem (for such group of users).
Maybe I talk about first run experience a bit.
One thing is that option is available, second thing is if this option is
easily discoverable. Option in settings is nice thing but this is
"hidden" for many users.
Is any doc about this issue in wiki?
Alex Faaborg
> I know but how easily available? Will be option revert all major changes in
> one step?
>
Everything is available from a single place, Firefox > Customize. However,
you will have to check two different things to fully revert:
-menu bar
-tabs on top
Some applications provide a choice between new and "classic" mode. This
might make the operation of reverting a second or so faster, but in general
I think users should actually have to form an opinion on these two
questions, that way they might actually decide that they like one of the
options. Users are actually pretty unsure and fickle. In a whole lot of
cases it's been shown that users aren't always right about what they think
they would prefer, and the only way for them to make an informed choice is
for them to actually try out their options. So for instance all of the
applications that have a "classic mode" option as early as the installer
(WinZIP, WinSCP, etc.) might be following a principle of giving users what
they initially think they want, but in many cases they aren't actually
following a principle of giving users what they actually ultimately wanted.
-Alex
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