A problem with the "me" box in Firefox 4 in Windows

[Meph]

Hello. The UX team are putting a fantastic amount of effort into
Firefox. A lot of work is being done in making the browser more native
in the OS it's being used in.

In Windows, the "me" button in Firefox 4 is going to be placed in the
top right corner, next to the window controls. However, this causes a
problem, because the Windows UX guidelines don't allow you to do that.
Is there anywhere else where the button can go?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa974173.aspx#frames

[Mike Beltzner]

On 10/19/2009 12:32 PM, Meph wrote:
> In Windows, the "me" button in Firefox 4 is going to be placed in the
> top right corner, next to the window controls. However, this causes a
> problem, because the Windows UX guidelines don't allow you to do that.
> Is there anywhere else where the button can go?

That's mostly a hedge for placement on the assumption that we'll be
working towards some identity solution in Firefox 4. I do think there's
a lot of other places that it could go, though, for instance to the
right of the location bar.

cheers,
mike

[Alex Faaborg]

Since the weave account theoretically controls every aspect of your
Firefox experience (persona, saved passwords and other data,
preferences, etc.) it conceptually makes the most sense to give the
control the highest level of placement. We want logging out and in to
feel like stepping outside of the browser, and then back in. So for
instance we aren't going to show any browser controls when we are
changing accounts (which is part of the reason we don't want to move
the control into the controls themselves).

In terms of violating the windows HIG, I don't think they really
anticipated this type of feature (a platform and sort of pseudo
desktop environment inside of their platform and desktop environment),
so I'm not sure their interactive guidelines can give us a whole lot
of guidance. Visually we can make sure everything matches and flows
correctly.

-Alex

On Oct 19, 2009, at 11:52 AM, Mike Beltzner wrote:

> On 10/19/2009 12:32 PM, Meph wrote:

>> In Windows, the "me" button in Firefox 4 is going to be placed in the
>> top right corner, next to the window controls. However, this causes a
>> problem, because the Windows UX guidelines don't allow you to do
>> that.
>> Is there anywhere else where the button can go?
>

> That's mostly a hedge for placement on the assumption that we'll be
> working towards some identity solution in Firefox 4. I do think
> there's a lot of other places that it could go, though, for instance
> to the right of the location bar.
>
> cheers,
> mike

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[Meph]

I see. It'll be interesting to see how this this takes on. If it turns
out that users don't like it, would it go in the toolbar, or would
that take up too much room?