TLDR: Paged scrolling results in tapping an icon faster and with less errors I will refer to two different ways of implementing a home screen: 1. Paged: As we find in iOS and stock Android. The user navigates through pages of icons that fall into place on a finger gesture. 2. Inertial: The user scrolls through a list and the scrolling acceleration depends on the user's finger motion. As implemented in the current vertical homescreen A user not familiarized with the items layout will employ a similar time to find a specific icon in either a paged or an inertial implementation. Paging is a more effective technique when the user becomes an expert on the physical distribution of the items. Users quickly learn the layout of the icons on a homescreen and can rely on muscle memory instead of visual feedback. e.g: Look at video attached (What's app application: one swipe to the left and tap on bottom left corner). With experience, opening and app becomes more like a gesture and less of a visual search of a specific item in a grid of icons. There's a lot of research about this property derived from the invention of marking menus in 1994: http://www.billbuxton.com/MMUserLearn.html On inertial scrolling muscle memory is less effective, since applying the correct acceleration to a list is harder than discrete gestures that provide a reliable outcome (turn an icon page). When a gesture translates into scroll accelerations the user is likely to over reach or fall short when locating a specific target. The user will have to do additional corrective gestures before tapping the desired icon. We can still implement a vertical scrolling but I suggest to make it paged instead of inertial to improve usability.

I am fairly sure that this is what we are looking for in bug 945584 - scroll snapping to the closest section as you scroll.

Jacqueline is in charge of Homescreen designs.

Diego, this is something Jacqueline and Maria are exploring for home screen in 2.1.

It doesn't look like this will be included for 2.1. NI on Maria as an FYI for 2.2

What's the progress of the spec? If we get started on it soon, there may be a chance to get this into 2.1 assuming we get something nice done on time :)

I haven't seen any of the UX work on this but I think Hung has been involved. Hung, do you know anything about the progress on the magnetic scroll? I will bring it up in our UX daily sync as well.

I'm currently working on an initial spec and will set up meeting to review it this week.

Mass update: Resolve wontfix all issues with legacy homescreens. As of 2.6 we have a new homescreen and having these issues open is confusing. All issues will block bug 1231115 so we can use that to re-visit any of these if needed.