The user study about the forget button (bug 1079945) has yielded some interesting results. Let's break down the (UX) work that should be done as a follow-up.

Sorry, the attached PNG has an invisible background. This may be easier to read: http://cl.ly/image/2e1M3e2G2G2P

Thumbs up! Looks great.

A few details: * What specifically should the "last site I visited" be? EG, if I visit justinbieber.com, then switch to my pre-existing onedirection.com tab and click the button... Which site gets cleared? One is literally the last site visited, the other is the current tab. Seems like this should be "current tab" as being most obvious, as last-visit is still sorta time-based in a scenario like this. OTOH, one can't close regretfultab.com and _then_ use Forget to purge history. And in either case, what if the site being purged is open in multiple tabs/windows? Should they all be closed? Perhaps both cases would be clearer with the TLD+1 shown in the dialog, but then that's a pain if it's a looooooong site name. * The checkbox being in-column with the other icons makes it really mistake as just another icon, and not something clickable. * When not closing tab+windows, should the "Thanks!" post-forget doorhanger be shown? I think we've talked about this before, but I'm again wondering if we should add some telemetry to understand usage before/after. (The main problem here is if it's a privacy issue to record the fact that this button was used. I don't _think_ so, since it's only Private Browsing that's not supposed to leave any local trace, but we should tread lightly here.)

Updated based on review with :phlsa

Good questions. Simplicity is a tough balance. :) In the case of the "Last Site I Visited" option, your scenario is about attention and intention. The design intention we recommended was that Forget should only forget the current tab because that is where the user's current attention is placed. In terms of the use cases that participants described in the study, this would fit the "site I am secretly buying a birthday gift on for my partner on our shared computer" or "I didn't want to visit that last site" cases. All tabs get wiped out when you restart anyway, so we could consider modifying the the "Last Site I Visited" option to the "Last Site I Visited in all Open Tabs." However, an idea we played around with is the "Last Site I Visited" option could cascade through your history. So, in your original example, if you press Forget and FF reopens, the last site you visited would be onedirection.com. You could press Forget the "Last Site I Visited" again and onedirection.com would disappear. Users could do this ad infinitum. As always, Telemetry would be helpful and interesting to see what users are doing. Telemetry can help us see if one option just isn't used at all. However, this is really one of those messy, human contextual design problems. We really want to know why an option is or isn't used in order to iterate toward a better solution. Telemetry cannot answer the why and how questions. To answer some of our questions: I recommend iterating on this with another small user study with a prototype.

Sorry guys, I didn't see your comments before resolving after chatting with phlsa. Reopened for the moment as a result. - Philip and I were discussing the "Last site I visited" option as well and felt that it was clearer to the users if we said "this site" instead, implying that it's going to erase the site they are looking at; a much clearer connection. - Regarding the checkbox, my informal polling suggests that people do notice it because of the blue and aren't confusing it for being an icon. I've tried alternate placements, but it just starts looking cluttered. One idea: What if all the items were checkboxes, so you could make a choice whether to keep your cookies and/or history and/or close tabs after clicking the button. Then it would just be a column of checkboxes, so there is no confusion for the user. - Not sure a Thanks panel needs to be shown. We could just close the tab and pulse the Forget at the same time. Thoughts?

Also, I have replaced the final option to clear the entire history with an option to just forget the sites visited since Firefox was last opened. In IRC Gijs brought the Clear Recent History dialogue to my attention. It does very much the same thing, but uses time-based options. Is this due to a technical reason (timestamped removal is easier than per site removal), or just how it was designed? What, if anything, should be done to unify the two? Finally, considerations need to be given to making everything keyboard-accessible.

(In reply to Bill Selman from comment #6) > All tabs get wiped out when you restart anyway, so we could consider > modifying the the "Last Site I Visited" option to the "Last Site I Visited > in all Open Tabs." Right, although we only clear stored history/cookies for sites matching the option. Hmm, that's worth thinking about. Does it even make sense to say "forget history for the current site, and also close all my other tabs but keep history for them"? We're treating "closing tabs" and "clearing history" as separate things, but they might be the same in the user's mind. Or at least blurred together. Perhaps we should just treat closing tabs as part of clearing history, and not try to also roll in "close everything else too" (and the option to avoid it)... Specifically: * Selecting "forget current site" on foo.com should clear history for foo.com, and close any foo.com tabs. All other tabs would remain untouched. * Selecting "sites I've been to today" should clear history since midnight, and close any tabs with sites loaded since that time. Tabs with sites not visited today would remain open. * Selecting "sites since opening Firefox" should clear history since startup, and close... Hmm. All tabs, but if Session Restore was used we could leave those tabs untouched. Except users who cleared the "don't load tabs until selected" option might be surprised. But this is veering towards edgecases. For most users I'd expect the latter two to effectively be "all tabs" anyway. But this might be tricky to explain concisely in the UI, and closing a subset of tabs could just be flat out weird. Additionally... Often "since I opened Firefox" will be equivalent "today". Do we need both? Maybe remove "today", and replace it with some kind of "Custom" option for users who want more control? > However, an idea we played around with is the "Last Site I Visited" option > could cascade through your history. So, in your original example, if you > press Forget and FF reopens, the last site you visited would be > onedirection.com. You could press Forget the "Last Site I Visited" again and > onedirection.com would disappear. Users could do this ad infinitum. I think the current design (in this bug) would do that, if the "close windows" was unchecked. At least until you run out of tabs. Similarly, an idea from a few months ago was to avoid the timeframe selection by having repeated clicks progressively clear more and more. For example, the first click nukes 5 minutes, click again for 2 hours, and yet again for 24 hours. But it's poor UI if you frequently want to clear the longer timeframes. Maybe it works better for sites, as sort of an accidental bonus. (Although if we think users will frequently want to clear the last N sites, we'd still want better UI for that usecase.)

Updated mockup with new options for forgetting: Forget...: - this particular site - the sites I've visited in this tab - the sites I've been to today - this browser's entire history wselman and I met to review the use cases garnered from his user study, and believe the above options can be used to address all the stories. For users who have accidentally clicked a link they wish they hadn't, the first options allows them to quickly erase their tracks. For users who start browsing after clicking that link, the second option allows them to erase all traces of what they were doing in that tab. For users who have been browsing up a storm over multiple tabs and windows, they can erase everything they've done that day. For users who are on public computers and want to be sure they have covered their tracks, they can nuke the entire browser history for peace of mind. There are myriad other stories that fit under these options too. I think it's a good start and something we can monitor and modify after more usage.

> Hmm, that's worth thinking about. Does it even make sense to say "forget history for the current site, > and also close all my other tabs but keep history for them"? We're treating "closing tabs" and "clearing > history" as separate things, but they might be the same in the user's mind. Or at least blurred together. > > > Perhaps we should just treat closing tabs as part of clearing history, and not try to also roll in "close > everything else too" (and the option to avoid it)... yeah, this seems to be the most common complaint I've see in user feedback. -User has been browsing for many hours or days... -wants to get rid of a few minutes or an hour of activity and make that selection... -user gets **** when all windows and tabs get shut down and they need to start over rebuilding their home... more association of history/cookies and tabs/windows and granularity in removing and cleaning up these in unison seems like it would reduce the frustration level of people ending up with too much getting killed off. on a slightly diffent topic there also seems to be a few people that get lead though the tour thinking they are just demo-ing what it might be like to use the feature, then end up actually executing a forget action and blowing away things unexpectedly. If the tour was changed to a video demonstration that might avoid that problem, yet train people to better understand what the feature does, and does not, do.

(In reply to Sevaan Franks [:sevaan] from comment #10) > For users who are on public computers and want to be sure they have covered > their tracks, they can nuke the entire browser history for peace of mind. Wouldn't that case also be addressed with the »forget today« option? I doubt that many people use a public computer for more than 24 hours in a row…

I don't really understand why people on public computers wouldn't use new private window to begin with, rather than first having to go looking for this button in customize mode, put it on the toolbar, exit customize mode, do their thing, and then forget everything.

(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] from comment #12) > Wouldn't that case also be addressed with the »forget today« option? I doubt > that many people use a public computer for more than 24 hours in a row… It's a psychological thing. How can you ensure your tracks are covered? Nuke everything. No one on a public computer cares about the data integrity and continuity of history. (In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #13) > I don't really understand why people on public computers wouldn't use new > private window to begin with, rather than first having to go looking for > this button in customize mode, put it on the toolbar, exit customize mode, > do their thing, and then forget everything. I think it's an education issue. Not everyone knows about private browsing.

(In reply to Sevaan Franks [:sevaan] from comment #14) > (In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] from comment #12) > > Wouldn't that case also be addressed with the »forget today« option? I doubt > > that many people use a public computer for more than 24 hours in a row… > > It's a psychological thing. How can you ensure your tracks are covered? Nuke > everything. No one on a public computer cares about the data integrity and > continuity of history. On public computers, sure people don't care about that. But the option would also be visible to users on non-public computers. For those users, deleting everything is most likely a big convenience trade-off (Tiles disappear, awesomebar ceases to work, logins are forgotten). Since the Forget feature is general purpose I'm not convinced that the psychological effect is worth this trade-off. (In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #13) > I don't really understand why people on public computers wouldn't use new > private window to begin with, rather than first having to go looking for > this button in customize mode, put it on the toolbar, exit customize mode, > do their thing, and then forget everything. One thing I can see happening is that the button starts to appear in the default setups of many internet cafés, since it stays there once one user customizes it into the toolbar. Private browsing needs planning and knowledge of the feature. The forget button only requires the knowledge.

(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] from comment #15) > (In reply to Sevaan Franks [:sevaan] from comment #14) > > (In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] from comment #12) > > > Wouldn't that case also be addressed with the »forget today« option? I doubt > > > that many people use a public computer for more than 24 hours in a row… > > > > It's a psychological thing. How can you ensure your tracks are covered? Nuke > > everything. No one on a public computer cares about the data integrity and > > continuity of history. > > On public computers, sure people don't care about that. > But the option would also be visible to users on non-public computers. For > those users, deleting everything is most likely a big convenience trade-off > (Tiles disappear, awesomebar ceases to work, logins are forgotten). Since > the Forget feature is general purpose I'm not convinced that the > psychological effect is worth this trade-off. Also, don't forget that managing your history is a largely buried affair. You need to be a slightly advanced user in order to know how to find it and manage it. This button provides a clear, quick way to clear things. How about we attached some telemetry probes and see if/how people are using it before removing it all together? Better to give users a wider range of options at the beginning and narrow in than do the opposite.

Hm, taking features away after they have landed in the mainline product is a pretty hard thing to do (I'm just remembering the add-ons bar for example). One of the great things about this revision is the addition of the »Show all History« button, where we could include more advanced tools. But we shouldn't give people a tool that we advertise as being simple and for everyone that allows them make far-reaching decisions like deleting all their history, especially if they usually won't fully understand the consequences. - The main use case for »forget everything« is also accomplished with »forget today« - Wiping the entire history has implications that most users just can't know about (awesomebar, tiles, form history, logins) - It becomes worse on non-public shared computers (think family) because now we are wiping *everyones* data

Removed deleting all history option.

Hey Sevaan, Can you elaborate based on some of the earlier points raised, as well as some other concerns given the latest mockup? In particular: - clearing all tabs when only deleting data related to 1 site doesn't really make sense. Not clearing all tabs usually leaves that tab to just re-set the cookies/history/things that you've just deleted (cf. bug 1088137) - "sites I've visited in this tab" - I suspect there is a limit as to how far back we keep the back/fwd history of a particular tab. Does this matter? - what do we do with pre-dating data for a particular site? If I visit onedirection.com in a tab, then save my forum password, then use the forget button for "this site", I might reasonably expect the password to be cleared. Ditto for bookmarks. If I use it with a site I've been visiting for 5 years, maybe I'd expect just that to stay put? Even if we never touch passwords/bookmarks, the same question might be repeated for history and other things (e.g. localstore/indexeddb data). - what happens if I've also visited the site in question in another tab? - what happens if I do this in private browsing - I guess we shouldn't clear things in the non-private windows/tabs, but that further complicates matters... - the iframes/subdomains/"what constitutes a site" issue raised by dolske in comment #4 - we're departing further from the time-based model, which means significant development effort because we don't currently support doing that kind of thing. Is that something we should invest in in parallel to the existing Clear Recent History dialog? At a minimum, we should have a keyboard-accessible alternative to some of the new things in this popup, and this change will make it harder to "squeeze that into" the current CRH mold.

Hi Gijs, great questions. > - clearing all tabs when only deleting data related to 1 site doesn't really > make sense. Not clearing all tabs usually leaves that tab to just re-set the > cookies/history/things that you've just deleted (cf. bug 1088137) Yes, I would agree, but the user does have the option of unchecking the "Close all tabs" box. Some possible alternate ideas: - The box could be unchecked by default - The box could be greyed out, unselected, if the user is only forgetting one particular site Philipp what do you think? I don't think it's a good idea to automatically uncheck/check that box based on what the user selects as it would be easy for users not to notice. > - "sites I've visited in this tab" - I suspect there is a limit as to how > far back we keep the back/fwd history of a particular tab. Does this matter? Do you know what the limit is? We should erase as much of that single tabs history as possible (ideally all). > - what do we do with pre-dating data for a particular site? If I visit > onedirection.com in a tab, then save my forum password, then use the forget > button for "this site", I might reasonably expect the password to be > cleared. Ditto for bookmarks. If I use it with a site I've been visiting for > 5 years, maybe I'd expect just that to stay put? Even if we never touch > passwords/bookmarks, the same question might be repeated for history and > other things (e.g. localstore/indexeddb data). I see the button as being just about forgetting your history and cookies. Passwords and bookmarks created will remain. As for pre-dating, my expectation is that if you want to forget a particular site, that domain is erased completely from history. You are not just forgetting that particular instance of you visiting the site, but rather all mention of it. > - what happens if I've also visited the site in question in another tab? If we are erasing the domain from the history, then even if is open in another tab, that history entry will be removed too. > - what happens if I do this in private browsing - I guess we shouldn't clear > things in the non-private windows/tabs, but that further complicates > matters... - Good question. Philipp, what are your thoughts about having a custom message here in Private mode? Instead of seeing the options, it could just display the Private browsing icon with some text to the effect of "You are currently in Incognito mode. Simply closing this private window will erase all your cookies and history." > - the iframes/subdomains/"what constitutes a site" issue raised by dolske in > comment #4 > > - we're departing further from the time-based model, which means significant > development effort because we don't currently support doing that kind of > thing. Is that something we should invest in in parallel to the existing > Clear Recent History dialog? At a minimum, we should have a > keyboard-accessible alternative to some of the new things in this popup, and > this change will make it harder to "squeeze that into" the current CRH mold. Philipp, what are your thoughts on these points?

(In reply to Sevaan Franks [:sevaan] from comment #20) > Hi Gijs, great questions. > > > - clearing all tabs when only deleting data related to 1 site doesn't really > > make sense. Not clearing all tabs usually leaves that tab to just re-set the > > cookies/history/things that you've just deleted (cf. bug 1088137) > > Yes, I would agree, but the user does have the option of unchecking the > "Close all tabs" box. Some possible alternate ideas: > > - The box could be unchecked by default > - The box could be greyed out, unselected, if the user is only forgetting > one particular site > > Philipp what do you think? > > I don't think it's a good idea to automatically uncheck/check that box based > on what the user selects as it would be easy for users not to notice. Sure, but should we close the affected tabs (ie that have "this site")? What happens to tabs which are now on site X (which the user wants to clear) but which have history including site Y? Should we navigate back to Y? Is that unexpected? Should we close the tab, which can have dataloss if there are form fields involved (I think...) ? If we do not close the affected tabs, they are in some cases still going to leave history things, which is probably not what the user wants. The user closing the tab first doesn't work because then we can't select "this site" for the forget button... Then there is the even more interesting case of having a tab be on site Y but we're clearing site X which is in that tab's history... I don't know if that will "just work" if we try to clear history per site, or if the back/fwd history is going to remain. > > - "sites I've visited in this tab" - I suspect there is a limit as to how > > far back we keep the back/fwd history of a particular tab. Does this matter? > > Do you know what the limit is? We should erase as much of that single tabs > history as possible (ideally all). No, not offhand, sorry.

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #21) > (In reply to Sevaan Franks [:sevaan] from comment #20) > > Sure, but should we close the affected tabs (ie that have "this site")? What > happens to tabs which are now on site X (which the user wants to clear) but > which have history including site Y? Should we navigate back to Y? Is that > unexpected? Should we close the tab, which can have dataloss if there are > form fields involved (I think...) ? > > If we do not close the affected tabs, they are in some cases still going to > leave history things, which is probably not what the user wants. The user > closing the tab first doesn't work because then we can't select "this site" > for the forget button... Why would this be the case? I can open Google in a new profile, and remove all my cookies and clear the history with the tab still being open. If a user does not want the tab to close, what history items would remain? If they Forget this Site, and don't want the tabs closed, then the info should be forgotten but the site would remain in tab. If they click on anything in that page, then that is a new history entry. > Then there is the even more interesting case of having a tab be on site Y > but we're clearing site X which is in that tab's history... I don't know if > that will "just work" if we try to clear history per site, or if the > back/fwd history is going to remain. This will have to be something we would need to address. If I forget a site that is in a previous tabs back history, I would expect the site to be removed from that tab history, so I would skip it if I kept going back. The forget button is about forgetting all traces, so there shouldn't be residual tab history open elsewhere.

(In reply to Sevaan Franks [:sevaan] from comment #22) > (In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #21) > > (In reply to Sevaan Franks [:sevaan] from comment #20) > > > > Sure, but should we close the affected tabs (ie that have "this site")? What > > happens to tabs which are now on site X (which the user wants to clear) but > > which have history including site Y? Should we navigate back to Y? Is that > > unexpected? Should we close the tab, which can have dataloss if there are > > form fields involved (I think...) ? > > > > If we do not close the affected tabs, they are in some cases still going to > > leave history things, which is probably not what the user wants. The user > > closing the tab first doesn't work because then we can't select "this site" > > for the forget button... > > > Why would this be the case? I can open Google in a new profile, and remove > all my cookies and clear the history with the tab still being open. If a > user does not want the tab to close, what history items would remain? As noted earlier, this was bug 1088137. We didn't use to wait for the tabs to be closed, and that caused cookies and/or other data to be left behind because the pages in the tab created new history data when they realized they were about to be closed. This is part of how the web works: as long as the site is open, it can (and in many cases will) leave traces on your machine. To be sure, the tab needs to be closed or we need to navigate away from the site. > > Then there is the even more interesting case of having a tab be on site Y > > but we're clearing site X which is in that tab's history... I don't know if > > that will "just work" if we try to clear history per site, or if the > > back/fwd history is going to remain. > > This will have to be something we would need to address. If I forget a site > that is in a previous tabs back history, I would expect the site to be > removed from that tab history, so I would skip it if I kept going back. > > The forget button is about forgetting all traces, so there shouldn't be > residual tab history open elsewhere. So if I currently have the site I'm removing open in a tab, and 'close all tabs' is unticked, that site stays open, but if I just navigated from foo.com to bar.com, and delete foo.com, that site gets removed from the tab's back/forward history? Likewise, if foo.com remains open, I delete foo.com using the forget button, and I then go to bar.com using a link from foo.com, you would expect there to be no entries for foo.com in the tab's back/forward history? From an engineering perspective, that is inconsistent. I realize it might seem intuitive for an end-user (maybe? I have doubts about that, too), but it sounds extremely complex to implement. I'm skeptical about the pros/cons of this elaboration on the original "panic button" idea, and whether it's worth investing the required engineering time. I suppose evaluating that is not really the goal of this bug, though...

Shelving this for now and removing the needinfo...