Browser cursor issue

From emails: ... We've came up with some ideas for browser on feature phone, you can find the file attached. But it still needs to dig deeper for more use cases and possibilities, so it will be great to have more suggestions from browser team's perspective to make it align with Firefox OS browser experience. However, please note that the browser experience here must take non-touch screen and T9 key pad as consideration to fulfill the need from target users, so the experience will look totally different than the smartphone browser. Looking forward to your responses, thanks. Morpheus Chen ... Hi Morpheus, Is that a cursor on the screen? How is that initiated and controlled? How would I fill out a form or drag an object across a page for example? I think we're going to have to come up with a very innovative new mode of interaction to provide a usable experience of the modern web without a mouse or a touch screen. From what I've heard our previous attempts at caret based browsing didn't go very well, and the web has moved on a lot since then. Do what have resources dedicated to research and development in this area, how much control do we have over hardware design, and what are the timelines? Unless we can come up with something really innovative here I'm very concerned about the damage that could be done to the Firefox brand by attaching it to such a painful experience of using the web. Regards Ben ... Hi Benjamin, Thanks for your questions, and of course it will be better to have a meeting to figure out if there is a better and innovative mode of interaction. But before answering your questions I want to share what we have researched and why we choose cursor-based experience to give you more references and ensure we are on the same page. First, Click UI is designed specifically for D-pad based feature phone, and touch screen is optional. Please always take D-pad and other physical keys as the minimum requirement whenever designing user experience for Click UI. Now the major control experience can be concluded into several ways: touch screen(Smartphone), cursor(Laptop), highlight(Direction key based UI), voice control(Siri), etc. However, the minimum requirement for Click UI is D-pad, so it leaves us not much choices: cursor mode and highlight mode. In highlight mode you can use D-pad to move the highlight to select the actionable item you want (See image 01). In cursor mode you can use D-pad to control the cursor as you are using a mouse on your desktop(See image 02). Inline image 1 Inline image 2 IMG 01 IMG 02 There are pros and cons for these two modes, but we think cursor mode is a better choice for the complicated web environment. Here I list some of the reasons: 1. The target users(technology laggard) are more familiar to the cursor mode because they use desktop browser very often based on user research. 2. Cursor mode can fulfill most of requirements from different web pages these days. For instance, what can be controlled by mouse on desktop can also be controlled by D-pad. 3. There are many decorative items and ad banners across all web pages. It would waste time to skip all actionable items if you just need to choose the link on the bottom of the website. These are why we still choose cursor mode as basic control for browser. But it would be great if we can come up with a brand new control system to fulfill all requirements for D-pad based feature phone. Please find response inline for the rest questions. And let me know if you have any ideas. Morpheus Chen ... Is that a cursor on the screen? [Morpheus] Yes, it is. How is that initiated and controlled? [Morpheus] The cursor is always there whenever browsing. You can use D-pad to control the cursor as if you control it by mouse on your desktop. How would I fill out a form or drag an object across a page for example? [Morpheus] For filling out a form, the mechanism is totally like using mouse on desktop. For dragging an object, tapping "OK" can pick up the item(just like long press to hold the item), then move to the target area and "OK" again to release. But please note that the target users won't spend too much time serving the web on feature phone. Desktop browser is still their main way to interact with the web. I think we're going to have to come up with a very innovative new mode of interaction to provide a usable experience of the modern web without a mouse or a touch screen. [Morpheus] It would be great if we can have a new mode, but please take the target users as consideration if they can understand and learn the new way to control, after all, technology laggard is the main reason why we still choose feature phone for them. Unless we can come up with something really innovative here I'm very concerned about the damage that could be done to the Firefox brand by attaching it to such a painful experience of using the web. [Morpheus] This short video might help you to know more about the target users. https://vimeo.com/128544536 From what I've heard our previous attempts at caret based browsing didn't go very well, and the web has moved on a lot since then. [Morpheus] From my perspective, I think caret browsing is suitable for desktop browser with keyboard, but it might be not very handy and intuitive for the target users. Do what have resources dedicated to research and development in this area, how much control do we have over hardware design, and what are the timelines? [Morpheus] Now the timeline is really tight and we are short on the resources. We might need to confirm what resource we have to answer your question.

I suppose the browser navigation issue should be taken care of, by outsourcing vendor? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1186410#c1 Needinfo UX team to check if this was discussed.

Yes, the issues about browser need outsourcing vendor to take care. Ideally, browser needs more attention. But now UX team is out of resource and within a pretty tight schedule, it's hard to create an innovative new mode to perfectly fulfill all the needs from modern webs, especially on non-touch screen. What we're proposing here is to take what Red tie has already built in and provide a better browsing experience. This approach can not only meet the deadline, but also present a familiar user experience to the target users, who are all tech laggards and unwilling to learn any new model. As a result, UX team will show the outsourcing vendor our workable proposals and have close cooperation with them to make sure the UX is great and aligns with Firefox browser. Please let me know if any concerns, thanks.

OK. Keep the bug open as reminder until we see the design finalized.

Firefox OS is not being worked on