User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 Currently, I suspect most users are not aware of the private browsing feature. And I forgot it even existed until now since there's no toolbar button to make easy use of it for us lazy people. But visually (not to be confused with textually) there's no good way to quickly tell if you're in private browsing mode or not. Secondly it's counter-intuitive to close out of Firefox only to manually restart it to get back to your previous session again. In other words, it's not as prominent and straight forward as it probably should be. Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce Steps to Reproduce: 1. You cannot reproduce what does not exist! 2. Repeat step 1 until step 3 is created to outline new steps to over-ride steps 1 and 2. Actual Results: All users get is a dialog that the browser is restarting, then tab with a brief message explaining private browsing mode after Firefox restarts itself. Other than that, there's no way to really tell other than seeing that "private browsing" is appended to the title in the application window. Expected Results: We should probably make use of the little masquerade ball mask in the form of a private browsing button users can stick into their toolbar. 1. Toggling it on performs a quick restart into private browsing mode. 2. Toggling it off restarts into the previous session. This should probably have been in the toolbar, tab bar or as a tab option (ie: send tab*1*/link to private browsing mode) from the start to introduce it to more users as a feature. Otherwise we're not really encouraging it's use and some might be missing out on a potentially useful feature in my opinion. *1* denotes a possible edge case: Maybe deleting that particular tabs history and if possible nuke associated cache entries before moving it into a new private browsing window. Opening links in this fashion could be a possible option though. It would also be nice if when in private browsing mode there was a good visual indicator to show users that Firefox is (for lack of a better description) not operating as expected. Chrome does this by placing the familiar neighborhood watch character in the upper left of the application window next to the tabs. The window border goes from the familiar light blue to a darker navy which indicates stealth. Similarly this could be pulled off in Firefox by coloring tabs, all buttons within the tab bar and the tab gutter border (bottom border full width) navy blue. This would serve as a good indicator while remaining somewhat stylish against the default gray background. Additionally a button left of all tabs (or right of in RTL langs) displaying the masquerade ball mask with menu options relevant to the mode (if any) where applicable as an alternative to a toolbar button. Alternately we could use the old SSL indicator by inverting the colors of the address bar. However while this might work it I think it would be potentially confusing for some when matched against the new address bar security indicators and recommend against it by default but possibly leave it open for theme authors. Naturally an associated set of prefs, either within the settings or at least in about:config to toggle these features would be big plus. And useful for those at work with screens visible to the entire office who may not want to (easily) reveal the fact that they're in private browsing mode. But as always it's useful for those who want to hide what they see as clutter. I'll post a mock-up of the tab, buttons + gutter color idea suggested above shortly.

Shifting the color of tabs and the main bottom border as an idea to indicate a user is in private mode. The only thing missing from this image is using the little masquerade ball mask in a button left of the first tab for added effect. But it's not necessary.

Half of this bug is a dupe of bug 469212 (about having a toolbar button which can toggle the private browsing mode). The other half was previously decided against because we didn't want people who pass your computer by to be able to say whether you're in private browsing mode or not, but I'll let Alex re-evaluate that decision if necessary. Also, Lech, in order to exit from private browsing mode and go back to your previous session you don't need to close Firefox and open it again, you can simply click Stop Private Browsing from the Tools menu.

Ahh, I did a search and didn't find any relevant bugs covering this and it appears the button suggestion I brought up is the same. But it hits upon a simple accessibility problem with it not being very intuitive in regard to starting/stopping private browsing. While it's good that the option is there, it's not the first thing which came to mind. Thus I figured closing the browser would automatically restore my previous session (which it probably could with a pref setting) As for the visual elements with a play on the tab bar, again this should possibly be a pref as well as not all of us are in the open and discretion isn't a concern. By default it could be on with an option to disable or vice versa wouldn't be too much. But the most important thing is that it's also very helpful and important to quickly and clearly distinguish which mode a user is in.

>But the most important thing is that it's also very >helpful and important to quickly and clearly distinguish which mode a user is >in. yep, I think we all agree, the only reason we didn't do a significant visual change was that we were holding off until we could get it right (we unfortunately ran out of time in the previous ship cycle). Cc'ing Stephen who did some really great mockups of a "night theme" that we've been thinking about using for when the user is in private browsing mode, in order to provide a clear indication in the user's peripheral vision so that they don't have any mode errors.

A full theme switch would be pretty cool, I'm not sure if that much would even be necessary but it would be a better than nothing at all. Then theme authors could take advantage of it to the fullest. The minimum should be at least coloring the tabs or something to that effect to show the user they're browsing privately.

(In reply to comment #5) > A full theme switch would be pretty cool, I'm not sure if that much would even > be necessary but it would be a better than nothing at all. Then theme authors > could take advantage of it to the fullest. The minimum should be at least > coloring the tabs or something to that effect to show the user they're browsing > privately. As Alex mentioned, an early mock-up was available early last year http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20070515-privateBrowsing/stealthBar.jpg

(In reply to comment #5) > A full theme switch would be pretty cool, I'm not sure if that much would even > be necessary but it would be a better than nothing at all. Then theme authors > could take advantage of it to the fullest. The minimum should be at least > coloring the tabs or something to that effect to show the user they're browsing > privately. Theme authors can customize their theme inside the private browsing mode today (see bug 463189 for more details on how to do this, it's pretty trivial). I had written a blog post in this regard as well: <http://ehsanakhgari.org/blog/2008-11-08/prepare-your-add-private-browsing>

OK, neat. That's very helpful for theme authors, but doesn't address the lack of theme by default. Either way that's good to know, but I sort of gave up on alternate themes and have been using the default for some time since Alex has pushed the default theme forward quite nicely. I did however find an extension that satisfies the toolbar button condition quite well https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9517 the only downside is there's no way to hide the statusbar entry. Not a horrible thing but if you have a few items already in your statusbar which you use often then this button on accident can happen with regularity.

>A full theme switch would be pretty cool Now we are just trying to decide if making a "cloaking" sound effect would be over the top or not :)

Oh dear, no. no cloaking sounds that would be too much.