I have been missing on all the functionalities available under the "Device" tab for months, because I understood that the "Device" tab was used for inspecting things in whatever *physical* device I had connected to the computer. It took someone in the Gaia team to point out that the "Device" tab allowed accessing things in the current "device" we were connected to, such as the System app. Can I suggest renaming "Device" to "Debug", "Inspect" or something similar? :-)

> I have been missing on all the functionalities available under the "Device" tab for months Interesting. Why do you need the device section? The "debug" button is the same. But you don't see "start" and "stop". Do you need that? > I understood that the "Device" tab was used for inspecting things in whatever *physical* device I had connected to the computer. That's the case. > It took someone in the Gaia team to point out that the "Device" tab allowed accessing things in the current "device" we were connected to, such as the System app. Why would you need to connect to the system app?

I needed the device section to debug the System app. I can't access it otherwise, AFAIK. We were seeing some odd behaviour when opening modal windows while working on the Cordova port, and were told to have a look at the DOM of the system app. Definitely not ideal but it's a reason why people need to debug things that are not their own apps. The device tab is not used for inspecting things in a physical device. Currently it is showing me the apps in the SIMULATOR that I started from the App Manager. So that's why the tab name is misleading. Let's not focus on why do we need to connect to the system app, but rather on why is the device tab badly named, shall we? :-)

If we rename "Device" to the name of the device ("Keon" "Peak" or "Simulator"), would it be better? "App" means "your app", and "Device" means "What's happening on the device". Debugging the system app only happens if: - you have a device that allows certified apps debugger (debugging something that is not your app) - you are actually interested on the system app This only happens when you're a Firefox OS developer, not a normal app developer. Using a term that would lead the app developer to use this "Device" tab might for debugging be confusing. But I understand that this is confusing. And I don't think changing the name of the tab will help. Maybe we should change the app manager UI to make it clearer. Maybe we could only have the "App" tab, and once a device is connected, add a "Permission" tab, and a "Runnning app" tab. What do you think?

(In reply to Soledad Penades [:sole] [:spenades] from comment #0) > I have been missing on all the functionalities available under the "Device" > tab for months, because I understood that the "Device" tab was used for > inspecting things in whatever *physical* device I had connected to the > computer. > > It took someone in the Gaia team to point out that the "Device" tab allowed > accessing things in the current "device" we were connected to, such as the > System app. I think the confusion stems from the fact that App Manager can only target a single device at a time, be that physical or simulated. I can see how one could think of the tool as the single dashboard for everything FirefoxOS-related on their computer and perhaps that's something to aim at. However, the App Manager explicitly makes the user initiate a connection to a device, the thing that it will target, which should clearly be the only valid context from that moment on, from the App Manager's point of view. That said, I can see how serious app developers for Firefox OS will often have both a physical device attached and a simulator installed on their system. If the device that the App Manager connects to is a simulated device, that is communicated from the tool's footer and, more prominently, from the b2g desktop window open on the side. If we were to further disambiguate the target of the Devices tab for this particular demographic, then perhaps we should modify the icon instead of the label, either using the simulator icon, or adding that icon (or part of it) as a badge to the existing device icon.

I think developers can bear with the AppManager targeting one device only for now, be it physical or virtual, but the label will still be confusing because when I think of a "device" I think of a physical one, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this. Even your copy misleads me: when I start the AppManager I get a "Not Connected. No device found. Plug a device or Start simulator" message on the footer which to me sounds like use a device, or use the simulator. See what I mean? I keep insisting you should rename that tab to "DEBUG" or similar :-) If you can in the future handle more than one device, having the name of each device on its tab would be absolutely obvious and you could get rid of the "DEBUG" label. The footer doesn't work as a place I go to look to see what I am connected to, once I fired up something. It doesn't even work well for starting the simulator (it took me a while to develop that habit). Maybe I have bad habits? Maybe it's the UI itself? A footer, for me, is somewhere where I see relatively unimportant status messages, not a place where actions can be launched or important information is displayed. I think the UI for starting simulators should be right where now we have the "╳ Not connected. Please connect your device below." message. Don't make the developer go on a tour all over the page - make it easy for them to get their work done quickly! Of course please take my criticism with a pinch of salt; I am not a UX designer, and I'm just discussing my experience :-) (I can file new bugs if needed, because that latest suggestion sounds like a new bug. Sorry-just trying to make AppManager better :-/)

The new UI fixed this.