Firefox/Projects/Preferences UI

Summary

This project will occur in two stages, with one for a target for Firefox 4.0 and one with a target for Firefox 4.n, where n<0.

Phase 1: Privacy and Site Identity

• Refactor our manager and exceptions window UI to allow changing all of the privileges for a particular site

Phase 2: Total UI Redesign

• Streamline the number of options
• Expand the "Apps and Services" tab to include all applications and services that Firefox interacts with (phising and malware, search engines, 404 services, handling different data types). Make this UI actually human readable (no mime types!)

Current Status

Just getting started on mockups

Next Steps

• Research
  • What is the scope for site identity information?
  • How do people think about site identity? How should they?
  • What is relevant to people about online privacy and security?
  • How can people be given the best information about complex topics so they can protect themselves online without much knowledge about the technologies involved?
  • How can one UI cater to people who understand site identity technologies and to people who do not?
  • (using Mechanical Turk to get some data here)

• Project scoping
  • What's possible for 4.0?

Related Bugs

• Bugs will get filed once the first round of mockups are complete

Team

• Project Lead: boriss

Designs

• Overview (coming soon)

Tabs

• General
• Privacy (will likely stay mostly the same)
• Sync
• Apps and Services
• Web Sites
• Add-ons (will be handled in a separate project)

Goals/Use Cases

• Provide the right amount of control, putting users in charge of their browsing experience, without overwhelming them with micromanaging.
• Provide a range of features and interactions that weren't possible in previous releases of Firefox.

Non Goals

• Placating extremely boundary and minority use cases
• Increasing complexity
• Giving the user options that they have no hope of understanding
• Playing blame the victim
• Using prefs as a means to settle debates over default settings

Older Mockups

Testing

• Test plan