Fenix: Swipe up the bottom bar to see the tab menu

Created on 23 Jun 2020 · 19Comments · Source: mozilla-mobile/fenix

What is the user problem or growth opportunity you want to see solved?

I like the new design but it it feels inconsistent. If you can swipe down to close the menu why can't you swipe up to open it?

How do you know that this problem exists today? Why is this important?

It would make the app easier to use because you won't have to aim for the tab button and it would feel more natural with the gestures.

Who will benefit from it?

Better accessibly for left handed people

Gesture feature request 🌟 sourpatch

Source

snakedye

👍18 🎉6

Most helpful comment

I think this video looks good.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/islbb9/added_some_flair_to_firefox_for_android_and_some/

black7375 on 23 Oct 2020

❤3

All 19 comments

This will conflict with A10 gestures.
Earlier they had that swipe up gesture in firefox where it was showiy some quick items but later removed...

sheikh-azharuddin on 23 Jun 2020

👍2 👎1

This will conflict with A10 gestures.
Earlier they had that swipe up gesture in firefox where it was showiy some quick items but later removed...

Actually I don't think so. There will be no problem with gestures. I've tried swipe up bottom bar with highest sensivity and doesn't conflict with gestures.
That swipe up gesture didn't removed for conflict with Android 10 gestures as i remember.

hakkikaancaliskan on 24 Jun 2020

I'll link this issue in #176 since I can't find an older issue requesting this. There is some discussion in #176 of potential issues with Android 10 gestures interfering with swiping up at the bottom of the screen, but nothing definitive. Will wait for UX feedback to determine if this is a gesture we want to add and if the Android 10 gestures will be a problem.

person808 on 24 Jun 2020

Assigning to @topotropic for UX feedback

AmyYLee on 24 Jun 2020

An option could be a toggle in the settings to switch this on or off.
Ideally, this toggle would be off by default for devices using the Android 10 gestures and on by default for everyone else.
Though I could live with it simply being off by default for everyone.

dglttr on 24 Jun 2020

👍1

An option could be a toggle in the settings to switch this on or off.
Ideally, this toggle would be off by default for devices using the Android 10 gestures and on by default for everyone else.
Though I could live with it simply being off by default for everyone.

When I was on android 9 I loved that quick swipe up gesture which was showing some options of the 3 dot menu...but later on they removed saying this conflicts with A10 gestures...I vote for bringing back the feature with a toggle to turn on/off...default should be off.

sheikh-azharuddin on 24 Jun 2020

If the bottom bar is slightly taller, I don't think it would be in conflict with A10 gestures.

snakedye on 24 Jun 2020

I vote for this feature, too. I still find it confusing that I can swipe it down, but not up

zcdunn on 27 Jun 2020

The closed tray should also be visible as it used to be in the early days of Fenix, for better discovability.

klint on 30 Jun 2020

12174 would add the much of the support necessary to allow this to be done from an engineering perspective. If UX gives the go-ahead I can work on this. Question for UX if we do decide to implement this: would this only available for the bottom bar?

person808 on 8 Jul 2020

@topotropic to follow-up

AmyYLee on 10 Jul 2020

12174 would add the much of the support necessary to allow this to be done from an engineering perspective. If UX gives the go-ahead I can work on this. Question for UX if we do decide to implement this: would this only available for the bottom bar?

@person808 I'd be curious to learn how much work is involved here - if the foundations are there and it's a rather quick thing to do, I'd be curious to try it out and see in how much it collides with A11 gestures.

If we implement it, it would be just for bottom bar, yes. Thanks!

topotropic on 17 Jul 2020

Once the PR I mentioned gets merged. I'll try to implement a version of this.

person808 on 17 Jul 2020

👍3

When I was on android 9 I loved that quick swipe up gesture which was showing some options of the 3 dot menu

Would a screen wide swipe up gesture conflict with bringing back the ability to swipe up on the 3 dot menu? If so, maybe an alternative is to have the gesture be to swipe up from the tab button instead of the entire bottom bar?

opusforlife2 on 24 Jul 2020

@topotropic @person808 The thing is this issue was I think filed keeping in mind with the 3 button Android navigation layout but it doesn't consider that most of the devices are now switching to gestures navigation by default and I think this is way Google's Android development team wants to go with. Gestures will become very common on Android no matter how much we resist. Of course. there are a lot of use cases for 3 button Android navigation layout and that's reason why they still kept on Android and made mandatory by its CDD documentation. But the fact remains that if we add this sort of feature it'll trigger the Android app multitasking gesture (recents app switcher). There's a very tiny space left between the Fenix and Android gesture navigation pill (see the Screenshot¹) and some (read a lot) Android OEMs hide that pill button altogether (see the Screenshot²) making it even harder to not trigger the Android recents app switcher gesture instead of what this issue wants to trigger. So you either implement such gestures in 3 button Android layout or don't enable them on Gesture navigation layout.

However, if you still insist on adding this gesture then I'd say at least suggest to add a divider line between Fenix's address bar and the Android's gesture navigation pill bar so that it at least becomes easy to spot where the Fenix's address bar is or Fenix's window itself is ending and where the Android's gesture navigation pill bar is starting, so that users can correctly aim for the Fenix's address bar when it's at the bottom. This is something that Chromium browser already do. I am going to file a new issue for that in a moment and let you know.

Update: Here's the issue: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12882

### Screenshot¹:

Screenshot²:

ghost on 24 Jul 2020

👎2

You're not supposed to do this, I already filed this last year https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/1021
Basically, when Apple put out the iPhone X they said no more swipe-up from the bottom. When Android added the system swipe-up gesture they put the same thing in their app guidelines but I'm not sure if they've changed it or not. Whether Android has relaxed it a bit or not, apparently Chrome for Android team scrapped their bottom toolbar (they called it "Chrome Home") because Chrome UX was determined it have a swipe-up from bottom function, but Android team said no at the last minute because it's not good to do for users that opted for gesture nav. (that's what I heard anyways)

Also, even if Android didn't have gesture nav at all, the fatal flaw of this "swipe-up-bottom-bar" idea is that for people that use their phones with one hand (and that's even more likely for users that have opted for bottom toolbar), you keep accidentally swiping up the UI when you're just trying to scroll down a webpage. It's a UX nightmare and no offence but I'm surprised this even made it so far. If you're determined to ship this, you have to make it optional because of the accidental swipe-ups when users are just trying to scroll.