Multi-account-containers: Create Container Windows

[TanviHacks]

Create an Option in the PopupMenu to open a Container "window". If I create a Container Window for "Personal", then clicking CtrlT or the plus button will continue to open Personal tabs.

We can decide whether other Container types are permitted to open in that Personal Window or not. (Deciding that they can't, may be more engineering work than it's worth. If a user creates a container window and then explicitly opens another Container, then maybe we shoudl just let them and assume they know what they are doing and no longer want a Personal Window. Once they do that, it becomes a regular window instead of a Personal Window. That may be easiest from an implementation stand point.)

Morpheus, what do you think of this Proposal?

We would have to figure out where in the Popup Menu to include the option for Container Windows.

[ChenMorpheus]

@TanviHacks The proposal you have here shares similar conceptual models with the prototype in this document, which is different than what we provide now. I'm concerned that the proposal would cause various use cases, which cause confusions to users as well. As a result, I would suggest not mixing these two models in one product.

Besides, as Fang and I mentioned in #844 and #871, we strongly recommend following the visual spec to solve some UI issues before diving into new features. If you need any help from us for any measurement-related questions, please let us know, thanks.

[jordanweaver]

Without access to the mentioned document, I can only comment on the proposal here and that is to say that I hope this (in some form) makes it on the roadmap. At the moment, I'm finding it very cumbersome to manage just two containers (work and personal), where at any moment I can mistakenly open a non-container tab that starts generating its own history/prefs/downloads/etc. I work on multiple projects for various entities and so this is enough to make me hesitate on fully migrating over to Firefox (which I would love to do).

Having the option to make the container distinction at the Window-level feels more "container-y" so I don't see why this would confuse users... rather it feels just like a less granular application of the container.

As I'm sure you're aware, Chrome provides this UX via "Users" with independent profiles and I suspect you'd get more users to convert by offering something similar. I realize that Firefox still contains a Profiles feature, but it doesn't currently have a great UX (multiple app instances are required, requires the CLI, etc).

When/if this feature is worked on, some nice UI additions could be:

• quick switching between Window Containers via keyboard shortcuts
• visual cues in the Window UI to indicate which Container

If a user creates a container window and then explicitly opens another Container, then maybe we should just let them and assume they know what they are doing and no longer want a Personal Window. Once they do that, it becomes a regular window instead of a Personal Window.

This seems like a fair compromise if it makes things easier to implement at first.

[ChenMorpheus]

@TanviHacks @jordanweaver

Thanks for your feedback. It seems I should elaborate my thoughts here in case of any misunderstandings.

First, we suggested following the visual specs we provided because we believed fine-tuning the UI could solve several prominent issues and align with the new design to create the feeling that Containers is an official product of Firefox. That's why we took so much time developing the visual design. However, it's been a while since we highlighted this issue, and we still don't find any refinement on the UI side. Again, please let us know if there are any difficulties in following the UI spec.

Second, I understand the proposal here could unquestionably provide usability to users. However, from UX perspective, I still want to ask a question: is Containers targeting to general users or advanced users? Of course, if we are aiming the latter, then I would assure that advanced users could easily switch their mental models between tab-level and windows-level. If we want to focus on selling Containers to more general users, I would suggest making this feature a stand-alone product, and that's why Chrome only provides windows-level Containers, which they also try not to mix the use cases. In short, I have doubts combining these fundamentally different mental models could provide "general users" usability, or confusion.

Again, we still hope we could fine-tune the current implementation of the UI first. Nevertheless, since I am fully occupied in other Test Pilot projects, I would suggest that you can reach out to other UX designers for supports in case my opinions become the blocker for these proposals. Thanks.

[psychoslave]

Well, a rapid glance at the current state of the UX is enough to generate suggestion:

• in the tool bar menu
  
  
  
  • each line should come with a "switch" button, that hide any other visible context and only show this one
  
  
  • you might add a show/hide column radio button that allow to quickly pick multiple context
  
  
  • next to this button, you might have a "+"/"new tab" button
  
  
  • finaly the last button might be a drop down button containing edit and delete, with delete creating a shaded line with a "valid deletion/recover" as only option.
  
  

Of course the order of containers should be changeable through both drag&drop and a "alphabetic sort" button.

The "edit button" which takes most of the place as last line should be drop and only "create a new context" should be left. After with the previous proposal you already can access edition next to each entry.

[psychoslave]

Also the "move to context" contextual menu and "context panel" should be merged in this extension, without the refreshing problems after creating a new context.

[victortrac]

It sounds like I have the same use case as @jordanweaver. Chrome's multiple profile windows is what's keeping me from switching to FF full-time. I always have to be logged into the same sites on multiple profiles, and one nice consistent feature of Chrome is that externally clicked links opens in the last active/focused window. This means that if I want to open a link (from my desktop email client, for example) in a specific Chrome profile, I just make sure that window was last active (of all of my chrome windows) before I click the link.

With FF's multiple profiles, it would always open external links in the default window, whether it was the last active FF window or not. It seems like multi-account-containers does the same thing - links from external programs are opened in the default profile.

I'd really like the ability to treat multiple-account-containers a lot like Chrome profile windows. It'd be great to have each window track the last opened container account and each new tab in that window use the last-used container account.

[kendallcorner]

Linking #319