From the package changelog: * Thu Jan 30 2014 Jan Horak <jhorak> - 26.0-7 - Set default homepage to about:newtab and make start.fedoraproject.org page pinned on it From the stats on Fedora Magazine — which means someone saw a headline there and clicked — it's getting a _lot_ of use. Generating magazine traffic is good, but even more importantly, this is one of our key channels of communication to users. Since the pinned page doesn't show you the new headlines, I'm concerned that we're going to lose a lot from this switch. (We could of course also pin the magazine directly, but, again, no headlines or direct ability to communicate.) Please revert this change for F21. I know there was some talk of updating the start.fpo design, but that seems like a separate consideration. Thanks!
Adding Allan as he was proposer of this change: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=999895
Thanks; I missed the earlier bug. The websites and marketing teams seem pretty strongly in favor of reverting it. I'm cc'ing Martin Stransky, who noted in the other bug that moving start.fpo to one of the tabs was "the plan". Martin, do you have a link to that discussion? If we weren't getting a lot of real world traffic from people clearly using and benefiting from the start page, I'd have a different opinion — but we are. And of course it's as easy as it has always been for an individual user to set it to about:newtab or whatever they like.
There's a fairly clear usability argument for having a homepage that provides navigation assistance that is tailored to the browsing habits of the user. The priority should be to provide the most efficient user experience possible. Marketing is important, but it shouldn't override that goal. (And, for what it's worth, I'm sure that there are alternative ways to generate traffic for Fedora Magazine.) The fact that users can change the default home page isn't particularly relevant: this question is about what the default should be. Considering that defaults frequently aren't changed, having a dynamic home page that updates itself based on browsing behaviour seems most appropriate - this way, we ensure that the home page always reflects actual user interests. Using the Fedora start page as the default means that there will be a lot of users with a home page that isn't interesting to them, and who don't use their home page.
> Using the Fedora start page as the default means that there will be a lot of users with a home page that isn't interesting to them, and who don't use their home page. Let's start from the assumption that the Fedora start page *will* be interesting and useful to Fedora users. The fact that we get significant incoming traffic from people clicking links on that page to the magazine (n.b. links also go _elsewhere -- presumably those are also often clicked) proves that this assumption is at least significantly valid.
(In reply to Matthew Miller from comment #4) ... You've ignored the most important part of my argument - that there's a significant usability advantage to using about:newtab. It adds an additional feature to the browser, which makes browsing easier. > Let's start from the assumption that the Fedora start page *will* be > interesting and useful to Fedora users. The fact that we get significant > incoming traffic from people clicking links on that page to the magazine > (n.b. links also go _elsewhere -- presumably those are also often clicked) > proves that this assumption is at least significantly valid. Even if we could make that assumption, it misses the point. *Any* subject-specific homepage is not going to update to reflect an individual's browsing habits. It is not a generic part of the browsing experience, and it doesn't make your browser any more effective, unless you think that every Fedora user wants to look at news about Fedora *every* time they open a new tab. I understand the desire to promote Fedora, but the best way to do that is to make it the most efficient and transparent tool for people to do what they want with their computer, not to push marketing content in front of them at the expense of improving the user experience.
It's not just marketing content, or just Fedora promotion. It's about helping tie our community together with cohesive communication. I don't think we should set the browser to go to the home page for every new tab. That should stay at about:newtab. That's a great feature and I agree it's much more useful than any specific page for that. But we should keep the home page for when the browser starts as it was, or else we're going _backwards_. I'd be happy for ideas for tying Fedora content and communications into a better overall design, but let's change things as part of an overall plan rather than ripping things out.
We can set the start.fedoraproject.org as a first run (a.k.a. Welcome) page which appears when Firefox starts with a fresh profile. IMHO that would be a good compromise.
I don't see that as a comparable tradeoff at all, Martin. There's one place, afaik, in all of Fedora's packages where we appeal to our users as a community, and the effectiveness of that appeal has been clearly demonstrated. Unless we expect users to independently encounter articles praising Fedora's UX choices on a regular basis, the net effect on the Project's community exposure is quite negative.
Well, I'm just trying to find some solution which may work for all.
Created attachment 958633 [details] patch
(In reply to Pete Travis from comment #8) > I don't see that as a comparable tradeoff at all, Martin. There's one > place, afaik, in all of Fedora's packages where we appeal to our users as a > community, and the effectiveness of that appeal has been clearly > demonstrated. > > Unless we expect users to independently encounter articles praising Fedora's > UX choices on a regular basis, the net effect on the Project's community > exposure is quite negative. Pete, unless there's some official decision by Fedora governance the setup should stay as is. I hope you understand we can't switch the page any time when someone file a BZ for that. But I offer the welcome page update now.
(In reply to Matthew Miller from comment #6) ... > I don't think we should set the browser to go to the home page for every new > tab. That should stay at about:newtab. That's a great feature and I agree > it's much more useful than any specific page for that. ... Ah, apologies - I misunderstood. Can someone confirm that the current defaults are: * When Firefox starts: show my home page * Homepage: about:newtab Also, it would be good to know what happens when "when Firefox starts" is set to "show my windows and tabs from last time", and there isn't any browsing history - that's the welcome page?
I'll double-check what happens in those situations when I get back from vacation, if someone else hasn't by then. Good questions. In the meantime, the Fedora Council does agree unanimously that the home page should go back to start.fpo -- in specific, make it the https version, https://start.fedoraproject.org. There was also the suggestion that the page could be actually made to be local with javascript to fetch dynamic content if network is available (but that the first thing should be to put it back and then we'll work on improvements after that). Meanwhile, I'm off for the holidays -- hope you all can enjoy yours too!
(In reply to Matthew Miller from comment #13) ... > In the meantime, the Fedora Council does agree unanimously that the home > page should go back to start.fpo -- in specific, make it the https version, > https://start.fedoraproject.org. ... It is bit premature for anyone to be asserting a position on this, when we haven't got the facts, nor identified potential solutions. I would really appreciate it if you could give me some space to do my job.
(In reply to Allan Day from comment #12) > (In reply to Matthew Miller from comment #6) > ... > > I don't think we should set the browser to go to the home page for every new > > tab. That should stay at about:newtab. That's a great feature and I agree > > it's much more useful than any specific page for that. > ... > > Ah, apologies - I misunderstood. Can someone confirm that the current > defaults are: > > * When Firefox starts: show my home page > * Homepage: about:newtab The recent default is: * When Firefox starts first time, shows https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/34.0/firstrun/ which is a default mozilla welcome page * Homepage: about:newtab I offer to change the welcome page to start.fedoraproject.org > Also, it would be good to know what happens when "when Firefox starts" is > set to "show my windows and tabs from last time", and there isn't any > browsing history - that's the welcome page? It does exactly what it says - shows whatever you have opened. So it's welcome page in one tab and about:newtab in another one.
Created attachment 977844 [details] firefox first run screenshots I just created a fresh install of F21 to see exactly what happens. When it is run for the first time, Firefox has two tabs open (see attached screenshots). Tab 1: "Welcome to Firefox" (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/33.1/firstrun/). The page is greyed out, and a popover is shown overlaid from the hamburger menu this says "Take a Quick Tour" and has buttons for "Not now" and "Let's go". Dimissing the popover un-greys the page beneath. Tab 2: about:newtab, prepopulated with a set of pages - all from Mozilla, except the first that is the Fedora Start Page. The page is overlaid with a "What is this page?" information bubble. Out of the box, the relevant settings are: * When Firefox starts: Show my home page * Home Page: about:newtab It still isn't clear to me whether this is a deviation from the upstream defaults. When you attempt to close a window with more than one tab open, a confirmation dialog is displayed (this isn't shown when "When Firefox starts" is set to "Show my windows and tabs from last time").
We w(In reply to Martin Stransky from comment #15) > * When Firefox starts first time, shows > https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/34.0/firstrun/ which is a default > mozilla welcome page > * Homepage: about:newtab We would really like to change the homepage, as it was before; I think it's okay to leave the Mozilla welcome page as-is.
I've given this some thought, and have some suggestions. Apologies for the length of this comment, but I want to make sure that the reasoning is clear. The first issue is to identify the best user experience possible. There are a couple of UX principles that we need to bring into play here: * As far as possible, reduce and remove the gap between user intent and what the UI does. * Reduce the amount of work the user has to do. * Don't distract the user from the task in hand. In doing so, provide a focused working environment. When someone launches their browser, they usually have a specific purpose: they are launching the browser in order to look at a particular website that they have in mind. Often, this will be a website that they frequently visit. In this scenario, the way we can ensure that the UI closely matches user intent is by showing about:newtab. One exception to this scenario is first run - when someone has just installed Fedora for the first time, and they are exploring the system. Often, people behave in a speculative, exploratory manner in this situation, and it is actually appropriate to provide some interesting content rather than a blank slate. Here we run into another issue though - that is, the need to balance Mozilla/Firefox's branding and marketing with Fedora's. As the default browser on Fedora, it seems reasonable to shift the balance towards Fedora marketing/community engagement a little. One place we could do this is by doing more to prepopulate about:newtab with links to Fedora resources. If someone from the Fedora community/marketing side could provide a list of possible websites to include there, that would be useful. At the same time, it doesn't seem right to expunge all of Firefox's marketing efforts. We want to support Firefox and Mozilla, and both have a strong brand which enhances Fedora's. Additionally, we have to ask whether the browser is the right place to promote the Fedora community. As an application that is branded with its own identity, it isn't as tightly associated with the OS as other parts of the experience, especially with Firefox/Mozilla branding alongside. So if this isn't the right way to promote the Fedora community, what is? There are plenty of possibilities here. One obvious one would be to allow people to sign up to Fedora news as a part of initial setup. Promoting Fedora Magazine as an email makes a lot of sense for a regular publication (rather than stumbling across a list of links, and having to work out whether you have seen the most recent issue). (I'm focusing on Fedora Magazine here because it was brought up in the bug, but if there is other material or websites that it would be good to promote, let me know and we can discuss the possibilities.) I realise that this might feel a little frustrating, but just because start.fedora.org is an obvious and easy fix does not mean it is the right approach. We have the opportunity to integrate Fedora Magazine (and other Fedora content) in a why that is far more coherent, and will enhance the workstation product itself - which, I hope we can all agree, is the best way to promote the Fedora community.
(In reply to Martin Stransky from comment #15) > > > * When Firefox starts first time, shows > https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/34.0/firstrun/ which is a default > mozilla welcome page > * Homepage: about:newtab I find it awkward to have the initial experience open more than one tab.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Allan. I generally agree. However, Martin, can you please put it back while we develop a better solution? (That's the official council requestion.) Allan, one thing to note is that the Fedora Magazine is kind of a misnomer. I'm not sure how it ended up that way rather than the proposed name of "Fedora Insight", but in actual practice it's a blog with multiple-times-a-week updates, not an actual magazine with groups of articles published together. It's also Wordpress, and for better or worse articles tend to rely a lot on Wordpress formatting and include images — it's not ideal as an email. The initial setup idea is good, but one immediate problem is that that's a time when you're learning a lot of new things, and pointing out a website there doesn't seem likely to stick. I think the start.fpo page works because people see it and while it's not beautiful or anything, don't see a reason to change it — and then, later, when headlines which _are_ relevant and interesting appear, they follow them. I'm not sure where else we could put these in a way that is similarly dynamic as the content changes, is accessible over time, is easily discovered and visible to almost all users... while still being easy to disable if you want something else. Do you have any ideas? There is an RSS feed; we could have some shell widget which follows that, although I'm not sure how to present that.
Sorry for not including this link back in comment #13. Council vote to revert the change was at https://fedorahosted.org/council/ticket/18
firefox-35.0-3.fc21 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 21. https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/firefox-35.0-3.fc21
firefox-35.0-3.fc20 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 20. https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/firefox-35.0-3.fc20
Package firefox-35.0-3.fc20: * should fix your issue, * was pushed to the Fedora 20 testing repository, * should be available at your local mirror within two days. Update it with: # su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing firefox-35.0-3.fc20' as soon as you are able to. Please go to the following url: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2015-0791/firefox-35.0-3.fc20 then log in and leave karma (feedback).
firefox-35.0-3.fc21 has been pushed to the Fedora 21 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
firefox-35.0-3.fc20 has been pushed to the Fedora 20 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
As a followup: this has resulted in an increase of approximately a thousand page views per day to the Fedora Magazine. I'm still very interested in finding alternate ways of connecting our users with that kind of dynamic, up-to-date information on a similar (or better!) scale, while also moving towards a more modern user experience / feeling for the web browser. But let's take that discussion to the mailing lists.