Firefox Home Tab

Summary

Firefox Home Tab is a small pinned tab placed at the far left of the tab strip that will serve as the user's home on the Web. The plan is for this interface to be locally hosted, customizable, and personalized to the needs of each individual user.

With the introduction of Apps and Identity into Firefox, a user's Home Tab will be the central location where users can access some of their most valuable content. Firefox will offer easy access to things users are familiar with today (Bookmarks, History, Settings, Downloads) as well as introduce the Apps Marketplace -- a great place to discover exciting new content on the Web.

As the content on the Home Tab evolves, we believe this page should be completely for the user. The goal is to make this page as customizable as possible, and offer valuable modules that really enhance the Firefox experience.

Phase 1:

• The work here is focused on the content of the about:home page
• Tab infrastructure does not change and about:home will remain as a tab (vs. a pinned tab)
• In this phase we will introduce launchers to the the Firefox Home page. See the UX spec below to see what this looks like. These launchers will serve as a starting point to access common activities for Firefox users today.
• Bug 711157 - Home Tab phase 1
• Assuming a Fx13 launch target date of 6/5, the "Apps Marketplace" launcher will need to be pref'ed off until the Marketplace goes GA at the end of Q2.
• When Apps Marketplace launches, we'll need to flip the pref for the Marketplace icon to appear for a specific set of launch locales.
  • Specific locales to be determined by Apps product team.

Phase 2:

• Tab infrastructure will change and about:home will become a pinned tab
• The pinned tab will behave like any current pinned tab and will be removable by the user
• Enhances the Home Tab content with the intro of the Apps Marketplace as well as additional modules that allow users to customize their page with content that matters to them
• UX is working on a wireframe for what the 'final' design will look like as well as creating more detailed specs for the various modules that will live on the page itself for phase 2

References

• Firefox Home Tab feature page

Use Cases

• TBD

Test Cases

• The test cases for this feature can be viewed here

Important Bugs

• Bug 711157 - Home Tab Phase 1 - about:home Visual Refresh & Launcher
• Bug 544819 - Create a basic Home Tab linking to the current Home Page
• Bug 585316 - Migrate homepage pref when we remove the home button

Not Tested

• TBD

Sign off Criteria

• All the test cases were executed.
• All the major bugs have been fixed.