Revise onboarding to take new Firefox experience into account

Firefox 68 ESR does not come with the onboarding extension anymore which Mozilla and we used to provide an onboarding experience for our browser based on Firefox 60 ESR. We hacked around that for Tor Browser 9 by reverting a bunch of patches and adjusting the code we had (see: #28822 (moved)) but that strategy won't work forever.

Instead we should look into how the new onboarding in Firefox works and develop our own on top of that. Or: We make a conscious decision to provide onboarding independent of Firefox's one because we don't like the new one Mozilla ships.

Trac:
Parent Ticket: #33658 (moved)
Child Ticket(s): #34321 (moved)

added ReleaseTrainMigration component::applications/tor browser owner::tbb-team parent::33658 points::4 priority::medium severity::normal sponsor::58-can status::new tbb-10 type::task ux-team labels

Thanks for the heads up, gk. Do you have any documentation link I could explore regarding any Firefox onboarding in ESR68? I failed when I tried to find it.

adding acat here too.

Trac:
Cc: antonela to antonela, acat

Replying to antonela:

Thanks for the heads up, gk. Do you have any documentation link I could explore regarding any Firefox onboarding in ESR68? I failed when I tried to find it.

I have not looked closely to be honest. It's part of the activity stream now, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1457565 being the meta bug. Clicking a bit around I found

https://trello.com/c/gRkk9mI2/188-i-want-a-simple-onboarding-tour-to-run-at-the-first-run-of-the-first-new-tab-page

but we should probably dig up more here.

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, TorBrowserTeam201911, tbb-9.5 added

Trac:
Points: N/A to 4

i'm leaving this here so i don't forget

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/70.0/whatsnew/all/?oldversion=69.0.3

Replying to antonela:

i'm leaving this here so i don't forget

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/70.0/whatsnew/all/?oldversion=69.0.3

FWIW, that's not the actual onboarding but more a general update page. The actual onboarding is explaining features as the previous one did. You see it in the attached screenshot (that's with Firefox 70.0.1) where you can click on the buttons to load further info or download stuff. The onboarding seems to be pretty flexible as I see an onboarding in ESR 68 closer to what we ship where features are highlighted that then open menu items explaining things in more detail (assuming that general functionality still exists in later versions).

Trac:

Replying to gk:

The onboarding seems to be pretty flexible as I see an onboarding in ESR 68 closer to what we ship where features are highlighted that then open menu items explaining things in more detail (assuming that general functionality still exists in later versions).

Nice! I didn't see it, but for sure we can follow that pattern on the next iteration. Honestly, I really like the idea of keeping cards.

Moving tickets to January

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam201911 deleted, TorBrowserTeam202001 added

Moving tickets to February

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam202001 deleted, TorBrowserTeam202002 added

Moving to April 2020

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam202002 deleted, TorBrowserTeam202004 added

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, ReleaseTrainMigration added

We don't have this work with any sponsor but I think is critical that we should do something. TB 9.0.6 (stable) has the onboarding-overlay-button in about:tor but it does not have any action. Could we link to a webpage that we can easily update? Something dynamic like: tpo.org/download/$version/new

@hiro what do you think?

Trac:
Sponsor: N/A to Sponsor58-can

Trac:
Keywords: TorBrowserTeam202004 deleted, TorBrowserTeam202005 added

Trac:
Parent: N/A to #33658 (moved)

Replying to antonela:

We don't have this work with any sponsor but I think is critical that we should do something. TB 9.0.6 (stable) has the onboarding-overlay-button in about:tor but it does not have any action. Could we link to a webpage that we can easily update? Something dynamic like: tpo.org/download/$version/new

I think we should try https://www.torproject.org/download/torbrowser/9.5a12/new or /whatsnew

1. we have download/tor/ for tor-specific download information, so can put Tor Browser info under download/torbrowser/ (and localized pages are ${locale}/download/torbrowser/$version/whatsnew)
2. this follows Mozilla closer where they use en-US/firefox/74.0/whatsnew/all/

Alternatively, we put it at torbrowser/$version/whatsnew instead of under download/. I don't have strong feelings about this and we can always move it to a different location later.

In addition, the "New Thing" on desktop is Messaging System for the "What’s New Panel" (under Hamburger button-> "What's New"). We should migrate to that after we finish the 78esr transition (on desktop). Fenix has a separate implementation and Mozilla's using: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/whats-new-firefox-preview?as=u&utm_source=inproduct