[tor-talk] TB for Win

Erinn Clark erinn at torproject.org
Tue Apr 12 13:38:01 UTC 2011


* Mike Perry <mikeperry at fscked.org> [2011:04:12 05:49 -0700]: 
> Right now, the thing is called Minefield, at least on Linux, because
> that was most expedient. We probably need to use at least some of the
> more visible Firefox graphics in the long run, though.  Remember, it
> should have a chance of looking like a regular web browser from a
> distance, at least. I think this means it must look as much like
> Firefox as possible, and shouldn't say Tor, but yet should still be
> obvious to the user that it is a different browser. 

Minefield is just the name it gives itself when I build it from source, along
with its own set of Minefield-y icons. Some user experimentation indicates that
a non-zero number of users don't even realize this is a browser at all, much
less what they should be using.
 
> My current thought it that this means it calls itself Firefox and uses
> the Firefox graphics, but it has a green onion button on the toolbar,
> next to the url, signifying Tor use. This may still be too conspicuous
> for some users. In fact, a prefs.js issue is preventing the button
> from being displayed right now on some platforms, but I think we
> actually do want the button there.. Or do we?

Because of a misconfiguration in the OS X TBB last year, the toggle button on
the bottom didn't appear, and one user remarked that he thought this was
deliberate since Torbutton shouldn't be toggled while using TBB anyway.

I'm more worried that users will have two Firefoxes open, and accidentally use
the wrong one because they can't distinguish between the two. It's hard to
anticipate which things would go wrong.

As an aside, I met some nice people at a conference once and they suggested
that if we can't afford real usability testing, we should just go sit in coffee
shops and interrupt random people and ask them to use our software and give
feedback, then buy them a cup of coffee. Maybe we should really do this.
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