Firefox Diagnostics?
Mossop
2007 (no don't start hissing and turn away yet!). One of the new
additions struck me as rather interesting. It's called "Microsoft Office
Diagnostics". It appears to check your systems configuration and Office
installation and suggest solutions to any potential problems it finds.
Now while Microsoft's implementation of this is inevitably poor, it
struck me that something similar could actually be quite useful for
people having problems with Firefox.
My thoughts are that this could be implemented as a separate application
to Firefox, one downloadable from Mozilla, that is continually updated
(probably more often than Firefox is), but since it will be a small
application hopefully faster updates will be possible. For ease of use
this would be a single exe that you can download and run, no
installation or anything. Maybe even have it offer to delete itself
after it has finished running.
Here's a few immediate ideas for what it could do:
Firstly it should be able to check that it is the latest version of
itself, just in case people keep an old version of this around they
ought to be told that a newer version is on the website.
It should check the Firefox installation. In particular it should check
if the latest version is installed, and provide instructions to update
if not. If a development version is installed it could provide an
appropriate warning. Subsequently it should perform a file level check
of the installation using MD5 checksums on the files or something
similar to warn that there might be a corrupt file there.
The profile folder is going to be where a lot of problems are. In
particular it can check that files are valid. localstore.rdf and
downloads.rdf cause numerous problems right now so it could check their
validity and offer to delete them if they appear broken. Also it could
compare the number of bookmarks in the main file and the backups. If the
bookmarks have drastically dropped, or the bookmarks file is back to
the default, then offer to revert to a backup. This could even be
implemented as a file check, if a certain file/reg entry exists then warn.
A couple of malware items are floating around right now that cause
Firefox problems. While this app shouldn't be a full spyware tool, it
could spot known troublemakers for Firefox, warn the user and provide
instructions for cleaning, even if those are "install a spyware scanner".
Problem extensions could be flagged and an offer to disable them made.
While the blocklist will be available in Firefox 2, that is an extreme
measure for very bad extensions. This tool can simply say that one of
the installed extensions is known to cause issues in that particular
version of Firefox.
Problem preferences can also be spotted and reverted. xpinstall.enabled
for instance, or the blocking images originating from the other websites.
I think all of these items are fairly trivial to implement, once you
know what problems to look for. This is why the tool would have to be
updated frequently, and the people that actively do Firefox support
would be heavily involved in spotting the major issues, then a quick
test for them can be found. Most of the solutions can be done as a
pointer to a webpage, or simpler.
So what am I asking here? Firstly does this sound like a sensible idea?
Is it something that Mozilla would be happy at least hosting, hopefully
at least contributing some development time to? Anything else I've missed?
Mossop
Michael
update when the hdd was full. It wouldn't finish updating, killed the
current installation, and wouldn't revert. It'd be nice if Firefox and
Thunderbird were smart enough to avoid those sort of problems. Sounds as
if it fits in with what you're suggesting. Programs should never die
painfully when the hdd gets full.
> dev-apps-firefox mailing list
> dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox
>
Mossop
the tool didn't find any problems, then it could have the option to
submit your profile ... somewhere. Dunno where but if people have got a
broken Firefox then having the profile available for
developers/supporters to analyze could be extremely useful. Obviously
for this to be used it should probably have the option to strip privacy
related info like bookmarks, history etc.
Mossop
Adam Guthrie
question.
We see a lot of users asking for help on the forums, IRC,
etc., but what percentage of our user-base does this make
up? I don't think it would make sense to devote all this
time to helping people solve problems easily when it's only
a small percentage of people that are actually experiencing
problems.
-Adam
Mossop
> We see a lot of users asking for help on the forums, IRC,
> etc., but what percentage of our user-base does this make
> up? I don't think it would make sense to devote all this
> time to helping people solve problems easily when it's only
> a small percentage of people that are actually experiencing
> problems.
That is a good question. I'm not sure the numbers will ever be available
but I guess a good place to start would be to look at the number of
people reporting problems in the uninstall survey. I'll see what kind of
numbers I can trawl together from a few places I have in mind.
Mossop
Fergy
happening. Maybe a small diagnostic to help diagnose problems like:
lost or corrupt profile, Internet connection trouble shooting, bad
extensions etc. But checking for updates? And don't make it a single
exe. Just integrate the checks in firefox itself.
Gemini
I would like to get a copy of Vista beta to check if my laptop is
capable to it's demands, where can I get a copy??
Thanks
Gemini
Fergy
this is the edonkey/emule link:
ed2k://|file|vista_5384.4.060518-1455_winmain_beta2_x86fre_client-LB2CFRE_EN_DVD.iso|3355598848|FAC636AE57653F9302567F6D35AC3A33|h=AIOUAL7A46Z7ZJMKWLAQG26DHTBGJIQP|/
Gemini
Does not work for me.
Gemini
Mossop
> It sounds like a lot of effort for something we should prevent from
> happening. Maybe a small diagnostic to help diagnose problems like:
> lost or corrupt profile, Internet connection trouble shooting, bad
> extensions etc. But checking for updates? And don't make it a single
> exe. Just integrate the checks in firefox itself.
In reality to check for updates is a simple web request to Mozilla, so
it may as well go in if only as a "I can't find any other problems, but
did you know you are using an old version?"
As for integrating the checks into Firefox, I see where you are coming
from, but if that happened then this couldn't be updated without
updating Firefox which would involve stacks of QA, version changes etc.
Also it wouldn't be usable if Firefox won't start up which is one thing
this tool just might help you with.
Mossop