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Firefox 4 b1 feedback - OS breakdown

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David Tenser

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Jul 21, 2010, 10:42:27 AM7/21/10
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I took a look at the OS breakdown of Firefox 4 beta feedback and it's
interesting to see that there's a clear difference between Windows, Mac,
and Linux.

Disclaimer: I did this in an attempt to spot trends in the feedback, but
I don't know if this is considered useful to people? Would love to get
feedback if you think this is something the SUMO team should continue to do.

Anyway, the results:

Windows: 54% happy, 45% sad
Linux: 42% happy, 57% sad
Mac OS X: 26% happy, 73% sad

When taking a closer look at the reasons why people are sad, I see the
following trends:

-------------- Linux -------------

In summary, the most common complaint seems to be that Linux development
isn't prioritized over Windows/Mac. Users feel they're missing out on
the fun.

Most common feedback:

* Regular menus / can't hide the menu / No Firefox button / Not the new
design / "visually broken" (by far the most common complaint)
* Bookmarks button annoying.
* Didn't pass ACID3 test.

Quotes:

"The linux interface is still the same one. Yeah, update the Windows one
and not the linux one, just wait for ubuntu & others to ditch you :("

"please, remove menu bar by default"

"i don't want main menu in linux, one button can be enough like windows ff."

"The tabs can't go up to the VERY top of the window like they can in Chrome.

"Firefox on Windows looks very good, but on Linux there is still some
inconsistency when you set tabs on top; more so with custom GTK themes."

"Why can't we have the "Firefox" button on Linux too? I use Opera for
Linux too, and they managed to add it on Linux."

"the awesome UI isn't available for linux yet..."

"There is not the new menu button available on Linux"

"because ridiculously like always, you guys put linux updates at a lower
importance... same horrible visual as always... come on..."

"I've got this annoying Bookmarks button between my search box and the
feedback button, and I can't get rid of it."

"Bookmarks menu item to the right of the search bar is unecessary."

"The bookmarks button in the upper right corner is not removable."

"Firefox does not pass the acid3 test. It gets a 97/100"

"It doesnot get 100 Marks."

"failed the Acid 3 Test 97/100"

-------------- Mac OS X -------------

In summary, the most common complaint seems to be the second icon
showing up in the Dock when Firefox is running plugins.

Most common feedback:

* More than one instance running (by far the most common complaint)
* Flash crashing
* Video fullscreen doesn't hide menu bar

Quotes:

"Too many instances in my dock on Mac OS 10.6.3"

"Firefox 4.0b1 keeps opening multiple instances for some reason, unknown
to me."

"An extra Firefox icon keeps appearing in my dock. When I right-click it
and click Quit, Firefox sats the Adobe Flash Player plugin crashed"

"Firefox is sometimes shown twice in my dock when restarted on Mac OS X
10.6.4."

"The new firefox (4.0b1) opens up a second icon on my mac everytime i
use it AND doesnt play YouTube videos - sound comes on but video doesnt"

"Adobe Flash plugin always crashes, even in Youtube"

"Firefox crashes often (I think it has to do with the flash plugin) and
when I reopen it, Flash does not play anymore until I kill firefox."

"Adobe Flash keeps on crashing."

"firefox does not hide the OSX menu bar when playing flash videos in
full screen."

"because when watching videos in fullscreen, my mac dock still stays at
the front"

"video full screen is extremely buggy - will not exit when esc is
pressed and will not switch programs. Menu bar (osX) will not hide either."

"there are some problems with the flash player in full-screen mode"

Mike Beltzner

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Jul 21, 2010, 11:00:59 AM7/21/10
to David Tenser, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
How did you get around the 1000-response limitation of the search? Were you using the raw data?

Generally this is useful, but I find the summary percentage statistics to be a little misleading as they're not correcting for spurious input, repetitive input, etc. The wider differences look to be significant for OSX only, and I'd call the differences between Windows and Linux a wash, statistically speaking :)

I think going forward you should co-ordinate with ddash and aakashd, both of whom are also doing some deeper analysis, but reporting here and to the Wednesday meeting is valuable, yes.

cheers,
mike

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> dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-firefox

David Tenser

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Jul 21, 2010, 11:57:27 AM7/21/10
to Mike Beltzner, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On 2010-07-21 17:00, Mike Beltzner wrote:
> How did you get around the 1000-response limitation of the search? Were you using the raw data?

I didn't get around it, but in all honesty I assumed that the limitation
was only for the plain text feedback messages. I realize now that it's
also limiting the %-age, so taking a closer look at the raw data
definitely sounds like a good idea.

>
> Generally this is useful, but I find the summary percentage statistics to be a little misleading as they're not correcting for spurious input, repetitive input, etc. The wider differences look to be significant for OSX only, and I'd call the differences between Windows and Linux a wash, statistically speaking :)

You could be right about the Linux/Windows differences being
insignificant, though after reading 10 pages of feedback, it at least
seemed clear what people were most frequently complaining about (they
want the new UI, too!).

Btw, I made a quick day-by-day graph plotting the %-age per OS:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aibg4PvTbjUKdHhtMzg0TjdfV2RhY0U2c0pRRmpIcnc&hl=en&authkey=CPiSwNUO

As can be expected, Linux fluctuates a lot more because of the smaller
dataset.


> I think going forward you should co-ordinate with ddash and aakashd, both of whom are also doing some deeper analysis, but reporting here and to the Wednesday meeting is valuable, yes.
>

Yep, definitely. This was really just an initial and quick analysis to
get a better feel for what we might expect on SUMO once we open up the
floodgate. We'll coordinate to make sure we incorporate this input
channel in our regular Wednesday/newsletter reporting.

- David

Philip Chee

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Jul 22, 2010, 12:46:57 AM7/22/10
to
On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:42:27 +0200, David Tenser wrote:

> -------------- Mac OS X -------------
>
> In summary, the most common complaint seems to be the second icon
> showing up in the Dock when Firefox is running plugins.

A patch just landed so OSX users will have less to complain about.

Phil

--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.

Marco Bonardo

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Jul 22, 2010, 2:20:49 PM7/22/10
to
Il 21/07/2010 16:42, David Tenser ha scritto:
> "I've got this annoying Bookmarks button between my search box and the
> feedback button, and I can't get rid of it."
>
> "Bookmarks menu item to the right of the search bar is unecessary."
>
> "The bookmarks button in the upper right corner is not removable."

The button is movable and removable in beta 2, we were expecting
complains, but code for having it movable was not ready for beta1.
So it will be interesting to see if this complain disappears or if users
will still complain just for its existence.
I'm a bit sad that users still don't get that we always try to make
changes allowing customization.
Where does this lack of faith come from?

> -------------- Mac OS X -------------

no Windows trends?

-m

Alex Faaborg

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Jul 22, 2010, 4:12:32 PM7/22/10
to Marco Bonardo, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
>
> Where does this lack of faith come from?
>

When we accidentally painted over the window controls (minimize, maximize,
close) if there was a persona on Windows, most of the comments were of the
form "I disagree with your decision to remove the window controls." I think
users now expect beta to mean nearly final release. This makes sense if you
consider there really aren't that many other organizations publicly showing
an unfinished application.

-Alex


On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Marco Bonardo
<mak77NO...@supereva.it>wrote:

Mike Shaver

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Jul 22, 2010, 4:14:33 PM7/22/10
to Alex Faaborg, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 4:12 PM, Alex Faaborg <faa...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>>
>> Where does this lack of faith come from?
>>
>
> When we accidentally painted over the window controls (minimize, maximize,
> close) if there was a persona on Windows, most of the comments were of the
> form "I disagree with your decision to remove the window controls."  I think
> users now expect beta to mean nearly final release.  This makes sense if you
> consider there really aren't that many other organizations publicly showing
> an unfinished application.

Yeah; also, there are applications that have tens of millions of users
for a year and still say "beta".

A good way to derail this thread would be to propose that we look at
our milestone naming, so I won't do that.

Mike

Mike Beltzner

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Jul 22, 2010, 4:17:21 PM7/22/10
to Mike Shaver, Alex Faaborg, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On 2010-07-22, at 4:14 PM, Mike Shaver wrote:

> A good way to derail this thread would be to propose that we look at
> our milestone naming, so I won't do that.

Tumucamaque!

cheers,
mike

Alex Faaborg

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Jul 22, 2010, 4:18:40 PM7/22/10
to Mike Shaver, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
> A good way to derail this thread would be to propose that we look at
> our milestone naming, so I won't do that.
>

Right, I'm not proposing we change our naming scheme, just providing the
premise that the lack of faith stems from users having a different
expectation of what "beta" means.
-Alex

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Mike Shaver <mike....@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 4:12 PM, Alex Faaborg <faa...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> >>

> >> Where does this lack of faith come from?
> >>
> >

> > When we accidentally painted over the window controls (minimize,
> maximize,
> > close) if there was a persona on Windows, most of the comments were of
> the
> > form "I disagree with your decision to remove the window controls." I
> think
> > users now expect beta to mean nearly final release. This makes sense if
> you
> > consider there really aren't that many other organizations publicly
> showing
> > an unfinished application.
>
> Yeah; also, there are applications that have tens of millions of users
> for a year and still say "beta".
>

> A good way to derail this thread would be to propose that we look at
> our milestone naming, so I won't do that.
>

> Mike
>

Mike Shaver

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Jul 22, 2010, 4:20:01 PM7/22/10
to Alex Faaborg, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 4:18 PM, Alex Faaborg <faa...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Right, I'm not proposing we change our naming scheme, just providing the
> premise that the lack of faith stems from users having a different
> expectation of what "beta" means.

I am not proposing that you are proposing that we change our naming
scheme. I am glad that you are not proposing it. I am making my glad
face right now!

Mike

Ron Hunter

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Jul 22, 2010, 4:38:19 PM7/22/10
to
Alex Faaborg wrote:
>> A good way to derail this thread would be to propose that we look at
>> our milestone naming, so I won't do that.
>>
>
> Right, I'm not proposing we change our naming scheme, just providing the
> premise that the lack of faith stems from users having a different
> expectation of what "beta" means.
> -Alex
>
Over the years, 'beta' seems to have morphed from 'nearly ready for
release, please find bugs/omissions', to 'this is where we are, but not
where we are going'. I liked it better the other way.

I do think some thought should be given to the difference between
'simplifying' and 'dumbing down', IF there is any.

Kevin Brosnan

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Jul 22, 2010, 5:37:39 PM7/22/10
to dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 13:17, Mike Beltzner <belt...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> On 2010-07-22, at 4:14 PM, Mike Shaver wrote:
>
>> A good way to derail this thread would be to propose that we look at
>> our milestone naming, so I won't do that.
>
> Tumucamaque!
>
> cheers,
> mike

FWIW It is spelled Tumucumaque. Yay for code names that are hard to
spell/remember.

Kevin

Marco Bonardo

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Jul 22, 2010, 5:38:25 PM7/22/10
to
Il 22/07/2010 22:12, Alex Faaborg ha scritto:
>>
>> Where does this lack of faith come from?
>>
>
> When we accidentally painted over the window controls (minimize, maximize,
> close) if there was a persona on Windows, most of the comments were of the
> form "I disagree with your decision to remove the window controls." I think
> users now expect beta to mean nearly final release.

Yes, you're absolutely right, this is the same trend I'm seeing, but was
unable to explain it so clearly as you did. People are considering betas
as RCs and alpha as betas.

But could even be we give them a wrong message, or we don't push enough
on what's a beta for us?

For example on various comments I've seen people pointing to the fact in
the release notes we said: "Firefox 4 Beta (version 1) considered to be
stable and safe to use for daily web". Then they complained about a
crash or that add-ons were not working or UI was missing pieces. They
complained that it was hard to realize how far beta1 was from final
release because it was declared already stable and safe that is far from
"beta".

-m

Alex Faaborg

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Jul 22, 2010, 5:56:17 PM7/22/10
to Marco Bonardo, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
>
> or we don't push enough on what's a beta for us?
>

Actually I think it is in our interest for people testing betas to have a
mindset that it's nearly final. If everyone thought "oh, it's still in
development, I'm sure someone else will report the problem, and they'll
eventually get around to fixing [broken thing]" then we wouldn't get as much
valuable feedback during the beta process.

It can however be a little frustrating to hear that Beta 1 mac users
"disagree with our decision to draw tabs incorrectly," but at least they are
being super critical!

-Alex

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Marco Bonardo
<mak77NO...@supereva.it>wrote:

Mike Shaver

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Jul 22, 2010, 5:57:26 PM7/22/10
to Alex Faaborg, dev-apps...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Alex Faaborg <faa...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> It can however be a little frustrating to hear that Beta 1 mac users
> "disagree with our decision to draw tabs incorrectly," but at least they are
> being super critical!

"We heard your feedback, and decided to remove the graphical
corruption from beta3!"

Mike

Philip Chee

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Jul 22, 2010, 11:50:55 PM7/22/10
to
On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:20:49 +0200, Marco Bonardo wrote:

> I'm a bit sad that users still don't get that we always try to make
> changes allowing customization.
> Where does this lack of faith come from?

There is this inexplicable belief that Firefox has been getting more
bloated and getting worse since, oh, 0.8. Unfortunately this fraction
tends to be the most vocal. We get this in SeaMonkey too where we get
accused of trying to ape all the worst bling in Firefox.

Phil

--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.

[ ]Walk through doors, don't crawl through Windows.
* TagZilla 0.066.6

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