Removing Firefox Version Number
Tyler Downer
Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
information anybody will need. While I understand that the UX team
wants to remove content from the UI and simplify it, there needs to be
a balance between information that benefits someone, and cleaning up
the UI.
First off, the versions number has always been shown in the Help>About
window for almost every Windows program for the past 16+ years (I
started using Windows with 95, it was probably in use before then). By
removing the version number from the About window (which was already
simplified to showing just the version number, and not build ID in
Firefox 4, eg. Firefox 4.0.1), then we open up a window of confusion
with those people who want to check just what version they are
running.
Asa says "When a user opens the About window for Firefox, the window
should say something like 'Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago,
you are running the latest release.'" But what if the computer is not
always connected to the Internet and the user wants to see if they
have the latest Firefox or if they need to connect to the internet and
download it? Or if they have had issues with their internet
connection? I had an Apache server set up on a computer once that i
did not have connected to the internet so I didn't have to worry about
security, but I did keep an up to date version of Firefox on the
computer because I used it for web development. And using the about:
pages isn't a good solution. 75% of people don't even know the about:
pages exist (based on my triage experience) and users likely are not
going to find them on their own.
Now, while I understand that the UX team wants to make version numbers
less important (that is something I myself want to see happen)
removing them from the About window is not the answer. Even Chrome,
which has a rapid release cycle and a VERY good updating process,
shows the Version in the about window. What needs to be done is,
remove the version from the download page. Just say "Download Firefox"
and leave it at that. Make Firefox automagically update in the
background (with an easy to find preference to turn that off), and get
rid of the first run pages (which now that we are using rapid release
and each new version has like 1 small feature, don't serve any purpose
anyway).
The About window needs to continue showing the version number, and it
already checks for updates as soon as it is opened. I see little to no
benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove something else from
the UI". Might as well remove the entire about window) and just
confusion, community angst, and frustration by cutting it.
Asa Dotzler
> In Bug 678775 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775),
> Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
> About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
> information anybody will need.
Actually, the Firefox usability lead, Alex Limi suggested it. As the
Firefox Product lead, I agreed and so I created a feature page for
tracking this effort and I filed a bug for the implementation when we're
ready to start that.
> First off, the versions number has always been shown in the Help>About
> window for almost every Windows program for the past 16+ years
It's always been that way is not a new argument against change. This was
considered when we decided to make this change.
> By removing the version number from the About window (which was already
> simplified to showing just the version number, and not build ID in
> Firefox 4, eg. Firefox 4.0.1), then we open up a window of confusion
> with those people who want to check just what version they are
> running.
We also thought of that. And the after thinking about it, we concluded
that most people don't need to know what version number they're using
and what they actually want to know is whether or not they're running
the latest version. For the few people who care whether it's version 7
or version 2011-08-16 or version 1.8.0.0.1.77, they can get this
information from about:troubleshooting which is available in the Firefox
Help menu.
> Asa says "When a user opens the About window for Firefox, the window
> should say something like 'Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago,
> you are running the latest release.'" But what if the computer is not
> always connected to the Internet and the user wants to see if they
> have the latest Firefox or if they need to connect to the internet
Actually, that's not quite accurate. For the tiny minority of users who
open the Firefox About dialog who are not connected to the internet, the
dialog will say something like "As of N hours ago, you are running the
latest version of Firefox" where N is the number of hours since Firefox
was online and made the update check. If they're not connected to the
internet, and they happen to know what the latest version of Firefox is
(how did they learn that again?) then they can open
about:troubleshooting and compare versions themselves. This is a rare
case that should not impact the decision on this feature change.
> download it? Or if they have had issues with their internet
> connection? I had an Apache server set up on a computer once that i
> did not have connected to the internet so I didn't have to worry about
> security, but I did keep an up to date version of Firefox on the
> computer because I used it for web development.
Users with Apache servers set up on their machines are quite capable of
using about:troubleshooting to figure out which version of Firefox
they're using.
> And using the about:pages isn't a good solution. 75% of people don't
> even know the about:pages exist (based on my triage experience) and
> users likely are not going to find them on their own.
about:troubleshooting is available via the Help menu. Users need not
know about the existence of about: pages.
> Now, while I understand that the UX team wants to make version numbers
> less important (that is something I myself want to see happen)
> removing them from the About window is not the answer.
It is not *the* answer. It is part of an answer which includes removing
it from other touchpoints in Firefox and the Firefox websites.
> Even Chrome, which has a rapid release cycle and a VERY good updating
> process, shows the Version in the about window.
Chrome does foo is a reasonable data point to offer. We can certainly
look at how certain Chrome features behave or are received by users and
use that data to help inform our decisions on Firefox features.
But this isn't new data. The UX and Product leads were fully aware of
what Chrome does here and that didn't cause us to decide differently.
> What needs to be done is, remove the version from the download page.
> Just say "Download Firefox" and leave it at that.
Thank you for the prescription. We are removing the version from the
download page. There's a bug on file and it is scheduled as part of the
next Website refresh. But no, we are not going to just "leave it at that."
> Make Firefox automagically update in the background (with an easy to
> find preference to turn that off), and get rid of the first run pages
> (which now that we are using rapid release and each new version has
> like 1 small feature, don't serve any purpose anyway).
Firefox already automagically does some of its update in the background.
We have feature pages and bugs describing the means by which we are
going to make this even more magical and less distracting.
We also have a feature page describing the intent to remove the What's
New tab that loads with each new release. That one is contentions but
it's on my list of features that will all combine to give us much more
"silent" updates.
> The About window needs to continue showing the version number, and it
> already checks for updates as soon as it is opened.
So far, I think I can summarize your argument for why Firefox "needs to
continue showing the version number" as 1) Versions have always been
shown in the About dialog, and 2) Some offline users will get a outdated
message about when they were last updated, and 3) users cannot find the
menu for Help -> Troubleshooting, and 4) Chrome does it.
I think I've responded to each of those. Have I missed one of your
arguments or mis-characterized any of them?
> I see little to no benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove
> something else from the UI".
That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
assumptions of those around you.
We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer
audience. We also have a need to let users know if they are indeed using
the latest and greatest version of Firefox. This feature re-design
accomplishes both of those goals.
- A
Neil Lee
>> In Bug 678775 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775),
>> Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
>> About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
>> information anybody will need.
>
> Actually, the Firefox usability lead, Alex Limi suggested it. As the Firefox Product lead, I agreed and so I created a feature page for tracking this effort and I filed a bug for the implementation when we're ready to start that.
Is there a wiki page for this change? I haven't read the notes so I'm not exactly clear what the justification for this change is, but as a knee-jerk reaction it seems a bit of an odd decision. If going to "about firefox" no longer gives the user specific information **about the version firefox they are running** and is just becoming a place to check for updates (which seems to be the case?), maybe instead of just removing the version from this window the label for actual menu item and window itself should change to just "check for updates".
As I said, though, I haven't seen the context for this change so I'm probably missing something important, but selecting "about" should probably provide some basic information about the current application, and part of that includes what the current version number is.
And thus concludes my completely uninformed 2 cents.
Neil
Thomas Ahlblom
----------
Excerpt from Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines:
About ApplicationName
Opens the About window, which contains the app's copyright information
and version number.
----------
Excerpt from GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 2.2.2:
Help About
...contains the name and version number of the application, a short
description of the application's functionality, author contact
details, copyright message and a pointer to the licence under which
the application is made available.
----------
Could someone please post references to the relevant standards Firefox
will comply with after implementation of bug 678775?
DaveG
First off, let me state here that either a group discussion is the
prerequisite to a bug or if not, then Bugzilla is actually where this
discussion belongs, regardless of what some people want on occasion.
No, Bugzilla is not generally a discussion forum, but it /is/ quite
often the place for discussing how and what is implemented, so long as
we don't get into a loop of repeating ourselves. Actual pros and cons
and alternative solutions are debated in Bugzilla all the time and it
is rare that I can stand to come over to the groups. I would've
thought the spam alone would make usenet dead by now, let alone the
fact that it's... usenet. I stopped using this place a decade ago. It
needs to die with fire.
</tangential rant>
On Aug 14, 4:23 pm, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> It's always been that way is not a new argument against change.
Certainly, but "it's always been this way, and thus everyone knows how
to use this" is, especially if we're explicitly talking about user
experience and interaction here.
The about dialog may be part of the application, but it's really more
of an OS-level action. It's one of the few things that has been more
or less standard on multiple OSes for decades. I have no clue what
version of KDE I have installed right now, but I do know it's in help-
>about for every KDE application as is each application's version. The
same concept is applied virtually everywhere.
> We also thought of that. And the after thinking about it, we concluded
> that most people don't need to know what version number they're using
> and what they actually want to know is whether or not they're running
> the latest version. For the few people who care whether it's version 7
> or version 2011-08-16 or version 1.8.0.0.1.77, they can get this
> information from about:troubleshooting which is available in the Firefox
> Help menu.
So... you basically want to use about:troubleshooting as a second
about window? I'll restate myself from bug 678775 here: The about
dialog is essentially a box designed for the sole purpose of housing
the application developer and version.
Also, to restate my suggested compromise:
If there's an actual known repeatable problem this would fix, I think
some kind of compromise where there were two views in the about
dialog: a hyper-user-friendly one with things hidden and a link to
show the rest of the (and maybe more) info including the version and
date of said version. (i.e. similar to how the credits were done once
upon a time)
> So far, I think I can summarize your argument for why Firefox "needs to
> continue showing the version number" as 1) Versions have always been
> shown in the About dialog, and 2) Some offline users will get a outdated
> message about when they were last updated, and 3) users cannot find the
> menu for Help -> Troubleshooting, and 4) Chrome does it.
>
> I think I've responded to each of those. Have I missed one of your
> arguments or mis-characterized any of them?
>
> > I see little to no benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove
> > something else from the UI".
>
> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
> assumptions of those around you.
Let me see if I can put this as politely as possible: The "let's
remove something else from the UI" route is often a perfectly valid
way to improve things. Firefox had until recently a lot of UI that
needed removing, and still has some. This should not be taken as an
offense and your response is more confrontational than is needed here.
I think we all would rather have a debate than an argument.
> We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer
> audience. We also have a need to let users know if they are indeed using
> the latest and greatest version of Firefox. This feature re-design
> accomplishes both of those goals.
Let me restate that these goals and showing expected information here
are not mutually exclusive concepts. Just have a little text link for
"show technical information about this version" (or some more concise
wording) which transitions from your ideal hyper-simple dialog to show
the version, its date, and maybe a link to about:buildconfig. This
gives the best of both worlds.
Additionally, version numbers matter whether anyone likes it or not,
at least until Firefox forces updates (with an override only
discoverable by power users and sys admins) such that you don't have
an ungodly number of users not taking major updates for quite some
time, if ever. We're currently on a path towards a highly fragmented
user-base and fixing that should be higher on the priority list. Yes,
I know that doesn't prevent improvements to the about dialog, but it
does mean that the version is not (yet) a completely trivial thing to
be buried.
Asa Dotzler
> <tangential rant>
> First off, let me state here that either a group discussion is the
> prerequisite to a bug or if not, then Bugzilla is actually where this
> discussion belongs, regardless of what some people want on occasion.
> No, Bugzilla is not generally a discussion forum, but it /is/ quite
> often the place for discussing how and what is implemented, so long as
> we don't get into a loop of repeating ourselves. Actual pros and cons
> and alternative solutions are debated in Bugzilla all the time and it
> is rare that I can stand to come over to the groups. I would've
> thought the spam alone would make usenet dead by now, let alone the
> fact that it's... usenet. I stopped using this place a decade ago. It
> needs to die with fire.
> </tangential rant>
Rant not withstanding, thanks for bringing this to the newsgroup. This
is where I've asked for feedback and as the Product owner of this
feature and reporter of the bug, I think I'm completely within reason to
request that discussion happen here and not in the bug. I appreciate
your willingness to accommodate my request.
> On Aug 14, 4:23 pm, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> It's always been that way is not a new argument against change.
>
> Certainly, but "it's always been this way, and thus everyone knows how
> to use this" is, especially if we're explicitly talking about user
> experience and interaction here.
This assumes "everyone" needs to know how to find the version number
when what we're doing here is intentionally killing the version number.
> The about dialog may be part of the application, but it's really more
> of an OS-level action. It's one of the few things that has been more
> or less standard on multiple OSes for decades. I have no clue what
> version of KDE I have installed right now, but I do know it's in help-
>> about for every KDE application as is each application's version. The
> same concept is applied virtually everywhere.
And we're breaking from that convention. We're moving to a more Web-like
convention where it's simply not important what version you're using as
long as it's the latest version. We're also already in a new system
where there is no supported version except the latest versoin so the
overwhelming majority of users will be on that latest version and for
them, the most important thing isn't the number of the release. The most
important thing is confidence that they're on the latest release. That's
what the About dialog will give them.
>> We also thought of that. And the after thinking about it, we concluded
>> that most people don't need to know what version number they're using
>> and what they actually want to know is whether or not they're running
>> the latest version. For the few people who care whether it's version 7
>> or version 2011-08-16 or version 1.8.0.0.1.77, they can get this
>> information from about:troubleshooting which is available in the Firefox
>> Help menu.
>
> So... you basically want to use about:troubleshooting as a second
> about window? I'll restate myself from bug 678775 here: The about
> dialog is essentially a box designed for the sole purpose of housing
> the application developer and version.
No, we don't want about:troubleshooting as a second about window. The
about:troubleshooting page is for troubleshooting. The About dialog is
for finding out about Firefox, including whether or not you're on the
latest version.
> Also, to restate my suggested compromise:
> If there's an actual known repeatable problem this would fix, I think
> some kind of compromise where there were two views in the about
> dialog: a hyper-user-friendly one with things hidden and a link to
> show the rest of the (and maybe more) info including the version and
> date of said version. (i.e. similar to how the credits were done once
> upon a time)
I don't believe, and the the UX lead for Firefox doesn't believe, that
this information belongs in the About dialog. You think it does and
you've cited "convention" as your argument. I've explained that we're
intentionally breaking from convention here because we're changing how
we make the software.
Our new model is much more akin to how Web software works where you are
always on the latest release and you don't need to know what release
number that is. As an end user, the number tells you nothing of value
and so we're removing it.
If you are in a troubleshooting situation, perhaps because you're
talking with a website that doesn't work in Firefox or you're trying to
get Firefox support from our Mozilla Support Forums , then you can go to
Help -> Troubleshooting and from there get all of the information about
Firefox that could help you troubleshoot your Firefox problem, including
the version number.
>>> I see little to no benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove
>>> something else from the UI".
>> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
>> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
>> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
>> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
>> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
>> assumptions of those around you.
>
> Let me see if I can put this as politely as possible: The "let's
> remove something else from the UI" route is often a perfectly valid
> way to improve things.
I disagree with that. That's never a valid way to improve things without
considering carefully the "something" you're removing from the UI.
> Firefox had until recently a lot of UI that needed removing, and still
> has some. This should not be taken as an offense and your response is
> more confrontational than is needed here. I think we all would rather
> have a debate than an argument.
When someone assumes or says outright that Mozilla UX and Product folks
are removing things just to be removing things, I'm going to shout
loudly. I stand by that. It's an argument, along with "You're just doing
it because <other browser> did it" and "It's just change for the sake of
change" that I'm not going to accept in these discussions and when it
comes up I'm going to call it out and call for it to stop. I'm sick of
it and I'm not going to accept those kinds of insults as arguments.
>> We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer
>> audience. We also have a need to let users know if they are indeed using
>> the latest and greatest version of Firefox. This feature re-design
>> accomplishes both of those goals.
>
> Let me restate that these goals and showing expected information here
> are not mutually exclusive concepts. Just have a little text link for
> "show technical information about this version" (or some more concise
> wording) which transitions from your ideal hyper-simple dialog to show
> the version, its date, and maybe a link to about:buildconfig. This
> gives the best of both worlds.
I don't think, and I believe the Firefox UX lead agrees with me, that
users need that information in the About dialog. That's why we're
removing it. The version number is only relevant to users for
troubleshooting and I question it's relevance even there given that
we're shooting for having all of our users on the latest release.
> Additionally, version numbers matter whether anyone likes it or not,
> at least until Firefox forces updates
Firefox updates are already all required. Firefox 5 was a required
update for Firefox 4 and the overwhelming majority of Firefox 4 ussers
are migrated to 5. Firefox 6, which will be available in several days,
is a required update for Firefox 5 users.
> (with an override only discoverable by power users and sys admins) such
> that you don't have an ungodly number of users not taking major updates
> for quite some time, if ever.
As I said above, Firefox 6 is an automatic and required update for
Firefox 5. Firefox 5 was a required update for Firefox 4. We're there
today. By the time we get to Firefox 9 or 10, when this new About dialog
feature change lands, we'll have an even better update experience so
we'll lose even fewer people in the transition and we'll transition them
even faster.
It's off-topic but I do want to note that there aren't an ungodly number
of users on Firefox 4 because Firefox 5 was an automatic update and the
overwhelming majority were updated in just a couple of weeks. That
update transition will be even faster with Firefox 5 to 6 and faster
still with 6 to 7 and 7 to 8.
> We're currently on a path towards a highly fragmented user-base and
> fixing that should be higher on the priority list. Yes, I know that
> doesn't prevent improvements to the about dialog, but it does mean that
> the version is not (yet) a completely trivial thing tobe buried.
We're not on a path to a highly fragmented user-base. You can't just
assert facts without evidence. The rapid release transitions are working
quite well and will improve over time. A year from now we'll be far
*less* fragmented than we've ever been since Firefox launched.
- A
Asa Dotzler
The About Firefox dialog contains a lot of information about Firefox. It
contains a paragraph describing Firefox and Mozilla with links to how
you might learn more or get involved. It contains the end user rights
and licensing links (in place of the traditional copyright notice found
in most about dialogs.) It contains a link to Privacy Policy for
Firefox. It also identifies the Firefox channel the user is on and
information about the last update check.
This dialog provides considerably more than just an update function.
There is a wiki page for
this.https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Desktop/About_Version
The justification is simple. We're removing the Firefox version number
from all of the common user-visible locations because we don't believe
that users need to know what version they're on. We're moving to a model
that's more like the Web. What version of Gmail are you on?
We've removed it from all of our marketing materials. We're removing it
from the download button on the Website. We're removing it from how we
talk to users about Firefox. We're ending version numbers because
they're not meaningful to users (except in troubleshooting situations.)
People using Firefox do need to have confidence that they're on the
latest version, though, and that's what this feature provides. Telling
the user explicitly that Firefox has checked and that she is indeed up
to date is a much better way of letting the user know that she's up to
date than giving her a number she can compare with some other number on
a website somewhere to figure out if she's on the latest version.
- A
Asa Dotzler
The About Firefox dialog contains a lot of information about Firefox. It
Asa Dotzler
> Could someone please post references to the relevant standards Firefox
> will comply with after implementation of bug 678775?
No. Not really.
We're intentionally breaking with convention here because we've moved to
an unconventional release model where conventional versioning and
version branding are no longer applicable.
- A
Tyler Downer
>
> We're not on a path to a highly fragmented user-base. You can't just
> assert facts without evidence. The rapid release transitions are working
> quite well and will improve over time. A year from now we'll be far
> *less* fragmented than we've ever been since Firefox launched.
>
> - A
Not to get off topic, but comparing the version adoption graphs at
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/08/july-browser-stats-windows-xp-loses-its-majority-share-of-web-users.ars,
Firefox's version adoption is quite behind the efficient model that
Google has for Chrome. Until we can reach that, updates are
"automatic". Just a offtopic link ;)
Asa Dotzler
To be clear, Firefox 3.6.x to Firefox 4 was not an automatic update.
Firefox 4 to 5 was and 5 to 6 will be. Our Firefox 4 users are already
into the single digits percentage of all Firefox users so we're moving
users pretty well.
As you noted, we're not yet as efficient as Chrome, which has been
working under an automatic update model for three years now. Maybe give
us a little slack as we've yet to release our first true rapid release
version :-)
- A
Anthony Ricaud
I don't see how unconventional this release model is. I use several
software that update more often than every six weeks and they keep their
version number in the About window.
Also, we're now talking about the privileged 2% web developers and I
think it's a need for us to see the version number we are working on.
Robert Kaiser
> Additionally, version numbers matter whether anyone likes it or not
Version numbers in software are like coordinate systems in physics:
irrelevant and necessary at the same time - it's completely irrelevant
how you do them, but they provide necessary reference points. Not more,
not less.
Robert Kaiser
--
Note that any statements of mine - no matter how passionate - are never
meant to be offensive but very often as food for thought or possible
arguments that we as a community should think about. And most of the
time, I even appreciate irony and fun! :)
Asa Dotzler
Anthony Ricaud wrote:
> On 15/08/11 05:29, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> Thomas Ahlblom wrote:
>>> Could someone please post references to the relevant standards Firefox
>>> will comply with after implementation of bug 678775?
>>
>> No. Not really.
>>
>> We're intentionally breaking with convention here because we've moved to
>> an unconventional release model where conventional versioning and
>> version branding are no longer applicable.
>>
>> - A
>
> I don't see how unconventional this release model is. I use several
> software that update more often than every six weeks and they keep their
> version number in the About window.
We're trying to change user expectations around the versioning of
Firefox. This may not be a goal for the other software you use but it is
a goal for Firefox. I appreciate that you may not like that goal, but
it's something we started on 6 months ago and this is a natural and
reasonable continuation on that path.
> Also, we're now talking about the privileged 2% web developers and I
> think it's a need for us to see the version number we are working on.
Web developers can get at the version number from an extension or from
Help->Troubleshooting which contains the version number, the full user
agent string, and additional information about which extensions,
plug-ins, and graphics settings they've got which might cause Firefox to
display to them their content differently from how end users see it.
If I was a Web developer, testing across a variety of browsers and
versions, I'd want to have the user agent string even more visible than
buried in an About window. Add-ons like Nightly Tester Tools and
Customize Titlebar offer that convenience.
- A
Tyler Downer
>The difference between what was there and what will be there is the removal of the version number and the addition of the time since last successful check.
The About window automatically checks for updates every single time it
is opened by default. Then it says "Firefox is up to date" when it
checks, unless there is an update available, when it will start to
download the update. Is there something wrong with this method, or
some problem that needs to be addressed? Otherwise, Firefox will
always be saying "Checked for update 1 second ago" because as soon as
they open the window, it will check again. There will never be a
"Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago" unless the user is not
connected to the internet. Firefox checked for updates 1 second ago,
if that is the only time that is ever shown, will be just as useless
as "Firefox is up to date". If users don't trust that "Firefox is up
to date" means that Firefox is up to date, they aren't going to trust
"Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago, Firefox is up to date".
You are simply saying the same thing, with more words, making it more
confusing. When I open about Firefox, it takes about 30 seconds~ to
check, so I can clearly see that Firefox is actively checking for
updates.
Besides, if I ever had an doubts, I can always look right above the
text, see, "Firefox 5" then google "What is the latest version of
Firefox" and see "Firefox 6 is being released tomorrow" on google
news. So I know tomorrow, I can check for updates again, and I'll have
the latest.
It just doesn't make sense to add the time, when the about window
checks immediately it is opened. Unless you will have the time
dynamically update for those people who leave the About window open
for 20 minutes, which seems more like a fancy gimmick than anything.
>That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
>characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
>that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
>regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
>Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
>assumptions of those around you.
No, I'm not a troll, but statements like that make me wonder why I
bother contributing to Mozilla. At least respect your community a bit
please. Your email address ends in @mozilla.org, I respect that, that
is why I came to usenet. At least hear me and others out on our
concerns.
DaveG
> It's off-topic but I do want to note that there aren't an ungodly number
> of users on Firefox 4 because Firefox 5 was an automatic update and the
> overwhelming majority were updated in just a couple of weeks. That
> update transition will be even faster with Firefox 5 to 6 and faster
> still with 6 to 7 and 7 to 8.
>
> > We're currently on a path towards a highly fragmented user-base and
> > fixing that should be higher on the priority list. Yes, I know that
> > doesn't prevent improvements to the about dialog, but it does mean that
> > the version is not (yet) a completely trivial thing tobe buried.
>
> We're not on a path to a highly fragmented user-base. You can't just
> assert facts without evidence. The rapid release transitions are working
> quite well and will improve over time. A year from now we'll be far
> *less* fragmented than we've ever been since Firefox launched.
I'll reply to this first because it's of course a fair point to
request hard numbers. I'm not just going on a feeling based on
complaining users. I see things being far worse than what you see by
looking at Firefox upgrade rates in my and other addons' AMO stats.
Flagfox currently has a peak of around 1.68 million users. Here's a
breakdown of what Firefox versions its users are reporting in their
update pings:
Firefox 5.0.x: 66%
Firefox 3.6.x: 21%
Firefox 4.0.x: 6.6%
Firefox 3.5.x: 3.1%
Firefox 6.0b: 1.9%
Firefox 3.0.x: 0.79%
Firefox 7.0a2: 0.19%
We're almost upon Firefox 6, yet only 66% of the users I see here are
running a current version. I do personally consider this to be fairly
horrible. Not only is a quarter of the user-base not even upgrading at
all anymore, but it appears that 5-10% of users got stranded on
Firefox 4 for quite some time, and many look like they're going to
stay there. I can back this claim up with data too, by going within
those numbers. Out of those who are on Firefox 4.0.x, only 73% are
running 4.0.1. The other 27% are on 4.0.0 and because major updates
are still only offered to those who have performed minor updates,
they'll stay there for quite some time. The Firefox 3.6 situation is
far more grim: out of all those running Firefox 3.6.x, only 3.5% are
running 3.6.19 (latest as of the moment).
This is only one data set, but I can repeat this with other addons
with public AMO stats. I'm #12 by average user count, but the same
pattern holds if I take a look at #1. Adblock Plus has over 13 million
users; here's its breakdown:
Firefox 5.0.x: 66%
Firefox 3.6.x: 21%
Firefox 4.0.x: 5.5%
Firefox 6.0b: 1.8%
Firefox 3.5.x: 1.5%
Firefox 3.0.x: 2.1%
Firefox 7.0a2: 0.15%
The top two are the same (with rounding to 2 significant figures) and
the situation for Firefox 4 is similar. The numbers for minor updates
are similar: 77% of Firefox 4.0.x users are on 4.0.1 and 2.3% of
Firefox 3.6.x users are on 3.6.19. (a little better for Firefox 4.0.x
and worse for 3.6.x)
Both of us have our stats set to public. The URLs are here and CSV is
available for digging into the numbers easier:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/statistics/addon/5791
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/statistics/addon/1865
One obvious issue with this method is that while addon use is
extremely common, most Firefox users don't use addons. Thus these
numbers are skewed in favor of those who do. One might want to say
that these are more often "power users" but that's not always the
case. Without more info there's no way to say the above is drastically
different from the rest of the Firefox user-base, however it is a
quite clear picture of a notable portion of it.
Seeing the above is why I say we're on a path to a highly fragmented
user-base, and I stand by that. It will be interesting to see if the
same thing that happened with Firefox 4 is the case for Firefox 5 when
Firefox 6 comes out, and how much. Regardless, right now we have a
somewhat fragmented user-base and I don't see a force going in the
opposite direction enough to change that yet.
Now to reply to the actual issue here:
> > Certainly, but "it's always been this way, and thus everyone knows how
> > to use this" is, especially if we're explicitly talking about user
> > experience and interaction here.
>
> This assumes "everyone" needs to know how to find the version number
> when what we're doing here is intentionally killing the version number.
No, not "everyone", just everyone who is looking for their version
number using what they've learned in the past. Unless we're only
catering to those who stumbled into this thing, people who
intentionally open the about dialog are often looking for exactly
this.
> And we're breaking from that convention. We're moving to a more Web-like
> convention where it's simply not important what version you're using as
> long as it's the latest version.
Firefox is not the web, just a chauffeur to it. It's still a program I
install on my computer and as was posted above by Thomas Ahlblom some
OSes even explicitly state that this is how programs are supposed to
function in this regard. Yeah, you are capable of ignoring that, but
the point is that it's sort of outside of what a program should be
doing and honestly, a strange fight to have.
> We're also already in a new system
> where there is no supported version except the latest versoin so the
> overwhelming majority of users will be on that latest version and for
> them, the most important thing isn't the number of the release.
Part one of a reply to this is the stats analysis at the top of this
reply. 66% is no overwhelming majority. Sadly, people don't care if
the version is supported anymore or not, and more often than not don't
even seem to know what this means.
Part two of my reply to this is that nobody here is arguing that the
version number is the most important thing, just that it's not
insignificant enough to be ditched from the about dialog where it
belongs. It's already deprioritized and I've already said that doing
so some more is a perfectly reasonable idea.
> The most important thing is confidence that they're on the latest
> release. That's what the About dialog will give them.
I have extreme doubts that such a logical expectation holds true given
the stated update rate. There are many many people who don't care at
all about being on the latest release, and some even scream at Mozilla
for posting updates at all. Most people have no understanding
whatsoever of what updates are for.
> The About dialog is for finding out about Firefox,
> including whether or not you're on the latest version.
Yep, and the version number is a part of both portions of that.
> >>> I see little to no benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove
> >>> something else from the UI".
> >> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
> >> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
> >> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
> >> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
> >> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
> >> assumptions of those around you.
>
> > Let me see if I can put this as politely as possible: The "let's
> > remove something else from the UI" route is often a perfectly valid
> > way to improve things.
>
> I disagree with that. That's never a valid way to improve things without
> considering carefully the "something" you're removing from the UI.
I would think that by now we can all agree that EVERYTHING is done
with careful consideration. We shouldn't have to prefix everything
with "careful consideration of". Let me put it this way: this is the
worst kind of debate; the kind where we're agreeing but debating
anyway.
> When someone assumes or says outright that Mozilla UX and Product folks
> are removing things just to be removing things, I'm going to shout
> loudly. I stand by that. It's an argument, along with "You're just doing
> it because <other browser> did it" and "It's just change for the sake of
> change" that I'm not going to accept in these discussions and when it
> comes up I'm going to call it out and call for it to stop. I'm sick of
> it and I'm not going to accept those kinds of insults as arguments.
1) Nothing of the sort. You're making assumptions and generating your
own angst here. Even if Tyler was partially passive-aggressively going
against UI removal, you're overreacting. (and I have no reason to
believe he was)
2) You're ramping up this discussion with the wrong tone. You're not
arguing with some people who just popped in from nowhere to yell at
you here, and even if you were, it's not helpful.
3) I don't want to get into this any more and it's a distraction from
this actual discussion, such that it is.
Look, I don't claim that showing the version number is the most
important thing in the world, just that the about dialog is where it
belongs and trying to change that feels to some of us like a fight is
being picked that doesn't need to be. Every decision is going to be a
cost-benefit analysis, and I just don't see the benefit to outweigh
the two costs here:
a) Breaking explicit HIG and decades of precedence, which both
translate to breaking how users find this basic and still needed
information in a place that is not in the way.
b) Confusing those of us closer to Mozilla and ticking off those
farther away. (yeah, some loons that are in the process of descending
on this to yell are overreacting, but it does nonetheless point out
that a portion of the community is not happy with this sort of change)
Jesper Kristensen
> I'll reply to this first because it's of course a fair point to
> request hard numbers. I'm not just going on a feeling based on
> complaining users. I see things being far worse than what you see by
> looking at Firefox upgrade rates in my and other addons' AMO stats.
>
> Flagfox currently has a peak of around 1.68 million users. Here's a
> breakdown of what Firefox versions its users are reporting in their
> update pings:
> One obvious issue with this method is that while addon use is
> extremely common, most Firefox users don't use addons. Thus these
> numbers are skewed in favor of those who do. One might want to say
> that these are more often "power users" but that's not always the
> case. Without more info there's no way to say the above is drastically
> different from the rest of the Firefox user-base, however it is a
> quite clear picture of a notable portion of it.
Tyler Downer
> Tyler Downer wrote:
> > In Bug 678775 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775),
> > Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
> > About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
> > information anybody will need.
>
> Actually, the Firefox usability lead, Alex Limi suggested it. As the
> Firefox Product lead, I agreed and so I created a feature page for
> tracking this effort and I filed a bug for the implementation when we're
> ready to start that.
Yes, and you filed the bug. I wasn't intending to attack you or Limi,
I just was giving background to everyone that might now know.
>
> > First off, the versions number has always been shown in the Help>About
> > window for almost every Windows program for the past 16+ years
>
> It's always been that way is not a new argument against change. This was
> considered when we decided to make this change.
No, it is not a complete argument. But since 99% of programs across
all Operating systems use the same location to put their version
information, then yes, I think that it is. Being the one odd duck out
on something so trivial as Version is not worth the backlash and
confusion.
>
> > By removing the version number from the About window (which was already
> > simplified to showing just the version number, and not build ID in
> > Firefox 4, eg. Firefox 4.0.1), then we open up a window of confusion
> > with those people who want to check just what version they are
> > running.
>
> We also thought of that. And the after thinking about it, we concluded
> that most people don't need to know what version number they're using
> and what they actually want to know is whether or not they're running
> the latest version. For the few people who care whether it's version 7
> or version 2011-08-16 or version 1.8.0.0.1.77, they can get this
> information from about:troubleshooting which is available in the Firefox
> Help menu.
Somewhat along these lines, maybe we should change to a date
versioning scheme, somewhat like Ubuntu. Firefox 8.11 or something.
>
> > Asa says "When a user opens the About window for Firefox, the window
> > should say something like 'Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago,
> > you are running the latest release.'" But what if the computer is not
> > always connected to the Internet and the user wants to see if they
> > have the latest Firefox or if they need to connect to the internet
>
> Actually, that's not quite accurate. For the tiny minority of users who
> open the Firefox About dialog who are not connected to the internet, the
> dialog will say something like "As of N hours ago, you are running the
> latest version of Firefox" where N is the number of hours since Firefox
> was online and made the update check. If they're not connected to the
> internet, and they happen to know what the latest version of Firefox is
> (how did they learn that again?) then they can open
> about:troubleshooting and compare versions themselves. This is a rare
> case that should not impact the decision on this feature change.
You are still assuming that they will know to look in the
Troubleshooting page to find the version. I was using Firefox before I
even began contributing to Mozilla 3+ ears ago, and never knew ANY of
the about pages existed, and I was running a server, designing
websites professionally and so on.
>
> > download it? Or if they have had issues with their internet
> > connection? I had an Apache server set up on a computer once that i
> > did not have connected to the internet so I didn't have to worry about
> > security, but I did keep an up to date version of Firefox on the
> > computer because I used it for web development.
>
> Users with Apache servers set up on their machines are quite capable of
> using about:troubleshooting to figure out which version of Firefox
> they're using.
See above. Troubleshooting is not a logical place to find version
information.
>
> > And using the about:pages isn't a good solution. 75% of people don't
> > even know the about:pages exist (based on my triage experience) and
> > users likely are not going to find them on their own.
>
> about:troubleshooting is available via the Help menu. Users need not
> know about the existence of about: pages.
See above
>
> > Now, while I understand that the UX team wants to make version numbers
> > less important (that is something I myself want to see happen)
> > removing them from the About window is not the answer.
>
> It is not *the* answer. It is part of an answer which includes removing
> it from other touchpoints in Firefox and the Firefox websites.
Well, I am glad that you are doing other things than just removing the
version window, that makes me a bit more at ease :) You didn't explain
that in the bug or the wiki page, so I was confused at that point.
Thank you for clearing it up.
>
> > Even Chrome, which has a rapid release cycle and a VERY good updating
> > process, shows the Version in the about window.
>
> Chrome does foo is a reasonable data point to offer. We can certainly
> look at how certain Chrome features behave or are received by users and
> use that data to help inform our decisions on Firefox features.
>
> But this isn't new data. The UX and Product leads were fully aware of
> what Chrome does here and that didn't cause us to decide differently.
>
> > What needs to be done is, remove the version from the download page.
> > Just say "Download Firefox" and leave it at that.
>
> Thank you for the prescription. We are removing the version from the
> download page. There's a bug on file and it is scheduled as part of the
> next Website refresh. But no, we are not going to just "leave it at that."
>
> > Make Firefox automagically update in the background (with an easy to
> > find preference to turn that off), and get rid of the first run pages
> > (which now that we are using rapid release and each new version has
> > like 1 small feature, don't serve any purpose anyway).
>
> Firefox already automagically does some of its update in the background.
> We have feature pages and bugs describing the means by which we are
> going to make this even more magical and less distracting.
No, it doesn't. When only 66% of Firefox users are running Firefox 5
according to Dave's stats, that is a total failure. Especially compare
that with Chrome uptake.
>
> We also have a feature page describing the intent to remove the What's
> New tab that loads with each new release. That one is contentions but
> it's on my list of features that will all combine to give us much more
> "silent" updates.
>
> > The About window needs to continue showing the version number, and it
> > already checks for updates as soon as it is opened.
>
> So far, I think I can summarize your argument for why Firefox "needs to
> continue showing the version number" as 1) Versions have always been
> shown in the About dialog, and 2) Some offline users will get a outdated
> message about when they were last updated, and 3) users cannot find the
> menu for Help -> Troubleshooting, and 4) Chrome does it.
>
> I think I've responded to each of those. Have I missed one of your
> arguments or mis-characterized any of them?
In a nutshell, yes those are the 4 I wrote early on a Sunday
morning ;) I'll have more
>
> > I see little to no benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove
> > something else from the UI".
>
> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
> assumptions of those around you.
Again, this isn't an attack on you, or the UX team. Just my
experience, opinions, and suggestions. Don't turn this into a personal
attack please. It isn't needed.
Tyler Downer
> from all of the common user-visible locations because we don't believe
> that users need to know what version they're on. We're moving to a model
> that's more like the Web. What version of Gmail are you on?
I know it isn't Beta anymore ;) But on a serious side, Gmail is a
webpage. Firefox is a program that I have to download and install on
my computer. I have no control over Gmail's version even if I wanted
it. I can't roll back, I can't update. It just is. Firefox, I can, and
should be able to. It is installed on my computer, I want to know what
version it is without having to type in "about"troubleshooting" or go
to a non-standard location to find it.
>
> We've removed it from all of our marketing materials. We're removing it
> from the download button on the Website. We're removing it from how we
> talk to users about Firefox. We're ending version numbers because
> they're not meaningful to users (except in troubleshooting situations.)
Good steps :)
DaveG
<moznewsgro...@something.to.remove.jesperkristensen.dk> wrote:
> Also:https://metrics.mozilla.com/stats/firefox.shtml
Thanks for that link. I didn't know where to find that and it looks
nice and buried.
Boiling that down to percentages as I did with my numbers above,
here's what the stats from Mozilla Metrics show:
Firefox 5.0.x: 52.6%
Firefox 3.6.x: 31.6%
Firefox 4.0.x: 7.75%
Firefox 3.0.x: 3.33%
Firefox 3.5.x: 2.74%
Firefox 6.0b: 1.20%
Firefox 2.0.0.x: 0.75%
Firefox 7.0a2: 0.07%
Wow... that's actually far worse than I imagined. Scratch thinking
about an "overwhelming" majority, Firefox 5 barely even has a simple
majority.
On Aug 15, 12:40 pm, Tyler Downer <tyler.dow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Somewhat along these lines, maybe we should change to a date
> versioning scheme, somewhat like Ubuntu.
Yeah, I said the same thing in the bug and others have brought this up
else where too. It would make things a lot simpler in this regard, and
if the opposition to version numbers is in any way based their new
lack of meaning then this would return some to them.
> Firefox 8.11 or something.
Actually, that'd imply November 2008; we'd want 11.8, otherwise the
versions wouldn't always be in ascending order.
Tyler Downer
> versions wouldn't always be in ascending order.
True, thanks ;) It was just an idea, I don't know it even 11.8 would
be best, but some date based version may be better in the long run.
Thomas Brownback
support page is the home of troubleshooting info, maybe that's where
this all goes. Also, maybe a date is unnecessary, you could just
indicate a binary state of whether the browser has been checked in the
past t days by making some ui element green if the browser is 'fresh,'
red otherwise.
Just a thought. I was initially worried about loss of version info,
but hey, why not go farther?
Tyler Downer
>People using Firefox do need to have confidence that they're on the
>latest version, though, and that's what this feature provides. Telling
>the user explicitly that Firefox has checked and that she is indeed up
>to date is a much better way of letting the user know that she's up to
>date than giving her a number she can compare with some other number on
>a website somewhere to figure out if she's on the latest version.
And on the wiki it says:
>It is important to say when the last check happened and ideally to do the check when the dialog is launched so that time is very near and to drop the version and simply tell them >they're on the latest or not.
And
>Asa heard something about a new version of Firefox on the radio and he's not sure if he's got it or not. He opens the About dialog and is comforted to read that he is on the latest >version of Firefox as of Firefox's last check 1 minute ago.
This is what we currently do: http://tylerdowner.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/checking.png
And then, if no update is found, we get: http://tylerdowner.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/checked.png
How exactly is this not succeeding in your use case goals? and how is
this bad and how does it need to be changed? Since we already check
automatically as soon as the about window is opened (https://
bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=596813 is where we made this
change in Firefox 4). Maybe you weren't aware of this behavior? Or
does this somehow now meet your need of showing the user that Firefox
is checking up update actively and Firefox is up to date?
Asa Dotzler
Tyler Downer wrote:
> Asa, going off something you posted in the bug...
>> The difference between what was there and what will be there is the removal of the version number and the addition of the time since last successful check.
>
> The About window automatically checks for updates every single time it
> is opened by default. Then it says "Firefox is up to date" when it
> checks, unless there is an update available, when it will start to
> download the update. Is there something wrong with this method, or
> some problem that needs to be addressed? Otherwise, Firefox will
> always be saying "Checked for update 1 second ago" because as soon as
> they open the window, it will check again. There will never be a
> "Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago" unless the user is not
> connected to the internet.
There's nothing wrong with either the connected to the internet or not
connected to the internet states you describe. The important part is to
let the user know that it actually happened and that this is not just
some static text saying "up to date".
> as "Firefox is up to date". If users don't trust that "Firefox is up
> to date" means that Firefox is up to date, they aren't going to trust
> "Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago, Firefox is up to date".
Here you're wrong. The context is very meaningful. I'll let the UX
experts weigh in here, but they've specified this as a crucial
requirement for the feature.
> Besides, if I ever had an doubts, I can always look right above the
> text, see, "Firefox 5" then google "What is the latest version of
> Firefox" and see "Firefox 6 is being released tomorrow" on google
> news. So I know tomorrow, I can check for updates again, and I'll have
> the latest.
This is the part that needs to be eliminated. Users should not feel the
need to compare a number in the About dialog with a number they found on
the web somewhere.
> It just doesn't make sense to add the time, when the about window
> checks immediately it is opened. Unless you will have the time
> dynamically update for those people who leave the About window open
> for 20 minutes, which seems more like a fancy gimmick than anything.
If you left the window open for long enough that a new auto check
happened, I'd expect it to update with the time of the check that
happened. I don't see anything gimmicky about that.
>> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
>> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
>> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
>> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
>> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
>> assumptions of those around you.
>
> No, I'm not a troll, but statements like that make me wonder why I
> bother contributing to Mozilla. At least respect your community a bit
> please. Your email address ends in @mozilla.org, I respect that, that
> is why I came to usenet. At least hear me and others out on our
> concerns.
I didn't call you a troll. I said I didn't expect that kind of comment
coming from regular members of the community.
You said you thought that the people responsible for this feature (the
UX and Product leads for Firefox) were thinking "let's remove something
else from the UI" as a rationale for this feature. That's insulting.
That's insulting in the same way that the all too often claims of
"You're just doing it because Chrome did it" or "you're just changing
for the sake of changing" are insulting.
I don't think that the people working on this project deserve to be
treated like that. You won't hear me making those kinds of claims about
the contributions you're offering and I think it's reasonable for us to
not expect to hear that from you.
- A
Asa Dotzler
Tyler Downer wrote:
>> The justification is simple. We're removing the Firefox version number
>> from all of the common user-visible locations because we don't believe
>> that users need to know what version they're on. We're moving to a model
>> that's more like the Web. What version of Gmail are you on?
>
> I know it isn't Beta anymore ;) But on a serious side, Gmail is a
> webpage. Firefox is a program that I have to download and install on
> my computer. I have no control over Gmail's version even if I wanted
> it. I can't roll back, I can't update. It just is. Firefox, I can, and
> should be able to. It is installed on my computer, I want to know what
> version it is without having to type in "about"troubleshooting" or go
> to a non-standard location to find it.
You cannot roll back Firefox versions without losing support. You get
automatic updates with Firefox unless you've disabled that feature which
you absolutely should not unless you're trying to get exploited.
No one is taking these things away. You can roll back. You can turn off
updates. It's just a foolish thing to do in all but very exceptional
cases and we discourage it.
- A
Asa Dotzler
Tyler Downer wrote:
> Asa, you said above:
>> People using Firefox do need to have confidence that they're on the
>> latest version, though, and that's what this feature provides. Telling
>> the user explicitly that Firefox has checked and that she is indeed up
>> to date is a much better way of letting the user know that she's up to
>> date than giving her a number she can compare with some other number on
>> a website somewhere to figure out if she's on the latest version.
>
> And on the wiki it says:
>> It is important to say when the last check happened and ideally to do the check when the dialog is launched so that time is very near and to drop the version and simply tell them>they're on the latest or not.
>
> And
>
>> Asa heard something about a new version of Firefox on the radio and he's not sure if he's got it or not. He opens the About dialog and is comforted to read that he is on the latest>version of Firefox as of Firefox's last check 1 minute ago.
>
> This is what we currently do: http://tylerdowner.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/checking.png
>
> And then, if no update is found, we get: http://tylerdowner.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/checked.png
>
> How exactly is this not succeeding in your use case goals?
We don't tell the user when the check happened which is a requirement
for the feature. We show the version number and removing it is a
requirement for the feature. So, those two goals are not met.
- A
DaveG
using stats from 2011-08-11 to avoid the regular drop-off on the
weekends)
Tyler Downer
> Tyler Downer wrote:
> > Asa, going off something you posted in the bug...
> >> The difference between what was there and what will be there is the removal of the version number and the addition of the time since last successful check.
>
> > The About window automatically checks for updates every single time it
> > is opened by default. Then it says "Firefox is up to date" when it
> > checks, unless there is an update available, when it will start to
> > download the update. Is there something wrong with this method, or
> > some problem that needs to be addressed? Otherwise, Firefox will
> > always be saying "Checked for update 1 second ago" because as soon as
> > they open the window, it will check again. There will never be a
> > "Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago" unless the user is not
> > connected to the internet.
>
> There's nothing wrong with either the connected to the internet or not
> connected to the internet states you describe. The important part is to
> let the user know that it actually happened and that this is not just
> some static text saying "up to date".
>
> > as "Firefox is up to date". If users don't trust that "Firefox is up
> > to date" means that Firefox is up to date, they aren't going to trust
> > "Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago, Firefox is up to date".
>
> Here you're wrong. The context is very meaningful. I'll let the UX
> experts weigh in here, but they've specified this as a crucial
> requirement for the feature.
And someone who can't see the spinning circle that says "Firefox is
checking for updates" then "Firefox is up to date" Isn't going to have
a different experience with "Firefox last checked 30 minutes ago". You
are addressing a problem that I don't see existing with a solution
that is exactly the same as what is already in place. Do you have
metrics on how many user's go into the About window to check for
versions, how long they stay and how many actually would benefit from
this?
>
> > Besides, if I ever had an doubts, I can always look right above the
> > text, see, "Firefox 5" then google "What is the latest version of
> > Firefox" and see "Firefox 6 is being released tomorrow" on google
> > news. So I know tomorrow, I can check for updates again, and I'll have
> > the latest.
>
> This is the part that needs to be eliminated. Users should not feel the
> need to compare a number in the About dialog with a number they found on
> the web somewhere.
You are assuming that all users will implicitly trust the Firefox
version updater, which they won't. You are always going to have those
who want to dig in deeper.
>
> >> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
> >> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
> >> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
> >> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
> >> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
> >> assumptions of those around you.
>
> > No, I'm not a troll, but statements like that make me wonder why I
> > bother contributing to Mozilla. At least respect your community a bit
> > please. Your email address ends in @mozilla.org, I respect that, that
> > is why I came to usenet. At least hear me and others out on our
> > concerns.
>
> I didn't call you a troll. I said I didn't expect that kind of comment
> coming from regular members of the community.
>
> You said you thought that the people responsible for this feature (the
> UX and Product leads for Firefox) were thinking "let's remove something
> else from the UI" as a rationale for this feature. That's insulting.
> That's insulting in the same way that the all too often claims of
> "You're just doing it because Chrome did it" or "you're just changing
> for the sake of changing" are insulting.
>
> I don't think that the people working on this project deserve to be
> treated like that. You won't hear me making those kinds of claims about
> the contributions you're offering and I think it's reasonable for us to
> not expect to hear that from you.
>
I never intended it to be insulting, and I don't think that in the
context of what I was saying it was insulting. I said that is the only
benefit that I can see. I am all for removing unnecessary stuff from
the UI, I never said it was a bad idea, nor that we shouldn't do it
because of that. Nor am I saying we are copying Chrome or anything. I
was simply saying that was the only pro I could see, along with
several cons. Nothing insulting about listing the pros and cons of a
change. Just because I don't see things the same way as you and UI
team doesn't mean I am insulting you or them, and you don't need to
take it that way. That is part of having an intelligent mature
conversation about change and compromise.
Maybe if regular members of the community are making these kinds of
comments will give you a hint on how the community feels.
Tyler
> - A
Asa Dotzler
> On Aug 14, 2:23 pm, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> Tyler Downer wrote:
>>> In Bug 678775 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775),
>>> Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
>>> About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
>>> information anybody will need.
>> Actually, the Firefox usability lead, Alex Limi suggested it. As the
>> Firefox Product lead, I agreed and so I created a feature page for
>> tracking this effort and I filed a bug for the implementation when we're
>> ready to start that.
>
> Yes, and you filed the bug. I wasn't intending to attack you or Limi,
> I just was giving background to everyone that might now know.
>
>>> First off, the versions number has always been shown in the Help>About
>>> window for almost every Windows program for the past 16+ years
>> It's always been that way is not a new argument against change. This was
>> considered when we decided to make this change.
>
> No, it is not a complete argument. But since 99% of programs across
> all Operating systems use the same location to put their version
> information, then yes, I think that it is. Being the one odd duck out
> on something so trivial as Version is not worth the backlash and
> confusion.
And we are the odd duck out because we're not delivering software like
99% of downloaded programs. We're moving to a model that's much closer
to how websites operate. It's not trivial. It's a fundamental change to
how we're delivering software. The version exists in the about dialog
because of the way desktop software has traditionally been developed and
distributed. We're changing the way that sofware is developed and
distributed and with that we're obsoleting this piece of information.
>>> By removing the version number from the About window (which was already
>>> simplified to showing just the version number, and not build ID in
>>> Firefox 4, eg. Firefox 4.0.1), then we open up a window of confusion
>>> with those people who want to check just what version they are
>>> running.
By leaving it we'd be opening up a window of confusion for the people
who want to check what version they are running. When version has no
actionable meaning to the user, it not only doesn't help, it adds confusion.
>> We also thought of that. And the after thinking about it, we concluded
>> that most people don't need to know what version number they're using
>> and what they actually want to know is whether or not they're running
>> the latest version. For the few people who care whether it's version 7
>> or version 2011-08-16 or version 1.8.0.0.1.77, they can get this
>> information from about:troubleshooting which is available in the Firefox
>> Help menu.
>
> Somewhat along these lines, maybe we should change to a date
> versioning scheme, somewhat like Ubuntu. Firefox 8.11 or something.
We're not going to change the format, that's just rearranging deck
chairs on the titanic, we're going to obsolete the entire feature of
version numbers.
>>> Asa says "When a user opens the About window for Firefox, the window
>>> should say something like 'Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago,
>>> you are running the latest release.'" But what if the computer is not
>>> always connected to the Internet and the user wants to see if they
>>> have the latest Firefox or if they need to connect to the internet
>> Actually, that's not quite accurate. For the tiny minority of users who
>> open the Firefox About dialog who are not connected to the internet, the
>> dialog will say something like "As of N hours ago, you are running the
>> latest version of Firefox" where N is the number of hours since Firefox
>> was online and made the update check. If they're not connected to the
>> internet, and they happen to know what the latest version of Firefox is
>> (how did they learn that again?) then they can open
>> about:troubleshooting and compare versions themselves. This is a rare
>> case that should not impact the decision on this feature change.
>
> You are still assuming that they will know to look in the
> Troubleshooting page to find the version. I was using Firefox before I
> even began contributing to Mozilla 3+ ears ago, and never knew ANY of
> the about pages existed, and I was running a server, designing
> websites professionally and so on.
That's not correct. I'm assuming they won't need to find the version
except in very rare cases.
There will be cases where they are in a trouble shooting situation and a
support person will ask them to give their information to the
troubleshooter or a an article will tell them how to diagnose a problem.
In those cases, the helper or the documentation will guide them to Help
-> Troubleshooting.
>>> download it? Or if they have had issues with their internet
>>> connection? I had an Apache server set up on a computer once that i
>>> did not have connected to the internet so I didn't have to worry about
>>> security, but I did keep an up to date version of Firefox on the
>>> computer because I used it for web development.
>> Users with Apache servers set up on their machines are quite capable of
>> using about:troubleshooting to figure out which version of Firefox
>> they're using.
>
> See above. Troubleshooting is not a logical place to find version
> information.
Unless the reason you need the version number is because your
troubleshooting and I don't see any other obvious use cases for the
version number.
>>> And using the about:pages isn't a good solution. 75% of people don't
>>> even know the about:pages exist (based on my triage experience) and
>>> users likely are not going to find them on their own.
>> about:troubleshooting is available via the Help menu. Users need not
>> know about the existence of about: pages.
>
> See above
>
>>> Now, while I understand that the UX team wants to make version numbers
>>> less important (that is something I myself want to see happen)
>>> removing them from the About window is not the answer.
>> It is not *the* answer. It is part of an answer which includes removing
>> it from other touchpoints in Firefox and the Firefox websites.
>
> Well, I am glad that you are doing other things than just removing the
> version window, that makes me a bit more at ease :) You didn't explain
> that in the bug or the wiki page, so I was confused at that point.
> Thank you for clearing it up.
And why wouldn't you assume the best from your colleagues rather than
the worst? When I see a colleague doing something I don't understand, I
don't assume they're idiots that don't know what they're doing. I assume
that they've thought about it carefully and I'm the one not seeing the
whole picture. I find that mindset helps me a great deal on a project
that's so large that I can't possibly know why everything is happening
as it is happening.
>>> Even Chrome, which has a rapid release cycle and a VERY good updating
>>> process, shows the Version in the about window.
>> Chrome does foo is a reasonable data point to offer. We can certainly
>> look at how certain Chrome features behave or are received by users and
>> use that data to help inform our decisions on Firefox features.
>>
>> But this isn't new data. The UX and Product leads were fully aware of
>> what Chrome does here and that didn't cause us to decide differently.
>>
>>> What needs to be done is, remove the version from the download page.
>>> Just say "Download Firefox" and leave it at that.
>> Thank you for the prescription. We are removing the version from the
>> download page. There's a bug on file and it is scheduled as part of the
>> next Website refresh. But no, we are not going to just "leave it at that."
>>
>>> Make Firefox automagically update in the background (with an easy to
>>> find preference to turn that off), and get rid of the first run pages
>>> (which now that we are using rapid release and each new version has
>>> like 1 small feature, don't serve any purpose anyway).
>> Firefox already automagically does some of its update in the background.
>> We have feature pages and bugs describing the means by which we are
>> going to make this even more magical and less distracting.
>
> No, it doesn't. When only 66% of Firefox users are running Firefox 5
> according to Dave's stats, that is a total failure. Especially compare
> that with Chrome uptake.
The Firefox 3.6 problem isn't something we've addressed with rapid
releases yet. We're not moving those users forward the way we are the
4.0 users and 5.0 users. So, if you're going to criticize the rapid
release process, you need to actually look where we're applying it.
We're applying it right now in moving Firefox 4 people to Firefox 5 and
we've done that rather well.
>> We also have a feature page describing the intent to remove the What's
>> New tab that loads with each new release. That one is contentions but
>> it's on my list of features that will all combine to give us much more
>> "silent" updates.
>>
>>> The About window needs to continue showing the version number, and it
>>> already checks for updates as soon as it is opened.
>> So far, I think I can summarize your argument for why Firefox "needs to
>> continue showing the version number" as 1) Versions have always been
>> shown in the About dialog, and 2) Some offline users will get a outdated
>> message about when they were last updated, and 3) users cannot find the
>> menu for Help -> Troubleshooting, and 4) Chrome does it.
>>
>> I think I've responded to each of those. Have I missed one of your
>> arguments or mis-characterized any of them?
>
> In a nutshell, yes those are the 4 I wrote early on a Sunday
> morning ;) I'll have more
Great.
- A
Asa Dotzler
> I'll reply to this first because it's of course a fair point to
> request hard numbers. I'm not just going on a feeling based on
> complaining users. I see things being far worse than what you see by
> looking at Firefox upgrade rates in my and other addons' AMO stats.
>
> Flagfox currently has a peak of around 1.68 million users. Here's a
> breakdown of what Firefox versions its users are reporting in their
> update pings:
> Firefox 5.0.x: 66%
> Firefox 3.6.x: 21%
> Firefox 4.0.x: 6.6%
> Firefox 3.5.x: 3.1%
> Firefox 6.0b: 1.9%
> Firefox 3.0.x: 0.79%
> Firefox 7.0a2: 0.19%
>
> We're almost upon Firefox 6, yet only 66% of the users I see here are
> running a current version.
Firefox 3.6 and below are not participating in the rapid release process
(yet).
Take Firefox 3.6 and below out of this equation and you'll see that
we're actually doing pretty good for our first update in the new system.
- A
Tyler Downer
Well, you can, for right now Firefox 3.6 is still supported, and you
have to remember that users will roll back even though it may not be
supported. I know in rapid release we are going to be dropping support
with every update (which I encourage and love), but you have to
remember, users can't always live with the latest and greatest.
Asa Dotzler
DaveG wrote:
> On Aug 15, 12:38 pm, Jesper Kristensen
> <moznewsgro...@something.to.remove.jesperkristensen.dk> wrote:
>> Also:https://metrics.mozilla.com/stats/firefox.shtml
>
> Thanks for that link. I didn't know where to find that and it looks
> nice and buried.
>
> Boiling that down to percentages as I did with my numbers above,
> here's what the stats from Mozilla Metrics show:
> Firefox 5.0.x: 52.6%
> Firefox 3.6.x: 31.6%
> Firefox 4.0.x: 7.75%
> Firefox 3.0.x: 3.33%
> Firefox 3.5.x: 2.74%
> Firefox 6.0b: 1.20%
> Firefox 2.0.0.x: 0.75%
> Firefox 7.0a2: 0.07%
>
> Wow... that's actually far worse than I imagined. Scratch thinking
> about an "overwhelming" majority, Firefox 5 barely even has a simple
> majority.
Firefox 3.6 and below are not participating in the rapid release process
Asa Dotzler
The about dialog has a lot of Firefox information that has nothing to do
with troubleshooting. We're not ready to lose that information and we
have no better place to put it.
- A
Tyler Downer
On 8/15/2011 11:56 AM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> Tyler Downer wrote:
>> On Aug 14, 2:23 pm, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>>> Tyler Downer wrote:
>>>> In Bug 678775 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775),
>>>> Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
>>>> About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
>>>> information anybody will need.
>>> Actually, the Firefox usability lead, Alex Limi suggested it. As the
>>> Firefox Product lead, I agreed and so I created a feature page for
>>> tracking this effort and I filed a bug for the implementation when we're
>>> ready to start that.
>>
>> Yes, and you filed the bug. I wasn't intending to attack you or Limi,
>> I just was giving background to everyone that might now know.
>>
>>>> First off, the versions number has always been shown in the Help>About
>>>> window for almost every Windows program for the past 16+ years
>>> It's always been that way is not a new argument against change. This was
>>> considered when we decided to make this change.
>>
>> No, it is not a complete argument. But since 99% of programs across
>> all Operating systems use the same location to put their version
>> information, then yes, I think that it is. Being the one odd duck out
>> on something so trivial as Version is not worth the backlash and
>> confusion.
>
> And we are the odd duck out because we're not delivering software like 99% of downloaded programs. We're moving to a model that's much closer to how websites operate. It's not trivial. It's a fundamental change to how we're delivering software. The version exists in the about dialog because of the way desktop software has traditionally been developed and distributed. We're changing the way that sofware is developed and distributed and with that we're obsoleting this piece of information.
But you are never going to get away from version numbers, Firefox is a
program that is downloaded and installed on the computer, versions
will never go away, and neither will the need to know the versions
>>
>>>> Now, while I understand that the UX team wants to make version numbers
>>>> less important (that is something I myself want to see happen)
>>>> removing them from the About window is not the answer.
>>> It is not *the* answer. It is part of an answer which includes removing
>>> it from other touchpoints in Firefox and the Firefox websites.
>>
>> Well, I am glad that you are doing other things than just removing the
>> version window, that makes me a bit more at ease :) You didn't explain
>> that in the bug or the wiki page, so I was confused at that point.
>> Thank you for clearing it up.
>
> And why wouldn't you assume the best from your colleagues rather than the worst? When I see a colleague doing something I don't understand, I don't assume they're idiots that don't know what they're doing. I assume that they've thought about it carefully and I'm the one not seeing the whole picture. I find that mindset helps me a great deal on a project that's so large that I can't possibly know why everything is happening as it is happening.
And I never said anything along the lines that they were stupid or
didn't know what they were doing. You are making assumptions about
what I said that don't need to be made. Let's leave the insults out of
this discussion, they have no place and serve only the increase
emotions.
John Goins
leaving it there if it needs updates?
Pascal Chevrel
>
> Unless the reason you need the version number is because your
> troubleshooting and I don't see any other obvious use cases for the
> version number.
>
Beta testers and web developers need to find that information rapidly
because they switch constantly between different versions of Firefox for
testing (the application itself or the pages they create).
Pascal
Tyler Downer
And they don't want to have to do extra steps to go into
Troubleshooting to find the number... And, if you totally get rid of
Version numbers, say goodbye to the beta testing community.
Barry Abel
'about' don't you understand?" This box is named "About" because it
provides information "about" the application. It's not just a matter
of convention; it's a matter of plain English (or Spanish or
whatever). From a technical side, there may be all sorts of reasons
to change the way part of a program works, but from a user
perspective, it makes sense to just give the user what they're asking
for, especially when it's something as simple as the version number.
A user doesn't want developers to say, "No, that's not what you really
want to see." If a program is not being designed to meet user needs
and expectations, something is wrong.
As for putting this discussion in mozilla.dev.usabiilty, as opposed to
Bugzilla, I think it's well worth noting that Google Groups doesn't
work in Firefox on my computer; I'm writing this in Opera. When you
decide to shunt user concerns from Bugzilla to a different web site,
you might want to be very careful where you redirect it. A major
shortcoming of Firefox is that not all sites work with it, at least
not with every possible combination of extensions. If a user might
already be wondering whether they're going to continue to use Firefox,
don't give them a further illustration of how Firefox is falling short
for them.
jarosite
>
> You cannot roll back Firefox versions without losing support. You get
> automatic updates with Firefox unless you've disabled that feature which
> you absolutely should not unless you're trying to get exploited.
>
> No one is taking these things away. You can roll back. You can turn off
> updates. It's just a foolish thing to do in all but very exceptional
> cases and we discourage it.
>
To say turning off updates is a foolish thing to do is ridiculous from
a business standpoint. If firefox is being used in an office
environment an update should only take place once IT has verified that
it is compatable and works in that environment. Nobody automatically
update Windows in a business environment, it is rolled out accross the
business remotely.
In this situation when a user is talking to IT support it is easiest
for the user to look at help->about to verify the version being used.
Many users of the more simple variety, which is most people in an
office environment will find about:support all a bit much to take
in.....
At the end of the day there are no real gains to removing the version
number.
I suggest vewing the article on slashdot to see quite a bit more
negative feedback from the more technically minded and experienced.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/08/15/177257/Mozilla-To-Remove-User-Facing-Firefox-Version-Numbers
c
DaveG
> And we are the odd duck out because we're not delivering software like
> 99% of downloaded programs. We're moving to a model that's much closer
> to how websites operate. It's not trivial. It's a fundamental change to
> how we're delivering software. The version exists in the about dialog
> because of the way desktop software has traditionally been developed and
> distributed. We're changing the way that sofware is developed and
> distributed and with that we're obsoleting this piece of information.
Not really. We're just bringing Firefox on non-Linux OSes to an update
model closer to Linux and actually updating faster than the distros
want to take them (though, they should).
> By leaving it we'd be opening up a window of confusion for the people
> who want to check what version they are running. When version has no
> actionable meaning to the user, it not only doesn't help, it adds confusion.
As is being brought up in the bug right now, one very actionable
meaning of the version to the user is with respect to what addons are
supported. In fact, this is one of the most common reasons I hear
people complaining about not wanting to upgrade at all.
> We're not going to change the format, that's just rearranging deck
> chairs on the titanic, we're going to obsolete the entire feature of
> version numbers.
Um, no. You can't really do that. You can hide the sausage making
factory from the average user, but you can't get rid of it.
> Unless the reason you need the version number is because your
> troubleshooting and I don't see any other obvious use cases for the
> version number.
When something changes in the UI from one version to another, and
someone is trying to direct another person on how to do something step
by step, they well need to know the exact version. And no, "just
update", is not going to fly for everyone no matter how much it
should.
> The Firefox 3.6 problem isn't something we've addressed with rapid
> releases yet. We're not moving those users forward the way we are the
> 4.0 users and 5.0 users. So, if you're going to criticize the rapid
> release process, you need to actually look where we're applying it.
A perfectly valid criticism of the rapid release process is where it's
being applied or not.
> We're applying it right now in moving Firefox 4 people to Firefox 5 and
> we've done that rather well.
To restate what I said via email when you replied directly to me (not
sure whether that was intentional or not, as the reply is here too):
Out of those running Firefox 4.0.x or 5.0.x, 87% are on the 5.0.x. For
one nearly complete rapid release cycle step, that's not very good.
That being said, as I mentioned in the group thread it will be
interesting to see what happens with the next cycle step and if we
keep getting such large numbers of people stranded each time, or just
mostly on the first.
William Sappington
> Tyler Downer wrote:
> >> The justification is simple. We're removing the Firefox version number
> >> from all of the common user-visible locations because we don't believe
> >> that users need to know what version they're on. We're moving to a model
> >> that's more like the Web. What version of Gmail are you on?
>
> > I know it isn't Beta anymore ;) But on a serious side, Gmail is a
> > webpage. Firefox is a program that I have to download and install on
> > my computer. I have no control over Gmail's version even if I wanted
> > it. I can't roll back, I can't update. It just is. Firefox, I can, and
> > should be able to. It is installed on my computer, I want to know what
> > version it is without having to type in "about"troubleshooting" or go
> > to a non-standard location to find it.
>
> You cannot roll back Firefox versions without losing support. You get
> automatic updates with Firefox unless you've disabled that feature which
> you absolutely should not unless you're trying to get exploited.
What support? You mean the news groups and bugzilla? FF has been
free
from the beginning and support is by SELF.
> No one is taking these things away. You can roll back. You can turn off
> updates. It's just a foolish thing to do in all but very exceptional
> cases and we discourage it.
No your not taking it away you are just making it harder to do.
I used to be a HUGE FF supporter, but that just stopped.
I am now a HUGE FF detractor.
You guys have your heads firmly planted in your asses and show no
signs of getting a clue.
It was a lot of fun while it lasted.
CLICK
> - A
Isaac A
> And they don't want to have to do extra steps to go into
> Troubleshooting to find the number... And, if you totally get rid of
> Version numbers, say goodbye to the beta testing community.
There is no extra step for users or developers. The same amount of
clicks (answer: 2) are required when going to Help --> "About Firefox"
and Help --> "Troubleshooting Information".
Tyler Downer
show What problem this is addressing, Who is affected by it, What our
goal is (long-term and short-term, and not generic terms like "getting
rid of versions") and How this solution addresses the problem better
than the solutions we already have in place. I truly would like to
know the clear answers to all of these questions, I may not be seeing
data that you are (Maybe 50% of users sit on About all day wondering
when Firefox last checked for updates, I don't know), but I need
concrete information, not generic buzzwords.
Isaac A
> When something changes in the UI from one version to another, and
> someone is trying to direct another person on how to do something step
> by step, they well need to know the exact version. And no, "just
> update", is not going to fly for everyone no matter how much it
> should.
This is an example of the troubleshooting scenario Asa is describing
(non-working add-ons is also a troubleshooting situation). Despite the
title, version numbers are not being removed entirely, rather its sole
location is being delegated to "Troubleshooting Information" in the
Help menu (which brings up about:troubleshooting).
Admittedly, the cognitive change could (and likely will) be considered
an annoyance, but instead of telling a user to go to "About Firefox"
in the Firefox help menu, you now would direct them to
"Troubleshooting Information" also in the help menu.
Eric Mitchell
Having the version in the name or some other truly overt poition is a little stupid, but removing it entirely from the parts in which people are familiar represents a drastic step backward in user experience. I am a very competent computer user and I have been with Firefox since version 1.5 and I had never learned about the "about:troubleshooting" and "about:support" pages until today, and I didn't know that "about:troubleshooting" was in a menu until I read this thread. I do urge the parties involved to see this as an extremely unimportant thing to be mucking with now and return to doing real work on improving Firefox's performance and other truly important aspects of the user experience that have improved so much in the past few years.
blackdeath
> On 15/08/11 05:29, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>
> > Thomas Ahlblom wrote:
> >> Could someone please post references to the relevant standards Firefox
> >> will comply with after implementation of bug 678775?
>
> > No. Not really.
>
> > We're intentionally breaking with convention here because we've moved to
> > an unconventional release model where conventional versioning and
> > version branding are no longer applicable.
>
> > - A
>
> I don't see how unconventional this release model is. I use several
> software that update more often than every six weeks and they keep their
> version number in the About window.
>
> Also, we're now talking about the privileged 2% web developers and I
> think it's a need for us to see the version number we are working on.
Agreed. Break things for the developers/sys admins and they will just
deploy Crome or IE as the required browser for their apps. It really
is that easy. Mess with the people with admin rights/app requirements
specifications at your own peril.
DavidIllsley
There was a bunch of backlash over the 4>5 transition, suggesting that
the world isn't quite as ready for the versionless future that you
desire (and I'm ambivalent about) as first thought. That was
particularly around extension and enterprise compatibility. Has the
situation improved markedly since then? If not, I don't see a benefit
to any user of the number being removed, and there being a reasonable
chunk who are inconvenienced (maybe not hugely, but a non-zero amount)
as the compatibility information is not where they'd expect it to be.
Can you (or a ux person) articulate the benefit you see to users a
little more clearly?
I can't come up with much more than...
- that casual users will see a high number and assume it's good-
enough despite the warning there's a new version?
- that casual users won't hear about new releases because of de-
emphasising the marketing or new releases, so might ignore the warning
there's a new version?
... which may be because I'm not a ux professional.
Cheers,
David
Linker3000
wordy responses the devs have to make to justify it says it all.
blackdeath
> DaveG wrote:
> > <tangential rant>
> > First off, let me state here that either a group discussion is the
> > prerequisite to a bug or if not, then Bugzilla is actually where this
> > discussion belongs, regardless of what some people want on occasion.
> > No, Bugzilla is not generally a discussion forum, but it /is/ quite
> > often the place for discussing how and what is implemented, so long as
> > we don't get into a loop of repeating ourselves. Actual pros and cons
> > and alternative solutions are debated in Bugzilla all the time and it
> > is rare that I can stand to come over to the groups. I would've
> > thought the spam alone would make usenet dead by now, let alone the
> > fact that it's... usenet. I stopped using this place a decade ago. It
> > needs to die with fire.
> > </tangential rant>
>
> Rant not withstanding, thanks for bringing this to the newsgroup. This
> is where I've asked for feedback and as the Product owner of this
> feature and reporter of the bug, I think I'm completely within reason to
> request that discussion happen here and not in the bug. I appreciate
> your willingness to accommodate my request.
>
> > On Aug 14, 4:23 pm, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> >> It's always been that way is not a new argument against change.
>
> > to use this" is, especially if we're explicitly talking about user
> > experience and interaction here.
>
> This assumes "everyone" needs to know how to find the version number
> when what we're doing here is intentionally killing the version number.
>
> > The about dialog may be part of the application, but it's really more
> > of an OS-level action. It's one of the few things that has been more
> > or less standard on multiple OSes for decades. I have no clue what
> > version of KDE I have installed right now, but I do know it's in help-
> >> about for every KDE application as is each application's version. The
> > same concept is applied virtually everywhere.
>
> And we're breaking from that convention. We're moving to a more Web-like
> convention where it's simply not important what version you're using as
> long as it's the latest version. We're also already in a new system
> where there is no supported version except the latest versoin so the
> overwhelming majority of users will be on that latest version and for
> them, the most important thing isn't the number of the release. The most
> important thing is confidence that they're on the latest release. That's
> what the About dialog will give them.
>
> >> We also thought of that. And the after thinking about it, we concluded
> >> that most people don't need to know what version number they're using
> >> and what they actually want to know is whether or not they're running
> >> the latest version. For the few people who care whether it's version 7
> >> or version 2011-08-16 or version 1.8.0.0.1.77, they can get this
> >> information from about:troubleshooting which is available in the Firefox
> >> Help menu.
>
> > about window? I'll restate myself from bug 678775 here: The about
> > dialog is essentially a box designed for the sole purpose of housing
> > the application developer and version.
>
> No, we don't want about:troubleshooting as a second about window. The
> about:troubleshooting page is for troubleshooting. The About dialog is
> for finding out about Firefox, including whether or not you're on the
> latest version.
>
> > Also, to restate my suggested compromise:
> > If there's an actual known repeatable problem this would fix, I think
> > some kind of compromise where there were two views in the about
> > dialog: a hyper-user-friendly one with things hidden and a link to
> > show the rest of the (and maybe more) info including the version and
> > date of said version. (i.e. similar to how the credits were done once
> > upon a time)
>
> I don't believe, and the the UX lead for Firefox doesn't believe, that
> this information belongs in the About dialog. You think it does and
> you've cited "convention" as your argument. I've explained that we're
> intentionally breaking from convention here because we're changing how
> we make the software.
>
> Our new model is much more akin to how Web software works where you are
> always on the latest release and you don't need to know what release
> number that is. As an end user, the number tells you nothing of value
> and so we're removing it.
>
> If you are in a troubleshooting situation, perhaps because you're
> talking with a website that doesn't work in Firefox or you're trying to
> get Firefox support from our Mozilla Support Forums , then you can go to
> Help -> Troubleshooting and from there get all of the information about
> Firefox that could help you troubleshoot your Firefox problem, including
> the version number.
>
> >>> I see little to no benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove
> >>> something else from the UI".
> >> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
> >> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
> >> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
> >> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
> >> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
> >> assumptions of those around you.
>
> > remove something else from the UI" route is often a perfectly valid
> > way to improve things.
>
> I disagree with that. That's never a valid way to improve things without
> considering carefully the "something" you're removing from the UI.
>
> > Firefox had until recently a lot of UI that needed removing, and still
> > has some. This should not be taken as an offense and your response is
> > more confrontational than is needed here. I think we all would rather
> > have a debate than an argument.
>
> When someone assumes or says outright that Mozilla UX and Product folks
> are removing things just to be removing things, I'm going to shout
> loudly. I stand by that. It's an argument, along with "You're just doing
> it because <other browser> did it" and "It's just change for the sake of
> change" that I'm not going to accept in these discussions and when it
> comes up I'm going to call it out and call for it to stop. I'm sick of
> it and I'm not going to accept those kinds of insults as arguments.
>
> >> We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer
> >> audience. We also have a need to let users know if they are indeed using
> >> the latest and greatest version of Firefox. This feature re-design
> >> accomplishes both of those goals.
>
> > Let me restate that these goals and showing expected information here
> > are not mutually exclusive concepts. Just have a little text link for
> > "show technical information about this version" (or some more concise
> > wording) which transitions from your ideal hyper-simple dialog to show
> > the version, its date, and maybe a link to about:buildconfig. This
> > gives the best of both worlds.
>
> I don't think, and I believe the Firefox UX lead agrees with me, that
> users need that information in the About dialog. That's why we're
> removing it. The version number is only relevant to users for
> troubleshooting and I question it's relevance even there given that
> we're shooting for having all of our users on the latest release.
>
> > Additionally, version numbers matter whether anyone likes it or not,
> > at least until Firefox forces updates
>
> Firefox updates are already all required. Firefox 5 was a required
> update for Firefox 4 and the overwhelming majority of Firefox 4 ussers
> are migrated to 5. Firefox 6, which will be available in several days,
> is a required update for Firefox 5 users.
>
> > (with an override only discoverable by power users and sys admins) such
> > that you don't have an ungodly number of users not taking major updates
> > for quite some time, if ever.
>
> As I said above, Firefox 6 is an automatic and required update for
> Firefox 5. Firefox 5 was a required update for Firefox 4. We're there
> today. By the time we get to Firefox 9 or 10, when this new About dialog
> feature change lands, we'll have an even better update experience so
> we'll lose even fewer people in the transition and we'll transition them
> even faster.
>
> It's off-topic but I do want to note that there aren't an ungodly number
> of users on Firefox 4 because Firefox 5 was an automatic update and the
> overwhelming majority were updated in just a couple of weeks. That
> update transition will be even faster with Firefox 5 to 6 and faster
> still with 6 to 7 and 7 to 8.
>
> > We're currently on a path towards a highly fragmented user-base and
> > fixing that should be higher on the priority list. Yes, I know that
> > doesn't prevent improvements to the about dialog, but it does mean that
> > the version is not (yet) a completely trivial thing tobe buried.
>
> We're not on a path to a highly fragmented user-base. You can't just
> assert facts without evidence. The rapid release transitions are working
> quite well and will improve over time. A year from now we'll be far
> *less* fragmented than we've ever been since Firefox launched.
>
> - A
I disagree that it is more web standard that it doesn't matter what
version you use. Web apps (eg. Office Live, Google Apps etc) try to
keep backwards capability between versions. At the very least you can
argue that the customer opted for "forced updates" since they are
using software as a service and can't reasonably expect the provider
to keep a version up for everyone that decides to forgo an upgrade for
each of potentially hundreds of versions in a rapid release cycle kind
of thing.
Firefox though is installed software. If it is on my computer and has
say a security vulnerability I need to be able to check to see if I
have that version of the program running or not. I also need to be
able to test my networks software against that version of FF. Having
an easy/as expected way for users to figure out if they have the right
software installed is mission critical. Telling users that they should
just care about being on the latest version is absolute crap.
Sometimes apps downgrade. They break your addons, don't perform as
well, get rid of a piece of UI or a keyboard shortcut that you like,
break a critical corporate webpage etc. You shouldn't have to upgrade
to know what "version" you are on (latest). Think about corporate
users, random system comes into the building, what version is it
running, "mm I don't know", go to troubleshooting etc etc. Why the
heck should something that ultimately needs to be there be hidden in
some never never land instead of the place were every major OS/
windowing system provider says it should be? The day the version
number goes away from the About box is the day my network goes back to
IE.
John Goins
Michael S.
they do as long as Add-ons compatibility is release-dependent.
Consider when Firefox either doesn't auto-update due to an
incompatible add-on, or does update and disables the add-on. The first
thing the user is going to do is go to the add-on page and check the
Firefox version requirements, which will say "compatible with Firefox
9" (or whatever). At this point the user *needs to know* what version
of Firefox they are on.
Or, the user will want to Google for the add-on name + Firefox version
to find instructions for what to do to resolve the issue. Again, they
need to know what version they're on.
(The root of this problem is that while Mozilla is now claiming
increases in major version number do not indicate changes in APIs, the
add-on architecture is still using it to check compatibility. It
should not be the user's job to fix this. And that's why I'm stick on
Firefox 4.)
Famous
version-ing information in most if not all software *INSTALLED* on a
machine
2) facebook/twitter/gmail are web applications that are used *through*
the browser, and as such do not require software to be installed
3) comparing the two, and determining that users (and developers)
don't need a uniform way of accessing version information, across
multiple software solutions, and operating systems, is a just poor
judgement to say the very *VERY* least
4) As a developer myself, I like to keep tabs on the version numbers I
have available (nice little text document on my desktop) as well as
the change logs with each version (security audits make this
necessary), and while I can admit that this isn't such a hard change,
It isn't one that is necessary.
Asa Dotzler
Tyler Downer wrote:
> But you are never going to get away from version numbers, Firefox is a
> program that is downloaded and installed on the computer, versions
> will never go away, and neither will the need to know the versions
We disagree.
- A
Asa Dotzler
John Goins wrote:
> How about removing the version number when Firefox is current, but
> leaving it there if it needs updates?
If Firefox needs updates, it will simply update. No need to supply a
version number.
- A
Asa Dotzler
It's available via the same number of clicks as it was. Help->About is
now Help->Troubleshooting. Or, if you really need it on your finger
tips, you can get one of several popular extensions that add it to the
titlebar.
- A
Asa Dotzler
There are no extra steps. Help->Troubleshooting is just as many steps as
Help->About.
- A
Asa Dotzler
William Sappington wrote:
> On Aug 15, 10:42 am, Asa Dotzler<a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> Tyler Downer wrote:
>>>> The justification is simple. We're removing the Firefox version number
>>>> from all of the common user-visible locations because we don't believe
>>>> that users need to know what version they're on. We're moving to a model
>>>> that's more like the Web. What version of Gmail are you on?
>>> I know it isn't Beta anymore ;) But on a serious side, Gmail is a
>>> webpage. Firefox is a program that I have to download and install on
>>> my computer. I have no control over Gmail's version even if I wanted
>>> it. I can't roll back, I can't update. It just is. Firefox, I can, and
>>> should be able to. It is installed on my computer, I want to know what
>>> version it is without having to type in "about"troubleshooting" or go
>>> to a non-standard location to find it.
>> You cannot roll back Firefox versions without losing support. You get
>> automatic updates with Firefox unless you've disabled that feature which
>> you absolutely should not unless you're trying to get exploited.
>
> What support? You mean the news groups and bugzilla? FF has been
> free
> from the beginning and support is by SELF.
Firefox versions older than the current version are exploitable and will
not be patched. That kind f support.
- A
EnviroChem
I've been using Firefox since when it was called Firebird and never heard of "about:troubleshooting" and "about:support" until today. From a tech support standpoint it is going to be a really confusing to users to tell them over the phone to "type about colon support into the address bar." Sure shooting, users will type "www.about:support" or "about : support" or some other goofy combination into the address bar assuming they get that right. It is a heck of a lot easier to tell users to "go to help then about Firefox" or to "click on the Firefox button and then on 'about Firefox'".
Does the version number really clutter up the about window that much? My feeling is putting "v6.0" below the word "Firefox" is a lot less clutter than "Firefox last updated X days ago."
Speaking of version numbers, here's a thought: Pegasus Mail, which I've been using since 1995 and has been around for over twenty years is only at v4.61. Oh, and Pegasus' version number is prominently posted in the about window just like every other application on my computer (as far as I can tell).
Removing the version number from Firefox's about window is just another in a long line of stupid decisions regarding Firefox in the past six months. And like the other stupid decisions, arrogant intransigence will force this bad idea through in spite of everything.
Asa Dotzler
It's simple. We are moving to a release model that makes version numbers
meaningless and unactionable for consumers. In that model, version
numbers go away.
- A
Asa Dotzler
> I disagree that it is more web standard that it doesn't matter what
> version you use. Web apps (eg. Office Live, Google Apps etc) try to
> keep backwards capability between versions.
Firefox does as well. Firefox tries to not break web content and does
not break add-ons which are written using our approved APIs.
- A
Asa Dotzler
Famous wrote:
> 4) As a developer myself, I like to keep tabs on the version numbers I
> have available (nice little text document on my desktop) as well as
> the change logs with each version (security audits make this
> necessary), and while I can admit that this isn't such a hard change,
> It isn't one that is necessary.
As a developer, you'll certainly have the ability to located and avail
yourself of the Help->Troubleshooting page which tells you the version
number. As a developer that likes to keep notes on the changelog for
each version, you'll be happy to know that about:buildconfig will give
you the changeset that Firefox was built from and that should lead you
to the full changelog (several thousands of checkins) for the release
you're using.
- A
EnviroChem
Only arrogant intransigence will keep the loser of an idea of removing version numbers from the about window from being scraped as it should.
Are you intentionally trying to kill off Firefox? With the decisions being made lately, this certainly seems to be the case.
Petter Andersson
> not break add-ons which are written using our approved APIs.
Right, right. "Trying to" is just not good enough, also APIs evolve.
What was approved yesterday and today, may not be that tomorrow.
Frequently changing API seems to be Firefox's forté. See also:
Google Toolbar (re: Google Throws In The Towel, no Toolbar for FF5,
aka: Screw You Guys, And Your Rapid Version Nonsense, LOL).
SmoothPorcupine
>
> Rant not withstanding, thanks for bringing this to the newsgroup. This
> is where I've asked for feedback and as the Product owner of this
> feature and reporter of the bug, I think I'm completely within reason to
> request that discussion happen here and not in the bug. I appreciate
> your willingness to accommodate my request.
Obviously not directed at me personally, but as I am someone who
accommodated the request, heh, it was no trouble. Really!
On Aug 14, 1:23 pm, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer
> audience.
How does moving the version information out of the About dialog
accomplish this goal?
jfager
> meaningless and unactionable for consumers. In that model, version
> numbers go away.
When this feature goes in, will version numbers actually be
meaningless and unactionable for consumers? If not, can't it wait
until that goal is achieved? If so, then why will version information
still be in about:support?
Anthony Ricaud
ships with that info in the About window. Asking people to learn and
find the new place for it is a huge burden on the users that want this
info (and a lot of answers explained that some users do need this).
Also, unless I've missed the explanation, you never actually explained
why removing the version number is so essential. You only said it was a
"requirement of the feature" and that version numbers are going away. I
agree the majority of users don't need to see this but some do. Like web
developers. A web developer needs to know what version he is using as a
basis before looking for precise documentation.
> We've removed it from all of our marketing materials. We're removing it from the download button on the Website.
Not yet, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=668122
FWIW, I like the idea of telling how long ago the check for updates was
done and I like the idea of trying to put less emphasis on the version
number. I also think removing it from the about window is too much.
fzammetti
by Alex and supported by Asa. Part of me even agrees with it... but a
much larger part doesn't. Most importantly, I believe it to be based
on a flawed premise, and I won't be the first to say it in this
thread: hosted software is fundamentally different than locally-
installed software and trying to make them similar is a flawed thing
to do.
What version of GMail am I running? It doesn't matter, I agree, and
even if I knew there's not a thing I could do about it. That last bit
is the key! The software host is responsible and in control of that
entirely, there's no way for me to effect a version change. With
installed software however, that's simply not the case. Whether its a
bad idea or not is an entirely different point, but the fact is I can
back-rev my browser, or any other locally-installed software, any time
I wish (assuming I can still find the installer floating around). I
may even NEED to: anyone experienced in software development knows
that no matter how perfect the development methodology may be,
regression breakages happen. This is even more true for software that
is a runtime for other software, as a browser essentially is, since
there's many more subtle ways things can get broken and no way to
fully regression test it anyway. If a browser upgrade causes my
bank's web site to not work, even if its ultimately the fault of the
bank for not coding "properly" somehow, in the short-term it doesn't
matter, I need to back-rev if access to that site is critical, as a
bank web site may well be for many people these days. I don't even
need to invoke the "enterprise argument" here, which carries even more
weight in this regard in terms of needing to ensuring proper
functionality of webapps to maintain business continuity.
Trying to base a decision like this on a flawed comparison leads to a
false dichotomy. Hosted software, it can be argued, makes version
numbers irrelevant because it's out of the users' control, but for
locally-installed software that is obviously not true... and I know I
for one always turn off forced upgrades in all software that has that
capability, even though in most cases I simply upgrade more or less
automatically anyway (I certainly do with Firefox for example)... the
fact that I'm still in control makes a world of difference. Likewise,
having the control to go backward is necessary, whether its a good
idea or not (Asa says it never is, my bank web site not working
illustrates otherwise).
Speaking as someone who spends a large part of my professional day on
UX design concerns I can tell you the notion of discoverability and
consistency are of paramount importance in the overall user experience
to how effective they are with a piece of software. They should be
able to quickly and easily discover functionality and information in
software in a logical manner even if they've never experience that
aspect of it before. Going to the About box of a piece of software to
get the version number quite obviously falls in that category based on
nothing more than accepted convention. Likewise, the fact that this
is considered a standard on most systems today and in most software
means the consistency will be apparent to the user and therefore
better usability-wise. Saying they now need to go to a
troubleshooting page instead is introducing a change for a highly
debatable benefit, and arguably the downside outweighs any benefit.
Like most of you, my mother always asked the hypothetical "if all your
friends were jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?" and while the
answer is most usually "no, of course not!", if we were all jumping
into a pool of $100 dollar bills then our answer would change in a
hurry, wouldn't it?! The point being, if everyone else is doing
something that is good, then yeah, doing the same thing ain't a bad
idea :)
If you want to work on a fully-hosted version of Firefox, then hey,
I'd change my tune entirely... showing version numbers would no longer
have any meaning because I'd never be able to change it myself. If
you want to truly force upgrades all the time without the possibility,
aside from hackish things, of going backward or skipping an upgrade,
then version numbers don't matter... and that's maybe my biggest worry
with this. This sets the stage for saying all users will be forced to
always be on the most current version regardless of what they want or
need. The whole dropping of support for anything but the latest
version thing, it could be said, was the first shot in that war and
this dropping of version numbers could be seen as the second, with the
inevitable third being removal of the option to turn off forced
upgrades. As a developer I generally approve of everyone being
current... aside from the regression breakages I mentioned before,
which could make my life hell if I get bit by them. As an end-user
though, the bank site example is all the justification I need to say
it'd be a bad idea. Now, I realize no one is making that argument
here... but it's the implied "yet" that follows that statement that
worries me. Removing the version number from the About box makes that
change all the more easy to justify and implement.
You know, I've seen some reasonable compromises posted in this
thread... why aren't they being given some consideration? The simple
adding of a "click here for more detailed info" on the About page
seems to me like a great solution that'll make everyone happy. Why
wouldn't that answer get the nod? Unfortunately, the only answer I
can come up with is a conspiracy theory: implementing the "bug" fix as
Alex and Asa want leads to that "forced upgrade" future I outlined. I
don't want to get all X-Files here, but it's not much of a leap.
Let me close with a simple question... Asa, is this something that is
GOING to happen regardless of what anyone says, or is there real
debate to be had about it? To me, the answer to that question would
say considerably more about the future of Firefox than whether this
single change is implemented or not.
Take care,
Frank
--
Frank W. Zammetti
Author of "Practical Palm Pre webOS Projects"
and "Practical Ext JS Projects with Gears"
and "Practical Dojo Projects"
and "Practical DWR 2 Projects"
and "Practical JavaScript, DOM Scripting and Ajax Projects"
and "Practical Ajax Projects with Java Technology"
For info on these books and a lot more: zammetti.com
janko
Mozilla and UX team is doing what they think is best for Firefox, obviously they have discussed all this things you complain about. And they made their decision. You started complaining that Mozilla is not listening community anymore. You must understand that we (advanced users, developers, whatever) are not majority of Firefox user base . Version number is important to us. I am sure that most of regular Firefox user won’t complain about this at all. They can search in Google and find out how to check their version number.
I am pretty sure that it will be so easy to you to find, restartless addon which will give your version number in about window.
Just like you I really care about version number, and I always want to check which version I am running even though I now it already. You can find that in Troubleshooting Information which is just 2 click away just like about window there is no difference.
If you really care about version in about window that much just install addon, if don’t you will get used to it after some time.
Yes Mozilla should discuss about their decisions with community, but Firefox should not stop changing just because many user don’t like change. People will always complain about changes because they are always hard to accept. But if they didn’t happen we would still use old Internet Explorer.
fredy
> dev-usability mailing list
> dev-us...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-usability
>
I understand the moving to a new release model but I feel that the
timing, of removing the version, is not the right. There are many cases,
which are written in this thread, where the version does matter. So, I
think that it will be better go on and make other more important
changes for reaching the new release model, than remove the version
number and confuse temporarily the users. When the model is successful,
then we can remove the version number from anywhere, because it will not
matter anymore if it is there or not.
[relative off-topic]
Anyway, if the version number is finally to be removed from the about
firefox dialog, we should inform users where to find it and not let them
just to discover it, like the UI changes from 3.6 to 4, when the users
wanted to downgrade just because they didn't know and they weren't
informed how to customize their toolbars. Unfortunately the UI is the
first thing that users care about and if we don't help them with the
changes then they will be disappointed. Another recent example of users
disappointment and confusion was the removed arrows next to the back and
forward buttons (back and forward history). The users weren't informed
about this change and they didn't know how to have this functionality
and this was very disturbing until they found a solution.
[/relative off-topic]
fredy
jfager
> Help->About.
>
> - A
Unless you expect the information to be in Help->About, like every
single other application on your system. Then it's at least twice as
many, and could be many, many more if you need to hit the web to
search for it.
Tyler Bletsch
This response is dismissive to the point of being disingenuous. I'm
sure you're upset that this has led to such a public backlash, but if
you're going to defend this proposal, at least do so in earnest. I
imagine he capitalized those four questions to prevent this sort of
evasive response, and they're fair questions. Can you please answer
them individually?
1. What problem this is addressing?
2. Who is affected by it?
3. What is our goal (long-term and short-term, and not generic terms
like "getting rid of versions")?
4. How does this solution address the problem better than the
solutions we already have in place?
I was going to draft some proposed answers to these questions myself,
but I honestly can't think of anything even for #1. "Version numbers"
themselves are simply not a Bad Thing.
To the point about Help|Troubleshooting replacing Help|About, every
application in the last two decades puts version info in the Help|
About, and About at the bottom of Help. I don't even see the other
items in the help menu, and before I clicked it, I had no idea what
the Troubleshooting option would even do. I figured it would go to
some boilerplate FAQ web page or something. Definitely would not have
found it on my own.
The only remaining reason I use Firefox is the addon library. The
ridiculous rapid release schedule has already thrown a wrench in that,
so I have the nightly build tools forcing compatibility for essential
addons that have no update or replacement, and now this proposed
versionless nonsense threatens to exacerbate the problem. If you've
never worked in a corporate support or web developer role, please take
your hands off the release decisions. Geeks had to fight tooth and
nail to get Firefox on businesses' radar when IE was king, and now
that you're here, you're killing us.
vic
The concept of version, or release if you prefer, is something that
exists and that cannot disappear simply by deciding it. Even the
suggested new wording implies that there are versions. If the new about
dialog says "you're not running the latest release" (or similar), then
the immediate and natural reaction (or at least the one that I'd have)
is : ok, then what is my release, what is the latest release, and what
are the changes ?
You're saying that you want to move to a model closer to a website, but
a program that I install on my computer is completely different. I don't
know the version of GMail because I don't have control over it. Google
makes changes as it pleases, doesn't document them, and I don't have my
word. Are you saying that users shouldn't have their word on the release
of FF they have installed on their own machine ? Are you implying that
undocumented updates should be imposed upon the user ? As an user I
believe that this is completely unacceptable and my reaction will be to
not update if possible or switch to a browser that does not impose such
behaviour. Actually I went away from Chrome for this very reason.
It's also bothering that you never brought a single argument in favor of
the change. Just to be clear, "I don't believe", "the UX lead for
Firefox doesn't believe" and "we don't believe" are not arguments.
v.
On 14/08/2011 22:23, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> Tyler Downer wrote:
>> In Bug 678775 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775),
>> Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
>> About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
>> information anybody will need.
>
> Actually, the Firefox usability lead, Alex Limi suggested it. As the
> Firefox Product lead, I agreed and so I created a feature page for
> tracking this effort and I filed a bug for the implementation when we're
> ready to start that.
>
>> First off, the versions number has always been shown in the Help>About
>> window for almost every Windows program for the past 16+ years
>
> It's always been that way is not a new argument against change. This was
> considered when we decided to make this change.
>
>> By removing the version number from the About window (which was already
>> simplified to showing just the version number, and not build ID in
>> Firefox 4, eg. Firefox 4.0.1), then we open up a window of confusion
>> with those people who want to check just what version they are
>> running.
>
> We also thought of that. And the after thinking about it, we concluded
> that most people don't need to know what version number they're using
> and what they actually want to know is whether or not they're running
> the latest version. For the few people who care whether it's version 7
> or version 2011-08-16 or version 1.8.0.0.1.77, they can get this
> information from about:troubleshooting which is available in the Firefox
> Help menu.
>
>> Asa says "When a user opens the About window for Firefox, the window
>> should say something like 'Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago,
>> you are running the latest release.'" But what if the computer is not
>> always connected to the Internet and the user wants to see if they
>> have the latest Firefox or if they need to connect to the internet
>
> Actually, that's not quite accurate. For the tiny minority of users who
> open the Firefox About dialog who are not connected to the internet, the
> dialog will say something like "As of N hours ago, you are running the
> latest version of Firefox" where N is the number of hours since Firefox
> was online and made the update check. If they're not connected to the
> internet, and they happen to know what the latest version of Firefox is
> (how did they learn that again?) then they can open
> about:troubleshooting and compare versions themselves. This is a rare
> case that should not impact the decision on this feature change.
>
>> download it? Or if they have had issues with their internet
>> connection? I had an Apache server set up on a computer once that i
>> did not have connected to the internet so I didn't have to worry about
>> security, but I did keep an up to date version of Firefox on the
>> computer because I used it for web development.
>
> Users with Apache servers set up on their machines are quite capable of
> using about:troubleshooting to figure out which version of Firefox
> they're using.
>
>> And using the about:pages isn't a good solution. 75% of people don't
>> even know the about:pages exist (based on my triage experience) and
>> users likely are not going to find them on their own.
>
> about:troubleshooting is available via the Help menu. Users need not
> know about the existence of about: pages.
>
>> Now, while I understand that the UX team wants to make version numbers
>> less important (that is something I myself want to see happen)
>> removing them from the About window is not the answer.
>
> It is not *the* answer. It is part of an answer which includes removing
> it from other touchpoints in Firefox and the Firefox websites.
>
>> Even Chrome, which has a rapid release cycle and a VERY good updating
>> process, shows the Version in the about window.
>
> Chrome does foo is a reasonable data point to offer. We can certainly
> look at how certain Chrome features behave or are received by users and
> use that data to help inform our decisions on Firefox features.
>
> But this isn't new data. The UX and Product leads were fully aware of
> what Chrome does here and that didn't cause us to decide differently.
>
>> What needs to be done is, remove the version from the download page.
>> Just say "Download Firefox" and leave it at that.
>
> Thank you for the prescription. We are removing the version from the
> download page. There's a bug on file and it is scheduled as part of the
> next Website refresh. But no, we are not going to just "leave it at that."
>
>> Make Firefox automagically update in the background (with an easy to
>> find preference to turn that off), and get rid of the first run pages
>> (which now that we are using rapid release and each new version has
>> like 1 small feature, don't serve any purpose anyway).
>
> Firefox already automagically does some of its update in the background.
> We have feature pages and bugs describing the means by which we are
> going to make this even more magical and less distracting.
>
> We also have a feature page describing the intent to remove the What's
> New tab that loads with each new release. That one is contentions but
> it's on my list of features that will all combine to give us much more
> "silent" updates.
>
>> The About window needs to continue showing the version number, and it
>> already checks for updates as soon as it is opened.
>
> So far, I think I can summarize your argument for why Firefox "needs to
> continue showing the version number" as 1) Versions have always been
> shown in the About dialog, and 2) Some offline users will get a outdated
> message about when they were last updated, and 3) users cannot find the
> menu for Help -> Troubleshooting, and 4) Chrome does it.
>
> I think I've responded to each of those. Have I missed one of your
> arguments or mis-characterized any of them?
>
>> I see little to no benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove
>> something else from the UI".
>
> That is not the benefit that the UX and Product lead are after here and
> characterizing our intents like that is somewhat insulting. I expect
> that kind of nonsense from random slashdotters and trolls, but not from
> regular members of our community. I don't assume your work on the
> Mozilla project is mindless or un-serious. Please don't make those
> assumptions of those around you.
>
> We have a goal to make version numbers irrelevant to our consumer
> audience. We also have a need to let users know if they are indeed using
> the latest and greatest version of Firefox. This feature re-design
> accomplishes both of those goals.
>
> - A
Ordinant
>> of what anyone says, or is there real debate to be had
>> about it? To me, the answer to that question would
>> say considerably more about the future of Firefox than
>> whether this single change is implemented or not.
Bravo, Frank, you've hit the nail on the head of why this thread is so disturbing.
Over the last hour, I've already gotten used to looking in Help > Troubleshooting Information for my Firefox version info. It's not hard to get used to, and removing the version from Help > About, while non-standard, is understandable.
What is disturbing is Asa's attitude, which can be summarized as follows:
You will do it this way, and you will like it. We know better.
EVERY MAJOR FIREFOX UPGRADE has broken at least one extension I use, a different extension for each upgrade since 1.5. From this loyal user's point of view, each Firefox upgrade has meant that I LOSE functionality, at least temporarily:
-- Familiar features disappear.
-- Extensions and plugins break, at least until their developers can catch up.
But at least I can schedule the inconvenience and postpone it until I have time to deal with it. If Firefox moves to an automated upgrade facility, then the future I can expect is to be automatically inconvenienced every few months. I'm just not seeing the improvement in that.
Right now, I CANNOT let Thunderbird upgrade itself to 5.0 because my antivirus vendor's plugin has not yet caught up. If T'bird goes to an automatic upgrade, I will have to find a new email client if I want to run with AV checking built-in.
To reiterate Frank's point, a hypothetical web-hosted browser of the future (where only a bare framework is installed locally) can update itself all it wants. But as long as we're in this world, Firefox is a LOCAL application that I installed on MY computer. Do NOT auto-upgrade anything on MY computer without my permission.
On the other hand, Chrome does manage to automatically update itself without breaking any extensions. Perhaps that is Firefox's goal, but they sure aren't anywhere near there yet.
DaveG
This is off-topic, not that much of one is left here, though I do
understand that this issue is a larger point that's bringing up more
of the frustration shown here.
I do feel the need to point out that whilst the version number is
going up faster and improvements are getting out to users faster,
addons aren't actually loosing hard compatibility faster. The Mozilla
Addons site team has been working hard on pushing automatic
compatibility bumps for addons with the so called "paper
incompatibility" where an addon can really work fine, but it just
doesn't know it. This only applies to addons.mozilla.org hosted
addons, however. Also, in the past months I have seen multiple re-
implementations of APIs that were removed added back in a form for the
sole purpose of allowing addons to continue to work in newer versions
to give more time to update to the newer APIs. This almost never
happened before and is becoming increasingly common. Things are
actually becoming more stable for addon compatibility as we move
forward. There were just a few quite noticeable growing pains at first
and more work still needs to be done. (e.g. with respect to outside
vendors such as with the A/V addon mentioned by Ordinant)
Asa Dotzler
Tyler Bletsch wrote:
> This response is dismissive to the point of being disingenuous. I'm
> sure you're upset that this has led to such a public backlash
Not at all. I've been working on Mozilla for 12 years. I'm used to it.
- A
brobins8
Tyler Downer
Thank you for the evasive and non-answer that was simply using big
words to dodge the question. Frankly Asa, I've been with Mozilla for
3+ years, I've touched tens of thousands of bugs, I've written and
submitted 23 patches to the Mozilla code base, and submitted many more
bugs, I have to say your attitude, is driving me out the door. You
complain I am not showing you or the UX team respect. I've given you a
chance to explain the Who, What, Why and How of this issue. You did
not. I would say that by not having the common courtesy to explain
your decisions or ideas to me and the other members of the community,
Asa and Mozilla in general is showing how it truly feels about the
community that is behind it. Mozilla is better than the community, and
does not have to explain anything to them. All I wanted was a clear
explanation of your reasoning, an UX's reasoning behind the change, in
case there was information that I had missed. You decided not to give
me and the community that courtesy. Thank you for showing to me that
Mozilla is not the community that I need to be a part of.
Petter Andersson
Obviously so. You and everyone else @mozilla.org are quite
conveniently disregarding what you're being told by, well, pretty
much everyone. I say, anyone _that_ comfortable in their position
needs to be fired ASAP.
When was the last time you had a look at mozilla.org's Manifesto, Asa?
And I quote -
"Individuals must have the ability to shape their own experiences on
the Internet."
But we are not. You guys focus on ill-advised, pointless, clueless
things and we're
just supposed to follow through. Oh, post 3.6.x Firefox is an
adventure all right,
you never know what you're going to get. Or: how would you like to
waste all your
memory (or cpu) today, would you like to have a bluescreen to go with
that?
"Individuals' security on the Internet is fundamental and cannot be
treated as optional."
Yeah, everyone's secure, just as long as you let us sucker you into
Rapid Release
Program. And now you're proposing to take it one step further, to take
away last
remaining user control over the process? It's MY computer and I decide
what I run
on it. I do not run Chrome precisely because I do not have any control
over it. Please
stop trying to turn Firefox into a Chrome clone.
"Transparent community-based processes promote participation,
accountability, and trust."
In other words, mozilla.org calls ALL the shots and ALL decisions are
final. The End.
Participate by dealing with it, etc.
No, Asa, if you were working for me, you'd be out the door by the end
of the day. Seriously.
Eric Mitchell
It is my understanding that the various components get spread out as per the Linux filesystem standards when Firefox is installed from a .deb or other package file (depending on its construction). The automatic update is looking for the local folder install like I can download from getfirefox.com but would not properly update a package based install and would actually need root permissions to properly update on Linux without drastically changing the location of the install.
Furthermore, there is the extreme possibility that Firefox would break on systems such as Debian Stable. Yes, I know they have Iceweasel but some users prefer the Firefox branding and the up-to-date versions. Rapid automatic updates could result in breaking library dependencies due to a hidden update and have a broken unusable Firefox.
Lastly I'd like to point out that background automatic updates are detrimental to Software Freedom and it seems that this version number removal coupled with an automatic update system could be a move by Mozilla to distance itself from the ideals of Free Software. Users should be constantly aware of anything happening to their computers. This idea would put Mozilla in control of the software people have on their own machines taking freedom from them. This is not the goal of community driven software. If this is the path you're going to take, either make Firefox closed source like Opera or Chrome or respect the wishes of the community. The open source ecosystem doesn't need another split like the one between OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
Abraham
I fail to see the reason behind hiding the version numbers. It makes very little difference to most people and will inconvinience many.
The help > about window is were everyone goes to see what software version is currently installed. This is the only reason people go to that box. No one will be mistified by the numbers. I believe the version numbers should be hidden everywere but in that box. A user cannot accidently go to that box, it will be hidden unless he intentially invokes it.
One way to make everyone happy would be to put a "technical details" link inside the "about box" that redirects to "about:support".
Another approach is to change the version numbering to "month.year" . So this months update (if one is released) would be "8.2011". This would help with support contracts, as support can be specified for "all 2011 and 2012 releases" and will change the user mentality into thinking of firefox releases as continuous updates rather than individual releases. If more frequent updates are needed days can be added as well.
Overall i regard this change as symbolic more than practical. In any case, as a linux user version numbers will always exhist and be prominent in my computing due to the way packet managers work.
Ironically I'm typing this from inside IE7 likely because my university has some kind of support issue with upgrading.
Patrick Smallwood
> Tyler Downer wrote:
> > But you are never going to get away from version numbers, Firefox is a
> > program that is downloaded and installed on the computer, versions
> > will never go away, and neither will the need to know the versions
>
> We disagree.
>
> - A
Hi. I've been a long-time Firefox user, and I'm also one of the
Administrators for a small school district. I maintain 1,000
computers. Getting from 3 to 3.5 was a dramatic process, and we're
frozen at 3.6 now.
Where was the community-based discussion *prior* to the decision by
the UX lead, and yourself for this change?
It seems near-universally disliked, so I'm curious if you are
considering community feedback. In one post you said (quoting) "I'm
used to it". I'm hopeful that isn't the extent of the consideration
given. You've asked us to give you the benefit of the doubt, so
please, assure our concerns by directing us to a community
conversation that was considered prior to the decision.
Barry Abel
> As for putting this discussion in mozilla.dev.usabiilty, as opposed to
> Bugzilla, I think it's well worth noting that Google Groups doesn't
> work in Firefox on my computer;
This is embarrassing; I was blocking cookies from Google. Sorry for
blaming Firefox for that problem, and thanks to the person who pointed
me in the right direction.
raymor
for web
developers to reproduce and diagnose compatibilty issues with specific
versions.
There is, however, a simple solution which meets the goals of both
sides.
The claim that "what version you are using doesn't matter" simply
isn't true in the real world.
In the real world, different versions are different, so any bug report
needs a version number in order to be useful.
When a user reports that "your site doesn't work with Firefox", it's
essential to know which version of Firefox they experiencing the
problem with.
The "what version of gmail are you using?" question has a simple
answer - the current version, just like everyone else. There is no
question of which version of gmail is associated with a given
problem. The day that EVERYONE is using an up-to-the-minute version
of Firefox, version numbers become irrelevant. As long as some users
have different versions, it's important that they can easily determine
which version they have. Currently, about half of Firefox users are
not current.
It is desired that all users be current, and that the About box tell
them so, without a version number.
The simple solution is this:
If they are current, it says so. If they are NOT current, it says
"your version is not current. This is version 4.2. Click here to
update."
That gives the people who just want to say "you are up to date" their
way, if indeed they are up to date, and allows people to easily
identify a specific version, either as "the current version" or a
number identifying a specific older version.
raymor
It is desired that all users be current, and that the About box tell
them so, without a version number. The simple solution is this: If
they are current, it says so. No version number needed if they are
current.
If they are NOT current, it says "your version is not current. This is
version 4.2. Click here update." That gives the people who just want
to say "you are up to date" their way, if indeed they are up to date,
and allows people to identify a specific version, either as "the
current version" or a number identifying a specific version, if it's
not up to date.
Kerry Coleman
Websites... no matter if the application is used to access a website!
Plenty of good reasons AGAINST it have already been brought up, and
not ONE SINGLE REASONABLE reason has been brought up FOR it...
To that end, the ONLY thing I get from reading all 3 pages of this
discussion and the pages of for the bug tracker, is that Asa Dotzler &
Co has it set in his/her mind and will NOT be swayed, no matter how
much common sense you throw at him/her.
I can in all honesty say that if I had to compare each and every one
of his comments to something, it would be of hitler replying to anyone
trying to convince him AGAINST his "perfect" race (sans having them
killed). <- Yes, I made that comment SPECIFICALLY to UNDERLINE the
literal tone in each and every reply to valid reasons AGAINST this
absurd move!*
To make a long story short, the decision has basically been made, and
the answer to all of us is! : Go fu** yourself's! Its happening (TM)!
Now as someone who currently works freelance on PC's and contract work
for company's and single customers, I find this move very insulting
for troubleshooting, this is invaluable, for compatibility of either
website or in-use add-on, its also invaluable. The statement was made
to "move" it elsewhere, I just cant fathom a good reason why, hell, if
you where to ask me or the people I deal with daily, they would ask
for a comparison to be added, and by that I mean: "You are currently
running Firefox v5.0.1, the latest version of Firefox is v7.5.2, you
are currently 4 release's behind the latest version: UPDATE NOW!" On
the flip side of this all, I have also dealt with LOTS of customers
(business and consumer) whose Firefox just wont auto-update, no rhyme/
reason, just sometimes it wont, go through the process yourself and it
works fine, but next time you check, its still at the version you
manually updated it to last time!
I know this will be ignored, but whatever, its how business's work,
ignore the ones using their product on a larger scale/ratio then
anyone in the company or in the flawed "survey's" they use.
*To anyone undoubtedly offended by this comment, I am very sorry, as
someone who liked history and even was unmanly (in our current world
views of what makes a person manly) enough to cry upon reading most of
the tragic events that had occurred in history, I could think of no
other comparison that detailed the blind idealism that I see
progressing here.
~Kerry
Abraham
I think we're making a mountain out of an anthill here. Everything we will ever need is in "help > troubleshooting". I was on IE earlier so i missed that.
A long as it's accessable to the user with two clicks, i'm happy. The Slashdot article was sensationalist. As long as help > troubleshooting object isn't removed, i personally see no reason not to remove the number in the about box.
- Abraham
Eliot
I would urge you to spend a lot of time on this decision and to gain
the benefit of a lot of input. There are both benefits and risks of
this change, and we have some historical evidence to understand both.
I refer you to the work of Stefan Frei et. al, in which he looked at
zero-day exploits and update times (published in WEIS), where going
back as far as Firefox 2 you had a substantial advantage over other
browsers (something like > 80% in as little as 72 hours), most notably
Microsoft and Apple. However, one of the reasons for that advantage
was confidence in Mozilla. There can be no doubt but that there have
been compatibility problems as late as this year between major
versions of Firefox, most notably with 32->64bit plug-ins. There has
been a distinction between "security" updates and other forms of
updates. Having that distinction provided a confidence to users that
they lacked with Microsoft when, for instance, they rolled out
Microsoft Genuine Advantage, and other functional changes through an
update that then caused users problems.
Now it seems you propose to lump all of these changes together in a
way that the user will not be able to distinguish, i.e., repeating
Microsoft's mistakes. The result will be higher risks of
incompatibilities, either between web sites or plug-ins.
There IS probably evidence going the other way on this, most
particularly Apple's experience with iOS and app updates. After all,
who knows what version their apps are running. But that is
considerably different than the underlying platform. I will bet
people know what version of iOS their iPhone/iPad runs.
Teddy Ni
support to the crowd against this move.
There is one extra point I'd like to bring up regarding this decision
to move away from versions. Right now, I'm not just using Firefox, I'm
using Firefox 8. This implies a host of improvements in the six weeks
between FF 7 and FF 8. It implies a series of changes, many only
behind the scenes, made manifest in an increased version number.
When a new version of my antivirus definitions comes out, I hardly
notice. When a new version of Firefox comes out, there are news
articles, blog posts, and parties. There is excitement over and
anticipation of new features. I don't think this should necessarily
change due to a faster release cycle.
I would even go so far as to say that version numbers increase
discoverability of our improvements. This is one area in which we are
better than Chrome. To this day, I honestly have no idea how my Chrome
install has improved, even if I know that it has.
My opinion is that FF version numbers are a huge part of the brand. I
realize this angle of argument may fit better in a separate discussion
or bug report (I don't know where). But if you agree with me even
partly on this, then it just provides extra support to keep version
numbers where they are conventionally found.
I'm sure that the UX team has solid reasons to move completely away
from version numbers. (I would be happy to debate this in a more
appropriate thread.) In any case, I do think this is still something
to consider when making this decision as well.
2 ch
> In Bug 678775 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=678775),
> Asa has suggested that we remove the version number from the Firefox
> About window, stating that the about:support page is all the
> wants to remove content from the UI and simplify it, there needs to be
> a balance between information that benefits someone, and cleaning up
> the UI.
>
> First off, the versions number has always been shown in the Help>About
> started using Windows with 95, it was probably in use before then). By
> removing the version number from the About window (which was already
> simplified to showing just the version number, and not build ID in
> Firefox 4, eg. Firefox 4.0.1), then we open up a window of confusion
> with those people who want to check just what version they are
> running.
>
> should say something like 'Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago,
> you are running the latest release.'" But what if the computer is not
> always connected to the Internet and the user wants to see if they
> download it? Or if they have had issues with their internet
> connection? I had an Apache server set up on a computer once that i
> did not have connected to the internet so I didn't have to worry about
> security, but I did keep an up to date version of Firefox on the
> pages isn't a good solution. 75% of people don't even know the about:
> pages exist (based on my triage experience) and users likely are not
> going to find them on their own.
>
> less important (that is something I myself want to see happen)
> which has a rapid release cycle and a VERY good updating process,
> remove the version from the download page. Just say "Download Firefox"
> background (with an easy to find preference to turn that off), and get
> rid of the first run pages (which now that we are using rapid release
> and each new version has like 1 small feature, don't serve any purpose
> anyway).
>
> benefit by removing it (other that "let's remove something else from
> confusion, community angst, and frustration by cutting it.
Did you find that:
Comparing with Google Chrome, Firefox is based on
Mercury Repository of whom the HG version is not recognisable for a
human.
Let's look at a Google Chrome's version number:
"13.0.782.112, SVN-95650"
The "13.0" is for the public that the number grows by 1 every 2 month.
The "782.112" means the 112th update of the branch 782.
SVN-95650 is the SVN version.
The customer can easily find whether their chrome is newest by
checking "782.112" or "SVN-95650", even if the automatic update system
fails.
Then, go back to Firefox's "about:"
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0
This tells nothing but the "big" version that is "always grows by 1
every 2 month".
in about:buildconfig, it shows "mozilla-release/rev/218ed8178b1e", OK,
what the hell is "218ed8178b1e"？
jez
> It's simple. We are moving to a release model that makes version numbers
> meaningless and unactionable for consumers. In that model, version
> numbers go away.
Implicit is the idea that consumers should never see anything that
might be meaningless or unactionable to them.
That idea is certainly not true in general -- some consumers pay a
premium for watches with a visible mechanism, but I'm sure nobody
would claim that the cogs and escapements are meaningful or actionable
to the majority of the people who pay extra to see them. So why is it
true here? I personally don't see how a consumer who doesn't care
would hurt himself on being confronted with this mysterious thing
called a "version number."
My data point is: I rarely look at the About dialogue, and when I do
the ONLY reason is to check the version number. I expect About: to be
a purely informative dialogue, I don't expect it to make any changes,
such as an update. Have you considered putting this update stuff under
an item called "update." I don't see how putting "update"
functionality in the non-descriptive "about" dialogue is more
discoverable than menu items that just do what they claim to.
How do other users use the "About" dialogue, if at all? Does anybody
bring that dialogue up who doesn't want to find the version number?
Small suggestion: consider announcing the date & time of the last
update, rather than the time since the last update. I'll always
believe the date and time, I might not believe "20 minutes ago,"
especially if the dialogue has not just been opened. Big suggestion:
consider that "about" is the wrong place for this update stuff.
Jez.
bedroom
"Users don't need to know what version they're on"
"Users just need to know if they're on the latest version"
"Users will go to the About Firefox window to find out"
If the user is savvy enough to know about the "About Firefox" dialog,
I think we can reasonably assume he's going to expect to find a
certain amount of information there, *including* the version number.
On the other hand, if the user is unsavvy but somehow happens upon the
"About Firefox" dialog, I'm okay with assuming that he won't be
impressed by the version number string. But do we assume that he will
*mind* it being there or become confused or any other "negative
impact" like that ?
I think we should not confuse "Firefox users" with "People who know
about, and use the About Firefox dialog". The latter is clearly a
minority IMHO, but the majority of people *in* that minority expects
to find a version number string in that box.
May I suggest an exercise to all the fine people debating this
problem :
Draw a Venn diagram representing the distribution of the following
groups of people :
- Firefox users.
- Firefox users who care and want to know if they're on the latest
version.
- Firefox users who care and want to know if they're on the latest
version, and are savvy enough to open the About Firefox dialog to find
out.
- Firefox users who care and want to know if they're on the latest
version, are savvy enough to open the About Firefox dialog to find
out, and will be satisfied by a simple "Firefox is up to date"
message.
- Firefox users who care and want to know if they're on the latest
version, are savvy enough to open the About Firefox dialog to find
out, and will still want to double-check the information.
- Computer users who know and use the "About <Program>" dialogs.
- Computer users who know and use the "About <Program>" dialogs, and
expect to find a version number string there.
You can also draw in these two bonus categories :
- People who think that bug 678775 is valid
- People who think that bug 678775 is invalid
Discuss.
Noname Nonefornow
> Tyler Downer wrote:
> > Asa, would you mind clearly, and with supporting data, tests, metrics,
> > show What problem this is addressing, Who is affected by it, What our
> > goal is (long-term and short-term, and not generic terms like "getting
> > rid of versions") and How this solution addresses the problem better
> > than the solutions we already have in place. I truly would like to
> > know the clear answers to all of these questions, I may not be seeing
> > data that you are (Maybe 50% of users sit on About all day wondering
> > when Firefox last checked for updates, I don't know), but I need
> > concrete information, not generic buzzwords.
>
> meaningless and unactionable for consumers. In that model, version
> numbers go away.
>
Its not simple. You still have not answered the question, you just
side stepped it like a politician. WHY are you moving to this release
model. HOW does it benefit users and support providers?
You have yet to provide an example of how this will improve the users
experience or assist support providers. Yet for some baffling reason
you dismiss valid and important reasons to publish version numbers.
And they are not going away, that is silly. To say otherwise lacks
intellectual integrity.
What is this this grand scheme Firefox is undertaking of which hiding
version numbers is a critical step? "Its our plan" is not a valid
answer. What is the plan and what does it accomplish?? You're not
doing this for average users, we have established this will hurt them
despite your attempts to brush the issue off as irrelevant. Users are
never irrelevant. You're not doing it for support providers, we know
it creates more work for them. These are your front line in the the
browser trench warfare, and quite frankly the cause of most new users
switching to Firefox. When they tell you something matters don't tell
them they're wrong and just drop it without and explanation.
That leaves the motives of either money or marketing. And you might
even find the community would support you if you just stopped being
evasive and answer questions.
jez
Another thing to bare in mind is hiding the version number introduces
a barrier to an ordinary user submitting a useful bug report. Surely
we want users to be able to easily submit bug reports without exposing
them to a genuinely scary page like about:support.
Making this harder surely leads to bug feedback which is more and more
skewed towards geeks?
Jez.
Wolfgang Rosenauer
> All of this would seem to ignore a significant point: how the new update model affects Linux users and maintainers and how removing the version number from the About box and moving to automated updates affects the users' right to know exactly what is changing in their computer.
>
> It is my understanding that the various components get spread out as per the Linux filesystem standards when Firefox is installed from a .deb or other package file (depending on its construction). The automatic update is looking for the local folder install like I can download from getfirefox.com but would not properly update a package based install and would actually need root permissions to properly update on Linux without drastically changing the location of the install.
As a Firefox maintainer for a Linux dist I can only confirm that all
that ignores the fact that Firefox is shipping with them and automatic
updates simply do not work there.
I just filed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679324 to get
rid of even more useless cruft from the about box btw.
There were many changes during the last year which were pretty annoying
for Linux distributions. Actually we more or less hit the point where
Firefox has no advantage anymore to Chrome/Chromium and I'll have a hard
time fighting to keep Firefox as a default browser instead of switching
to Chromium. Even worse I'm not sure if that fight is worth it given
what happens currently @Mozilla.
Wolfgang
Ray Morris
> Like most of you, my mother always asked the hypothetical "if all your
> friends were jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?" and while the
> answer is most usually "no, of course not!", if we were all jumping
> into a pool of $100 dollar bills then our answer would change in a
> hurry, wouldn't it?! The point being, if everyone else is doing
> something that is good, then yeah, doing the same thing ain't a bad
> idea :)
My friends are not stupid. If they are all jumping off the bridge, I'm
going to quickly look
to see whether a) the bridge is on fire or b) the train is coming,
knowing that there is probably
a good reason they are getting the heck off that bridge. If I can't
figure out why they are
screaming and jumping off, I better think quickly whether I should
assume that they are doing
so for no good reason or if I better follow.
In this case, all my friends, who aren't stupid, say that versions
matter. They might be right.
Frank Sagurna
>
> This is the part that needs to be eliminated. Users should not feel the
> need to compare a number in the About dialog with a number they found on
> the web somewhere.
But this is a part that cannot be eliminated:
A User finds a hint on the internet for Firefox. He does not find the
option mentioned in this tip because it is removed for some reason in
Versio^H^H on some day.
He will now search for hours if he does something wrong.
For now it is more like:
A User finds a hint on the internet for Firefox 5. He does not find
the option mentioned in this tip because it is removed for some reason
in Versio^H^H on some day.
He will now look in the about dialog and sees he is running Firefox 6,
and will easyly find out this option is removed.
The version number is btw. the only reason i open the about dialog, if
i try to support someone with his problems. So if you remove the
version number you can remove the whole about item.
Frank
aardmaat
> > Besides, if I ever had an doubts, I can always look right above the
> > text, see, "Firefox 5" then google "What is the latest version of
> > Firefox" and see "Firefox 6 is being released tomorrow" on google
> > news. So I know tomorrow, I can check for updates again, and I'll have
> > the latest.
>
> This is the part that needs to be eliminated. Users should not feel the
> need to compare a number in the About dialog with a number they found on
> the web somewhere.
I disagree with you. It's logical you want people to stop worrying
about version numbers and it's good you're working on that but some
users do want to know the version number and some users do want to
compare it with other numbers and nobody else then those people can
decide if those people do or not. I think it's a very simple scenario
you have: Most users don't mind having the version number displayed
(they just don't care) but some do mind the version number not being
displayed. So if it's there, nobody has a problem, if it's not there
some people have a problem (and you can say they don't but if they
feel they have a problem, they have a problem, it's as simple as
that).
> You cannot roll back Firefox versions without losing support. You get
> automatic updates with Firefox unless you've disabled that feature which
> you absolutely should not unless you're trying to get exploited.
>
> No one is taking these things away. You can roll back. You can turn off
> updates. It's just a foolish thing to do in all but very exceptional
> cases and we discourage it.
well, I don't know if you've ever checked comments on articles about
firefox but to many people seem to be willing to be at risk of being
exploited just to stay with an older version.
most people just don't like change, especially if features or
information they like gets ditched (many people for example liked the
keyword.URL to be http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
and many people liked the menu-bar and many people like to be able to
see the version number; sure al those changes can be undone, but some
of those people don't know how to do that, or are just not willing to
go trough a lot of trouble just to regain what they already have) so
if you are making changes that don't obviously benefit (almost) all
users, many users will find it annoying. Of course the fear of changes
shouldn't make firefox completely freeze all it's features, but it is
a factor that must always be considered (I'm sure you did, but I ask
you to consider it again).
off-topic:
if you're going to implement a date instead of a version number (as
some recommended), please use the local date notation. In the Dutch
aurora version for example it says 7.0a2 (2011-08-15) (jjjj-mm-dd)
while in the Netherlands we use (dd-mm-jjjj) so it should be 7.0a2
(15-08-2011). I know this isn't really the place to say that, but just
in case you decide to use the date: translate the date to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
Doerr
...
> Actually, the Firefox usability lead, Alex Limi suggested it. As the
> Firefox Product lead, I agreed ... ... we concluded .. .
Grotesque idea.
Folks, you have completely lost the ground.
Tyler Bletsch
As what, a professional troll? The people in this thread are asking
basic, factual questions about the motivation for this very unpopular
decision, and you're doing nothing but dodging them. Either you
believe this isn't the right venue for this discussion (then what is?)
or you simply don't believe you should have to defend this proposal to
the user community. Which is it?