Simplify wording for disable flags on chrome://flags

[Robert Flack]

Hi chromium-dev,

We have a lot of flags of the form: "Disable foo" which on chrome://flags leads to rather confusing language (Clicking enable disables foo):

Disable foo

Enable

A while ago I landed a new flag type, SINGLE_DISABLE_VALUE, and I have since created a CL (not yet landed) to update our existing flags to use this new flag type which simplifies the language of the above to (Clicking disable disables foo):

Foo

Disable

See my attached highlighted screenshots (or the before/after screenshots on the bug) for the difference, it only affects the text of the chrome://flags page.

This also simplifies merging back changes of the default value of a flag since they require no string update, just changing from SINGLE_DISABLE_VALUE to SINGLE_VALUE.

I have heard the suggestion that we should just be getting rid of "most" disable flags, but I don't feel it's realistic to remove all of them.

Thanks,

Rob

[Peter Kasting]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Robert Flack <fla...@chromium.org> wrote:

I have heard the suggestion that we should just be getting rid of "most" disable flags, but I don't feel it's realistic to remove all of them.

We should be getting rid of most flags in general, but that's orthogonal to your change, which will significantly aid clarity.

PK 

[Majid Valipour]

I think there is also great value in grouping related flags e.g., UI feature, Performance enhancements, Input, Web Platform API, etc.

Majid

[Robert Flack]

This is also orthogonal though (e.g. should discuss separately).

The main motivation for making this change for me was when I started to see tri-state flags get added with (Default, Enabled, Disabled) solely so that we could change what the "Default" value of a flag meant without updating strings. This is one of the causes of confusion in http://crbug.com/245319 (the other being finch flags which we may intentionally not want to reveal their defaults). I can do a separate pass to clean up these tri-state flags, but wanted to set an example with the existing flags so that other people were aware of this solution (e.g. I had to point out this disable flag constant exists as a potential solution in this thread: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/flags/chromium-dev/7pTJJGew_eI/UWme4tmmdvcJ )

[Ilya Sherman]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 2:11 PM, Robert Flack <fla...@chromium.org> wrote:

This is also orthogonal though (e.g. should discuss separately).

The main motivation for making this change for me was when I started to see tri-state flags get added with (Default, Enabled, Disabled) solely so that we could change what the "Default" value of a flag meant without updating strings. This is one of the causes of confusion in http://crbug.com/245319 (the other being finch flags which we may intentionally not want to reveal their defaults).

FWIW, it's not so much that we don't want to reveal their defaults, but rather that "Default" is the state in which Finch (a.k.a. variations) will make a random decision for the user.

 

I can do a separate pass to clean up these tri-state flags, but wanted to set an example with the existing flags so that other people were aware of this solution (e.g. I had to point out this disable flag constant exists as a potential solution in this thread: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/flags/chromium-dev/7pTJJGew_eI/UWme4tmmdvcJ )

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 4:57 PM Majid Valipour <maj...@chromium.org> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 3:34 PM Peter Kasting <pkas...@chromium.org> wrote:

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Robert Flack <fla...@chromium.org> wrote:

I have heard the suggestion that we should just be getting rid of "most" disable flags, but I don't feel it's realistic to remove all of them.

We should be getting rid of most flags in general, but that's orthogonal to your change, which will significantly aid clarity.

I think there is also great value in grouping related flags e.g., UI feature, Performance enhancements, Input, Web Platform API, etc.

Majid

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