Where shall I put this option item?

[Yuzhu Shen]

Hi,

Some code for HTTP throttling, which tries to reduce HTTP requests if the destination server is returning 5xx, was landed a few weeks ago. Some web developers wish to turn this feature off when they are debugging their own web sites. (Issue: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=66062)

After consulting with some more experienced people, I added a command line switch --disable-enforced-throttling to disable the feature. However, command line switches don't work on ChromeOS (do they?). I wonder what is a better solution:

1) Do we have a way to use command line switches on ChromeOS?
2) Shall we put such an option item in about:flags? It seems that about:flags is used for experiments, though.
3) Shall we put it in about:net-internals?

I personally prefer option (3). But please let me know if this is against the guidelines of using about:net-internals, or you have a better idea.

Any suggestion would be appreciated!

[Peter Kasting]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Yuzhu Shen <yzs...@chromium.org> wrote:

After consulting with some more experienced people, I added a command line switch --disable-enforced-throttling to disable the feature. However, command line switches don't work on ChromeOS (do they?). I wonder what is a better solution:

1) Do we have a way to use command line switches on ChromeOS?
2) Shall we put such an option item in about:flags? It seems that about:flags is used for experiments, though.
3) Shall we put it in about:net-internals?

Please see the many emails Ben has sent out about about:flags.

In short, this should be in about:flags, which was created precisely for the purpose of enabling ChromeOS users access to command line flags (as well as some other side benefits).

In theory about:flags should have a roughly 1:1 correspondence with command-line flags.

PK

[William Chan (陈智昌)]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Peter Kasting <pkas...@chromium.org> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Yuzhu Shen <yzs...@chromium.org> wrote:

After consulting with some more experienced people, I added a command line switch --disable-enforced-throttling to disable the feature. However, command line switches don't work on ChromeOS (do they?). I wonder what is a better solution:

1) Do we have a way to use command line switches on ChromeOS?
2) Shall we put such an option item in about:flags? It seems that about:flags is used for experiments, though.
3) Shall we put it in about:net-internals?

Please see the many emails Ben has sent out about about:flags.

Ben wrote in http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-dev/browse_thread/thread/5fa88c367d2829b8/9d389457c24339eb that:

"(The only sort of thing that doesn't really belong in about:labs are things 

useful only for debugging like --single-process etc). "

 

Yuzhu said wed developers want to use --disable-enforced-throttling for debugging.

In short, this should be in about:flags, which was created precisely for the purpose of enabling ChromeOS users access to command line flags (as well as some other side benefits).

In theory about:flags should have a roughly 1:1 correspondence with command-line flags.

PK

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[Yuzhu Shen]

Thanks William and Peter.

Ben wrote in http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-dev/browse_thread/thread/5fa88c367d2829b8/9d389457c24339eb that:

"(The only sort of thing that doesn't really belong in about:labs are things 

useful only for debugging like --single-process etc). "

 

Yuzhu said wed developers want to use --disable-enforced-throttling for debugging.

I think they may be different:

--single-process is for debugging Chrome itself.

--disable-enforced-throttling is to ease Web developer to debug their own web sites. 

[Peter Kasting]

OTOH, William has a good point.  Debugging options tend to stick around forever.  One of the hopes with about:flags was that it would pressure people to eventually turn a switch on or off for good and remove it from the list.  In your case that's unlikely to ever happen.  Therefore, making it a toggle inside about:net-internals and removing the command-line switch might be the best route.

PK

[Eric Roman]

I don't think that about:net-internals is the correct place for this.

Hiding a user preference (which is persisted to the preference file)
in about:net-internals feels a lot like about:config to me.

Moreover about:net-internals is not a polished, or even internationalized page.
It would be a poor user experience to make users go here to change this setting.

Why not just put this preference with all the others, in "Under the hood" ?
Is the fear that it doesn't apply to enough users to warrant taking up
space in the options dialog?

Based on how many people starred that issue, I think there is cause to
make this setting more widely visible, so "Under the hood" seems like
a good fit to me.

[Peter Kasting]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Eric Roman <ero...@chromium.org> wrote:

Moreover about:net-internals is not a polished, or even internationalized page.
It would be a poor user experience to make users go here to change this setting.

This is a really obscure network-specific setting that's of interest to a small set of developers.

Why not just put this preference with all the others, in "Under the hood" ?

Absolutely not.  This doesn't even come close to the bar needed to go there.

If you don't want to persist the setting, then it would be appropriate to put this in about:net-internals and have turning it off only apply for the remainder of the session.  But we persist other, similar prefs; for example, the extensions page persists whether "developer mode" is toggled on.

PK