333125 - Talkback overall misbehaving, should at least choose the right proxy settings

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 210251

(Core Graveyard :: Talkback Client, defect)

Description

[peter]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; sk; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; sk; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1

User often dosen't even know there is any so-called "Talkback" utility.

Once upon a time, crash appears. Suddenly some strange behaving program opens, looks totally different from what user ever seen. It dosen't resemble anythingm just as if some ancient, ages forgotten monster risen from an ash.

The program asks user questions, email address and so on. I wonder how many users ever fill the forms and answer the questions. Then that strange looking program sends something and remains open.

The proud Firefox user might be even fooled into thinking, that he "helped the good thing" by sending the crash report, and that someone will open the report and repair the beloved browser.

Why shouldn't he think so? Even the strange narrow Talkback window that dosen't show good will to clear space immediately when user no longer needs it, looks like the reports were sent. What would You think about "Queued" status?

Unfortunately, anything user did tell to the eyewitness strange utility from cpt.Nemo, it has been silently LOST. Why? Because the Talkback is so stupid that it dosen't even take proxy settings from the browser!!

I couldn't believe that. We want users to damper with the awful Talkback agent, that has risen from nowhere after a crash, and search there in its Settings, where should the user set the Proxy (not to say most users don't even know, what "proxy" is). Then he should manually tell the Talkback to resend the reports, even when they seem alright ("Queued")

Does anyone really think that such a misbehaviour produces the real, valuable crash reports from users?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Make Firefox crash, for example according to bug 332781
2. Fill the crash report, overriding Your disguisement by its presence
3. Look what will happen

Actual Results:  
Talkback keeps open, looks like the reports were sent "Queued"

Expected Results:  
Nice window, at least slightly resembling the Mozilla Firefox ordinary user interface, should open.
Should only ask basic question: What actions made Firefox crashed, and email address.
Talkback agent should be BY DEFAULT set to use the proxy that Firefox uses.
Talkback should grab from somewhere the last page visited and only ask user, if this is really the page that caused the crash.

Then it should send report.
If report was not successfully sent, a clear message should appear, with clear guidelines, what ever should user do, if he wishes the report be sent.

If report has been sent succesfully, the agent should display kind message about that, with kind Thank You, and after user's confirmation, exit and disappear.

Talkback agent should be also configured from within the Firefox settings. It should allow at least the setting, either it should ever open a dialogue, or just send the data silently and never come on screen. In large companies, users clearly don't understand what's going on, however the data could be valuable. Let the admin do the rest.
The settings of email address should also be available there. Admin could set his own address. Copy of any crash report should go to that address, or let this option at least be available.

Please don't underestimate the amount of crash reports that have been lost because of the foolish behaviour of Talkback agent.

Also don't underestimate the value of the Talkback reports data.

Comment 1

[timeless]

we get more than enough talkback data. while the loss of some is disappointing, the reality is that at times the amount of data we do get floods our talkback servers.

As we've said repeatedly in bugs that you could easily find, reading proxy settings from a data browser is very very very hard. especially in code that isn't really ours.

Comment 2

[Philip Withnall (unavailable)]

Could be duped to bug #188293/bug #19271?

Comment 3

[John Patterson]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Could be duped to bug #188293/bug #19271?
> 

I have a feedback report in queue from a recent Thunderbird crash.  The computer tries periodically to send it without success. The error message says to check my proxy settings, but it doesn't say what to check them for.  Obviously they are set correctly for everything else I do here, so what good is checking them?

Can I attach the feedback report to an email?  A bugzilla report?  

How do I end this session and send this message?  

Comment 4

[Jay Patel [:jay]]

Chances are your crash has already made it's way to the Talkback DB and you are getting the error due to a known Talkback bug that has been around for a long time and probably won't be fixed anytime soon.

See item #1 in the Talkback FAQ: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_QA_Community:Talkback:FAQ


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 210251 ***