444436 - [Mac] The DMG Window's Instructions Could Be Clearer Regarding Moving the Firefox Program to the Application Folder

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Douglas]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061004 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061004 Firefox/3.0

The installer window for a Mac (on Firefox 3) could be done in a clearer manner.  Right now, when you open the disk image, you're presented with a picture of a Firefox icon and an arrow indicating that it should be dragged to the Applications folder.  This could be clearer, particularly by including explanatory text.
See:
<http://www.macworld.com/article/134067/2008/06/firefox3_install.html>
I also think that the way the installer runs now, someone will be tempted to run it directly off the disk image.
I downloaded the latest build of Firefox, which is today's build, as of 9 July 2008 at 3:26 a.m. PDT.  This didn't have the same installer interface, but since I wasn't able to find anything on Bugzilla saying it had been changed, I presume it has not been changed.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Double-click on a disk image for Firefox for Macintosh.

Actual Results:  
The window appears, with the icon layout discussed above.

Comment 1

[Douglas]

Attachment: Sample Screenshot of the Problem

This is a sample of the screenshot of the problem that I am talking about.

Comment 2

[Douglas]

I'm adding the keyword polish and am also, as requested on your blog, CCing you, Alex.  

This problem still exists in Firefox 3.1b1.  I downloaded a nightly build, today, 29 Oct 2008 at ~8:08 a.m. PDT, but it does not have the same installer interface.  I presume it has not been changed.  

Alex, can you mark this bug confirmed?  I don't have that privilege on Bugzilla.  

Also, could you please check to make sure that I did all the entries on Bugzilla properly?  I'm new to using Bugzilla.  In particular, I wasn't sure what to specify for Version, so I left it blank.  

Thank you.

Comment 3

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

>I also think that the way the installer runs now, someone will be tempted to
>run it directly off the disk image.

This is definitely the case, I've met people who have downloaded Firefox every time they reboot their Mac because the disk image keeps closing and they don't know where their downloaded files folder is.

>could you please check to make sure that I did all the entries on
>Bugzilla properly?

All the entries look good, and thanks for filing.

The larger issue here is that we ship Firefox in over 50 languages, so to add a textual description we would need to create 50 images (and possibly change our build process since I think right now we only localize text, but I'm not entirely sure on that part).

Switching to polish-hard due to the localization implications.  One benefit of not having a description is an overall simpler and cleaner visual appearance, but it does make the interface a little harder to use, especially if you have never installed an application before on OS X.

Comment 4

[Douglas]

What is the image format that one would need to use to create an image that could be added to the browser?  Is there a source image that I could work off of (rather than using my own install window)?  Thank you.

Comment 5

[Pavol Vaskovic]

Attachment: Things Installer.png

For inspiration, Things installer includes a nice explanatory text:
"To install, drag Things into your Applications folder."

Comment 6

[Pavol Vaskovic]

In my opinion the Applications folder alias should have "Appliactions" name.

Comment 7

[Pavol Vaskovic]

Even though I have located the background image Douglas was seeking (/Volumes/Firefox/.background/background.png), I don't think that attaching modified version of that image is a sufficient fix for this bug.

After reading you blog post about new Mac Installer icon
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2008/12/16/new-os-x-icons-made-by-sofa/ 
I'm sure you are carefully planning the visual refresh, that includes also the installer background. This bug doesn't look like something to be resolved by community volunteers.

Alex: I believe that this bug should be assigned to someone responsible for Firefox visual identity.

Comment 8

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Resolving this bug would involve a few tasks

1) Adding the string so that we can get it localized in the 60+ languages we now support
2) Generating a new image file for each language (would take someone an evening, but I could take care of this).
3) somehow deploy a different image file for each localized build (not that this is impossible, however I think it is something that we have never done before).

I'll ask our l10n people to see what would be involved to get part 3 working, to see if addressing this bug is even feasible.

Comment 9

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

There is another interesting tidbit here, and that is, "Applications" is called "Programme" if you use the German version of OSX. I.e., in an intl enviroment, you actually have to know which OS language you're having for folks to find the folder.

I recall that we explicitly decided to not use text the last time we went through the UE of the osx install because it's hard to get localized right.

2.5) Get the generated image reviewed by the l10n teams

and probably, 

4) redo the background image to have enough space for yet more verbose locales, and rinse and repeat :-/ Or have different base sizes, so that short locales like Japanese or Chinese don't look like s***.

Comment 10

[Pavol Vaskovic]

How is the installer package generated? Is this automated part of the build process or some manual step? (Is it possible to get some 'inspiration' from the way the installer is built and localized on Windows?)

Comment 11

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

This bug's priority relative to the set of other polish bugs is:
P3 - Polish issue that is in a secondary interface, occasionally encountered, or is not easily identifiable.

Doesn't really fit any of the categories since it isn't an in product bug, but is rather part of the install experience.  Setting to P3 since the set of users effected is first limited just to OS X, and then limited to only OS X who are not familiar with installing applications.  This group definitely exists (I've met people who have had trouble installing Firefox and ran it from the disk image every time), but the group probably isn't a major segment of our users.

Comment 12

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

I took a look at this from a slightly different angle: suppose rather than a single space we used the symlink title to include text? Then we don't have to generate a bunch of per-locale images. In the code right now, MOZ_PKG_MAC_EXTRA is unused AFAICT. It would be a slight hassle to make the hard-coded ' ' string be locale-aware, but it's not deep rocket science. (Remember to update this as well.)

I'm not sure that this addresses any of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444436#c9, but I thought I'd capture my 10 minutes of investigation.