Closed Bug 757206 Opened 12 years ago Closed 12 years ago

Update older Firefox what's new pages

Categories

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

x86
macOS
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: cmore, Assigned: rik)

References

Details

Prior to version 12 of the what's new page (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/12.0/whatsnew/), if you were running a new version of Firefox, the page would tell you "Your Firefox is out of date". The older what's new pages are linked from various sources around the web and some have good SEO. We should update version 11 and below of the what's new pages to read the user agent and use that to adjust the "out of date" message.

To see the behavior, view this page in any version of Firefox newer than 11: 

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/11.0/whatsnew/
Hi everyone.

I talked with a few of you and had a different idea that would be easier to implement and probably make more sense.

What if we redirected all what's new pages prior to version 12 to http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/update/. 

Why?

* The messaging on the old what's new pages are probably no longer relevant.
* Updating all old what's new pages to do user agent detection is more work.
* Gets users on older browsers to the appropriate page with messaging to upgrade.

If we do this, it may make sense to keep redirecting older what's new pages to the ./update page after a page is more than a version old.

Thoughts?
Summary: Update older what's new pages to read user agent → Update older Firefox what's new pages
(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #1)
> Hi everyone.
> 
> I talked with a few of you and had a different idea that would be easier to
> implement and probably make more sense.
> 
> What if we redirected all what's new pages prior to version 12 to
> http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/update/. 
> 
> Why?
> 
> * The messaging on the old what's new pages are probably no longer relevant.
> * Updating all old what's new pages to do user agent detection is more work.
> * Gets users on older browsers to the appropriate page with messaging to
> upgrade.
> 
> If we do this, it may make sense to keep redirecting older what's new pages
> to the ./update page after a page is more than a version old.
> 
> Thoughts?

+1 . This would make things much more easy
Rik: Can you get a list of URLs for all what's new pages prior to version 12 and list them here before we move forward with the redirects? I want to get this wrapped up asap.
Assignee: nobody → anthony
So we already have some redirects in place. Some go to http://mozilla.org/fr/firefox/oldversion, some go to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/out-of-date/. I was trying to understand what the code is doing but that means understanding the main .htaccess file which is a complete mess.

I think the best way to solve this is:
- Port the whatsnew page to Bedrock
- In Python, everything that looks like /firefox/(version number)/whatsnew/ is redirected to an update page if (version number) < (current firefox version). Otherwise, they get the bedrock version of whatsnew.

A version number can have letters (a1, b1 for alphas and betas). It can also have -pre, etc.
Rik: What do you think about setting up the redirects to point all of the legacy "what's new" pages to at least the latest what's new page before we get the "what's new" in python?
I'm really afraid of touching the mozilla.com .htaccess file anymore. I'm not confident with all the possible regressions. Also, I see this as a good opportunity to port the whatsnew page to Bedrock. This is one of the page we revisit most often so we'll be happy to have it use the cleanest code base.

And I don't think this problem is so bad that it needs a quick fix. I could be convince otherwise though.
Let me pull the collective traffic to all what's new pages and I will give that as a percentage of visitors to other Mozilla.org landing pages.
Here are the stats for What's new pages prior to version 13 (current release) from the past 60 days: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqVK61V4lXa1dHU4UTdTd3pBZWdnN1RFN19HSG5XdWc

That's 101 million page views on older what's new pages. There is also a substantial amount of traffic on "old" what's "new" pages.

There is also a big chunk of the traffic on this page: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/3.6/whatsnew/

I think the possible regressions are worth the risk of getting 100+ million eyeballs on a page (http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/update/) with recent content and CTA's to download the latest version.

Raymond: From a QA perspective, how can you help with tests?
Note: The only exception should be PPC users on 3.6 that can't upgrade. From version 4 and above, putting in a redirect to /firefox/update/ makes a lot of sense.
(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #9)
> Here are the stats for What's new pages prior to version 13 (current
> release) from the past 60 days:
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/
> ccc?key=0AqVK61V4lXa1dHU4UTdTd3pBZWdnN1RFN19HSG5XdWc
> 
> That's 101 million page views on older what's new pages. There is also a
> substantial amount of traffic on "old" what's "new" pages.
> 
> There is also a big chunk of the traffic on this page:
> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/3.6/whatsnew/
> 
> I think the possible regressions are worth the risk of getting 100+ million
> eyeballs on a page (http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/update/) with recent
> content and CTA's to download the latest version.
> 
> Raymond: From a QA perspective, how can you help with tests?

Chris, I agree with you 100% and it would be very easy to write a selenium test case for this
Raymond: please:

A) Flag this for automation
B) Get a Pivotal Tracker task going, so Softvision can look at this/implement a test(s) tomorrow?
I'm a little bit confused. If things are working as they're supposed to, users will only see the What's New page once (unless they bookmark it or visit it from search results or some other link.)  So which users are hitting this page and why?
Asa: Correct, Firefox users that have upgraded should only see them once, but other random users (any browser) on the web are still going to those pages via links and search.

We have a bunch "old" what's new pages on Mozilla.org that are not dynamic (no user agent sniffing) and do not have a very prominent call to actions to upgrade if you are running an old browser. Also, the content in "what's new" in Firefox 4-12 is no longer relevant and thus what benefit does it have to people?

If we redirect what's new pages from version 4-12 to http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/update/, that page is dynamic and it checks to see if you are running the latest version. If you are, it says so, if not, there is a call to action.

Over the past 60 days, we have had 101 million views of What's New pages that are before Firefox 13. We could go back to all the older What's New pages, convert them over from PHP to Python and make them functional, but what's the point? We have to eventually get off of the PHP code-base and speeds up that change over. 

How does Chrome do it? Chrome has all of their what's new and release notes on a separate blog to keep SEO separate for dated content. Everything on google.com/chrome is consistent and focused on converting people to download.
(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #14)
> Asa: Correct, Firefox users that have upgraded should only see them once,
> but other random users (any browser) on the web are still going to those
> pages via links and search.

Thanks for the detailed response. I like where you're going here and have no objections.
Rik/Raymond: Let's look into this the week of July 9th. We still have a lot of work to do for the Fennec release and there will more likely be related work after the 26th.
Flags: in-testsuite?
Depends on: 763659
(In reply to Asa Dotzler [:asa] from comment #13)
> I'm a little bit confused. If things are working as they're supposed to,
> users will only see the What's New page once

Well, for example, if they never close the tab, it will stay open and around for longer than "once".
I'm gonna use the User-Agent string to detect the Firefox version. The version number in the URL will not be used. So if you go to /firefox/12.0/whatsnew/ with a Firefox 14, it will tell you "up-to-date". If you go to /firefox/14.0/whatsnew/ with a Firefox 12, it will tell redirect you to /update/

I'm currently working on this and I have a few questions:

- Where should we redirect non-Firefox users hitting this page?
- Where should we redirect PPC Firefox users?
- We take care of Firefox current, old Firefox, old PPC firefox and non-Firefox. Are we missing any special case?
Laura Forrest: Now that you are in the Firefox PMM role, can you provide us with direction on this project? I think it has the possibility to increase ADIs by focusing all of the older pages on the latest messaging.
Commit pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/054a7f4edcd075657bc2bae37bc77374a86ffb50
"What's new" page redirect based on the User Agent

fix bug 757206
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
FYI, I decided to redirect out-of-date users to /firefox/update, non-Firefox users to /firefox/new.

PPC users do not have a special case so they fall in the 'out-of-date' users.
Component: www.mozilla.org → General
Product: Websites → www.mozilla.org
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