1011093 - WebApp update prompt looks scary - wordsmith notification text

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Web Apps (PWAs), defect, P2)

Description

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

cloned from bug 1007770, see discussion there.

Comment 1

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

The strings are here:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/locales/en-US/chrome/webapp.properties

cc: dria, who also had some thoughts on the text.

blassey: who should own this wordsmithing?  I can make the actual code changes but need direction on what these notifications should say instead, as the only guidance to date has been to make these notifications as native as possible, which is already the case.

Comment 2

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

I think Ian is the best place to start for wordsmithing

Comment 3

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

What am I wordsmithing here? I just looked through the Myk's MXR link and didn't see anything especially offensive, maybe I'm missing something? :)

Comment 4

[Deb Richardson [:dria] (plz NEEDINFO)]

Attachment: unnervingnotification.png

Comment 5

[Deb Richardson [:dria] (plz NEEDINFO)]

I think the scary part is that there is no indication that the update notification is related to Firefox or the Firefox Marketplace - it's just a download arrow and some text.

(Attaching screenshot.)

I believe the Play store updates are somehow identified with the Play store, although possibly just through the icon.  We did talk about updating the icon so it was either the rocket ship or the Firefox Marketplace shopping-bag icon, which I expect would help.

I also suggested that we mention Firefox Marketplace in the text, but i expect we just don't have the room to do so.

Comment 6

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Thanks Deb! 

Seems to me like the bigger problem here was the icon which was handled in bug 1007770 by adding a rocket ship. 

The only additional suggestion I might have here is to use the word "update" instead of "download". It's a little more consistent with Android, and doesn't carry the same kind of emotional baggage that the word "download" does. So a notification might read:


2 new updates
Touch to update Twitter and 2048

Comment 7

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #6)

> 2 new updates
> Touch to update Twitter and 2048

Sounds good to me

Comment 8

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to Deb Richardson [:dria] from comment #5)
> I think the scary part is that there is no indication that the update
> notification is related to Firefox or the Firefox Marketplace - it's just a
> download arrow and some text.
> 
> (Attaching screenshot.)
> 
> I believe the Play store updates are somehow identified with the Play store,
> although possibly just through the icon.  We did talk about updating the
> icon so it was either the rocket ship or the Firefox Marketplace
> shopping-bag icon, which I expect would help.

Google Play update notifications do indeed have an icon reminiscent of the Google Play app icon, but then Google Play will only update apps you install via Google Play.

Whereas Fennec's update service works for all Open Web Apps, not only those installed from Marketplace, and it would be misleading to use a Marketplace icon for notifications about apps that come from elsewhere.

Nevertheless, it seems fine to use an icon associated with Open Web Apps generally, like the "rocket ship" icon, or with Fennec, like the "globe" icon we use to notify users about Nightly updates.

Another option would be the two-circular arrows icon that @alam designed for the "Check for Updates…" item in Tools > Apps:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/themes/core/images/update.png

But presumably that icon, like the download icon, is too generic.


> I also suggested that we mention Firefox Marketplace in the text, but i
> expect we just don't have the room to do so.

As of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, we can make notifications expandable.  And we probably want to do that anyway, since the list of apps to update is unbounded and quickly fills the available space in a compact notification.

Nevertheless, the notification will still be compact under a variety of circumstances, like on older versions of Android and possibly when other notifications crowd the notification area (unsure, would need to look into this further); so it's still worth optimizing for brevity!


(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #6)
> Seems to me like the bigger problem here was the icon which was handled in
> bug 1007770 by adding a rocket ship. 
> 
> The only additional suggestion I might have here is to use the word "update"
> instead of "download". It's a little more consistent with Android, and
> doesn't carry the same kind of emotional baggage that the word "download"
> does. So a notification might read:
> 
> 
> 2 new updates
> Touch to update Twitter and 2048

We actually have two notifications during an automatic update check.  First, there's a notification that tells the user that updates are available and asks the user to download them:

  2 new updates
  Touch to download Twitter, 2048

Then, once the updates are downloaded, there's a notification that asks the user to apply them:

  2 updates downloaded
  Touch to install Twitter, 2048

The reason we do this is that Firefox can't apply updates without invoking the Package Installer's "confirm install" dialog, which is a full-screen modal dialog.  If we did that automatically after downloading the update, which might happen many seconds or even minutes later, then we would jolt the user away from whatever else they were doing while waiting for the download to complete, which would be a jarring, disruptive experience.

(Google Play gets special privileges that aren't available to third-party apps, not even if they explicitly request them!  So it can and does install updates without triggering that dialog.)

We could, however, wait until we've downloaded the update before prompting the user to install it.  Then we could show them a single notification that prompts them to "update" and immediately triggers the "confirm install" dialog:

  2 new updates
  Touch to update Twitter, 2048

Note that this still wouldn't be identical to the native experience.  When "autoinstall" is disabled in Google Play (either for all apps or for the particular apps that need updating), then Play will show you such a notification *before* downloading the update, whereas in this case we would show it *after* downloading the update.

Also, doing this unconditionally would violate the principle enshrined in the default value of the app.update.autodownload pref that we not download updates automatically if the device is on a potentially metered or narrowband mobile data network.

But Firefox could do it conditionally if the device is on "wifi" or if that pref is set to enable autodownloads on mobile data networks.  And in fact we just landed bug 970200 to do that.


So the only change I would recommend making here is possibly to change the postdownload notification to read:

  2 new updates
  Touch to update Twitter, 2048

Then that would be the only notification users see when we autodownload the updates, while they'd receive two notifications in the nonautodownload case:

  2 new updates
  Touch to download Twitter, 2048
  …
  2 new updates
  Touch to update Twitter, 2048


(We should also tackle the grammatical kludge that makes the app list read "Twitter, 2048" and "Twitter, 2048, NYTimes" instead of "Twitter and 2048" and "Twitter, 2048, and NYTimes".  But I recommend we file a new bug on that and tackle it separately, as I have a hunch that it's non-trivial.)


ibarlow: Does that seem reasonable?

blassey: Does that address your concern?

Comment 9

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Sounds good to me.

Comment 10

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

I think the this that set off my "this seems like spyware" senses is the association with downloads. May I suggest:

2 new updates
Touch to update Twitter, 2048

2 updates downloaded
Touch to install updates for Twitter, 2048

Comment 11

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?) from comment #10)
> I think the this that set off my "this seems like spyware" senses is the
> association with downloads. May I suggest:
> 
> 2 new updates
> Touch to update Twitter, 2048
> 
> 2 updates downloaded
> Touch to install updates for Twitter, 2048

That seems like a painful way to avoid the word "download", given the limited space, but ok.  Ian?

Comment 12

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Yeah, I dunno about that one... I could imagine being a little frustrated by having to tap two notifications that sound like they mean the same thing. 

1. Touch to update
2. Wait, Touch to install update? Did I not already just tell you to do that?

Comment 13

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Note that Fennec's built-in updater (used by Nightly and Aurora builds) says:

  Touch to download

and then:

  Touch to update

  - http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/locales/en-US/android_strings.dtd?rev=480860e8a7f2#422

But Nightly/Aurora users are presumably more sophisticated than Beta/Release users and less likely to be scared by the word "download", so perhaps that isn't informative.


We could also do:

  Touch to retrieve updates for …

And then:

  Touch to install updates for …

Which makes both notifications longer but avoids both the word "download" and confusing similarity.

Comment 14

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez] from comment #13)
 
> We could also do:
> 
>   Touch to retrieve updates for …
> 
> And then:
> 
>   Touch to install updates for …
> 
> Which makes both notifications longer but avoids both the word "download"
> and confusing similarity.


I think I still prefer "download" and "update", but my arm can be twisted into this one as well.

Comment 15

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

so, all together these would be:

2 new updates available
Touch to retrieve updates for Twitter, 2048

2 updates downloaded
Touch to install updates for Twitter, 2048

that seems fine to me.

Comment 16

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Alright let's do it

Comment 17

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Attachment: patch v1: change update notifications

Ok, here's a patch that implements the changes.

Note that there's now some inconsistency in these notifications, since we talk about "retrieving" updates but then tell users the updates were "downloaded".

Also, there are two other notifications where the word "download" used to be used: the one with a progress bar that appears while we're in the process of downloading updates, and the one that appears if a download failed.  I updated the first to use the word "retrieving":

  Retrieving 3 updates…
  Retrieving updates for Foo, Bar, Baz

But the second one uses "updates" in place of "downloads," since it would sound weird to say that "3 retrievals failed":

  3 updates failed
  Failed to retrieve updates for Foo, Bar, Baz

Comment 18

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Attachment: update-notifications.png

Here's an annotated collage of screenshots showing the various notifications in the update flow, as they appear on my Nexus 5.

Comment 19

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Note that the screenshot shows multiple variations for some of the steps, so you can see what the notification looks like with a different number of updates being available/retrieved.  But a given update flow will only ever see one of those notifications in each step!  So you'll either see "1 new update available" or "2 new updates available", but not both notifications, at the "updates are available" step.

Comment 20

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Attachment: patch v2: minor bug fix

Pushed to fx-team with a minor bug fix: made the String.replace call that unescapes the string change all instances of the escape character.  Here's the patch I pushed.

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/b367d9f2ab45

Comment 21

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

(In reply to Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez] from comment #8)
> As of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, we can make notifications expandable.  And we
> probably want to do that anyway, since the list of apps to update is
> unbounded and quickly fills the available space in a compact notification.

Filed as bug 1017868.


> (We should also tackle the grammatical kludge that makes the app list read
> "Twitter, 2048" and "Twitter, 2048, NYTimes" instead of "Twitter and 2048"
> and "Twitter, 2048, and NYTimes".  But I recommend we file a new bug on that
> and tackle it separately, as I have a hunch that it's non-trivial.)

Filed as bug 1017881.

Comment 22

[Wes Kocher (:KWierso) (Not reading bugmail; email directly if needed)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b367d9f2ab45