1024687 - [UX] Decide on UI options for more aggressive support prompts

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Health Report Graveyard :: Client: Desktop, defect)

Description

[Benjamin Smedberg]

The Firefox Health Report/support system would like the ability to more aggressively show itself to the user if there is a known resolution for an issue. Some examples:

* A particular addon is known to be causing crashes for some users and should be automatically disabled for those users (but not for everyone in the blocklist).
* A particular addon is thought to be causing crashes for some users and we want to prompt them to disable it.
* 3rd-party software or malware is present on the system which we can detect in crash reports but can't block. We want to show the user a support article on how to solve their problem.
* The user is experiencing out-of-memory crashes and we detect that their virtual memory settings in Windows should be changed (we need to show them a support article)
* The user is seeing frequent jank/hangs due to an old version of something (Flash) and we want to prompt them to update.
* The user is seeing frequent jank/hangs due to something that looks like a corrupted profile and we want to prompt them to do a profile reset.

Other possible use-cases:
* The user experienced a crash in prior versions; we fixed it and we might want to let them know.
* We are seeing some bad behavior/crash that we don't understand, and we want to ask the user to send us more details so we can diagnose it.

I'd like to have some generic UI options available to the healthreport code so that it can take relatively appropriate actions based on the severity of a problem. Some possibilities:

* open a tab to a particular URI (support page/survey)
* automatically disable an addon and inform the user that we did so
* show a notification to the user

The goal is to have a small set of UI options which solve most of these use-cases, and then we can decide which one to use dynamically on the FHR server based on the severity.

Comment 1

[Michael Maslaney [:mmaslaney] ([e-mail])]

Couple options here:

v1 – Top notification bar

v2 — Tab prompt

v3 — Bottom notification bar

http://people.mozilla.org/~mmaslaney/prompt/Prompts_health-report.png

Comment 2

[Michael Maslaney [:mmaslaney] ([e-mail])]

Flagging Philipp for design feedback.

Comment 3

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Those look great!
I think the notification bars work better as a mechanism because they don't break the flow and can be shown at any time during the session.
For placement, it makes sense to go on case by case basis. E.g. it makes sense to have the bar about an add-on that causes crashes at the top when the browser just recovered from a crash, whereas it is better to have it at the bottom when the browser just detects an add-on that frequently causes crashes (in which case it should be at the bottom).

Comment 4

[Michael Maslaney [:mmaslaney] ([e-mail])]

Attachment: glyphs_prompt.zip

Spec:

http://people.mozilla.org/~mmaslaney/prompt/Prompts_health-report.png

Comment 5

[Michael Maslaney [:mmaslaney] ([e-mail])]

Prompt style spec:

http://people.mozilla.org/~mmaslaney/prompt/Prompt-spec.png

Comment 6

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Are we going to use the existing notification bar code, or does this detailed graphical spec mean that we need to make visual modifications?

Is there still an option to interrupt the user more aggressively? Sometimes we may want to break flow for serious issues but where we can't take automatic action.

I wasn't sure whether it would be better to open a new tab in that case, or show a whole new browser window.

I didn't understand the distinction about notification on top or on bottom. Is there a clear guideline about how to choose?

Comment 7

[Michael Maslaney [:mmaslaney] ([e-mail])]

The notification bar is being built here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1024741#c8

With regards to tab notification, I would lean toward the opening of a new tab, rather than a new window. New windows tend to be disregarded and viewed as spam.

The top notification bar would be ideal for critical messaging; information that I really need to know with regards to my browser's performance.

The bottom notification bar would for non critical messaging; nice to know information more or less, but not vital in performance terms.