1093689 - Update the e10s notification

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

We need to update the notification users get when Firefox starts with e10s enabled. It needs to include notes on how to disable and that some add-ons may be causing performance issues.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Can you give this a points estimate felipe?

Comment 2

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

If this is just updating the text, it would be trivial. But I'll set it at 3 points because there might be more to it. If the text is too large maybe we'll need something else than the infobar. Also, the current notification only shows up once, and I think that for this use case, once is too little and very easy to miss. So some simple code changes will be required to display it N times.

Comment 3

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Attachment: Current infobar

For reference, this is the current notice as displayed. The Learn More link opens a tab to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

Comment 4

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

So the immediate questions to answer are:

- Do we want to change the text?
- Should we display it more than once?
- Should the link change to something less project-y and more user focused?

Or are there bigger UX changes wanted?

Comment 5

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Philipp: just as a heads up, we're going to be turning e10s on by default for all users on Nightly, and so we're doing this to help set expectations and communicate common issues. If you have any suggestions on wording please chime in, but we want to get this landed in the next day or two.

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to :Felipe Gomes from comment #4)
> So the immediate questions to answer are:
> 
> - Do we want to change the text?

I think the important messages are:
- stuff might be broken, there are known issues
- your testing and bug reports are very important

The current message does a decent job, but we might want to rephrase the "thanks" bit to be more encouraging of future testing effort and tolerance.

> - Should we display it more than once?

I don't think that's necessary.

> - Should the link change to something less project-y and more user focused?

I think the wiki is fine for a Nightly audience, but we may want another pass at the text on that page that reinforces and clarifies specifically the "important messages" above.

Comment 7

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

In general, I don't think we should be showing a lot of notifications where there's not real user choice to be made or a way they should change behavior. We showed an infobar here when e10s was opt-in because it was a confirmation that the thing you just turned on is in fact on (i.e., it's the final response in the conversation with the user that started with the doorhanger).

As thought of here, it's mostly telling me that something I likely don't understand very well is now on, and that Firefox/Mozilla think's it's OK for it to be on. But maybe you should worry that things will break. But we're not going to give you a button to turn it off.

All of that is to say -- we should think about what our actual goals are for telling the user that e10s is enabled, and if there's anything we'd like them to do, then make those things easy. If it's a warning that Nightly is going to be less stable than usual, then I'd expect for us to talk specifically about ways to opt out.

It sounds like we're not that worried about about stability, but we _do_ want users to report more problems (i.e. that's how we're asking them to change their behaviour)... so maybe something like:


You're now helping to test Process Separation (e10s)! Please report problems you find.  (Learn more)

Comment 8

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

Attachment: Patch

I really like this new message. Thanks for the thoughts, Gavin and Madhava. The only concern I have is that we haven't been using the "Process Separation" terminology. Instead we mostly used "Multi-process". Although come to think of it, it does sound better. But all other messaging (preferences UI, e10s prompt, etc) has used Multi-process so I don't know if the new term would be confusing.

Patch is trivial but I'm setting review to Gavin so he can take a final look at the string.

Comment 9

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/9eceae016a75

Comment 10

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

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9eceae016a75

Comment 11

[Vasilica Tamas, QA [:vtamas]]

I confirm that e10s notification is changed on Nightly 36.0a1 (2014-11-13) following the model "You're now helping to test Process Separation (e10s)! Please report problems you find.  (Learn more)". I verified on Windows 8.1 x64, Ubuntu 14.04 x32 and Mac OSX 10.8.5.