1167974 - about:config preferences should have more columns - "Restart?" , "Depend-On" , "Depended-Upon" and "Description"

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Preferences, enhancement)

Description

[Eitan Caspi]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150513174244

Steps to reproduce:

Following https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1165421 I tried to know which settings in "Preferences" (e.g. about:config) that is changed - needs a restart to get applied or not.
Also searched the web and mozilla.org


Actual results:

Only found an official note of "Note: There is no indication in the table as to which items will take effect immediately, with a new window, or require restarting." at http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries


Expected results:

The preferences table should have a column of "Restart?" (or other text that will enable users to understand the concept) for each setting with a boolean read-only value of either "true" or "false" - so user will know what to expect and what to do or not to do (restart or not) - for each change of setting they perform.
This will take the guesswork out of when changes are applied to preferences.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

(In reply to Eitan Caspi from comment #0)
> Only found an official note of "Note: There is no indication in the table as
> to which items will take effect immediately, with a new window, or require
> restarting." at http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries

MozillaZine is an independent community. Their knowledge base isn't an official reference.
http://www.mozillazine.org/about/

Comment 2

[Eitan Caspi]

Following more comments and explanations on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1165421 - I raise: There is need for more columns:

1. Depend-On , closed and read-only list of other preferences - meaning the that the relevant preference depends on one or more other preferences

2. Depended-Upon, closed and read-only list of other preferences - meaning other preferences are depended on this preference

3. Description - A free text, read-only field that explains what this preference is all about (document inside the product. Yeah, I know developers hate to document, but hey, humans use this product! They need to understand! It will hopefully lead to less dummy-bug! ;) )

Because of columns 1 and 2 - consider adding a "Tree" view to the preferences GUI as a Tree is more visually helpful to show dependencies (consider "Tree" on the left and context-based (based on what selected at the Tree) list on the right, File system explorer like)

Comment 3

[jwms]

Attachment: screenshot.png

after seeing so many undocumented prefs, platform-dependent prefs, deprecated and planned prefs, etc. I imagine seeing these sorts of columns.  I can't see why someone couldn't fill in a few notes when they add new prefs.  Even if they slowly start trickling in at least there would be a mechanism to document your work users and devs alike not having to Google or search source code for what they do.

Comment 4

[YF (Yang)]

I think this will greatly increase maintenance costs and some misleading (such as taking effect when some operation or restart). It will fit as a wiki page, MDN page or support articles.

Comment 5

[jwms]

(In reply to YF (Yang) from comment #4)
> I think this will greatly increase maintenance costs and some misleading
> (such as taking effect when some operation or restart). It will fit as a
> wiki page, MDN page or support articles.

Wiki pages get stale very quickly.  There are tons of Mozilla wiki pages which are old and outdated.  It would save users a lot of time to know what config preferences mean.

Comment 6

[YF (Yang)]

(In reply to jwms from comment #5)
> (In reply to YF (Yang) from comment #4)
> > I think this will greatly increase maintenance costs and some misleading
> > (such as taking effect when some operation or restart). It will fit as a
> > wiki page, MDN page or support articles.
> 
> Wiki pages get stale very quickly.  There are tons of Mozilla wiki pages
> which are old and outdated.  It would save users a lot of time to know what
> config preferences mean.

Indeed, and I guess the document cannot cope with version changes. But I suspect we cannot get a comprehensive, accurate and effective description soon, as well as the easy revision of it (submission to version control is cumbersome for new users).

Comment 7

[jwms]

I could cope with missing information.  Having a mechanism within the screen is the most important part.  I wouldn't expect it to be fully populated any time soon.

I can recall a thing with Microsoft where they wanted all code signed with digital signatures.  It turned out that a lot of Microsoft's own processes within Windows didn't have digital signatures on their own executables (ex: svchost.exe).  Eventually, as Microsoft pushed new security patches, all of their executables were getting signed and when you used tools like Sysinternals Process Explorer you'd see more and more verified processes by Microsoft and other vendors- so it became easier to spot malware using fake signatures (ex: svchost.exe not signed by anyone.)

Having the mechanism in place doesn't mean the data will be fleshed out day one but people will start noticing and appreciating the mechanism and even other contributors who like to document things may step in and fill in the blanks.

Comment 8

[lolipopplus]

(In reply to jwms from comment #7)
> I could cope with missing information.  Having a mechanism within the screen
> is the most important part.  I wouldn't expect it to be fully populated any
> time soon.
> 

What about users who don't read English or are complete new to Firefox?

Comment 9

[jwms]

The source code comments for the same things (albeit hidden in the source code) are written in English.  It's pretty well known that the lingua franca in programming is English.
And users completely new to Firefox don't necesarily visit nor are encouraged to visit about:config.

Comment 10

[lolipopplus]

(In reply to jwms from comment #9)
> The source code comments for the same things (albeit hidden in the source
> code) are written in English.  It's pretty well known that the lingua franca
> in programming is English.
> And users completely new to Firefox don't necesarily visit nor are
> encouraged to visit about:config.

True as it is but not justification to not give the most humane design. Chrome://flags & Visual Studio Code has done a great job in this part.

Comment 11

[jwms]

I just thought of another rationale for in-app descriptions and these additional details. If Firefox is trying to introduce newer ways to manage enterprise installs via GPO's, having clear descriptions of prefs in the about:config screen would lend credence to the effort. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Enterprise_deployment

In-app documentation makes the most sense to explain some of the more unintuitive description.  network.http.referer.trimmingPolicy = 0... I have no idea what that implies.

Comment 12

[jwms]

Attachment: cleaner version

Comment 13

[jwms]

Attachment: screenshot_v3.png

Comment 14

[Heinrich Schuchardt]

Preferences files like https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/blob/master/extensions/chromium/preferences_schema.json have a description field. I wonder why within 5 years this field could not be made available in the about:config dialogue.