1248046 - Clarify "Automatic updates" under Home in Settings

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Settings > General > Home > scroll to the bottom > "Automated updates"
Settings > Advanced > "Automatic updates"

Do we need two copies of this pref?

Comment 1

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Hm, according to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1216257#c4, it should be under Advanced as "Automatic updates".

Not sure what the one in General is, I'm not seeing it on my 6P

Comment 2

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Kevin Brosnan [:kbrosnan] from comment #0)
> Settings > General > Home > scroll to the bottom > "Automated updates"

This setting is not about app updates, it's about content updates for content in home panel add-ons. Given that this is confusing, and that this feature is only half-baked, I think we should just remove this.

I don't believe this is a regression in 45, since I see this item in Customize -> Home.

Comment 3

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

45 is where the settings redesign landed. Lets just clear the affected flags then.

Comment 4

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #2)
> (In reply to Kevin Brosnan [:kbrosnan] from comment #0)
> > Settings > General > Home > scroll to the bottom > "Automated updates"
> 
> This setting is not about app updates, it's about content updates for
> content in home panel add-ons. Given that this is confusing, and that this
> feature is only half-baked, I think we should just remove this.

Right, I got confused - removing this WFM.

Comment 5

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I see that a decent number of people hit this settings item ("home.sync.updateMode") in UI telemetry... but I'm not sure if they know what it means or does. It will only do something useful if you have a home panel add-on installed, and if that add-on is using the HomeProvider `requestSync` and `addPeriodicSync` APIs.

If we're going to remove this pref from the UI, we should probably remove this functionality as well.

Barbara, how do you feel about this from a product perspective? Should we remove this part of our home panels add-on API? Or maybe instead what we need to do is make this settings item clearer, since obviously right now it's easy to confuse it with app updates.

I could add telemetry to see if add-on developers are using these APIs, but I'm going to guess they're used a decent amount, since my home panel add-on boilerplate includes them. However, home panel add-ons themselves are not that popular, so maybe this isn't something we care to support. But then that opens up a whole other can of worms about the future of home panel add-on support.

It just seems like it would be more work to remove it than to fix the confusion problem.

Comment 6

[Barbara Bermes [:barbara] - NI please!]

> It just seems like it would be more work to remove it than to fix the
> confusion problem.

It seems to me easier to update the string than to start removing this and all its dependencies.

Why don't we update the string to a more concrete message and add a probe to monitor. We can always remove it later.

Suggestions for ...->home->: "Automated content updates"

As for the app updates -- what kind if updates are we talking about?

Comment 7

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Barbara Bermes [:barbara] from comment #6)
> > It just seems like it would be more work to remove it than to fix the
> > confusion problem.
> 
> It seems to me easier to update the string than to start removing this and
> all its dependencies.
> 
> Why don't we update the string to a more concrete message and add a probe to
> monitor. We can always remove it later.
> 
> Suggestions for ...->home->: "Automated content updates"

Okay, I think this makes sense, too. I'm going to make this bug track 47 instead of 45, since this will require a string change. Anthony, how do you feel about this?

> As for the app updates -- what kind if updates are we talking about?

For the app updates, we're talking about the updates Mozilla serves for Firefox itself (e.g. for Nightly, Aurora updates). Unfortunately, the fact that we always build the Firefox updater with our code, regardless of whether updates come from Mozilla or the Play Store, means that we always show this pref, even if we never download app updates from Mozilla.

I thought there was a bug filed about this, but I can't find it. I don't think it's actively harmful, since we'll never be downloading those updates, so we're respecting the user's wish to only download over wifi or never download.

Comment 8

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #7)
> (In reply to Barbara Bermes [:barbara] from comment #6)
> > > It just seems like it would be more work to remove it than to fix the
> > > confusion problem.
> > 
> > It seems to me easier to update the string than to start removing this and
> > all its dependencies.
> > 
> > Why don't we update the string to a more concrete message and add a probe to
> > monitor. We can always remove it later.
> > 
> > Suggestions for ...->home->: "Automated content updates"
> 
> Okay, I think this makes sense, too. I'm going to make this bug track 47
> instead of 45, since this will require a string change. Anthony, how do you
> feel about this?

WFM!

Let's change this language right now. 

I would also like to know if this is a nuance we could remove or we should make a bigger deal out of for the Add-ons work later down the line. So, we should monitor the telemetry on this after the copy changes too.

Why don't we call it "Content updates" instead? that makes more sense I think

+-------------------------------------------------+
|                                                 |
|  Content updates                                |
|  Enabled                                        |
|                                                 |
+-------------------------------------------------+

Comment 9

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Can we clarify that this setting is only for content from add-ons? I don't want users to be confused by the fact that everything in your default home panels is local, so what content is being updated? Or maybe they would think this relates to sync, but that isn't the case.

Comment 10

[Barbara Bermes [:barbara] - NI please!]

If the current string is ambiguous, and the update only applies to add-ons, we could call it

Content updates from Add-Ons

or

Updates of Add-ons Content
...

Comment 11

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Hm... I don't think any of these copy changes will really make it obvious enough that this setting is about Add-ons only. The best non-scope creeping, immediately do-able solution is to rename this for now. 

But, I've filed bug 1249729 to keep track of a more permanent solution.

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #9)
> Can we clarify that this setting is only for content from add-ons? I don't
> want users to be confused by the fact that everything in your default home
> panels is local, so what content is being updated? Or maybe they would think
> this relates to sync, but that isn't the case.

It's currently under the header "Content Settings", why don't we just create another header called "Add-ons" and put this pref there?

Content settings

+-------------------------------------------------+
|                                                 |
|  Show site suggestions                          |
|  Display shortcuts to sites on your homep..     |
|                                                 |
+-------------------------------------------------+

Add-ons

+-------------------------------------------------+
|                                                 |
|  Content updates                                |
|  Enabled                                        |
|                                                 |
+-------------------------------------------------+

BTW, what does "show site suggestions" do again?

Comment 12

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Anthony Lam (:antlam) from comment #11)

> BTW, what does "show site suggestions" do again?

It shows suggested sites, i.e. the tiles we show on first run.

Comment 13

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Oops, I missed the merge, this will have to happen in 48.

Comment 14

[:Grisha Kruglov]

Attachment: MozReview Request: Bug 1248046 - clarify "content updates" label under Home in Settings r=margaret

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/38793/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/38793/

Comment 15

[:Grisha Kruglov]

Comment on attachment 8728113 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1248046 - clarify "content updates" label under Home in Settings r=margaret

Review request updated; see interdiff: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/38793/diff/1-2/

Comment 16

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I see the patch here updates this string to say "Content updates", but I feel like it would be clearer if this said something like "Content updates from add-ons". antlam, what do you think?

Comment 17

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Lets use the subtitle that we talked about in comment 11 to make this distinction.

Saying "Add-ons" up there will allow us to stick with "Content updates" as the pref title.

Comment 18

[:Grisha Kruglov]

Will make that change and re-push.

Comment 19

[:Grisha Kruglov]

Comment on attachment 8728113 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1248046 - clarify "content updates" label under Home in Settings r=margaret

Review request updated; see interdiff: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/38793/diff/2-3/

Comment 20

[:Margaret Leibovic]

Comment on attachment 8728113 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1248046 - clarify "content updates" label under Home in Settings r=margaret

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/38793/#review35565

Looks good! You should re-push with my one comment addressed, add the "checkin-needed" keyword to the bug, and then a sheriff will land this for you.

::: mobile/android/base/resources/xml/preferences_home.xml:40
(Diff revision 3)
> -
> +                        

Nit: Remove trailing whitespace (you should be able to set a preference in your editor to avoid saving trailing whitespace).

Comment 21

[:Grisha Kruglov]

Comment on attachment 8728113 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1248046 - clarify "content updates" label under Home in Settings r=margaret

Review request updated; see interdiff: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/38793/diff/3-4/

Comment 22

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/fd53c862d17a

Comment 23

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/fd53c862d17a

Comment 24

[Teodora Vermesan (:TeoVermesan)]

"Automatic updates - Only over Wi-Fi" is displayed in Settings > Advanced 
"Content updates - Enabled" is displayed in Settings > General > Home > Add-ons

Verified as fixed using:
Device: One A2001 (Android 5.1.1) 
Build: Firefox for Android 48.0a1 (2016-03-13)