Closed Bug 1271774 Opened 8 years ago Closed 8 years ago

Figure out decisions about what to migrate for a/each browser when auto-importing data on startup

Categories

(Firefox :: Migration, defect, P2)

defect

Tracking

()

RESOLVED FIXED
Tracking Status
firefox49 --- affected

People

(Reporter: Gijs, Unassigned)

References

Details

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1271766 +++

(bug 1271766 covers "which browser" which seems orthogonal in terms of implementation/philosophy)

Effectively, when auto-importing we'll need to make all the decisions we're now delegating to the user automatically.

Things we need to know:

- what browser(s) to import from. See bug 1271766.

- which data-types to import:
  const unsigned short SETTINGS    = 0x0001;
  const unsigned short COOKIES     = 0x0002;
  const unsigned short HISTORY     = 0x0004;
  const unsigned short FORMDATA    = 0x0008;
  const unsigned short PASSWORDS   = 0x0010;
  const unsigned short BOOKMARKS   = 0x0020;
  const unsigned short OTHERDATA   = 0x0040;

(Note: not all of these are implemented for all 3rd-party browsers. We also support "SESSION" but not for any third-party browsers, as far as I can tell. We'll shortly add support for migrating add-ons from another Firefox profile, but that isn't immediately relevant here, either.)

I would suggest that we should import only form data, passwords, history and bookmarks. 

I don't think we should actually bother importing cookies as they're often not very useful - I wouldn't expect them to help persist logged-in sessions to bigger sites like Facebook or Google, for instance, as both of those know "which browser" you log in with as well - and keeping them has tracking/advertisement downsides.

The settings we import for IE are of debatable usefulness (I thought there was a bug on file for this but I can't find it off-hand). The only other browser we seem to support this for is Safari, and at a glance, some of those settings (e.g. "allow me to store logins") seem like ones we shouldn't be auto-importing. Perhaps alternatively we just need to take a broom through those settings and then do import the ones that seem valuable? If so, that should probably be a separate bug.

OTHERDATA only gets you safari search strings. I don't know in what state that migrator is, we'd have to go test it, but it doesn't seem particularly valuable either.


- whether to import the homepage (this is a separate step in the wizard, so I'm listing it separately). I would suggest not to do this as it's unlikely to be useful, often hijacked, and it's easy for the user to restore if they really did want it.


- what profile to use. Both Chrome and 360SE seem to support multiple user profiles. I have no idea how to decide on which profile to use if there are multiple. I suppose if we detect this situation we could go back to showing the wizard, and we could auto-import if there's just the one? I doubt that importing from all the profiles is a reasonable solution here, and the "whole point" of this change is not to get in the user's face on startup, so asking also seems wrong. The only other thing I can think of is trying to work out which profile has the most data and basing it on that? Which seems like a pretty rubbishy strategy for user profiles moreso than for which browser to use (feels like multiple profiles has more user intent). I don't see anything in the code that indicates which of many profiles would be the default/current, either. :-\

Pinging :Verdi for thoughts / decisions here.
Flags: needinfo?(mverdi)
Blocks: 1271775
Blocks: 1271798
Initial thoughts:

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch from comment #0)
> 
> I would suggest that we should import only form data, passwords, history and
> bookmarks. 

I agree. The only other thing I would have suggested was cookies but...

> 
> I don't think we should actually bother importing cookies as they're often
> not very useful - I wouldn't expect them to help persist logged-in sessions
> to bigger sites like Facebook or Google, for instance, as both of those know
> "which browser" you log in with as well - and keeping them has
> tracking/advertisement downsides.

Yeah doesn't seem worth it.

> 
> The settings we import for IE are of debatable usefulness (I thought there
> was a bug on file for this but I can't find it off-hand). The only other
> browser we seem to support this for is Safari, and at a glance, some of
> those settings (e.g. "allow me to store logins") seem like ones we shouldn't
> be auto-importing. Perhaps alternatively we just need to take a broom
> through those settings and then do import the ones that seem valuable? If
> so, that should probably be a separate bug.
> 
> OTHERDATA only gets you safari search strings. I don't know in what state
> that migrator is, we'd have to go test it, but it doesn't seem particularly
> valuable either.
> 

Agree - let's not import any of this.

> 
> - whether to import the homepage (this is a separate step in the wizard, so
> I'm listing it separately). I would suggest not to do this as it's unlikely
> to be useful, often hijacked, and it's easy for the user to restore if they
> really did want it.
> 

Agree - don't import any homepage (or new tab page settings if they exist).

> 
> - what profile to use. Both Chrome and 360SE seem to support multiple user
> profiles. I have no idea how to decide on which profile to use if there are
> multiple. I suppose if we detect this situation we could go back to showing
> the wizard, and we could auto-import if there's just the one? I doubt that
> importing from all the profiles is a reasonable solution here, and the
> "whole point" of this change is not to get in the user's face on startup, so
> asking also seems wrong. The only other thing I can think of is trying to
> work out which profile has the most data and basing it on that? Which seems
> like a pretty rubbishy strategy for user profiles moreso than for which
> browser to use (feels like multiple profiles has more user intent). I don't
> see anything in the code that indicates which of many profiles would be the
> default/current, either. :-\
> 

I think if there are multiple profiles we shouldn't try to guess or ask the user. We should skip importing and use a default data set (e.g. Alexa top sites). We can surface the "Import data from another browser" command on the new tab page to give people the option to manually figure out which profile they want to import from.
Flags: needinfo?(mverdi)
Priority: -- → P2
Based on comment #0 / comment #1, let's go with form data / history / bookmarks / passwords, and nothing else, for now. I split out the multiple profile issue to bug 1277294 because the current state of about:newtab / first run pages doesn't allow for this surfacing and I don't want to block bug 1271775 on this.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 8 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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