1466568 - Warn when starting a profile that last ran with an older build

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1455707

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect, P1)

Comment 1

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Bram, can you please help confirm the copy?

Comment 2

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

I’m worried that virtually everybody who download Beta, Dev Edition and Nightly will see this message – potentially scaring away those who may like to help test our products.

What if we perform a silent upgrade and then only warn on downgrade, which is the current behaviour? It’s less interruption that way.


Otherwise, this is my proposed message.

Windows title:
You’ve launched a newer version of Firefox

Body text:
To continue accessing your bookmarks and browsing history, you must upgrade your profile.

An upgraded profile may not be used to launch an older version of Firefox safely. However, you will be able to choose a different profile, sign into Firefox Account, and perform a sync to restore your bookmarks and browsing history.

[Upgrade profile and launch newer version] [Exit and launch older version]

Comment 3

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Thanks Bram, you bring-up a good point for new installs.
I was thinking a good solution may be to default to a new profile for new installs of a channel when another install is already detected. Although the stub installer beta data shows us the following:
- About 20% of beta installs have a different install detected in a different directory
- About 42% of beta installs have an install in the same directory
https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/queries/4886/source#9990

If I interpret this right (NI Matt in case I'm not) it means there are more paveover installs of Beta than installs of Beta along with another channel so we probably don't want to default to a new profile in this case.

Comment 4

[Molly Howell (she/her) (mostly inactive)]

That's the correct interpretation, although it should be noted that we're looking at counts of installation events, which don't necessarily translate directly to counts of users.

I think we'll want to be pretty careful in implementing this idea to not annoy users who either know what they are doing or do not care about what the warning is saying; we should try to identify the specific scenarios we're concerned about as precisely as possible and keep the warning narrowed to just those scenarios.

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

We should limit any behaviour change to the following case:

- User is starting a profile that was previously used by an older version of Firefox AND
- older version of Firefox was in a different location on disk to the current version of Firefox AND
- older version of Firefox still exists on disk

So pave-over installs, upgrades would not trigger the dialog. Likewise if the user has uninstalled the old version and installed a newer one somewhere else it would not trigger. The only case where it would trigger is where it is currently possible for the user to run the older version of Firefox without re-downloading.

What do you think about also including the following:

- Firefox is starting with the default profile.

This means if the user selected their profile through the profile manager or via a command-line argument we wouldn't show the dialog, presumably those users have some idea about what they're doing.

(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #2)
> I’m worried that virtually everybody who download Beta, Dev Edition and
> Nightly will see this message – potentially scaring away those who may like
> to help test our products.

This is still often going to be true even with the above, the problem is we can't tell if they are switching channel permanently or just testing if a newer build works. Given the next point they will be blocked from switching back.

> What if we perform a silent upgrade and then only warn on downgrade, which
> is the current behaviour? It’s less interruption that way.

We aren't warning on downgrade, we're effectively blocking users from downgrading their profile without exceptional steps.

Comment 6

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Attachment: screenshot

Not sure why the standard prompt dialog is messing this up so I'm going to have to spend a bit more time making this look right.

Comment 7

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

(In reply to Matt Howell [:mhowell] from comment #4)
> [...] we should try to identify the specific scenarios
> we're concerned about as precisely as possible and keep the warning narrowed
> to just those scenarios.

Thanks, Matt. You’ve articulated my biggest worry for this warning dialogue.


(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #5)
> […] the problem is we
> can't tell if they are switching channel permanently or just testing if a
> newer build works.

I wonder if our message can say something like:

Windows title:
You’ve launched a newer version of Firefox

Body text:
If you’re planning to switch to this new version permanently, upgrade your profile.

If you’re planning to test this new version temporarily or run it alongside the old version, open Profile Manager and choose a different profile to use. Afterwards, sign into Firefox Account and perform a sync to restore your bookmarks and browsing history


[Upgrade profile and launch newer version] [Launch profile manager] <-- default


This way, the user is given two ways to accomplish their goal. The default option is the least destructive (ie. they can go back and forth between versions easily) but potentially more complicated (to migrate data).

The secondary option is more destructive (your profile won’t be able to downgrade), but also more direct (data is instantly migrated).

The option to reopen the older version isn’t provided here, because we assume that, when the user wants to open a newer version, it’s usually not done by mistake. The goal really is to open the newer version.

As a third option, we can have a “Cancel” button, or just have the quit “x” window control.


What do you think?

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #7)
> (In reply to Matt Howell [:mhowell] from comment #4)
> > [...] we should try to identify the specific scenarios
> > we're concerned about as precisely as possible and keep the warning narrowed
> > to just those scenarios.
> 
> Thanks, Matt. You’ve articulated my biggest worry for this warning dialogue.
> 
> 
> (In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #5)
> > […] the problem is we
> > can't tell if they are switching channel permanently or just testing if a
> > newer build works.
> 
> I wonder if our message can say something like:
> 
> Windows title:
> You’ve launched a newer version of Firefox
> 
> Body text:
> If you’re planning to switch to this new version permanently, upgrade your
> profile.
> 
> If you’re planning to test this new version temporarily or run it alongside
> the old version, open Profile Manager and choose a different profile to use.
> Afterwards, sign into Firefox Account and perform a sync to restore your
> bookmarks and browsing history
> 
> 
> [Upgrade profile and launch newer version] [Launch profile manager] <--
> default
> 
> 
> This way, the user is given two ways to accomplish their goal. The default
> option is the least destructive (ie. they can go back and forth between
> versions easily) but potentially more complicated (to migrate data).

Much more complicated for the average user since we don't have profile-per-channel right now. When they go back to the older version it will attempt to use their new profile by default and still show the error dialog.

> The secondary option is more destructive (your profile won’t be able to
> downgrade), but also more direct (data is instantly migrated).
> 
> The option to reopen the older version isn’t provided here, because we
> assume that, when the user wants to open a newer version, it’s usually not
> done by mistake. The goal really is to open the newer 

Do we have evidence to back this up? At least anecdotally I hear from folks who accidentally attempt to use the wrong channel with the wrong profile.

Comment 9

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Attachment: screenshot

Comment 10

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Attachment: Bug 1466568: Warn when starting a profile that last ran with an older build

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/250120/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/250120/

Comment 11

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

> 
> > The secondary option is more destructive (your profile won’t be able to
> > downgrade), but also more direct (data is instantly migrated).
> > 
> > The option to reopen the older version isn’t provided here, because we
> > assume that, when the user wants to open a newer version, it’s usually not
> > done by mistake. The goal really is to open the newer 
> 
> Do we have evidence to back this up? At least anecdotally I hear from folks
> who accidentally attempt to use the wrong channel with the wrong profile.

I'm with you here, especially regarding Beta where we had surveys showing that a lot of Beta users don't even realize they're on Beta given it looks the same.

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #9)
> Created attachment 8984301 [details]
> screenshot

The fact that you can show the channel name in the title bar is great, my guess is it will helps address scenarios where users open Beta when they meant to open Release. I'm although unsure about the string in this case since "You've launched a newer version of Nightly" means to me that I ran before an older version of Nightly and I now run an updated version of Nightly - which can be confusing?
How about something like "You've launched Firefox (channel), a newer version of Firefox."?

Comment 12

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #11)
> (In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #9)
> > Created attachment 8984301 [details]
> > screenshot
> 
> The fact that you can show the channel name in the title bar is great, my
> guess is it will helps address scenarios where users open Beta when they
> meant to open Release. I'm although unsure about the string in this case
> since "You've launched a newer version of Nightly" means to me that I ran
> before an older version of Nightly and I now run an updated version of
> Nightly - which can be confusing?
> How about something like "You've launched Firefox (channel), a newer version
> of Firefox."?

What I'm showing in the title bar right now is the brand name which is Nightly on nightly and Firefox on release and beta. I could include the actual channel name though we generally frown on hardcoding "Firefox" in strings so I'd want to get l10n's sign-off on that.

Comment 13

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #12)
> (In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #11)
> > (In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] from comment #9)
> > > Created attachment 8984301 [details]
> > > screenshot
> > 
> > The fact that you can show the channel name in the title bar is great, my
> > guess is it will helps address scenarios where users open Beta when they
> > meant to open Release. I'm although unsure about the string in this case
> > since "You've launched a newer version of Nightly" means to me that I ran
> > before an older version of Nightly and I now run an updated version of
> > Nightly - which can be confusing?
> > How about something like "You've launched Firefox (channel), a newer version
> > of Firefox."?
> 
> What I'm showing in the title bar right now is the brand name which is
> Nightly on nightly and Firefox on release and beta. I could include the
> actual channel name though we generally frown on hardcoding "Firefox" in
> strings so I'd want to get l10n's sign-off on that.

Thanks for clarifying.
Bram can you please confirm if we should go with my suggestion or keep the current implementation?

Comment 14

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

(In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #11)
> How about something like "You've launched Firefox (channel), a newer version
> of Firefox."?

Sorry for the late reply on this bug. Clarifying the build name is absolutely the right direction to go, but a window title doesn’t have a lot of space and isn’t supposed to contain a long text string.

Consider shortening the title: “You’re about to launch Firefox (channel)”.

How will the user know that this channel is a newer, pre-release version?

We’ll add a sentence in the first paragraph: “Firefox (channel) is a newer, pre-release version of Firefox. To continue accessing your bookmarks and browsing history, you must upgrade your profile.”

Comment 15

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Bram Pitoyo [:bram] from comment #14)
> (In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #11)
> > How about something like "You've launched Firefox (channel), a newer version
> > of Firefox."?
> 
> Sorry for the late reply on this bug. Clarifying the build name is
> absolutely the right direction to go, but a window title doesn’t have a lot
> of space and isn’t supposed to contain a long text string.
> 
> Consider shortening the title: “You’re about to launch Firefox (channel)”.
> 
> How will the user know that this channel is a newer, pre-release version?
> 
> We’ll add a sentence in the first paragraph: “Firefox (channel) is a newer,
> pre-release version of Firefox. To continue accessing your bookmarks and
> browsing history, you must upgrade your profile.”

What if the user is switching from beta to nightly? Both are pre-release versions.

Comment 16

[Bram Pitoyo [:bram]]

Hi Dave, you’re right. I didn’t think of the Beta → Nightly scenario, but it’s not unheard of.

Maybe we should take “pre-release” out of the first paragraph and just say:

“Firefox (channel) is a newer version of Firefox. To continue accessing your bookmarks and browsing history, you must upgrade your profile.”