1548943 - about:config page title has "Configurations" which feels grammatically awkward

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1533031

(Firefox :: General, defect, P5)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Right now, about:config has the following title (shown in the tab):

Advanced Configurations

The trailing "s" feels grammatically awkward. The word "configuration" (no "s") is already a collective noun, and can refer to the totality of all the various options.

The plural form "Configurations" really feels like it refers to multiple different possible configurations that you could apply (but at any given time, you only have a single configuration which is what about:config is exposing to you).

Could we fix this to drop the trailing "s", so that the title is just

Advanced Configuration

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Oh -- digging through history, it seems this was discussed in e.g. bug 1533031 comment 9 and bug 1533031 comment 11:
(Quoting Markus Jaritz [:designakt] (UX) from bug 1533031 comment #11)

(In reply to :Paolo Amadini from bug 1533031 comment #9)

PAGE TITLE: Advanced Configurations

Is this intentionally plural? It sounds strange because "configuration" (as the word says) is a specific arrangement of settings, and we're not selecting between different configurations here, we can just change individual settings (which are called "preferences" internally). In other words, by modifying settings you can change the configuration of Firefox.

I checked with Michelle on this and she confirmed we should go with the plural: "Advanced Configurations"
To quote her: "I think it will help localizers to be clear we mean the plural vs a single or collective noun."

So per this bug-comment, it looks like "Configurations" was chosen as a hint to localizers that they should be using a collective plural form (e.g. they should be translating it like "Advanced options" rather than "Advanced option")

Can we achieve the hint-to-localizers some other way (e.g. with a code-comment)? The plural form of the word "Configurations" feels really awkward/mistranslated in this context. It does not mean the thing we're using it to mean.

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

ni=designakt for question in comment 1. (This may really be a question for Michelle who he mentioned, but I don't know Michelle's bugmail).

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot of the window with this title

Here's the title in context in an actual Firefox window.

Just as a thought experiment about the title -- if you mentally substitute "advanced configurations" (the current page title) into the disclaimer on this page (i.e. if you pretend we had s/advanced settings/advanced configurations/ in the disclaimer), it illustrates how weird this title feels:

"Changing these advanced configurations can be harmful..."

In contrast, the descriptor "Advanced configuration" makes sense (with s/these/this/):

"Changing this advanced configuration can be harmful..."

(I'm not actually suggesting we change the disclaimer text -- I'm only mentioning this to point out a different angle from which "Configurations" seems like an awkward/broken descriptor for this page.)

Comment 4

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

I feel like adding a comment above the string's definition saying localizers should treat it as the collective plural form (while also dropping the 's' from the English locale's version) would read easier in English while still allowing better localization.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Ideally it'd be great to have a resolution here soon, before Nightly ships to beta, because string changes become more troublesome after that point, as I recall.

Comment 6

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #5)

Ideally it'd be great to have a resolution here soon, before Nightly ships to beta, because string changes become more troublesome after that point, as I recall.

The new HTML-based about:config is not enabled on Beta or Release. See https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/e7d9a8749303b39dadcc0e18ea0d60a570a68145/browser/components/about/components.conf#31-32 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1529088 for more details.

Comment 7

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

The text on the page, referred to as the disclaimer text, is the incorrect text. Please use this and refer to Bug 1533031 for reference.

PAGE TITLE: Advanced Configurations

WARNING MESSAGE

Proceed with Caution

Changing advanced configuration settings can impact Firefox performance or security.

[checkbox]

Warn me when I attempt to access these settings

[blue button]

Accept the Risk and Continue

AFTER ACCEPTING THE WARNING

Changing these settings can impact Firefox performance or security.

Comment 8

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

PAGE TITLE: Advanced Configurations

Is there a reason we're sticking with having the word "Configurations" be plural here? That's the part that feels broken to me (and to several others), which prompted this bug report.

If I understand correctly, it's trying to be a shorter version of the idea of "Advanced Configuration Settings". And unfortunately, the plural version "Configurations" means something semantically different, and feels broken & like an inaccurate title/label for this page.

Comment 9

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

To paraphrase the concerns from here & Bug 1533031 comment 9 (RE why this string sounds wrong), here's what these words mean to me & :paolo:

• "Settings" (plural) are the various knobs you can twiddle.

• "Configuration" (singular) is the current state of these collective knobs. (or, as a verb, the process of twiddling these knobs)

• "Configurations" (plural) refers to a collection of possible states that you could hypothetically get into by twiddling these knobs.

There are an infinite number of possible "configurations", and at any given time, your Firefox has one particular configuration (singular), and you use about:config to view & adjust the configuration (i.e. to perform "configuration tasks"), via changing the various settings.

So, "Configurations" feels like it refers to something much more expansive/"meta" and feels like an inaccurate label here, whereas "Configuration" seems like the appropriate label.

Comment 10

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

I see. Would Advanced Settings or Advanced Preferences work better?

Comment 11

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Sure! Those both sound fine to me.

Comment 12

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

Great, I'm good with either of those. Thanks for caring about language! Could you also see that the rest of the copy gets updated as well? Because there definitely are no dragons in Firefox.

Comment 13

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

(In reply to Betsy Mikel [:betsymi] from comment #12)

Great, I'm good with either of those. Thanks for caring about language! Could you also see that the rest of the copy gets updated as well? Because there definitely are no dragons in Firefox.

For historical context, this page's text has always been a bit whimsy. It used to say that entering it would void your warranty, though we have no warranty. It's a hidden page that pretty much only expert users find and use. So that's why it mentions dragons now. I don't think it would hurt to keep some whimsy in the text of this page.

Comment 14

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Thinking a bit more about the two suggestions from comment 10 a bit further ("Advanced [Settings || Preferences]"), I think there may be a clear winner...

We internally refer to these about:config values as "Prefs" or "Preferences" (e.g. the internal API to read/write them is in a file called libpref/Preferences.h ). So, all other things being equal, that makes me think "Advanced Preferences" would be the right title to use here, for consistency with how we talk about these values internally.

Comment 15

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Also, RE "Here be dragons" & whimsy: there actually is indeed a dragon on this page -- this dino-with-pretend-dragon-wings appears after you click through the disclaimer (and he exists because of that "dragons" text, I assume):
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/raw-file/tip/browser/components/aboutconfig/content/background.svg

Comment 16

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

On that consistency note, we should refer to these the same across the entire message. So I've made updates to reflect that.

PAGE TITLE: Advanced Preferences

WARNING MESSAGE

Proceed with Caution

Changing advanced configuration preferences can impact Firefox performance or security.

[checkbox]

Warn me when I attempt to access these preferences

[blue button]

Accept the Risk and Continue

AFTER ACCEPTING THE WARNING

Changing these preferences can impact Firefox performance or security.

Comment 17

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

Attachment: about_config_risk.PNG

Comment 18

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

Attachment: about_config_blank.PNG

Comment 19

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

Attachment: firefox_about-config.eps

Comment 20

[Betsy Mikel [:betsymi]]

Attached a few files to show how this should look. Also providing updated imagery in place of the dragon.

Comment 21

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The priority flag is not set for this bug.
:Dolske, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 23

[Meridel [:meridel]]

Romain, I recommend a won't fix here, unless we have received significant feedback that the page title or copy is causing confusion and PM thus feels it is a priority.

The new name for this bug is a bit confusing as the page title is "about:config" (not 'configurations'). Since the page title is about:config, it makes sense that we use that language in the message itself. The audience for this page is pro-level power users so using the more technical term is okay.

Comment 24

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

No need to wontfix, since this was already closed as a duplicate (and fixed via the dupe-target).

The about:config title is now "Advanced Preferences", via bug 1533031's patch.

Comment 25

[Meridel [:meridel]]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2022-01-11 at 1.11.15 PM.png

Ah got it, thanks Daniel. When you say 'page title,' are you referring to the label within the Firefox chiclet here? All our other about pages use 'Firefox' so changing that to 'Advanced Preferences' could cause some issues.

Comment 26

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: image.png

I'm talking about the actual HTML <title> tag, which shows up in the tab-strip (see attached screenshot) and which now says "Advanced Preferences" (whereas we had originally changed it to say "Advanced Configurations" as shown in the screenshot in comment 3).

Note also that nothing is changing here or has changed recently; this was resolved (via bug 1533031) in September of 2019. So, no need to worry about any upcoming or recently-shipped changes here at this point. :)

Comment 27

[Meridel [:meridel]]

Aha, I see! Thank you. I thought I was misunderstanding something and so I was! Okay, all set. =)