1580958 - Add gray subhead under the “Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations” pref

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Amy Tsay [:amyt]]

This pref is in about:preferences and not about:addons, but I'm filing it in this component for ease of tracking.

Users have reported thinking that unchecking the TAAR recommendation pref “Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations” would result in no recommendations shown. However, that is not the case--recommendations are still shown in about:addons, they are just not personalized using TAAR.

We would like to add a gray subhead under the “Allow Firefox to make personalized extension recommendations” pref to say: “You will still see recommendations, but they won’t be based on other extensions you’ve installed.”

Quick one-pager: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dKgWvRKrHTvdA5t4NXVlaciYlNrSTBJcW2joVBk1UAA/edit

Comment 1

[Jeff Pfaller]

My suggestion is:

You'll still see generalized recommendations, but they won't be based on your data.

Comment 2

[Amy Tsay [:amyt]]

Sounds good, thanks!

Comment 4

[wroot]

Maybe "Allow Firefox to personalize extension recommendations" would be a bit more clear main setting title. Because this would imply that recommendations are already happening and this setting is just allows to personalize them. Although it will still confuse many users. And additional small font hints won't help much. Recommendation, personalized or not, is still something that appears on the screen and this checkbox is the only thing that seems related to this in the settings, so many will find it and try to uncheck it without reading this very carefully and will be confused (even if it will show different set of recommended add-ons).

What would have worked the best is to have one "Allow recommendations" checkbox and a sub checkbox "Allow to personalize recommendations". But as you don't want to allow to disable recommendations completely, now you have to come up with clarifications and hints to fix the unnecessary confusion.

Comment 5

[gwarser]

Why are you dodging from real issues by marking older bugs as duplicates?

Add gray subhead under the...

Semantics did not change our feelings that we don't want these recommendations to be here.

Comment 6

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Preferences names doesn't corresponding now to what they control.

Both preferences names are:

• "Recommend extensions as you browse"
• "Recommend features as you browse"

Both preferences names should be:

• "Recommend personalized extensions as you browse"
• "Recommend personalized features as you browse"

Also new preference ( extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled ) for recommending generic extensions and themes in "Extensions" and "Themes" tabs in about:addons/"Add-on Manager" should be added to GUI, not be hidden in any way in about:config/"Advanced Preferences", as it's now, because hiding preferences in about:config/"Advanced Preferences" doesn't seem like good idea, as how user will know about this that some hidden preference control this.
Name of this preference could be:

• "Recommend extensions and themes in Add-on Manager"
• "Show extensions and themes recommendation in Add-on Manager"

But still I'm in favor of completely moving any recommendation, will it be generic or personalized, to its proper section in "Recommendations" tab in about:addons/"Add-on Manager". There should be two sections like generic "Recommendations selected by Mozilla" and "Personalized recommendations only for you". No need to spam user like some bloaty spammy adware, nagware, annoyware website pages - like for example this funny joke one "Personal & Business Car Leasing | LINGsCARS" website page ( https://www.lingscars.com/ ).

Comment 7

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Any update?

Comment 8

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

Attachment: Bug 1580958 - Clarify the recommended extensions preference r?Gijs,mixedpuppy

The recommended extensions preference was causing some confusion on its
purpose. Clarify that it shows generic recommendations instead of personalized ones.

This also tidies up the data collection section's markup.

Comment 9

[Luca Greco [:rpl] [:luca] [:lgreco]]

I just notice this P1 has been stuck for a while, and so this is not a P1 anymore or it should be re-assigned.
(there is a patch attached, which was marked as "needs changes", but I haven't looked into the details related to what it got blocked on).

I'm clearing assignee, priority and severity to get this into our next triage meeting.