1660848 - Add a "check for updates..." option to application menus.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Menus, enhancement)

Description

[Rachel Tublitz [:rachel]]

To make it easier for users to easily update to the latest version of FF, let's add a "Check for updates..." option to the application level menus. When clicked, we'll open a slightly modified version of the "About Firefox" window to take advantage of the existing update UI in there.

To mirror what's most common on various OS's:

• Windows - this should live just below the "About Firefox" option in the application menu (and in the hamburger menu under Help since that content is mirrored there).

• macOS - this should live under the application name in the application menu.

Here is an initial mock from Markus - he will be the go to person here for UX follow up.

Comment 1

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Hey rachel! Is there a planned assignee for this? If so, we can assign them and set this to P1. Otherwise, this can go into the P3 backlog.

Comment 2

[Rachel Tublitz [:rachel]]

Hey Mike; not yet. Blake and I talked about it but it's not at the top of the priority list right now. NI-ing Blake in case he had thoughts on who might take this (after current work) but otherwise....P3 it is.

Comment 3

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

I didn't have any thoughts, but my team has changed a little due to the re-org, so I might have some thoughts later today…

Comment 4

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

To offer some context to help implement this: The Windows/Linux side of this bug is reasonably straightforward - it'd need a menuitem inserted in browser-menubar.inc, see https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/8a0745cd346f0cfb89ae71690babbf7bff706113/browser/base/content/browser-menubar.inc#499-503 . This should be sufficient to add items into the hamburger menu, too, due to the copying code at https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/8a0745cd346f0cfb89ae71690babbf7bff706113/browser/components/customizableui/content/panelUI.js#773-809 .

On macOS, as the comment in browser-menubar.inc already hints at, we jump through some hoops to get things into the application menu, see
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/8a0745cd346f0cfb89ae71690babbf7bff706113/widget/cocoa/nsMenuBarX.mm#617 and https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/8a0745cd346f0cfb89ae71690babbf7bff706113/browser/base/content/browser-menubar.inc#425-432 . We copy the details once (hence the comment to keep the label/accesskey for these items as DTD instead of migrating to fluent), but don't update them.

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/071f4fbb4512d91c3182043a99b54cd08986919d may also be useful - we used to have this menuitem, and now we don't anymore, and that commit covers the macOS menubar integration.

Comment 5

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Hmm. That got me wondering why we removed it in the first place.
Turns out https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1068384#c24 led me to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=599480 which had some ideas and edge cases that we might want to think about and make sure we handle if they still apply…

Comment 6

[Rachel Tublitz [:rachel]]

(In reply to Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️) from comment #5)

Turns out https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1068384#c24 led me to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=599480 which had some ideas and edge cases that we might want to think about and make sure we handle if they still apply…

Sounds like the core issue in 599480 would again be a problem here if we don't intentionally address it. The suggestion to focus the about window makes sense to me here, as long as we also make sure to trigger whatever CSS flag/etc would adjust the about dialog UI. Feels simpler than building a dedicated dialog(which doesn't seem worth the effort). Markus, what do you think?

Comment 7

[Markus Jaritz [:designakt] (UX)]

I agree, we should focus the about window if open and re-trigger the update check so people see we are doing what they ask for.

Comment 8

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Maybe we can fix bug 1670559 while we're making these modifications…

Comment 9

[Bernard Igiri]

Attachment: Bug 1660848 - Add a check for updates option to application menus r=flod,jaws,gijs,mkaply

Adding a check for updates option to the application menu, changing the about dialog styling during updates, and adding a minimum delay to the checking for updates message.
Bernards-MacBook-Pro:mozilla-unified bernardigiri$ cat ~/Documents/commit.txt
Bug 1660848 - Add a check for updates option to application menus (WIP) r=bwinton

Adding a check for updates option to the application menu, changing the about dialog styling during updates, and adding a minimum delay to the checking for updates message.

Comment 10

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Can we have code to hide this menuitem if app update is disabled via policy?

Comment 11

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Seems like a reasonable thing to do. Did you want to leave that as a drive-by review question on the patch?

Comment 12

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8dc3f02e20ca
Add a check for updates option to application menus r=fluent-reviewers,jaws,harry,Gijs,flod,mkaply

Comment 13

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

Backed out changeset 8dc3f02e20ca (bug 1660848) for multiple mochitest failures.

Push with failures: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=autoland&group_state=expanded&fromchange=8b0372660ca7904ea7e9e160614fccf350b9992a&searchStr=mochitest&tochange=7ec796d35d3a8c09f1e332592e136abfd2a11624&selectedTaskRun=PraQg2S-TS6qbnBx4gmOQQ.0

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/7ec796d35d3a8c09f1e332592e136abfd2a11624

Failures logs:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=326411241&repo=autoland&lineNumber=2015
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=326413111&repo=autoland&lineNumber=1942
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=326411291&repo=autoland&lineNumber=2116
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=326411293&repo=autoland&lineNumber=2774
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=326411234&repo=autoland&lineNumber=3183
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer?job_id=326411205&repo=autoland&lineNumber=2497

Comment 14

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b1628ddad291
Add a check for updates option to application menus r=fluent-reviewers,jaws,harry,Gijs,flod,mkaply

Comment 15

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b1628ddad291

Comment 16

[Mehmet]

On macOS the current location of this new item "Check For Updates..." in the Menu Bar is not optimal and makes not much sense there. It is a duplicate of the "About Nightly/Firefox" item which is directly one item above the new "Check For Updates..." item that open the exact same Info-Window. The new item "Check For Updates..." should be better located under the Help section in the Menu Bar. Please see bug 1688406. Thanks.

Comment 17

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Hi Mehmet, thanks for your comment. We thought about this, but after the "About Firefox" was the standard location for a "Check for Updates" item in all the apps we looked at. None of them had it in the Help section. And it looks like Gijs has replied to you in the other bug with the rest of the reasons we've put it here, so I won't repeat what he said. 🙂

Comment 18

[Mehmet]

Alright, thanks for your feedback.