1784244 - Sync error should not show if stale tab data is available

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Firefox View, task, P1)

Description

[Sarah Clements [:sclements]]

Per a slack discussion, it can be confusing to users if the sync error is shown as part of the sync warm up process that can take a bit longer when the device was previously asleep.

So we should only show this error state if the there isn't existing/stale synced tabs data available to show (when the sync service error notification fires).

Does this sound right Mark? Or do we get rid of the error state entirely?

Comment 1

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

(In reply to Sarah Clements [:sclements] from comment #0)

So we should only show this error state if the there isn't existing/stale synced tabs data available to show (when the sync service error notification fires).

Does this sound right Mark? Or do we get rid of the error state entirely?

I think this is a product decision, so I don't feel I can make a decision here. But my personal opinion is that getting rid of the error state entirely would be OK, mainly because all other synced tabs UI in the browser seems to be fine without it and we haven't had too many complaints.

Another anecdote is that the about:sync addon shows an OS notification when it sees an error state - this is mainly for devs, so they can investigate when these transient errors happen. Even though the user-base of that addon is fairly small, I ended up getting complaints about the popup "randomly" appearing, so added an option to that addon to suppress it. That somewhat reinforced my opinion that "ignorance is bliss" when it comes to transient sync errors :)

All that said though, I do understand why it was added, and do understand users will be confused if they start the browser and firefox view is not showing their tabs, so I'm really on the fence and thankful it's not my decision to make :)

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond] from comment #1)

(In reply to Sarah Clements [:sclements] from comment #0)

So we should only show this error state if the there isn't existing/stale synced tabs data available to show (when the sync service error notification fires).

Does this sound right Mark? Or do we get rid of the error state entirely?

I think this is a product decision <snip>

Yep! Ray? :-)

Comment 3

[Ray Fambro]

(In reply to Sarah Clements [:sclements] from comment #0)

Per a slack discussion, it can be confusing to users if the sync error is shown as part of the sync warm up process that can take a bit longer when the device was previously asleep.

So we should only show this error state if the there isn't existing/stale synced tabs data available to show (when the sync service error notification fires).

Does this sound right Mark? Or do we get rid of the error state entirely?

Sarah, let's go with this proposal. Only show this error state if the there aren't existing/stale synced tabs data available to show (when the sync service error notification fires).

Comment 4

[janet [:janet]]

@Ray -

1. What value did we decide showing the error state will provide to the user?
2. if we are going to show this error state - should we make sure there's some telemetry to understand how frequently users are seeing the dialog. Also 1784085 is marked as see also - but should it be considered a blocker for this bug, are you tracking like that?

Comment 5

[Ray Fambro]

Hey Janet. I feel that the value of showing the error to the user is low if there isn't an actual error. So in this proposal, we'd be going with the stale tabs to mitigate that concern.

Yep. I'm tracking the other bug as well.

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Bug 1784244 - do not surface sync errors in Firefox View if we previously synced successfully, r?sfoster,sclements

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8d79ae1fd98b
do not surface sync errors in Firefox View if we previously synced successfully, r=sfoster

Comment 8

[Andreea Pavel [:apavel]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/8d79ae1fd98b