1789501 - Many existing users w/o session restore MAY be left with extra home/newtab/blank tab after onboarding experience

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Messaging System, defect, P3)

Description

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Ed did some testing on this today and it looks fairly likely that there won’t be a problem here (see the Slack thread for the gory details of that). To really be sure, we’ll need some higher fidelity testing. Here’s an approximate list of steps, including commentary on stuff that needs fleshing out:

• Install a Fx 105 nightly build (each time you do this test requires a new install, as the previous one will have upgraded your 105 to 106)

  • https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/2022/08/2022-08-18-06-57-02-mozilla-central/

• Create a new profile

• Quit & Start up again

  • this better simulates normal usage by clearing out some “new profile stuff”

• Verify that there is a single open tab

• Decline the offer to open previous tabs

• Open a web page (eg wikipedia.org) in the existing tab

Simulate the conditions described in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1774071#c3

• In about:config,
• set browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone to 105
• XXX How to simulate WhatsNew page being gone
• create browser.startup.upgradeDialog.version as a Number preference
  • set it to 105

Figure out how to trigger an update download such that the “Restart needed” prompt in the upper right corner of the screen drops down. This is to try and best simulate the real typical user experience in terms of what gets automatically restored after a restart.

• Cc["@mozilla.org/updates/update-service;1"].getService(Ci.nsIApplicationUpdateService).checkForBackgroundUpdates() did not do the trick for me, though I was hopeful.
• Possible fallbacks, possibly less good simulations of user experience, but...
  • Wait for the green in the Hamburger menu that signifies that an update is available
    • click the Hamburger menu
    • click upgrade and restart
  • Go to Firefox -> About Firefox (on Mac; I think this can be reached from the Hamburger > Help menu on Windows)
    • allow it to download the 106 nightly update
  • Click the “restart" button.

Finally:

• The first tab may be about:home, and if so, it’s the bug I’m talking about
• If we’ve found the right prefs to tweak as described above, verify that there is NOT a “What’s new with Firefox” tab present
• Verify that there is another about:home tab to the right of that with upgrade modal dialog
  ** If for some reason this doesn't work, we can mostly simulate with by entering Cc["@mozilla.org/browser/browserglue;1"].getService().wrappedJSObject._showUpgradeDialog() from the Browser Toolbox,
• an additional 'about:home' page should appear, with the upgrade onboarding modal on top of it
• go through the modal screens, and on the last one, click "Start browsing"
• browsing should start in the tab that the modal was in, leaving a single, unused about:home tab to the left. If this is true, it’s definite confirmation of the potential bug here.

Comment 1

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

CCing Simona, as this may be relevant to QA work on the switching to tab-modal onboarding for existing users.

Comment 2

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

@srosu, can you test whether restarting by clicking on the update dialog causes the browser to re-open to about:home (ie are the above-steps to reproduce correct), or does it open to the what's new page?

Comment 3

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I've updated the steps-to-reproduce in comment 0, with a fair bit of detail and a few fuzzy areas. There may still be errors. I’m hoping that QA already has some analogous test cases from testing the upgrade service that can be used to flesh out the stuff above that’s incomplete. If you could have a look, and if you do have steps to flesh out the details please do, and if not, please run through those steps and report back what you find. Thanks!

Comment 4

[Marius Coman [:mcoman], Ecosystem QA - PTO until 8th of November, for any requests ping :cmuresan]

Hi, Dan! I have tested this scenario and I can confirm that an extra tab containing the Onboarding modal for existing users is opened even if only a new tab is present in the Tab Strip.
Also, we have created a Test Case to cover this scenario.

Tested using the latest Firefox Nightly (20220911214030) installed on Windows 10 x64, macOS 11.6.5, and Linux Mint 20.2 x64.

Comment 5

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

@Marius, thanks!

Ania, we've set this to P3, since having this fairly harmless bug that any given user sees at most once for any given upgrade doesn't seem like a super big deal. If you disagree (particularly if you think we want this for 106), please let us know...

Comment 6

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Fixing this is probably a matter of changing _showUpgradeDialog to check and see if there is exactly one tab that is the default for that user, possibly using isBlankPageURL and then using the existing tab as the dialog home, rather than waiting for a new one and opening there.

Comment 7

[Ania]

Marius, Dan, thank you.
I think it is acceptable for 106, as it's fairly harmless and has two preconditions: no session restore (which is the case for majority of users), and having only a new tab open.

It might be a cosmetic annoyance to these users, so I'm going to note it in our feedback monitoring doc with SUMO just in case, to see if it's worth fixing it sooner rather than later.

Comment 8

[Punam Dahiya [:pdahiya]]

Safe to close as won'tfix , the experience doesn't deteriorate because of this edge case