1852329 - [meta] Firefox Addon suggestions enabled by default - QA bug tracking

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, task, P1)

Description

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Given that there's no meta for actually enabling Addon Suggestions by default (US region), took the liberty to create this ticket.

Comment 1

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Fixes for bug 1851940, bug 1851941, bug 1851942 have been landed and tested in Nightly 119, effectively turning the feature on for US region . Additional to the verification testing a wide smoke test has been run with 119.0a1 (2023-09-07) on Windows 10, Ubuntu 22, Mac 12.6 to ensure the feature behaves as expected:

• all keywords in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1851940#c4, with pref flipped true, no-star treatment works as intended;
• no addon suggestions if the browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.enabled is false;
• addon suggestions are not displayed if browser.search.region is something other than US;
• addon links in Address Bar result page - url string features both utm_medium: "firefox-desktop", utm_source: "firefox-suggest";
• all addon displayed in about:addons - urlbar string features both utm_medium: "firefox-desktop", utm_source: "firefox-suggest";
• addons dismissed by the ‘Not relevant’ command are not shown anymore, but the ones that were not are shown, as intended;
• dismissed addon suggestions can be restored from either about:preferences#privacy or resetting browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.blockedDigests;
• ‘Not interested’ command switches browser.urlbar.suggest.addons disabling the addon suggestion feature;
• functionality of 'Show Less frequently' enables and increments browser.urlbar.addons.showLessFrequentlyCount as well as requires more input chars to trigger;
• general address bar smoke/regression testing - bug 1852300 has been filled

Follow-up will be done with 118beta once bug 1851940, bug 1851941, bug 1851942 are uplifted.

Comment 2

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Thank you Adrian!

In summary, these prefs must be true to enable addon suggestions in 118+. All of them default to true for the Firefox Suggest user population (U.S. users):

browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.enabled
browser.urlbar.addons.featureGate
browser.urlbar.suggest.addons
browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.nonsponsored

In detail, here are the prefs that are relevant to addon suggestions as of now. I've included notes on differences from the experiment from before.

• browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.enabled
  • Same as before
  • Must be true to enable addon suggestions
  • Controls the whole Firefox Suggest feature including addon suggestions (and many others)
  • Defaults to true in the U.S., false otherwise
• browser.urlbar.addons.featureGate
  • This has the same meaning as before but it now defaults to true (bug 1851940)
  • Must be true to enable addon suggestions
  • As before, it only matters if browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.enabled is true, i.e. if the entire Firefox Suggest feature is enabled. Otherwise it's ignored and addon suggestions are not shown.
• browser.urlbar.suggest.addons
  • Same as before
  • Must be true to enable addon suggestions
  • Defaults to true
  • This will be set to false when the user picks the "Not interested" command, which will disable all addon suggestions
  • After you choose "Not interested", you can clear this pref to show addon suggestions again
• browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.nonsponsored
  • Same as before
  • Must be true to enable addon suggestions (addon suggestions are considered a type of nonsponsored suggestion)
  • Defaults to true in the U.S., false otherwise
• browser.urlbar.bestMatch.enabled
  • Different from before: Previously this pref had to be true to show addon suggestions using the top pick (a.k.a. best match) UI treatment, but now addon suggestions will be shown using the top pick treatment regardless of the value of this pref (bug 1851940)
  • As before, still defaults to false
• browser.urlbar.addons.minKeywordLength
  • Different from before: This pref was replaced with browser.urlbar.addons.showLessFrequentlyCount (bug 1836582)
• browser.urlbar.addons.showLessFrequentlyCount
  • Different from before: As just mentioned, this pref replaced browser.urlbar.addons.minKeywordLength
  • It's incremented each time the user picks "Show less frequently" in the result menu
  • Each time it's incremented, the user should have to type one more character to trigger any addon suggestion
  • The user is supposed to be able to increment this only 3 times, but as I wrote these notes I realized that's not working on Nightly/Beta. I'll file a bug. [Edit: bug 1852353]
• browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.blockedDigests
  • Different from before: This pref is now used by the "Not relevant" command in the result menu (bug 1851942)
  • Keeps track of suggestions that are dismissed using the "Not relevant" command in the result menu
  • If you dismiss a suggestion with "Not relevant", you can clear this pref to show the suggestion again
• addonsUITreatment
  • This is a Nimbus variable that was used for the experiment
  • It is not used now
  • Instead, the implementation defaults to treatment to "b" (no stars)
  • There is no fallback pref for this variable
• browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.dataCollection.enabled, browser.urlbar.merino.enabled, browser.urlbar.merino.providers
  • Same as before
  • Not related to addon suggestions
  • As long as addon suggestions are enabled, they should be shown regardless of these prefs

Comment 3

[Cristian Baica [:cbaica], Release Desktop QA]

Following up comment#1, QA has followed through with smoke testing spread along Beta 118.0b8, 118.0b9(treeherder) and 118.0b9 on Windows 10, Ubuntu 22, Mac 13 to ensure the feature and its integration with address bar behaves as expected:

• all keywords in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1851940#c4, with pref flipped true, no-star treatment works as intended;
• no addon suggestions if the browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.enabled is false;
• addon suggestions are not displayed if browser.search.region is something other than US, preferences are true for US region, false otherwise;
• addon links in Address Bar result page - url string features both utm_medium: "firefox-desktop", utm_source: "firefox-suggest";
• all addons displayed in about:addons - urlbar string features both utm_medium: "firefox-desktop", utm_source: "firefox-suggest";
• addons dismissed by the ‘Not relevant’ command are not shown anymore, but the ones that were not are shown, as intended;
• ‘Not interested’ command switches browser.urlbar.suggest.addons disabling the addon suggestion feature;
• dismissed addon suggestions can be restored from either about:preferences#privacy or resetting browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.blockedDigests;
• 'Show Less frequently' dissapears after 3 increements(bug 1852354), requires more input chars to trigger;
• general address bar smoke/regression testing
• telemetry verification

Comment 4

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Thank you Cristian and Adrian!

Comment 5

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Since testing is done and the feature has shipped, I think we can close this? Apologies and please re-open if you disagree. There are a few follow-up bugs I attached to this one just because there's no other addons meta bug. They're all on autoland now, and we can track any future follow-ups without keeping this bug open.

Thanks again for this quick work on this!