253555 - remove profile manager docs

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox Graveyard :: Help Documentation, defect)

Description

[John C Klensin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

Under Windows 2000 SP4, and I suspect other versions, the instructions for
getting to the profile manager -- "go to Run, browse to installation directory,
type 'firefox.exe -P'" will not work.   That sequence produces a error message
to the effect that "firefox.exe -P.exe does not exist".   Instead, one needs to
open a command window (either by use of a handy icon from the "start" menu or by
typing "command" in the Run window and then clicking "ok"), using "cd" to
navigate to \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" or equivalent, and they typing
"firefox.exe -P" there.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select Help, then "Index", then "Profiles"
2. Scroll down to "Open the profile manager/ Windows" under "Creating a New
Profile" and "Deleting or Renaming a Profile" -- the problem text appears in
both places.
3.

Actual Results:  
Erroneous text appears.

Expected Results:  
While the "open a command window" plan is even more complicated than the
Run/Browse one, it is the only one guaranteed to work for all NT-based versions
of Windows (NT 4, 2000, XP).  In the Win 95/98/98SE/me thread, my vague memory
is that the Run path will work and the command window (really "MSDOS prompt")
option will not -- I've still got Win98SE machines around, so let me know if you
need me to verify this for you.  IMO, it might be useful to tell those of us who
are used to such things how to just edit the profile.ini file -- it wasn't hard
to find and figure out.

Comment 1

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

D'oh!  I'm pretty sure you're right that at least in some instances the
instructions as given won't work.  Interestingly, they do for me, probably
because I've got the path in the autocomplete data for Run.

What should work for everyone (I think) would be to find the location of the
Firefox executable, enter the path to it in the Run box, surround it in quotes,
and then add " -P" at the end, like so for the typical user:

"c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P

Explaining that to the user in a simple way sounds tricky.  If during
installation a Start Menu entry is made for Firefox, is an entry for Profile
Manager created there?  If it is, that's what we should probably reference
(assuming the icon placement options aren't part of a non-typical Custom setup
only - I only use Custom, so I'm not sure).

Comment 2

[John C Klensin]

Yes.  I just tried the 
   "c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P
plan and it works fine.  I did try a few other things involving quotes this
morning, and they didn't -- probably too little coffee.   But I agree that
explaining this to the user, especially given that other locations are possible
(and certain if the user is upgrading and installing into separate trees). 
There is no profile manager entry on the start menu, only "Mozilla Firefox" and
"Mozilla  Firefox (safe mode)".

FWIW, I think there are only two good fixes for this.   One is to _require_ a
start menu entry (unlike "clutter up my desktop", there is little reason not to)
and put a Profile Manager entry there, as you implicitly suggest, and then
reference it.  The other is to create an option (presumably either in
tools/options or as a check item under tools) for "start with profile manager".
 The latter, in the worst case, would require that the user start Firefox, check
the option, exit, and then restart -- not the worst thing in the world.  And its
advantage would be that you could hugely clean up the help file since that
option approach would be OS independent.

best, 
   john

Comment 3

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

R.J., Ben's against the profile manager (and might even remove the UI, if I read
him correctly) because the systems we support already have per-user settings
management.  See this post in mozillaZine explaining his reasons:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=554389#554389

Given this, how about removing the instructions on using the profile manager? 
If the UI for the profile manager stays in Firefox, it can be left as an
advanced tip on, say, <http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html>.  Given
Firefox's focus, it really doesn't belong in built-in Help.  I can create a
patch for this pretty quickly, because it's just deletions.

What do you think?

Comment 4

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

After more consideration, I don't think this is sufficiently wrong to require
fixing right now.  It's not quite right, but anyone who really tries this is
probably advanced enough that he can fix the problem himself.  As such, moving
to After Firefox 1.0...

Comment 5

[John C Klensin]

Hmm.  How and when you handle this is clearly up to you, and I'm inclined to
agree that it isn't a huge deal (as my original report indicated).  But I ought
to mention that I ended up in profile manager space by accidentally installing
0.9.2 over 0.9.1, rather than completely un-installing 0.9.1. first.   The
result was that I couldn't get to my original profile but, instead, got profile
manager messages, etc., which I then had to untangle. 

So, from my point of view as a sometime UI designer, you sort of have your
choice of problems here.  One choice is that, if someone is doing tricky things
are makes the install/upgrade mistake, you provide decent tools and/or decent
documentation for untangling (which is the thread we have been going down).  The
other is to put code into the installer that will check for an existing version
and then do something appropriately threatening (a dialog box suggesting that it
not be done and offering an "exit" option would be more than adequate) if one is
found and the new install is going over it.

Whether either is important enough for pre-1.0 is again, up to you, but I
personally can't see recommending Firefox to ordinary/naive users when doing a
version upgrade without careful reading of the documentation can trap them into
a place from which they can't untangle and for which the relevant documentation
is inaccurate.

     john

Comment 6

[R.J. Keller]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Hmm.  How and when you handle this is clearly up to you, and I'm inclined to
> agree that it isn't a huge deal (as my original report indicated).  But I ought
> to mention that I ended up in profile manager space by accidentally installing
> 0.9.2 over 0.9.1, rather than completely un-installing 0.9.1. first.   The
> result was that I couldn't get to my original profile but, instead, got profile
> manager messages, etc., which I then had to untangle. 
> 
> So, from my point of view as a sometime UI designer, you sort of have your
> choice of problems here.  One choice is that, if someone is doing tricky things
> are makes the install/upgrade mistake, you provide decent tools and/or decent
> documentation for untangling (which is the thread we have been going down).  The
> other is to put code into the installer that will check for an existing version
> and then do something appropriately threatening (a dialog box suggesting that it
> not be done and offering an "exit" option would be more than adequate) if one is
> found and the new install is going over it.
> 


The Help View documentation is not technical support documentation.


> Whether either is important enough for pre-1.0 is again, up to you, but I
> personally can't see recommending Firefox to ordinary/naive users when doing a
> version upgrade without careful reading of the documentation can trap them into
> a place from which they can't untangle and for which the relevant documentation
> is inaccurate.


It clearly says in the mozilla.org documentation that you should not install a
newer version of Firefox over a previous version. If you have problems with
Firefox you should go to MozillaZine forums, not the Help Viewer.

Comment 7

[R.J. Keller]

(In reply to comment #3)
> R.J., Ben's against the profile manager (and might even remove the UI, if I read
> him correctly) because the systems we support already have per-user settings
> management.  See this post in mozillaZine explaining his reasons:
> 
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=554389#554389
> 
> Given this, how about removing the instructions on using the profile manager? 
> If the UI for the profile manager stays in Firefox, it can be left as an
> advanced tip on, say, <http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html>.  Given
> Firefox's focus, it really doesn't belong in built-in Help.  I can create a
> patch for this pretty quickly, because it's just deletions.
> 
> What do you think?

Yeah, lets kill it. On bug 214675 (Remove Profile Manager UI), it's marked
blocking 1.0b. I'll make a patch in a bit (good thing that anonymous access is
still on pserver :)).

Comment 8

[R.J. Keller]

Attachment: Removes references to profiles.xhtml

This patch should also include removal of prefs.xhtml

Comment 9

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

Comment on attachment 156128 [details] [diff] [review]
Removes references to profiles.xhtml

Don't you also want to remove the reference to the profile manager in
forieusers.xhtml?  (That's the only other case-insensitive reference to
'profile' within browser/components/help, by the way.)

Comment 10

[R.J. Keller]

Attachment: removes forieusers.xhtml profile reference

Good catch Jeff!

Comment 11

[Steffen Wilberg]

Comment on attachment 156128 [details] [diff] [review]
Removes references to profiles.xhtml

r=me. It was pretty well hidden anyway, since you had to expand the extensions
section in Contents.

Comment 12

[Steffen Wilberg]

Comment on attachment 156162 [details] [diff] [review]
removes forieusers.xhtml profile reference

r=me.

Comment 13

[Steffen Wilberg]

Checked into aviary branch 08/15/2004 13:35. I also removed profiles.xhtml.