270880 - cookies.xhtml uses 'surfing' once, where all other documentation uses "browsing".

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Help Documentation, defect)

Description

[Martijn Ras]

Comment 1

[Martijn Ras]

Attachment: Replaces surfing with browsing.

Comment 2

[Daniel Wang]

'surfing' and 'browsing' aren't technical jargons. Does the mixup cause confusion?

Comment 3

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

(Nitpick first: the attachment's not really a patch.  If you're going to post a
patch, doing 'cvs diff -u8 <file> > /file/for/output/patch' is the way to get
something more useful for posting.)

"Surfing" and "browsing" are both fine as technical words.  I'm surprised the
usage is so lopsided, but I haven't looked at super-nitty-gritty details like
this in much detail.

Personally, I think our current usage is mostly fine if we aren't looking at the
really little nits like this.  However, there's always room to make improvement
when we see it (or at least file a bug for it so that we remember to look at it
eventually).  In contrast with the reporter, tho, I'm all for making the usage
more homogeneous.  We should try to use "surfing" a little bit more and
"browsing" a little bit less so that either seems natural.

Of the two terms used, "browsing" is the more technical term.  "Surfing", on the
other hand, is a much more informal term.  Use of "browsing" lends Help
authority, while use of "surfing" lends us familiarity.  I'd give a link to the
writing style guide for Help on m.o, but it's currently unresponsive for
whatever reason.

This is something that feels like much more of a gut decision than a reasoned
one, however.  Steffen, what do you think of this?

Comment 4

[Martijn Ras]

Attachment: Proper patch this time ...

Sorry, must have picked the file itself instead of the patch ...

It just stood out while i was translating these pages, otherwise i wouldn't
probably have noted.

I checked all helppages, surfing is only used three times alltogether.

In my opinion helppages should be authoritive rather than informal and for
clarity be consistently using one term rather than mixing two that in the end
mean the more or less the same, i also think it's why browsing is used
everywhere else.

Comment 5

[Steffen Wilberg]

On the one hand, I'd tend to use "browsing", because Help docs should be
authoritative rather than familiar
(http://www.mozilla.org/projects/help-viewer/documentation_language-style.php#voice).

On the other hand, I'm not a native speaker and this is rather subtle. In
German, the term "browsing" is unknown, we always use "surfen". The German Help
uses "sonstige Surfaktivitäten" (other surfing activities) instead of
"activities in general while surfing the Web". I like that.

Do you know this one?
http://www.axel-hecht.de/blog/archives/breakingnews.jpg

Comment 6

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

Ugh, I hate webmail, but it's all I've got because my computer's partially
horked.  Sorry it's taken me so long to get back on this.

The style docs do say formal, but they also say conversational and friendly. 
"Surfing" is more conversational, and "formal" more applies to the structure
than the terms themselves.

Anyways, this is low-priority, so reassigning to nobody unless someone else
wants this (I'm cleaning up my assigned bugs list)...

Comment 7

[Jeff Walden (gone starting June 8)]

This doesn't need to be fixed.  Both "surfing" and "browsing" are acceptable
terms with wide usage, and the informal/format argument doesn't matter because
no matter which type it is it's useful for conveying the style of help docs.