278661 - Dates listed on "Newest" list are confusing

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 314019

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, defect)

Description

[Dan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When choosing "Newest" from the left menu of Mozilla update's Firefox pages, I
would expect the list to be order by updated/added date with the most recently
updated/added extension appearing first and so on..

The order of the list returned from the server does not reflect that and
although recent extensions seem to appear first in general, there seems to be a
bug in the query or formatting code that returns the extensions and some newer
extensions appear later in the list at regular intervals in some cases..

Do I have the right idea about what the term "Newest" means in this case? - I've
seen this bug around for a while now, ever since the inception of MozUpdate I
believe..

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to Mozilla Update - Firefox extensions page
2. Choose "Newest" extensions

Actual Results:  
List is not order correctly (Some items do not appear in the correct place in
the list)

Expected Results:  
List is ordered correctly (Ascending by updated/added date of extension)

Comment 1

[alanjstr]

Newest is sorted by Date Added, descending.  The UI is a bit confusing since it
shows Last Updated for anything that has been updated and Added for anything
that has not.

We should be showing Date Updated for all lists except for this one.  This one
should only show Date Added.

Comment 2

[Dan]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Newest is sorted by Date Added, descending.  The UI is a bit confusing since it
> shows Last Updated for anything that has been updated and Added for anything
> that has not.
> 
> We should be showing Date Updated for all lists except for this one.  This one
> should only show Date Added.

What I would really like is a view that shows Date Updated, but currently all
other  views, including "All" are displayed alphabetically not by date..

It would be good to be able to view alphabetically and/or perform a keyword
search (when searching for an known named extension) or view by date (if you
wanted to see all recently added/updated ones).. 

I'd imagine those are the most popular ways a user would want the access the
results.. perhaps it would be possible to introduce these as options in a way
that keeps the user interface simple and elegant..

Would it be preferable to amend the Newest results to include ordering
extensions by their updated date as well?..

Comment 3

[Scott]

I've had the same problems.

I find better accuracy with the RSS feed for newest updates (although the number
of updates is smaller).

Comment 4

[Gabriel Seah]

Other bugs suggest that you use the "Most recent" view instead of the "Newest"
view, but there is currently no "Most recent" view. This view should be brought
back.

The "Newest" text should be changed to say "Most recently added", and the
listing of extensions should have a field reading "Added" in addition to the
current "Last Update".

If not, confusion abounds: I just got extensions dated october, june, september,
july, august - all on the same page.

Comment 5

[Christopher Finke]

> Newest is sorted by Date Added, descending.  The 
> UI is a bit confusing since it shows Last Updated 
> for anything that has been updated and Added for 
> anything that has not.

Is the date added used in the ordering the date that the latest version was approved, or is it the date that the latest version was submitted for approval?  For example, I submitted Slashdotter for approval on March 9, and it was approved on March 19.  I would expect that it would be at the top of the Newest extensions list after its approval, but it shows up at #18 (second page), while SEO Tools has been at the top for several days.

Comment 6

[alanjstr]

We store date added.  I agree that we need to be using the approval date

Comment 7

[smolens]

(In reply to comment #6)
> We store date added.  I agree that we need to be using the approval date

I agree too.  I was going to submit a bug against that problem, but found this bug first.  Whenever I submit a new version of my extension for approval, it leaps to the top of the newest extensions list.  I would expect it not to appear on that list until the new version is approved.

Comment 8

[Cameron]

Duping to newer bug that we seem to have been concentrating on more (has severity, TM, dependency/blocks, more CCs.) I don't know why we hadn't duped these before :s

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 314019 ***