316488 - Non-modal software update notification (e.g. information bar)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 334767

(Toolkit :: Application Update, enhancement)

Description

[Jesse Ruderman]

My brother and I think software update notification should be an information bar instead of a dialog.  The message can be short, e.g. "Firefox will update to version 1.5.0.1 when it is restarted", with one or more buttons for getting information about the update, etc.


Advantages:

* Won't get in your way if you're playing a game (in Firefox or not).

* Don't have to worry about users not noticing the dialog because they pressed Esc or Enter just when it appeared (see bug 311288).

* Persistent, so if you click "Later" and don't restart quickly, there will be something reminding you to restart.

* Less clicking in the case where you click "Later" (on Windows and Linux, where closing the last Firefox window restarts Firefox).

* Less potential for accidental dataloss from clicking "Restart", if you thought you only had one window open but actually had multiple windows open.


Disadvantages:

* Some users won't notice an information bar but would notice a dialog.  But that isn't catastrophic, because Firefox will still apply the update the next time the user happens to restart or crash.

* There are some cases where a dialog might be desirable, such as when a user has asked to be asked about update or a user has an extension that is incompatible with the new version.  Using non-modal update notification in the common case and a dialog in these cases would introduce inconsistency.

* Not everyone knows what to do when asked to restart Firefox.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

CCing Beltzner to see what he thinks.

Comment 2

[Darin Fisher]

CC'ing beng for his thoughts.

Comment 3

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

So, by default we don't ask, don't show a modal dialog, and just update the user's software for them. No fuss, no muss. However, some form of indication that this is happening would be a warm fuzzy. The draft plan for Firefox 2 http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:2.0_Product_Planning:Draft_Plan includes a feature listing for "Browser status indication system & UI". This is the sort of thing that would need to be considered/included in that feature.

In the case where the user has asked to be, er, asked, then I think a modal dialog is still the way to go, as it requires some pretty explicit user input. And remember that we do want them to make that choice ASAP, as the updates will (presumably) be important for security/stability reasons.

Comment 4

[Jesse Ruderman]

Dup of bug 334767?

Comment 5

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Yeah, I think this is better duped against 334767 since the solution we're considering isn't using a non-modal notification, but rather just eliminating the notification outright.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 334767 ***