326691 - Advertise all possible import options for all possible platforms

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, enhancement)

Description

[Pam Greene]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20060128 Firefox/1.5

Import dialog does not present Internet Explorer as an option.  I don't have IE installed, and never have.  Even with no IE data to import, however, it should appear as a greyed-out option so I know that it could do it if I wanted.  I might have another machine with IE on it, or want to be able to convert a friend who uses IE.

I'm assuming that it *can* import from IE.  If not, that's a bigger problem.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Find machine without IE, or delete all IE user data
2. Launch Firefox and select File:Import...

Actual Results:  
Only Safari is shown as an import choice.

Expected Results:  
Any available importers should be shown.  If no data for them was found, they should be greyed-out (disabled).

This is the 20060128 Places build.

Microsoft ceased distribution of IE for Mac on 31 Dec 2005.

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Giving a user info to evangelize the product before they've even used it seems like a bad plan, overall.  On Windows we'd show the following, when most users will only have IE.

Internet Explorer
Netscape 6/7 and Mozilla
Netscape 4.x
Opera
Do Nothing

Giving users options that simply aren't useful to them is a bad design theory.  Feel free to disagree, but please make a stronger case than "I might want to tell someone else that there's a feature that might be useful to me somewhere else."

Comment 2

[Pam Greene]

> Giving a user info to evangelize the product before they've even used it seems
> like a bad plan, overall.

True, but even after I've used it for 6 months, I'll still assume that it can't import from anything but Safari, since that's all I've ever seen in the dialog.  I'm far less likely to suggest that an IE-using friend switch over if I think that they can't migrate their settings; and if I do suggest it, and they ask about migration, I'll have to say, "Er, no, I don't think it can...".

> Giving users options that simply aren't useful to them is a bad design theory. 

Even disabled?  I'd think that showing the capabilities, but disabling them to avoid confusion, would be the best of both worlds.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> > Giving a user info to evangelize the product before they've even used it seems
> > like a bad plan, overall.
> 
> True, but even after I've used it for 6 months, I'll still assume that it can't
> import from anything but Safari, since that's all I've ever seen in the dialog.
>  I'm far less likely to suggest that an IE-using friend switch over if I think
> that they can't migrate their settings; and if I do suggest it, and they ask
> about migration, I'll have to say, "Er, no, I don't think it can...".

If you're migrating without knowing we'll import browser settings, you're probably not thinking that's an important feature.  If you did look for that feature before trying, you'll see that its not just Safari that we import.  Personally, if someone asked me a question like that, I'd just Google it.

> > Giving users options that simply aren't useful to them is a bad design theory. 
> 
> Even disabled?  I'd think that showing the capabilities, but disabling them to
> avoid confusion, would be the best of both worlds.

Back in my user support days, disabled options more often than not prompted the "why can't I do this?" question instead of "oh, I could do X if I had Y"  

Comment 4

[Pam Greene]

> If you did look for that feature before trying, you'll see that its not just 
> Safari that we import. Personally, if someone asked me a question like that,
> I'd just Google it.

Sure, if I look at the documentation, I'll see all the choices.  But if I've already seen the dialog box with only one option, I'm not likely to check either the docs or Google to see if there was something else available but not shown.

I guess I'm saying that the behavior I'm used to is that an option that's in principle available, but not applicable, is shown but disabled.  To cite a silly example, the "Stop Loading" button goes grey, it doesn't vanish; and the same convention is pretty widespread across buttons, menu items, etc. in all sorts of apps.  I think it should apply here too.

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv