374891 - 2.0.0.3 release notes issue needs to be clarified

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

This was reported in hendrix and needs to be fixed:

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0.0.3/releasenotes/

The following two bullet items fail to mention that the user must go to about:config in the URL bar and adjust these values. Without this information, the user is clueless as to how to proceed. These are the items in the release notes which I found, there may be others I missed. Basically anything that refers to be an about:config setting needs to be clarified.

# The Session Restore functionality provided in Firefox 2 will restore connections to services which use session cookies to maintain login state such as GMail. It is recommended that users with concerns about the privacy implications of this behavior change the value of browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false.
# The option for "Shrink to fit" has been removed in Firefox 2. If you wish to change this from the value you had set in your previous version of Firefox, change the value of browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing. 
# Some financial institutions use port 563 for secure logins, which results in an error message. If you encounter this error, make sure that network.security.ports.banned.override includes 563 in the comma-separated list of banned network ports to override.

Comment 1

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

FWIW, this was intentional, and the referenced parts of the release note have been carried forward from the 2.0, 2.0.0.1 and 2.0.0.2 release notes.

As a matter of course, we try to not point people into about:config, because it's a pretty dangerous place. Additionally, merely pointing them to about:config doesn't help them:

 - figure out how to find the preference
 - figure out how to change that preference

Neither of those actions are particularly trivial, since about:config is a place for advanced users only. My instinct is to WONTFIX this bug, but it's not really my call. From a user experience POV, though, I think it's fair to assume that the type of people reading the release notes are the type of people who would Google for how to change preferences if they were really into that sort of thing.

An alternative I could live with, though, would be that instead of referencing about:config directly, we merely add a link to the text "change the value" and "make sure that" pointing to:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config

That page has a warning about the seriousness of such changes, and instructions on how to use the about:config editor.

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

As long as we're not continuing to add about:config items to the general release notes, I think we're good here. We could remove it from the older ones if people are still linking into those for some reason but that doesn't seem terribly important.

Comment 3

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

closing this one out, as 2.0.0.3 has come and gone.