397493 - Add-ons Update should skip "Continue" if all updates have been successful

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Andreas]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7

This is a simple usability issue:

When starting Firefox from time to time updates for your installed Add-ons are to be downloaded and installed. The user has to confirm this step (sees a list with the provided updates and then has to click "Install update").

After installing all updates, the mentioned list-view changes and shows messages for all updates (best case: everything went well). Now you have to click "Continue" regardless whether all updates were successful or not.

For occuring errors, this behaviour is comprehensible... 
But why do I have to confirm again although everything went well?

--> Suggestion: Just show this second dialog with "Continue" if errors occured during updates. (Or isn't Firefox able to detect whether everything went well?)

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Related to bug 366251. I think there is a dupe somewhere too

Comment 2

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Though I'd personally like this I believe that removing this step would be confusing to people in that they wouldn't be provided any information that the action they just performed was successful since the ui would disappear.

Comment 6

[Stanislav Malyshev]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Though I'd personally like this I believe that removing this step would be
> confusing to people in that they wouldn't be provided any information that the

There's nothing confusing if you ask program to do something and it actually does. It doesn't need to come back and brag about it - if it didn't display error message I assume it did what I asked it to do. Demanding constant user intervention and reassurance is not a good thing for an application. 

Comment 7

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Continuing without any status in regards to success or failure is not a good thing IMO. Providing the option to skip the continue button is a good thing IMO. Additional advocacy comments is not of additional value. Providing a patch is of additional value.

Comment 9

[Ben Wong]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Continuing without any status in regards to success or failure is not a good
> thing IMO. 

In programming, every time you have 1 dialog with only 1 choice that does nothing is redundant. 

From memory, when you update/upgrade Firefox itself, it bring you to a page that tell you the update is complete, you can ignore that page as if it does not exist, that could be a way to fulfill your need. 

 

Comment 13

[Sean]

Okay, it would be fair to everyone, if there was a tick-box that disabled this "continue" button that is pointless for many people, but allows people to retain this interaction if they feel so inclined. I can't program, so there will be no patch from me, I'm afraid. I did vote for this "bug" however.

Comment 15

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: show the "Continue" button only if an update failed, otherwise close the EMwindow after 2 seconds

Comment 16

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #15)
> Created an attachment (id=328461) [details]
> show the "Continue" button only if an update failed, otherwise close the
> EMwindow after 2 seconds

Seems like a sensible idea though I want to hear UX's input before I look over the patch in more detail. In the meantime though could you attach a patch with more lines of context (8 lines is a good standard)

Comment 17

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: show the "Continue" button only if an update failed, otherwise close the EM window after 2 seconds

My current hg toolchain is strange, but at least I found a way to include function heads.

Comment 18

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: show the "Continue" button only if an update failed, otherwise close the EM window after 2 seconds

Comment 19

[Paul Randall]

I would suggest eliminating the 'continue' step. What is it I am being asked to continue? Answer: starting Firefox, which is the command I already initiated. If there are problems show a status dialog. If not then start Firefox. This is a usability issue of minor importance. It should still be addressed.

Comment 21

[Andreas]

Since FF3 I am experiencing that after downloading and installing updates not only "continue" has to be clicked but also after start of the FF window another dialog opens that states "x extensions installed successfully" at its top.

With that the present (FF 3.0.1) behaviour even worsens the old "press continue" situation. Is this a tech evangelism issue for extensions? I am not sure about the conditions when this appears. As far as I can remember it's not always like that. Maybe it depends on my computers where this occurs or not. 

Can anyone confirm this behaviour?

Comment 22

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #21)
> Since FF3 I am experiencing that after downloading and installing updates not
> only "continue" has to be clicked but also after start of the FF window another
> dialog opens that states "x extensions installed successfully" at its top.
> 
> Can anyone confirm this behaviour?

This is an entirely different issue, please file it in a new bug rather than cluttering up existing ones.

Comment 23

[Andreas]

From Usability point of view that's not very different! Just from technical point of view.

For the enduser it's related and should be tracked. Yes, I'll file a new bug (or search for an existing one).

Comment 24

[Raptor Ramjet]

Having thought about this I'd like to be able to set an option in the "Add Ons" dialogue that would allow me to tell Firefox how to behave.  This should have a series of choices something like:

1  Prompt me before installing updates.  i.e. behave as is by putting up the existing dialogue (complete with redundant "Continue" button :)   etc.

2  Prompt me before installing updates at startup but don't ask me to confirm "Continue".

3  Automatically download updates to Add Ons and silently install them at next Firefox startup.  i.e. Absolutely no user interaction unless an error occurs.

That way the people who want their hands holding and like clicking buttons get to carry on as normal whilst the rest of us who simply want the browser to get on with browsing can select option 3.

Obviously it might also be nice to have some sort of log available so you can see when updates have been automatically updated etc. etc.

Just my tu'ppence worth.

Comment 26

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Jennifer: Can you take a look at this bug and say if you agree with the proposed solution?

Comment 27

[Nick Demou]

> Continuing without any status in regards to success or failure is not a good
> thing IMO. 

When you click "send" in a mail window the window closes without any other indication of success in all of the GUI clients I have seen during the last 20 years. So there are definitely times when displaying reassuring "all done" messages is NOT considered good. So we SHOULD consider whether to present an "all done" message or not. To decide we can consider the following:

 a) What's the Gain? do we provide any useful info? In other words: without  reassurance, will a reasonable user worry that the performed action may have failed?
 b) What's the Cost? In other words: how much do we expect to annoy the user?

a) the gain: if the update was the last thing the browser did before closing then, with no reassuring message, it would be hard for the user to guess if the action was successful or if the browser crashed (that's the reason that almost all programs that finish their job provide an "all done" feedback before terminating). But in our case, after the update the browser is not closing but rather just opens it's main window. So with no error message poping up, no reasonable user will really worry (especially if you add the fact that most likely he doesn't really care a lot since he started the browser to do something else. If you don't care you also don't worry)

b) the cost: Considering that 999 times out 1000 the user has started the browser to do something completely unrelated to updating the extensions and that we may have already interrupted his job a lot it is safe to expect that we annoy him (another way to be sure that this is not a small annoyance is the very existence of this bug and it's duplicates: they show that enough people have taken quite some time to express their complains.)

So in this particular case, we have no measurable gain while we have some measurable cost. So this is a usability bug and we must fix it.

> Providing the option to skip the continue button is a good thing
> IMO. 

Not the proper direction IMO. If someone wants to spend a little time tweaking this behavior, he'll be much better spending it in one of the following since with the same or almost the same effort he'll please ALL users at once:

1) provide a "update successful" message in an unobtrusive strip under the toolbar (like the one that asks if you want firefox to remember the password you entered)
2) use some system notification facility (like the one used by thunderbird for "you have new mail" messages) to inform the user of the success
3) provide a CLEAR visual[1] and audio[2] feedback of success and after 1/4sec close the update window (the delay is just to make sure the user will notice the visual feedback)


_______________
[1] e.g. the progress bar of each extension changes to a bright white "update successful" text on green background
[2] e.g. a happy tone after ALL updates succeed -- this is mainly for our visually impaired users

Comment 28

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: updated to trunk

Comment 29

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: updated to trunk

missed the second button

Comment 30

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

(In reply to comment #26)
> Jennifer: Can you take a look at this bug and say if you agree with the
> proposed solution?

Looks good!

Comment 31

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Comment on attachment 341900 [details] [diff] [review]
updated to trunk

Looks good, just a couple of minor changes.

>+  _failed: 0,
Just use a boolean for this

>   onInstallEnded: function(aAddon, aStatus)
>   {
>+    if (aStatus != 0)
>+      this._failed++;
>+

Only set failed if aStatus < 0, doesn't matter right now but might in the future.

Comment 32

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/aa4b3566d739

Comment 35

[Dylan Martin]

What version will I see this fix in?  I'm running 3.0.10 and I just had to press "continue".

Comment 36

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Probably 3.5.

Comment 37

[Terry Davis]

would a 'check this box' option on the dialog be appropriate to turn off the continue button?

I think the fix is appropriate btw, I think I started this thing

good job