40024 - Strategy for "about:credits"

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

The about dialog (see bug 40023) uses "Contributors" just like "About". However,
"about:" can be resolved locally while "about:credits" is not.

-> the about dialog uses "chrome://global/content/credits.html" for the
"Contributors" pane in order not to go to the network.
-> Clicking on "Contributors" in the "About" pane gives a different page than
activating the "Contributors" pane.

Proposed Fix:
1. Change "about:credits" to resolve to "chrome://global/content/credits.html".
2. Change the about dialog to use "about:credits" for the "Contributors" pane.

This makes sure, we hardcode the "Contributors" page only in one point in the
product and still makes sure, the about dialog responses fast.

I could do both changes. The only question is "Should I?" (and who will
review/checkin).

Comment 1

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Ah, and 3. Include a link to <http://www.mozilla.org/credits> in
<chrome://global/content/credits.html>.

Comment 2

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

Currently, the 'About | Contributors' is not up to date (i.e. it's not the same
list as <URL:http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26186>). Should I open
a seperate bug on this?

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

No reaction to my question, so I'll just take this bug, fix it and let it being
reviewed.

huftis, it's so easy, I'd let it in this bug.

Comment 4

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

um, that would be M18, if I could set it :) (no M18 for this product, odd).

Comment 5

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

Is the local credit list updated for M18 now?

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: New local credits.html, version 1

Comment 7

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: about:credits -> local file, version 1

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Updated credits.html attached. I
- updated the names to the ones on the website
- added "The most recent version of this page can be found on our web site."
  (with link) (see 3. above)
- removed the "To be added to the list, s..." paragraph at the bottom. This is
internal, and should IMO not be shown on the page, and not be shipped.

> 1. Change "about:credits" to resolve to"chrome://global/content/credits.html".

Patch attached.

> 2. Change the about dialog to use "about:credits" for the "Contributors" pane.

If about:credits might point to the mozilla.org web site again in the future, we
get those banner and TOC in the small dialog, sucking up most of the space. So,
either we drop that change, or add credits/* to NOWRAP or how it is called, i.e.
drop the framing table on the web site. I propose the latter.

Comment 9

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

dmose (who was available at #mozilla): <dmose> BenB: seems fine to me, r=dmose. 
But.... the one whose review really counts is endico's.  You should really get
her to review it too.

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: Change for credits.html, version 2. List Matt[hew] Wilson only once.

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

As I understood endico, she wants to make sure by automatics that the website
and local versions are in sync. Fine with me, but
- I can't do that
- Please do it before N6, so it can point to a local version.

On IRC: <endico> BenB: fine just update the one in the source tree to be the
same as the one on the web site.

Patch attached.

Comment 12

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: Update for credits.html, version 3. Just updating to match website version.

Comment 13

[Dawn Endico]

Attachment: latest credits page hot out of my tree

Comment 14

[Dawn Endico]

Attachment: ultra new updated credits page

Comment 15

[Dawn Endico]

I very much don't like the idea of having two credits pages. The real
credits page is on the web site. A big feature of the credits page is that
you can use bonsai to look up when and why people got added so it would be
bad to lose all this info by moving the page. If there's two  pages there's 
a chance that information will get lost or that the two lists will diverge
if someone makes changes to the wrong list. 

I would really like to work around this by having just one location for
the credits page. Either have the mozilla build script pull it from the
web site's repository or have the web site script pull it from the 
source tree. Doing either one would be a pain though so neither will be
done in the near future and we have to live with the two file system for
a while. In the mean time, lets treat the one on the web site as the 
original and the version in the source tree should be an exact copy.
with the exception that Ben wants to add a link to the original credits 
page from the static page.  This seems like a good idea.

He also mentioned adding a link from the static page to cvs log. Now
that I think about it more, that's probably a bad idea because the 
cvs log will contain info that possibly a whole lot newer than the
static page. Also, the link is a lot more likely to break. if we
move the credits pages some day then the cvs log links will break.

Ben also suggested removing the "how to add yoursef" text from the 
static page. This is probably a good idea because you can't add 
yourself to the static page after the product has shipped. You can
only add yourself to the web page.

I would go ahead and check in the most recent page i attached.
I doubt i'll get many (if any) requests to be added before nsbeta3.
I only added a bunch today because we were talking about it on irc
and I had one or two queued up from before. 

Comment 16

[Dawn Endico]

Attachment: yet another credits page

Comment 17

[Dawn Endico]

ok, this one is really the last one for a while because i'm going home now.

Comment 18

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Dawn, I agree now that adding a link to bonsai was no good idea.

Made the changes (updating to match the most recent version attached here,
adding link to web version, removing the "Adding" blurb at the bottom) to
credits.html. Note that you added Jeffrey Baker twice, but I didn't change that.

We need to point <about:credits> to the local version now.

Comment 19

[Dawn Endico]

jeffery baker is only in once. the one below him is jerry baker, who is
someone else.

Comment 20

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Left is 2. and (4.) adding the webpage to NOWRAP. (The latter has to be fixed
anyway, because you can click on the "most recent version link".) I can fix 2.
and will attach patch.
Don (module owner for xpfe), can you review, please?
Dawn, can you fix 4., please (should be a one-liner)?

Comment 21

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: Fix, step 2, version 1

Comment 22

[Dawn Endico]

Um, no. Its the static credits page in the browser that shouldn't
have the bonsai link, not the web page. The web page will continue
to be wrapped and have the bonsai link. That's an important part of
the page.

Also i have no idea what you're talking about with 2) and 4).

Comment 23

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Dawn, the problems are the banner and table on the left, not the Bonsai link.
Try the following:
1. Enable pref for the modal about dialog
2. Help|About
3. Click on "Contributors" (either the tab or the link in <about:>)
4. Click on "most recent version"
Actual result: You see the www.mozilla.org toc table and banner in the small
iframe, pushing the real content to the right, without much room left over.
If you want the Bonsai link, maybe you can reinsert it manually in the HTML
file? I know, it's unfortunate, but if we even want to enable the modal dialog
by default (or allow a distributor to do so), then this needs to be fixed
anyhow.

> Also i have no idea what you're talking about with 2) and 4).

This bugs has several sub-tasks, too minor to file bugs for them.
"2." is "Change the about dialog to use "about:credits" for the "Contributors"
pane" (see inital description)
"4." is "Remove the toc table and banner from
<http://www.mozilla.ogr/credits/index.html>", i.e. "Add index.html to
credits/NOWRAP", for the reasons explained above.

Comment 24

[Dawn Endico]

In fact, all of the links from the about dialog have that problem.
Not only that, they suffer from other problems of modal dialogs.
(You can't go back or copy/paste)

You should fix the problem by changing the links on the license page so
they load in the browser, not in the dialog. Try something along the lines
of <A HREF"blah" target="_TOP"> should work.

Also, the fullsoft link in that page is bad. see bug 55257.

Comment 25

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

endico, yes, makes sense, we should fix the dialog. (But I don't know how, given
that we reuse the same content now. target="_top" doesn't seem to work, we'd
need special JS to open a new browser window.) IIRC, there's even a bug about
it. OK, forget 4..

Don, I still need a review for the latest patch attached.

Comment 26

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Bug 40022 is about Dawn's last suggestions. These bugs are so old that I didn't
even remember that I filed them. :-(

Comment 27

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Could anybody plealse review the latest patch?

Comment 28

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Mozilla is still going to the network for about:credits. Is it generally agreed 
that this is a bad thing? If so, can Ben spruce up his (sadly neglected) patches 
and we can check them in?

Not having a credits page at all for a bit will spur someone on to change the 
build automation to pull it from the website, if that still needs doing :-)

Gerv

Comment 29

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> Mozilla is still going to the network for about:credits. Is it generally agreed
> that this is a bad thing?

When I asked on the newsgroup, the majority thought so, IIRC, yes. (IIRC, there
were nobody at all disagreeing with me in that point.)

Comment 30

[Dawn Endico]

Its been proposed to move the credits page to the source tree because the about
dialog needs it to be a local file and because about:credits will break for
people who aren't connected to the internet. (people at work on intranets might
not have internet access). I see some problems with this:

1. You assume that the current web page (credits.html) can be moved to the
source tree and be used interchangably both by the web site and by the about
dialog. It cannot. The web page and the about dialog both use the list of names
but the surrounding text needs to be different. The about dialog shouldn't
contain any links or the 'how to add yourself' section. The web site will need
to not only pull the credits file from the source tree but will also need to
extract the list of names and substitute its own introductory content.

2. People embedding mozilla care a whole lot about footprint and I think its
quite likely (and reasonable) that some will omit the credits.html file from
their distribution to save space. Doing this will break this proposed
implementation of about:credits. If you're going to implement the static credits
page then make it so the static page is loaded if it exists, otherwise load the
url at mozilla.org. This will make it a lot harder for people to inadvertantly
break things.

3. Mozilla is a network appliance. Expecting mozilla users to have internet
access is not a big stretch. I am not convinced that having a static credits
page will result in more people having access to the credits page or that its
worth putting a lot of effort in to. Yes, there will be some people who cannot
access the web page, but I think that's a tiny proportion of our users and I put
this work at low priority compared to most of the other 13K+ bugs in the database.

Perhaps having a blank contributors section in the about dialog for a bit will
spur someone on to change about:credits and the build automation for the web
site. But wait, this has already been broken for quite a while and no patches
yet. =(

Comment 31

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> You assume that the current web page (credits.html) can be moved to the
> source tree and be used interchangably both by the web site and by the about
> dialog. It cannot.

There are solutions proposed, see bug 55584.

> Mozilla is a network appliance. Expecting mozilla users to have internet
> access is not a big stretch.

Why is bienvenu working (a lot) on offline modes in Mailnews, then?

For this general discussion, please followup to the thread in .license (see below).

> People embedding mozilla care a whole lot about footprint and I think its
> quite likely (and reasonable) that some will omit the credits.html file from
> their distribution to save space

This is plain illegal. The license requires credits.

Actually, IMO, the license requires a local credits file. See my post to
.license for this topic, posted sometime around October 2000, IIRC.

> I put this work at low priority

But no reason to *disallow* somebody to fix it, right?

Comment 32

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

No movement on this for 7 months... http: is a bad way to get credits...

Comment 33

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

<Devil's Advocacy>I don't know about that. For instance, what if the credits
page changes a lot between versions, and someone who should be on the credits
for the older version is only on for the newer version. For instance, I haven't
asked to be put on the credits tree yet, but I have been contributing to this
project for over a year and have been involved for much longer. When I get added
to the contributor's list, I deserve to be viewable from older versions of
Mozilla</Devil's Advocacy>

Comment 34

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

The only solution I can think of that would make everyone happy is for Mozilla
to occasionally (i.e. once a week) grab the new credits page and store it in the
binary directory.

Comment 35

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Brain, such a problem was exactly the reason why we ended up with the current
solution. But it's not the only possible solution. Another one is to have a
(public) policy, like "You need to ask this and that way until 2 weeks before a
release to get on the credits list for that release".

Comment 36

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

> I deserve to be viewable from older versions of Mozilla

a) no you don't
b) mozilla upgrade cycles are high
c) you do deserve to be viewable in current versions of mozilla when mozilla.org
   is long dead, however

> occasionally (i.e. once a week) grab the new credits page and store it in

uhhh... how can I put this... no. That's the worst of both methods, and then some.

Comment 37

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> No movement on this for 7 months... http: is a bad way to get credits...

I forgot that it's assigned to myself. If anybody wants to fix it, feel free to
do so.

Comment 38

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

No movement here in over a year. Is there any argument AGAINST making credits a
local file? Is all that's holding this up a simple little patch? It certainly
isn't size, we already include half a meg of useless sample files no one uses in
every build:

% du -s res/samples 
512   res/samples

Isn't it a one liner to tell about: that credits is at resource:///credits.html
and not http://mozilla.org/credits/ ?

Endico... you apperantly had some concerns about something a while ago...
anything I've missed?

Comment 39

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Jeremy:

Its best to keep the credits online because they might become out of date 
within the source tree.

Comment 40

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031030]
(BuildId=2003110115, bug 224340#c19) (W98SE)

I discovered this URL from the new <about:about>.

I don't plan to visit that page many times, but for the record,
I don't like the idea that an <about:*> URI needs to be online and access to web.

Understanding the issue of maintaining a local page with an up-to-date list,

What about having a local page with "nothing" but a link to the website ?
*It would make it a 2 step process for who actually wants to see the list :-(
*It would allow the others to give up, wihout http involved. :-))

Comment 41

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

Isn't this fixed? Or is only Firebird doing the right thing here?

Comment 42

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Re comment 41:

I have never used FireBird.

My guess is that this bug never fixed anything (in Mozilla suite) yet:
only various suggestions were made, and patchs proposed.

Comment 43

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

We need credits on the server for good reason (because it changes and people
might not get added to the list until AFTER a version is sent out even if their
contributions were prior to that).

Its good the way it is. This bug is dead, and has been dead for a while.

WONTFIX?

Comment 44

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

On second thought, maybe we should have a backup page for when the user is
offline that just says something like, "Normally you would see the list of all
the contributors, but you are not connected to the internet. Please connect and
refresh this page or click here." so it doesn't appear we are broken when the
user is offline. It would have no names, just a description of what they should
have seen but not look like a standard error you get when not connected. Any
about: page that connects should share this behavior so Mozilla doesn't appear
broken.

Comment 45

[Richard Lloyd]

I'm not sure if this needs a separate bug or not, but I can't currently
hyperlink to a named anchor within the "about:credits" page. I can type
"about:credits#M" in the location bar and it will jump to the letter M in the
page, but if I hyperlink <A HREF="about:credits#M">about:credits#M</A>, clicking
on that link does nothing. This was with Mozilla 1.6 and Fedora Core 1, but I
suspect the problem occurs with earlier releases of Mozilla too and with other
OS'es.

Comment 46

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

[Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113] (W98SE)

Re comment 45:

Yes, please (search /) file another bug.

Also:
loading 'about:credits', then adding '#M' WorksForMe
but
trying to load 'about:credits#M' directly from:
*Browser: does nothing
*MailNews: I get these twice
{
Security Error: Content at
mailbox:///X|/WINDOWS/Application%20Data/Mozilla/Profiles/SergeG_M13/p0lj4ssh.slt/Mail/pop.noos.fr/Inbox.sbd/Inbox_BugZilla?number=91427
may not load or link to about:credits#M.

+

Error: uncaught exception: Load of about:credits#M denied.
}

Comment 47

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

That's a feature. Other protocols can't link to about:

Comment 48

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

gerv, can you check into this?

Comment 49

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

about:credits is fine as it is, and there has been no activity here for years. Changes in this area are never going to be a priority for reviewers. Marking WONTFIX.

Gerv