415293 - AMO Manager: Showing the total number of addon results is deceiving

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect, P2)

Description

[Tony Chung [:tchung]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008020104 Minefield/3.0b3pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9b3pre) Gecko/2008020104 Minefield/3.0b3pre

I question if we should be showing the total number of results of a addon search in the AMO Manager.  Currently, only the logic says the top 5 compatible addons are displayed and available for installation.  However, the link at the bottom "See all results (n)" shows the total n, on the AMO search page, which includes both compatible and incompatible results.  

To be consistent, shouldnt we also display the "See all results (n)" , where n = compatible extensions for the version also?   Otherwise, users are going to just navigate to AMO and randomly search the list only to find some are incompatible.   This defeats the purpose of the logic we have here.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install latest trunk
2. open Addons Manager, search for common addons (eg. "plugin")
3. Verify 5 or less results appear in the compatible addons manager window.  however, the link at the bottom says "See all results (60)".  
4. If you click the link, it shows 60 results on AMO, but not all 60 is compatible with fx3 right now.  This is deceiving to the user.
Actual Results:  
See all results (n), where n= both version compatible+incompatible extensions.

Expected Results:  
See all results (n), where n= both version compatible only extensions.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

So the problem is that any number we display except for the total number which is what we show now would be misleading. The AMO search pages do not hide incompatible items, so saying the total number of compatible items would not match the number of results you get when going to AMO. Even if that were changed on AMO's side you would still get discrepancies because we also filter out already installed add-ons which AMO cannot do.

Comment 2

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

There's value to the number listed in the manager being the same as that
mentioned by the AMO search results page post-click-through.

At the moment, this spill-over use of the AMO search results page is serving
two purposes.  First, it's a follow-up list of all search results so that we
can purposefully show no more than the top 5 in the manager (for simplicity and
avoiding the "paradox of choice" problem).  Second, it gives us a place to show
incompatible add-ons;  we don't want to be such a tease as to put something
that won't work with your browser in the in-manager result set, but there's
still value to users being able to see those add-ons somewhere.  If, for
example, a user finds something really interesting to them, and they're only
one firefox-update away from being able to use it, why would we not want them
to know about that add-on?

There's still some confusion between these latter two states on AMO, but we're
going to try to make that better _in AMO_ in the not-too-distant future.  What
I'd like to see is AMO noticing that your version of Firefox isn't listed as
working with the range of compatibility for the add-on you're looking at, and
so offering to let you update Firefox and get the add-on right there.

Comment 3

[Tony Chung [:tchung]]

Then can't we just message the link as "See more matching Add-on results" or something like that?   This is less misleading than a solid number shown, and can still send the user to AMO for additional browsing.  A user will then discover what else is offered, but will only discover an addon is incompatible after attempting to install... But that's current behavior anyway so we're not doing anything different.

Comment 4

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

FWIW, I agree with Tony. It looks worse to have the number mismatched, so we should either list the number they'll see on AMO (compatible and incompatible combined) or remove it from this string. Otherwise it looks like we're not really in sync.

Not blocking, though.

Comment 5

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

So, the number _does_ match at the moment, so it looks like we're all in agreement.  FWIW, I think this issue will be a lot less visible when enough add-ons are compatible that we're actually showing 5 in the manager.

Comment 6

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

Oh, I see, Tony wasn't complaining about a mismatch. I misread the bug. Still not blocking, perhaps even WONTFIX or HOPETHATAMOWILLEVENTUALLYFIX.

Comment 7

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I'm going to mark this a WONTFIX based on the UX team. It is possible that AMO could update to only show compatible on their side but even then the lists could be difficult because the client has more information about what add-ons are currently installed than AMO ever will.