416515 - Refresh favicons stored as data URIs in pre-populated bookmarks (with platform specific icons)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

[Note, cross posting to Firefox::Theme and Websites::www.mozilla.com since the
icons need to both ship with Firefox and be served up by our web servers]

The favicon for all localizations of the Getting Started page
(http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/) should be a help icon,
instead of a red dinosaur head.  Many users will not know that this is our
logo, or even that Firefox is made by Mozilla, so the current icon is at best
confusing, an at worst slightly derogatory to novice users who could
potentially view at as an analogy to their ability to adapt to new
technologies.

Ideally we would also be able to use a different style of icon on each
platform.  I can provide new favicons for XP, Vista, Linux and OS X.

There are currently 6 favicons cached in Firefox, here is what I think we
should use:

-Getting Started = help icon
-Get Bookmark Add-ons = extension icon
-Help and Tutorials = help icon
-Customize Firefox = extension icon
-Get Involved = mozilla logo (same)
-About Us = mozilla logo (same)


Talking to reed, philor and fligtar on irc, they indicated that we need to:

1) update the cached favicons in bookmarks.html, which also needs to be
latel10n since this file is localized
http://mxr.mozilla.org/firefox/source/browser/locales/en-US/profile/bookmarks.html?raw=1

This will involve preprocessing the file to get the correct icons on each
platform.

2) find a way to serve the correct icon to each platform after the user clicks
on the bookmark and the favicon gets updated.  This could be achieved by:
       a) use javascript to check the OS and set the correct favicon
       b) setup netscaler cache rules to return a certain image based on the
user agent

This bug covers part 1, part 2 is covered in bug 416514

Comment 1

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Quick note on requesting blocking, the getting started favicon is one of the most visible icons in our product, appearing directly up back, forward refresh and stop, and next to home.  We haven't taken the icon seriously in the past due to the underlying technical details, but I believe it deserve as much scrutiny as the other super high profile theme icons.

Comment 2

[Michael Monreal [:micmon]]

"Getting Started = help icon". Is this supposed to be the same icon we currently use for the "Help->Help Contents" menu item (gtk-help) or do we need a custom one?

Comment 3

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

>(gtk-help) or do we need a custom one?

It needs to be custom because the icon will be shipped in the user's pre-populated bookmarks, and served up from our server if we detect the user is running linux (so the icon remains consistent), this means that it can't be a gtk uplift.

Comment 4

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

Not blocking until we can get the icon designs in place. Also note that we refresh this content whenever we load the page from a bookmark, so platform specific icons might be tricky (dunno if favicons can be returned based on UA header, though I bet some clever rewrite rules can win the day here, cc'ing morgamic and wil)

Comment 5

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

It'll involve netscaler rules to not cache, and then some kind of rewriting on the server.  CCing mrz for feasibility.

Comment 6

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> It'll involve netscaler rules to not cache, and then some kind of rewriting on
> the server.  CCing mrz for feasibility.

I think you meant for that comment to be in bug 416514. However, why can't we do this with JavaScript? I don't see any reason why we have to involve the NetScaler or cache rules here...

Comment 7

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> (In reply to comment #5)
> > It'll involve netscaler rules to not cache, and then some kind of rewriting on
> > the server.  CCing mrz for feasibility.
> 
> I think you meant for that comment to be in bug 416514. However, why can't we
> do this with JavaScript? I don't see any reason why we have to involve the
> NetScaler or cache rules here...
> 

I was replying to comment #4.  Pulling favicons from the server doesn't involve executing any js unless you're suggesting adding it to the client.

Comment 8

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> > (In reply to comment #5)
> > > It'll involve netscaler rules to not cache, and then some kind of rewriting on
> > > the server.  CCing mrz for feasibility.
> > 
> > I think you meant for that comment to be in bug 416514. However, why can't we
> > do this with JavaScript? I don't see any reason why we have to involve the
> > NetScaler or cache rules here...
> > 
> 
> I was replying to comment #4.  Pulling favicons from the server doesn't involve
> executing any js unless you're suggesting adding it to the client.
> 

Talked about this on IRC.  I was under the impression it was possible for the client to retrieve a favicon without actually loading the page but it sounds like that doesn't happen.  In that case, yeah, we could do this with js.

Comment 9

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Note: quick version of fixing this bug spun off to bug 426976 

Comment 10

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Resolving as invalid in favor of the simpler fix.