435378 - Check for updates should check for updates on both themes and add-ons at the same time

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Ciaran Welch]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008051206 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008051206 Firefox/3.0

Currently if you click check for updates, it only check for addon or theme, depending which tab you open. It should check for both at the same time.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go to addons window
2.Click'Check for updates'
3.Watch as it updates for addons only
Actual Results:  
Updates only for addons.

Expected Results:  
Updated for addons and themes

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Seems like a valid suggestion. I'm not sure there is really any benefit in only checking for updates to particular types of add-ons, I doubt that is ever the user's aim and if they want to restrict the check then they can check individually.

Madhava does that make sense?

Comment 2

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Or Boriss even...

Comment 3

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

Yes, it should check both.  Having to check for updates on each category is just giving the user work to do.

Comment 4

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

Note: with the proposed new UI this would be much simpler since all add-ons could be made visible. With the existing UI the richlistbox would need to display all add-ons (or perhaps only updateable add-ons but then the only way to tell if an add-on is updateable is via the context) so update status (e.g. error, no updates found, etc.) is displayed in the list and it would need to revert to the previous view when no updates were found on click or when the notification is dismissed.

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I don't think that is necessarily true. Certainly when updating you will only see the failure status for those add-ons in the current view but I rather suspect that most users don't really notice or care why an update wasn't available, only if one was and in that circumstance we jump to the updates view anyway.

Comment 6

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

Though not necessarily true don't you think that it would be optimal? If not, then perhaps it would be better to not display this information in the list at all and just show the notification when no updates are found? This would lessen the current confusion where the user has no indication that clicking anywhere will restore the previous view when no updates are found.

Comment 7

[Carl Menezes]

Just to add my 2c: 

I think it increases the level of consistency to have one "Check for updates" entry and to have that in the Help menu. Other applications usually have a "Check for updates" or similar in the "Help" or "About" section. Therefore, this is where a new Firefox user would expect to go to find updates. The help menu is therefore the preferable place for a menu entry that updates "everything that needs to be updated".

Further, add-ons and themes are by their definition a separate part of Firefox, but do we want to force the average Joe Bloggs to recognize that separation by making them check for their updates separately? If there was one place for updates, that would contribute to users' perception that they "add features" to Firefox, but once installed, become a part of it until removed. This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how well an add-on is written, but I'll stop there. 

Finally, I think Firefox should be what its users want it to be - to a simple user, it should be extremely simple, but to a more informed user, it should be more communicative. To that end, in terms of a dialog box, how about a simple message in the status bar like "Checking for updates" on startup? If the user clicks that message, they'd like to know more, so then let them take control. If there is an update available, install it. To make things easier for the more savvy users, make an advanced user preference "Notify me when updates are available".  

I'm sorry if I have deviated a bit, but I think that this is part of a larger problem - Firefox needs to do a Nintendo.

Comment 8

[Ngamer01]

If I may add-on:  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2098

This extension will let you check both extensions and themes for updates at the same time.  This should do for now.

Comment 10

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

The new UI does this, fixed by bug 554007

Comment 11

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Marking as verified fixed. Dave, do we have tests for this specific case?