529523 - Plugin finder service UX is terrible if it doesn't find a plug-in

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit Graveyard :: Plugin Finder Service, defect)

Description

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

BUILD: Current m-c Firefox build

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1)  Load attached testcase
2)  Observe the "Additional plugins are required ... " notification bar.
3)  Click the "Install Missing Plugins..." button.
4)  Observe the "No suitable plugins were found" message.
5)  Click the "Find out more..." link.

EXPECTED RESULTS:  Either after step 4 or after step 5 the user gets some indication of what sort of plug-in they need to look for (e.g. the "application/i-made-it-up" type should perhaps be mentioned somewhere).

ACTUAL RESULTS:  Step 4 shows no information that would be useful for actually finding a plug-in.  Step 5 takes the user to an alphabetical list of plugins on AMO, with no indication of which (if any) of these is relevant.  Presumably none are, or PFS would have found them, right?

Heck, a link to search for the MIME type involved and "plugin" in the user's preferred search engine would be more useful....

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Most users don't know about mime-types and the current UI tries to hide mime-types everywhere, just look as example in tools/application that takes the decisions only based on the mime-types and there are no mime-types listed.
There must be a way for people who know how the web works to get the information they need. In the PFS case it's the only useful information

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Attachment: The testcase

Comment 3

[Steve Fink [:sfink] [:s:]]

Apologies for the "me too" comment, but this has been driving me crazy for ages. 

Basically, my browser is telling me

  "You suck. Why do you suck? You wouldn't understand, so I won't tell you."

Comment 4

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Bug 836415 has now removed the Plugin Finder Service (PFS) from Firefox. As a result, I'm closing all the remaining PFS bugs.

If you're getting this bugmail for an ancient PFS bug, the basic summary of the world today is:

* NPAPI plugins are a dying technology
* PFS was already restricted to assisting with only the 4 most common plugins
* Sites commonly provide their own UI for install a required plugin
* Mozilla is generally focusing on  improving the web platform so that proprietary plugins are not required.

(Note that "plugins" are a completely separate from "browser extensions", such at those found on addons.mozilla.org. The latter are not going anywhere, and are not impacted by the removal of PFS.)