546073 - [OOPP] Let user add comment to plugin crash reports

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, enhancement)

Description

[Matthew Cline]

As far as I can tell, the crash reports for plugin crashes get sent automatically, without the chance for the user to add a comment.  There should be a preference that would make a dialog similar to the full-crash come up and let the user add a comment.  The preference could default to true for alpha builds.

Comment 1

[Dave Garrett]

Personally, I'd like to avoid resorting to dialogs. I think a better route would be to add a "Comment about this crash" link to the placeholder box somewhere (maybe below the crash report link). I'd rather have to opt-in on an individual basis rather than all or nothing.

Comment 2

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Part of the UX goal here was to have a simple UI that didn't require decision making from the user (submit or not, comments, email, etc). Similarly, the more the browser interacts with the user when a plugin crashes, the more users associate the crash with being a problem in the browser.

I'd lean towards wontfixing this, except that I know in the past crash comments have sometimes been useful in figuring out what happened. I don't know if that will be true of plugin crashes too.

One possible approach would be to allow users to comment on crashes after submission, but that would be a significant amount of work to implement.

Comment 3

[Dave Garrett]

You could also make the argument that plugin crashes aren't Mozilla's problem as much anymore if they're isolated from the main application and thus bugging the user for more info isn't as needed anymore.

Maybe a better idea than asking for comments in Mozilla's system would be to explicitly link to the plugin developer's support site instead, when possible. For example:

----------------------------------------
                :-(
The Shockwave Flash plugin has crashed.
[Reload the page] to try again.

A [crash report] was submitted.
You can report this problem to [Adobe].
----------------------------------------

It would also hopefully funnel bug reporting to the right people faster.

Comment 4

[timeless]

if we're going that way, i'd love:
 [ ] allow the vendor access to my crash report 

we currently have a number of vendors who would love access to crash reports, but our policy prohibits it.

Comment 5

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #4)
> we currently have a number of vendors who would love access to crash reports,
> but our policy prohibits it.

That doesn't make any sense. They're public. How could they not be allowed?

Comment 6

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

The raw crash reports (minidumps) are not public, because it's possible they may contain private user data. Only the processes reports are public.

Comment 7

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

s/processes/processed/

Comment 8

[Dave Garrett]

Ah, I was thinking "crash report" to just mean the public thing usually called a crash report, not the raw dump. Then yeah, the checkbox idea sounds good, assuming it were restricted to trusted vendors if there's privacy implications. It would probably also be a good idea for the checkbox to be plugin-specific; i.e. each different plugin would require separate opt-in which would then be remembered for the next crash of that plugin.

Comment 9

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #8)
> It would probably also be a good idea for the checkbox to be plugin-specific

On second thought, nevermind on that bit. It'd be too confusing for users. One checkbox state remembered for all plugins should be plenty user confirmation, so long as Mozilla is making sure that those vendors which have the ability are trustworthy enough.

Comment 10

[Matthew Cline]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Part of the UX goal here was to have a simple UI that didn't require decision
> making from the user (submit or not, comments, email, etc).

But if doing it was a preference which could be turned on, then users who wanted to be more helpful by providing comments could do so.  Also, users of alpha builds probably wouldn't mind having to deal with providing a comment, and would be technically savvy enough to know that the problem was with the plugin, not the browser.  So the preference could be on by default in alpha builds.

Comment 11

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I don't think we should fix this bug, but I did file bug 546291 to accept comments on the crash reporter page itself, so interested reporters can provide more details via the links in about:config

Comment 12

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Let's call this wontfix. We can revisit in the future if we find that the lack of comments are making it hard to diagnose/fix problems.

Comment 13

[Dave Garrett]

Fair enough. Someone want to file a bug for opt-in for vendor dump access?