603940 - (fx40-p12n-ar) [ar] Firefox 4.0 productization review for Arabic

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Mozilla Localizations :: ar / Arabic, defect)

Description

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

As you might have seen in the newsgroups or on the Mozilla blog, there's a couple of changes to search engines planned for the 4.0 release for en-US: <http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.l10n/msg/81073d8d67e1c4c3>. We would like to use this opportunity to review the current productization setup for Arabic and make any changes that you think will be good for our users.

What is a productization review?
================================

Here's what we're interested in:
* search engines,
* protocol handlers,
* feed readers,
* live bookmark.
You can see what your locale currently ships with at <http://hg.mozilla.org/l10n/l10n-src-verification/file/default/reference/browser/2.0/ar>

Please take a moment and review the choice of services available by default in your locale. If there have been any new services that have recently gained popularity and that offer good value for the users, please suggest adding them to your locale. On the other hand, if there are services that lost credibility (e.g. display too many adds) or have poor user experience, consider suggesting that we remove them. If in doubt, feel free to make a suggestion and we'll look at it together. You might find the guidelines at <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Productization> and <https://wiki.mozilla.org/L10n:Firefox/Productization> helpful, too.

Required changes
================

There's two things I would like to draw your attention to (if applicable):

1) if you have a google.xml file in your `searchplugins` directory, please remove it,

2) Bloglines is closing down on November 1st and we need to remove it from the feed reader options for all locales (see bug 595485). We suspect that it will make sense to move Google Reader up to the first position (if your locale has it). We will be offering technical help with this change, either in form of ready-made patches or a mass-landing by one of the l10n-drivers. If you don't think that moving Google Reader up is a good idea for your locale, please let us know!

Changes in en-US and en-GB
==========================

Here's the changes that we will be making in en-US and en-GB:
* add Bing as the 3rd general search engine (see bug 603298),
* remove Answers,
* remove Creative Commons.

We're making these changes in en-US and en-GB because we feel that they follow the recent market trends and user preferences in the US and the UK. We would like to go through the same thought process for your locale and see if any of these changes would make sense in Arabic builds as well. If you decide that implementing these changes would be in your users' best interest then please go ahead and include them in the patch you'll attach to this bug.


Implementation
==============

Please make suggestions for changes and attach patches that Seth, Axel or I will review. Please note that since Bing provides a global plugin which does the locale detection itself, you will only need to add "bing" to your list.txt if you decide to include it. The XML file will be automatically pulled from en-US.

Once a review is granted, you can land the patch on l10n-central if your locale actively maintains it. Otherwise, please wait for further instructions which will be put in the comments of this bug and announced in mozilla.dev.l10n (we're still unsure when the branching will happen). Please do not land any changes except for the required ones (google.xml, Bloglines) on 1.9.2.

If you do not wish to make any changes, let us know, and we'll only work on removing Bloglines.

Thanks!

Comment 1

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: Patch for 1.9.2

Comment 2

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch for l10n-central

Comment 3

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 482846 [details]
Patch for 1.9.2

You will want to remove the XML file for Creative Commons as well.

Comment 4

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 482846 [details]
Patch for 1.9.2

You will want to remove the XML file for Creative Commons as well.

Comment 5

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 482847 [details]
patch for l10n-central

Same thing, please remove the Creative Commons XML.

Comment 6

[Seth Bindernagel]

Do you want to remove Answers from the list?  Is it still relevant for your locale?  If not, please remove it from list.txt and remove the XML file.

Lastly, I noticed a stray wikipedia.xml file in your set of search plugins.  This is not the ar version.  Axel mentioned that it might be a bug with the tool set you use to work, which might copy en-US plugins automatically.  Regardless, please remove that extra wikipedia plugin if you don't mind. 

Thanks.

Comment 7

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch v2 for l10n-mozilla-1.9.2

Comment 8

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch v2 for l10n-central

Just as you have asked, Seth. I've removed `answers' from list.text, and deleted wikipedia.xml, answers.xml and creativecommons.xml from both 1.9.2 and central.

The fact I was keeping wikipedia.xml on purpose, because back then Arabic wikipedia was still small and Arabic users had to refer the English one. Now it seems not the case anymore.

Comment 9

[Seth Bindernagel]

Sorry to cause confusion for you on this because I was looking at the Mozilla Central list and then instructing you to also apply changes with your 1.9.2 patch.  Very sorry about that!

As the bug comment 0 from Stas indicates, "Please do not land any
changes except for the required ones (google.xml, Bloglines) on 1.9.2."  So, let's prepare a simple patch that does that for 1.9.2. and hold the other patches for later.  

The patch for 1.9.2 should: 
1)  Remove the Google.xml file
2)  Remove Bloglines
3)  Remove the extra wikipedia.xml file
4)  Remove Answers.xml file
5)  Remove CC.xml file

You do not need to change your list.txt file on 1.9.2 right now.  Be sure to keep Answers and CC in your list.txt file for 1.9.2.  

We will *not* remove Answers or CC from the list on 1.9.2 and we will *not* add Bing to 1.9.2.  That is only for Mozilla Central and the future release of Firefox. 

Hope that is more clear now.

Comment 10

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 482852 [details]
patch v2 for l10n-mozilla-1.9.2

As mentioned, we are not adding Bing to 1.9.2.  Sorry for the confusion.  Also, do not remove creativcommons or answers from list.txt.  

list.txt is used to grab the global plugins that ship with 1.9.2 en-US and place them in your locale.  Since we are not making the Bing/CC/Answers changes until Firefox 4, we don't want to change list.txt.

With this patch, we want to remove the xml files to do some code cleanup for your locale on 1.9.2.  Bing changes come in for Firefox 4.

Comment 11

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch v3 for l10n-mozilla-1.9.2

patch v3 for l10n-mozilla-1.9.2, removing only unneeded xml files and keeping list.txt untouched

Comment 12

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 482866 [details]
patch v3 for l10n-mozilla-1.9.2

Getting very close on this.  We are almost there.  :)

This patch takes care of the search plugin cleanup, but it still does not remove Bloglines.  If you look at Stas's comment 0, he mentions that we will want to remove Bloglines because it is going out of business.  

"2) Bloglines is closing down on November 1st and we need to remove it from the
feed reader options for all locales (see bug 595485). We suspect that it will
make sense to move Google Reader up to the first position (if your locale has
it)."

Comment 13

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 482855 [details]
patch v2 for l10n-central

We will need to remove Bloglines from Mozilla Central.  See comment 0.

Comment 14

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch v4 for 1.9.2

Sorry Seth. I didn't forget about bloglines, but I never thought it is in the region.properties. I was assuming it is one of those in searchplugins and my locale didn't have it so it is not here to remove it. Hopefully this will be the final patch. :)

I suggest that

Comment 15

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch v3 for central

I suggest that you clarify those points - about the difference of patches between 1.9.2 and central, and about the location of bloglines in region.properties - in the other bugs so that my mistakes won't be repeated.

Comment 16

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 482922 [details]
patch v3 for central

The intended experience is to move Google to the browser.contentHandlers.types.0 position and not move Yahoo.  

Before I r- this again, I'll wait for Stas to jump in.  This could be OK.  If you don't mind doing it again with that fix, then submit a new patch.  Otherwise, I'll ask Stas his opinion.

Comment 17

[Staś Małolepszy :stas]

(In reply to comment #16)
> The intended experience is to move Google to the
> browser.contentHandlers.types.0 position and not move Yahoo.  

I'd say that this could be fine as long as it is a result of a conscious decision. If there's a reason to make My Yahoo! the first feed reader in our Arabic builds, then let's do it. If not, based on the traffic metrics I'd suggest to move Google to browser.contentHandlers.types.0.

The patches look good otherwise.

Comment 18

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch v5 for 1.9.2

Comment 19

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

Attachment: patch v4 for central

I switched the IDs of Yahoo and Google in the web-based feed handlers section.

Comment 20

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 483167 [details]
patch v5 for 1.9.2

This looks good to me.  Please check in this patch, annotating that checkin with a comment that cites the change based on Bug 603940.

Comment 21

[Seth Bindernagel]

Comment on attachment 483168 [details]
patch v4 for central

This looks good to me.  Please check in this patch, annotating the checkin with a comment that cites Bug 603940.

Comment 22

[Anas Husseini [:linostar]]

The two patches are applied and pushed to respective repos.

For 1.9.2: changeset 2b90ba905fa6
For central: changeset 0c3d211e2358