664057 - crash reporter should offer restart in safe mode as option

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Crash Reporting, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Stephanie Daugherty [:sdaugherty]]

This is closely related to bug 294260, but rather than (or in addition to) automatically starting in safe mode, crash reporter should recommend and offer the option to restart in safe mode, so that users that are experiencing repeated crashes can have a way out.

Comment 1

[Hmmwhatsthisdo]

Perhaps do something like M$ Office where after the 2nd or 3rd crash, the first thing that FF pops up with upon starting is a prompt that says "Firefox had a serious error the last time it was opened. Would you like to start Firefox in Safe Mode in case an extension or plugin is causing the problem?"

Another option (courtesy sdaugherty) could be to have another button alongside the restart button in the main crash reporter window with text that says "If firefox continues to crash, you can restart in safe mode", and "maybe make it more obnoxious as crashes continue." This could escalate to the aforementioned prompt.

Comment 2

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Needs some UX input, I don't want to overly clutter the crashreporter UI. We could display an additional checkbox for "restart in safe mode" if we encounter repeated crashes, or something like that.

Comment 3

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

I think this is already the case? Someone told me a while back that if you crash 3 times (or something), it automatically starts in Safe Mode.

This is purely anecdotal, of course — I haven't looked at the code. :)

Comment 4

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

(In reply to Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team from comment #3)
> I think this is already the case? Someone told me a while back that if you
> crash 3 times (or something), it automatically starts in Safe Mode.

The only thing like this is about:sessionrestore which appears after browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes crashes and gives you the option to select which tabs to restore.  

I'm working on automatically starting in safe mode in Bug 294260 (mentioned in comment 0).

Comment 5

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

I'd support adding a "restart in safe mode" checkbox to the crash reporter if there are repeated crashes within a short period of time. (a better way is probably to measure whether we got the user to a state where they could browse at all, but not sure how hard this is)