679802 - "Keep" column in the Add-on checker is misleading

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

The "Keep" column seems to indicate that by proceeding all the unchecked add-ons will be deleted with only the checked items being kept. I was tempted to check them all to avoid this which would be the opposite of what we want here.

Something like "Activate" or "Enable" would match the actual less destructive behavior.

Comment 1

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

unfortunately activate / enable doesn't work because we need to differentiate between:

-disabled, but Firefox will enable once an update is available
-disabled, and Firefox won't bother to try to update it because you didn't want it

So since those two are different, we were looking for a word that meant "I want this thing."  we then tried to patch over the problem of people thinking we might delete the extensions by saying they could always change their mind at the bottom of the dialog.

anyway, this was a one time interface, so probably not worth tweaking it too much more but if you have a better term we can replace it for new users doing an upgrade.

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

What about Keep installed?

Comment 4

[u52928]

Stephen Horlander -> "The 'Keep' column seems to indicate that by proceeding all the unchecked add-ons will be deleted with only the checked items being kept."

This is correct, though I'd say "disabled" rather than "deleted". 

In the couple of times I've encountered this dialogue, all the boxes were checked by default, so "Keep" (or "Keep enabled") seems OK to me. 

If users haven't disabled any of the add-ons, aren't they all always checked by default? 

What I'd like to see offered somehow is the option "Disable all".  (In reply to Stephen Horlander from comment #0)

Comment 5

[u52928]

Whoops, I've just been informed in the on of the Forums that there are scenarios in which not all the boxes are checked by default. Sorry, I didn't know this.

Comment 6

[rdz_bug]

(In reply to Michael Kaply (mkaply) from comment #3)
> What about Keep installed?

But this is not about keeping the addon installed (it is going to be kept installed regardless). It is about enabling and disabling it and it should be written as such.

At least write it in simple language: "Check which add-ons you want to be kept enabled" (instead of marketing speak).

Incompatible addons are more and more of a complaint now that updates are frequent. Dismissing this as a one time thing is weak.

Oh, well.

Comment 7

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to Joe Greenman from comment #4)
[...]
> If users haven't disabled any of the add-ons, aren't they all always checked
> by default? 
[...]
No, see bug 476430. When I installed Nightly nightly 9.0a1 it found in the profile an extension installed by my Linux distro with no intervention from me, and that particular extension came up unchecked ("This extension will be disabled"). Others that I had installed myself but had a maxVersion < 9.0 said "This extension will be disabled until it is updated to a compatible version" or something like that (quoting from memory). The latter, unlike the former, would actually remain enabled if the appropriate compatibility-override pref is set to false (e.g. by the ACR).

Comment 8

[LegNeato]

a) This should have been brought up when the feature was in development and on Nightly FWIW. This was an explicit choice according to comment #1, and unless we have data that says it was the wrong one we are keeping the status quo. The feature is in "integration / convergence" mode now that it's in Aurora.

b) We won't take this for Aurora as it has l10n impact and breaking our "no l10n changes on Aurora" policy isn't worth it for this particular case in my opinion.

c) If this will cause massive confusion or impact the success of the feature materially we can talk about bending the rules and/or turning it off. Not sure the new release process has come up against a onetime feature yet, hard to reason about a bit

Comment 9

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

(In reply to Christian Legnitto [:LegNeato] from comment #8)
> a) This should have been brought up when the feature was in development and
> on Nightly FWIW. This was an explicit choice according to comment #1, and
> unless we have data that says it was the wrong one we are keeping the status
> quo. The feature is in "integration / convergence" mode now that it's in
> Aurora.

This feature was in Nightly builds for 3 days only, including the week-end before the merge to Aurora happened. There was really no time to do intensive testing on those builds given the lack of time. But those are probably comments which would fit better on bug 596343.

Comment 10

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Recommend wontfix based my comment #1, keep is the best and shortest way for us to describe "the user wants this add-on." It doesn't actually mean disabled or enabled since it may or may not be compatible.

Comment 11

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Consensus seems to be wontfix

Comment 12

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

What do you think about changing the text in the dialog then?

My report in bug 679858 was mostly about the inconsistency between the dialog text and the name of the column, not that "keep" itself is wrong.

Maybe some massaging of the text would help?

Comment 13

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

I didn't really like the text that much, but it was part of the negotiation of the add-ons team buying into the need for us to ship this feature (they wrote what it currently says).

Generally speaking, trying to tell the user "choose the add-ons that you would like to keep, which may or may not be enabled depending on compatibility" is too complex of a message.  Just "choose your add-ons" seems to work better, momentarily brushing over the details of if they will be searching for updates to re-enable or not.