684737 - about:support should link to the GPU blocklisting wiki page

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

Attachment: patch that doesn't work

about:support should link to this:

  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers

See e.g. bug 672712.

Attached patch doesn't work. Can somebody have a look why? Is it not allowed to enter http links in the DTD?

In an ideal world the message linking to the wiki would only be shown when some feature is blacklisted, but maybe it's not worth adding that extra complexity.

Comment 1

[Kelsey Gilbert [:jgilbert]]

The problem seems to be the double-quotes surrounding the URL. Changing those to single-quotes fixed it for me, I believe.

Comment 2

[:aceman]

Hi, will you update the patch? Or can I pick it up?

Comment 3

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

Please do!

Comment 4

[:aceman]

Attachment: fixed quotes

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Comment on attachment 578332 [details] [diff] [review]
fixed quotes

I don't *think* that this is valid XML, but I'm not actually sure, and I'm also not sure that this is a good way to put in a (localized?) link to an external site which is not SUMO. In any case, I'm going to defer this to Pike.

Comment 6

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 578332 [details] [diff] [review]
fixed quotes

Review of attachment 578332 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I'd rather not have the link in the DTD. Also, the text sounds like it's not reflecting what the wiki page describes. Aka, you need particular hardware, and recent drivers. Not that I'm totally confident that the information on the wiki is 100% accurate, I digged through some of the linked bugs and got the feeling that stuff was unblocklisted, too.

Benoit, I'm surprised by the dependency on bug 671712, is that the right bug?

Comment 7

[:aceman]

Attachment: v3, link moved to xhtml.

Comment 8

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

I briefly chatted with Kadir, let's loop in Cheng for SUMO, talking about about:support. Cheng, any comments on whether we're using the right link and the right language here?

Comment 9

[:aceman]

So what is the decision?

Comment 10

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

Comment on attachment 579767 [details] [diff] [review]
v3, link moved to xhtml.

No decision, sorry. Moving the review request over to Cheng to make this more explicit that we're stuck on feedback from support on this.

Comment 11

[[:Cww]]

I don't maintain that page so I can't say if that's the right place to link to and I'm on on the UX team so I'm not the one to say if the language is correct.

What exactly are you asking, the gfx team can probably provide input on whether that's the right place to point.  If they'd rather point to a SUMO page, we can work with them on crafting one.

Comment 12

[:aceman]

Great. So who can actually decide anything about this bug?

Comment 13

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Linking to a random wiki page from in-product doesn't seem ideal, but this *is* just about:support, I guess. Who maintains that page?

Comment 14

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

The wiki page is maintained by the graphics team.

Comment 15

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

What Joe said! The graphics team wants this to happen. Heck, I filed that bug :)

Comment 16

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

I saw that you filed the bug, but it wasn't clear that the page was being actively monitored (for vandalism) and updated.

Adding in-product links to the web is generally more involved than just throwing in the link. People expect them to offer localized content (the rest of about:support does!), be consistently maintained, live up to a certain level of usefulness, etc.

Comment 17

[[:Cww]]

Comment on attachment 579767 [details] [diff] [review]
v3, link moved to xhtml.

Removing myself as a reviewer until we decide what to do exactly.

Comment 18

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

about:support is meant primarily as a way to provide troubleshooting information. A link to the GPU blocklisting wiki doesn't really serve that purpose, and is unlikely to be discovered there anyways.

Comment 19

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

I don't understand comment 18: the Graphics section of about:support tries to provide troubleshooting information about why some Graphics feature may not be working, which in 99% of cases means a blacklisted driver version. In some cases, about:support tries to offer a suggestion of what driver version to upgrade to, however in many cases it can't make a suggestion at all, or it can't make an accurate one, or the suggestion is hard to phrase in a way that fits in 1 line in about:support. In all these cases, a sufficiently motivated user will find all the information they need on the blocklisting wiki. So definitely, the target audience of about:support/Graphics would benefit from a link to the blocklisting wiki.

Comment 20

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

(In reply to Gavin Sharp (use [e-mail] for email) from comment #16)
> I saw that you filed the bug, but it wasn't clear that the page was being
> actively monitored (for vandalism) and updated.

I've been taking care of both. It's one of the most viewed wiki pages. Real vandalism hasn't happened, but we've had cases of regressions caused by people of good will but lacking proper information.

I don't have a solution to the localization problem, but I would claim that there is no quality/usefulness/maintainedness problem here. But, I understand and sympathize with the general principle you're phrasing here.

Comment 21

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

What's the scenario where a user would end up viewing about:support to find information about updating their graphics drivers?

about:support is primarily meant to be provide an easy summary of the state of the build for support purposes (either manually or automatically, once we fix bug 732527). It's not somewhere that users go to to get information about how to fix their Firefox problems - we have support.mozilla.org for that. I think you should focus on getting a SUMO article created that talks about the important of updating drivers, and it can link to the wiki as appropriate.

Comment 22

[Benoit Jacob [:bjacob] (mostly away)]

Alright, that sounds reasonable.

Comment 23

[[:Cww]]

We already have https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-upgrade-my-graphics-drivers ... can you suggest whatever changes you want in the discussion tab (click show editing tools) and we'll make those changes.