692556 - Create a minimum time window between sync notifications

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

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

If Sync encounters an error, it should avoid informing the user about the error multiple times inside of a particular time window.

I believe there was some initial discussion of this being 2 hours.  (I had also floated the idea of 72 hours for our servers, and 2 hours for customized servers). Either way we should decide an exact time window and make sure we don't accidentally inundate the user with updates on the error still existing.

Comment 1

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

(In reply to Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX) from comment #0)
> If Sync encounters an error, it should avoid informing the user about the
> error multiple times inside of a particular time window.
> 
> I believe there was some initial discussion of this being 2 hours.  (I had
> also floated the idea of 72 hours for our servers, and 2 hours for
> customized servers). Either way we should decide an exact time window and
> make sure we don't accidentally inundate the user with updates on the error
> still existing.

Firefox 9 (currently in Aurora) and later already avoid bugging the user for all recoverable errors (server maintenance, network errors, etc.), see bug 659067. We missed a few cases at browser start (see bug 684798), but other than that it works very well. I'm running Nightly and I haven't seen a single error bar over the past days.

Part of the work that went into Firefox 9 is that we warn the user if they haven't been able to sync successfully for 7 days. This allows for, say, a week's worth of vacation at the beach without internet access. One may argue that it's quite long for multi device users, although they will likely wonder where their data went and click Sync Now and that will always produce an error bar if an error occurred. (Because it's a user-triggered operation, so it should also give immediate feedback.)

Is there anything else you'd like us to do beyond the things that I've described here?

Comment 2

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

nope, sounds good.

Comment 3

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

Thanks, Alex.

(I forgot to mention that we also only show stuff like the Wrong Sync Key error once, see bug 622387, and only show an error message once for any items that fail to apply, see bug 659107.)