Open Bug 714133 Opened 13 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Improve the text of our crash reporter dialog

Categories

(Toolkit :: Crash Reporting, defect)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Crash Reporting
Platform:
x86
All
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: jrmuizel, Unassigned)

References

Details

I was talking to family members over Christmas. Most don't don't submit crash reports for variety of reasons. They believed that doing so would be a hassle to us and didn't want to bother us, or that it would take more time to submit a crash than not, or that it isn't of any use to us. No one mentioned any reason like privacy and all of them said that they would switch their behaviour when I told them that it was actually valuable to us for them to do it. This makes me believe that we can probably do a better job with the text. Limi, can you cc the appropriate people?
We went around and around on this the first time around, but our original motivation wasn't so much to coerce people to submit reports, but to try to be as humble as possible (since crashes are the worst possible user experience). We figured making the submission process opt-out (the checkbox is checked by default) and making it as easy as possible to get back to what you're doing (clicking Restart Firefox will get you back to browsing, and also submit if you didn't touch the checkbox) we'd get a fair amount of crash reports. I think our volume of crash reports proves this out, but maybe we could do better.
Can someone refresh my memory: What does it say now?
"Firefox had a problem and crashed. We'll try to restore your tabs and windows when it restarts. To help us diagnose and fix the problem, you can send us a crash report."
I don't think a lot of the wording needs to change - though I bet Matej could find more natural ways of phrasing the various thoughts - as opposed to the nature of the dialog box as well. The balance, as Ted implies, is between privacy and the ability to get back to task. Obviously the data will help, but more importantly to the user, restoring their tabs and what they were doing would help more. I would be thrilled for the dialog to look more like: .-----------------------------------------------------------. | Well, that was embarrassing |X| |-----------------------------------------------------------| | | | Sorry about that. We'll try to bring back everything you | | were doing just before you crashed. | | | | [[ Restart Firefox ]] [ Quit Firefox ] | (other way on OSX) | | | [X] Report this crash to Mozilla (_Details..._) | | | '-----------------------------------------------------------' With advanced options like including your email address, omitting the address of the crashing page, etc, on a secondary dialog that pops when the user clicks Details (The harder thing to get right is plugin crashes, which may be to what Jeff was referring.)
I'll put my thinking cap on again for verbiage. I like Mike's direction to simplify it. Until then I'd like to offer the following.... Yes a crash is a bad for the user and we want to respect privacy, but once the failed code is in the product a crash report is probably the best means we have to surface the issues. (in the absence of bazaillon alpha testers who file bug reports) Further, from a thunderbird perspective (I can't speak for Firefox) it is important in many cases to get direct contact with reporters and get more than just the crash report. I mentioned this in a previous bug report. So verbiage that a) encourages the user to report helps (or doesn't discourage) b) encourages the user to provide an email address helps, so that steps/testcases and data can be obtained (protocol logs and the like) c) encourages a user to respond when subsequent contact is made to get more info also may help. (it is disappointing that user responses to post-crash mail is poor, IME ~5% of users respond. so if I have 10 people reporting a crash and an email address and you contact them all, my odds of getting a response are slim to none) Please remember also that many users are generous, and this is a good opportunity for the user to contribute to the health of the product. Related to this - what does the details information button contribute and is it really needed? As far as I know, the only thing it contributes is users posting this information in support fora, and then we have to tell the user, no, that's not useful, please give us the crash ID. I'd be happy to file a bug for any items that are beyond the scope of this bug
I think making it clearer that providing extra info isn't mandatory might make a difference, so +1 to beltzner's suggestion in comment 5. As it is, it feels like a lot less work to unclick the first box than to do anything else. I also think making it clear that we want the crash reports, that they help us make Firefox better for users is a good idea. Let me know if you'd like me to take a stab at something or if I should look over what Wayne comes up with.
(In reply to Matej Novak [:matej] from comment #7) > Let me know if you'd like me to take a stab at something or if I should look > over what Wayne comes up with. Could you do both ?
(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #6) > Yes a crash is a bad for the user and we want to respect privacy, but once > the failed code is in the product a crash report is probably the best means > we have to surface the issues. (in the absence of bazaillon alpha testers > who file bug reports) Yes; as Ted said in comment 1 the default option sends a crash report with the last-viewed page URL. I don't think anyone's suggesting that we switch to opt-in. > Further, from a thunderbird perspective (I can't speak for Firefox) it is > important in many cases to get direct contact with reporters and get more > than just the crash report. I mentioned this in a previous bug report. So While I agree with the motivation, I'm sorry to tell you that the only user who will enter their email address here is someone who's already on your side about trying to fix things. Those users exist, but they are the vast minority compared to the number of people who just want their browser back (or more accurately, the page they were viewing back!) > Related to this - what does the details information button contribute and is It's a privacy-related issue: I firmly believe that we need to be completely transparent with what data we're sending back to Mozilla, so that if a user wants to inspect it, they can do so without pulling out Wireshark or the like :) (In reply to Matej Novak [:matej] from comment #7) > I think making it clearer that providing extra info isn't mandatory might > make a difference, so +1 to beltzner's suggestion in comment 5. As it is, it > feels like a lot less work to unclick the first box than to do anything else. Even with the redone design, I think what users really want is something like this: - Firefox crashes - Firefox restarts and restores their state At the same time, I feel like it's important / consistent with our mission to: - allow people to opt-out of sending information, - choose to see what information will be sent, - just quit (especially useful in the not-uncommon case of endless crash/restore loops) If we wanted to be more aggressive, we could do something like this: .------------------------------------------------------------. | Whoops! |X| |------------------------------------------------------------| | | | Apparently something went wrong. We'll restore Firefox to | | what you were just doing and report the problem to Mozilla | | windows and tabs where they were. | | | | O Sending a _crash report_ to Mozilla ... (Cancel) | | | '------------------------------------------------------------' ... and immediately restart Firefox in the background. The default user experience would be: - Firefox crashes - a little dialog box pops up and apologizes, sending a report to Mozilla - Firefox restarts! Hooray! - little dialog box finishes with report, vanishes If the user is hitting a repeated crash, Firefox already suspends session restore (with the "Well, that was embarrassing" page) and gives an opportunity to quit or start a new session or try again. If the user clicks on the _crash report_ link, they'll get a dialog which allows them to see the content of the crash report, add a comment, choose to withhold the URL or add their email address. If the user clicks the cancel button, they could be asked to reconsider or choose to never share crash reports with Mozilla.
IMO, that's a little too aggressive. I like the "get the user back to what they're doing as quickly as possible" slant, but automatically submitting reports without an explicit click is a bit too much for me. I'm not sure if automatically restarting Firefox is the best course of action either, honestly. It feels a little too unintuitive. I'm not suggesting that a user wants to spend time reading our crash reporter dialog, but at leas when they explicitly click "restart", they have a chance of understanding what happened. "Oh, Firefox crashed, and I need to restart it." vs. "Firefox went away and now it's back and what is this other thing saying?"
I think you overestimate the desire of the user to understand that there's even a thing called a "web browser" as opposed to their activity/destination online. :) As I said, *if* we want to be aggressive, I think that's the cleanest user experience. I'd be fine with it, I think, as there's an opportunity to cancel (and we can put in a 5-10s delay before restarting Firefox / sending the report) and we give users control, while not getting in the way of users who just want their lolcats back. We could even include a vorbis file of Chumbawumba!
A datapoint I mentioned to ted on irc, to illustrate the choice of whether or not to submit might be unclear to some users ... On an arguably not so lucid morning when firefox crashed and I did not have network connectivity, I clicked the window close X thinking I could submit the crash later. Of course I was wrong. Indeed, the crash data was DELETED. If I, an experienced user, was that lame then there must be others who a) are making the same mistake and might want to submit later, b) want to not submit, but presented only with the choices of submit crash, and start firefox or not start firefox
OS: Mac OS X → All
See Also: → 550303, 444356
See Also: → 1438929
Severity: normal → S3
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