788032 - Confusing UI for setting up with an existing username and password

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

Attachment: IRC log of our adventure setting up sync

I just walked a user through sync setup on IRC, and it was a pretty confusing affair.  They had an existing username/password for services.moz.com but had not successfully set up sync on a device before.

The flow we eventually worked out was the following:

 * Go to sync preference pane
 * Click on "I already have an account"
 * Click on "I don't have the device with me", which doesn't really match user intent at this point
 * Fill in username and password, but leave recovery key blank
 * Click on "I have lost my other device" link, which against doesn't match user intent
 * Click "Change recovery key" button
 * Dismiss some "unresponsive script" warnings
 * It works!  But it's not obvious that it has started working.

At pretty much every step, it was not obvious what the next step should be.  I guess this flow is not really designed for "have an account but have never set up a device before".  There may be a better way to do it for such a case, but this the only one I could find.

I'm attaching the IRC log for reference.  We also hit some UI strangeness e.g. unresponsive buttons which I will put into separate bugs.

Comment 1

[thinsoldier]

I'd like to add that I can successfully log into the mozilla syc service site (https://services.mozilla.com/) and yesterday I was able to sync my Android device with Aurora on my desktop. But today when I open aurora I see a yellow bar at the bottom of the window with this message:

"Sync encountered an error while syncing: Incorrect account name or password. Sync will automatically retry this action. ((Preferences))"

Comment 2

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

The old sync system has been shut down, this bug is no longer relevant