804694 - Messaging related to Adobe Flash on Firefox Mobile is confusing

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(support.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

I'm not sure exactly where to file this so if this isn't an appropriate place in bugzilla (or if bugzilla isn't the right system) please let me know and I'll close this out and open it in the right place.

I feel that our messaging related to Adobe Flash on Firefox Mobile is confusing, I'll explain why.

I'm a long time Firefox Desktop user. I'm used to thinking of Flash as a "plugin" that one installs in Firefox, like Quicktime or Divx or Google Talk, due to to my Firefox Desktop experience (as well as experience with desktop browsers in general).

I've been using an Android phone for a couple years now and with the re-launch of Firefox Mobile, I decided to install it again (having uninstalled the original one for obvious reasons). I've been using Firefox Mobile on my phone, with flash, just fine. Unbeknownst to me though I never installed a flash plugin, the reason I was able to view Flash content in Firefox Mobile was that my OS came bundled with Adobe Flash.

I recently got a tablet. I decided to install Firefox Mobile (nightly in this case) on it. Today I tried to watch an air mozilla broadcast and found that flash wasn't displaying. Working from my experience with Firefox Desktop, I began searching through the menu's for "plugins" to no avail. (I've since found a "plugins" menu in Firefox Mobile, but it merely controls if plugins are enabled, disabled or set to "tap to play")

I then turned to google to figure out why flash wasn't playing. Here's how that went :

Search terms "firefox mobile flash"
1. http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-mobile-doesnt-support-flash
Answer : "Firefox for mobile doesn't support Flash", followed by instructions on how to enable flash. This is a confusing article since the title and instructions seem unrelated to each other. Also, this doesn't address the issue of adobe retiring flash, the flash app not being installed, etc.

2. http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/767909
Chosen solution : "Hey, Firefox. If you see so many leave firefox for other browsers for this reason, why don't you add it? It's Feb 19, 2012. Still no Flash on my Xoom tablet firefox. Hurry, quick! ". In addition to this answer there are comments by mbrubeck saying that "The new Firefox Beta now supports Flash on Android phones". The chosen solution is not a solution but a complaint. Matt's comments don't speak to the fact that one would have to find an archived adobe flash android app an install it for flash to work on firefox.

3. http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/757638
mbrubeck's top comment states "The latest pre-release version from the Aurora channel supports Flash on Android 2 and on Android 4. (Flash is not working yet on Android 3 "Honeycomb" devices.) " followed by a detailed complaint against mozilla and how it's failing. Matt's comment doesn't address the situation if adobe flash isn't installed as an app as well as applying to an older state (1 year ago) of firefox mobile. 

Followed by many news stories from 1 year ago about Mozilla adding flash to firefox for android

For the search "firefox android flash" we also get these pages :

1. http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-watch-flash-videos-firefox-android
This page says to install flash in the Google Play store which is no longer possible after adobe pulled it from the store.

Continuing to search with additional terms turn up no other useful pages.

Summary :
As a user trying to use Firefox Mobile, the absence of flash is a deal breaker. The absence of information out there explaining why flash isn't working and how to get it installed required me to rely on the fact that I work at Mozilla and to contact other employee's over IRC. I suspect this will heavily hamper our desired adoption of Firefox Mobile.

I believe that we (Mozilla) should identify the pages that come up in search when people try to figure out why flash isn't working and update all of them that we control to reflect the current state of Firefox Mobile and flash, indicating that users should download the archived flash app from adobe and install it ( http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html ) or whatever other remediation would be needed.

This would involve manually modifying existing closed support forum entries in addition to other mozilla authored kb pages

Comment 1

[Ricky Rosario [:rrosario, :r1cky]]

We don't really use bugzilla for content changes. Assigning to Michael Verdi (the content manager for SUMO) so he can take the next step.

Comment 2

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

Since we don't track documentation in bugzilla I'll close this but that doesn't mean we can't do something to "fix" it. I'm moving the discussion over to the article itself - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-mobile-doesnt-support-flash/discuss/4660

Thanks for letting us know about this.

Comment 3

[Michelle Luna]

Hi, 

Thanks for this detailed report about your experience. We can certainly do what you suggest and update the forum posts and articles asap. 

I'm adding Matt and James to the bug since they know the supported devices for Flash and whether we should tell users to install an archived version as you suggest. Matt, snorp, is it OK to document this for users? 

Also, can you give me a bit of help with where I should point these tablet users for flash and any pointers you have to lists of devices / versions that will have this problem supporting Flash on Firefox for Android?

Comment 4

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Michael, that link is a 404 for me.

Comment 5

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

Ya, that link was working a few minutes ago but it's 404 now.

Comment 6

[Michelle Luna]

As an update, the content of the first article has been updated (thanks verdi!) and the title is fixed. I've submitted a new revision to the second article and asked Matt to review it to be sure the recommendation is correct. After his review, I'll update the forum posts with a new link to the articles.

Comment 7

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

Ah, the page was deleted and changed to a redirect to this page : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-android-supports-flash-learn-how-enable-it?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=firefox-mobile-doesnt-support-flash

which inevitably killed the discussion thread.

Michelle, where should we hold the discussion thread now?

Comment 8

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

Sorry we changed the name of the article and for some reason we don't have redirects for discussions. The new article is here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-android-supports-flash-learn-how-enable-it and the discussion is here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-android-supports-flash-learn-how-enable-it/discuss/4660

Comment 9

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

If this isn't the right place for this comment, apologies, please let me know where I should put it (discussion forum somewhere maybe?)

Michelle, how's the revision that you submitted to Matt going? This page :

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/767909

still comes up in the top google results and contains outdated and confusing information.

I commented in the discussion thread on this page :

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-android-supports-flash-learn-how-enable-it

that the new text still would not have helped me in my use case because I didn't have Adobe Flash installed because it didn't come bundled with the device. We really should add in some text mush like this page has : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-watch-flash-videos-firefox-android

Also, the updated text on this page ( https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-watch-flash-videos-firefox-android ) looks great. Might be worth mentioning in step 1 that you don't need to install the archived flash app if you already have the flash app installed because it was bundled with your OS.

Comment 10

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

(In reply to Gene Wood [:gene] from comment #9)
> If this isn't the right place for this comment, apologies, please let me
> know where I should put it (discussion forum somewhere maybe?)

We have the KB articles discussion forum [1] and individual articles also have a place for discussion [2]. Bugzilla is not the correct place.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/knowledge-base-articles
[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-android-supports-flash-learn-how-enable-it/discuss

Comment 11

[Gene Wood [:gene]]

I chatted with James on IRC and for the https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/767909 page he suggested :
* Emailing Michelle, which I'll do now
* Using the "Contributor Forums" instead of bugzilla, specifically this one : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/support-forum-contributors