807836 - Show What's New page for Firefox 17.0 updates

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Release Engineering :: Release Requests, defect, P2)

Description

[Laura Forrest]

We mostly don't show this page anymore, save for large announcements. 

Please show the What's New page when users update onto Firefox 17.

Comment 1

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

(In reply to Laura Forrest from comment #0)
> We mostly don't show this page anymore, save for large announcements. 
> 
> Please show the What's New page when users update onto Firefox 17.

What's the link you'd like to use? This is a RelEng task, by the way.

Comment 2

[Chris More [:cmore]]

(In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #1)
> (In reply to Laura Forrest from comment #0)
> > We mostly don't show this page anymore, save for large announcements. 
> > 
> > Please show the What's New page when users update onto Firefox 17.
> 
> What's the link you'd like to use? This is a RelEng task, by the way.

It will be: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/17.0/whatsnew/

yes, RelEng makes this change through product-details.

Comment 3

[Laura Forrest]

Thanks Alex!

Also note that we'd like to show this page to all locales, not just en-US, as Chris' URL denotes above. 

So not just: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/17.0/whatsnew/

But the overall: http://www.mozilla.org/ALLLOCALES/firefox/17.0/whatsnew/

Comment 4

[John O'Duinn [:joduinn] (please use "needinfo?" flag)]

triaged.

Comment 5

[Chris More [:cmore]]

(In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #1)
> (In reply to Laura Forrest from comment #0)
> > We mostly don't show this page anymore, save for large announcements. 
> > 
> > Please show the What's New page when users update onto Firefox 17.
> 
> What's the link you'd like to use? This is a RelEng task, by the way.

Alex: Is it possible to *ONLY* show the what's new page for a subset of locales? (4-5 locales). If it may be technically possible, is it too late to do an exception?

Comment 6

[Laura Forrest]

(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #5)
> (In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #1)
> > (In reply to Laura Forrest from comment #0)
> > > We mostly don't show this page anymore, save for large announcements. 
> > > 
> > > Please show the What's New page when users update onto Firefox 17.
> > 
> > What's the link you'd like to use? This is a RelEng task, by the way.
> 
> Alex: Is it possible to *ONLY* show the what's new page for a subset of
> locales? (4-5 locales). If it may be technically possible, is it too late to
> do an exception?

Technically yes, we did this with Firefox 14 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767207#c1). 

But we don't need to do that yet. 

Our current scenarios:

1. Work with Pascal to update all locales. This will take lots of l10n work over the next week but it's what we're shooting for. 
RelEng: show for all locales, no additional work. 

2. Launch in a designated 10 only. If we can't get that word done. Will have a go/no go on that by Wednesday 11/14.
RelEng: custom work to show to only 10 locales. Will know by 11/14.

3. IF product (Social API) isn't ready to ship with Firefox 17, don't launch in any locales.  
RelEng: don't show any What's New page until a hotfix, or new Social API launch date is determines

Comment 7

[Chris More [:cmore]]

Chelsea: Based on your conversation with Pascalc today, and getting the en-US What's new page approved by Facebook, is comment 6 feasible to do all locales?

Alex: How late before November 20th can you make the change to enable or disable the What's New page popping?

Comment 8

[Chelsea Novak [:chelsea]]

Chris, we are going to do our best to get all 80, but if we can enable specific locales, that puts us in a much better position.

Comment 9

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #2)
> (In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #1)
> > (In reply to Laura Forrest from comment #0)
> > > We mostly don't show this page anymore, save for large announcements. 
> > > 
> > > Please show the What's New page when users update onto Firefox 17.
> > 
> > What's the link you'd like to use? This is a RelEng task, by the way.
> 
> It will be: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/17.0/whatsnew/
> 
> yes, RelEng makes this change through product-details.

RelEng does this through update snippets actually.

Comment 10

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #5)
> (In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #1)
> > (In reply to Laura Forrest from comment #0)
> > > We mostly don't show this page anymore, save for large announcements. 
> > > 
> > > Please show the What's New page when users update onto Firefox 17.
> > 
> > What's the link you'd like to use? This is a RelEng task, by the way.
> 
> Alex: Is it possible to *ONLY* show the what's new page for a subset of
> locales? (4-5 locales). If it may be technically possible, is it too late to
> do an exception?

RelEng (bhearsum) should really be your point of contact here, but yes, we have done this for only a subset of locales previously.

(In reply to Chris More [:cmore] from comment #7)
> Chelsea: Based on your conversation with Pascalc today, and getting the
> en-US What's new page approved by Facebook, is comment 6 feasible to do all
> locales?
> 
> Alex: How late before November 20th can you make the change to enable or
> disable the What's New page popping?

I'll let RelEng respond when they need this info by. My guess would be by 11/15, since we create update snippets the following day.

Comment 11

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

The timeline here is not in favor of getting all locales done for release.

The easiest way would be to not specify a locale in the url we send out, and to use server-side language negotiation to show the best available localization.

Pascal mentioned that we may not be able to do that perf-wise. That means we should prepare on what to do for locales that aren't ready on release day:

I expect that we'll need snippets for ready locales, and different snippets for the other ones.

I propose to do either of the following:

Hope that we get all BIG locales localized by release, and for those, use WN urls with hardcoded locale, and for the long tail, take the much smaller hit of doing language negotiation server-side. Pros: We'll likely be able to stick to one set of snippets that are live, and negotiating "other good languages" is much easier.

Go for two chunks, one set of locales to be ready by release, and I suggest to do a second bucket once we re-enable updates after our stability-throttle period. That gives us about an extra week to get more localizations of WN done and tested. Pros: We get localized WN pages for the majority of our updates. Cons: We change the snippets, and likely need another round of update tests on those before unthrottling.

Comment 12

[Chelsea Novak [:chelsea]]

So two clarifying questions here Axel

1) We can enable and disable locales from getting the What's New page via the update snippets mechanism? I just want to make sure I'm understanding that correctly. 

If that's the case, then I understand why you're referring to snippets above. 

2) If you're not, do the suggestions above apply to serving the what's new page?

I agreed that getting 80 locales in time for ff17 is not going to happen. I personally like option two, but I'm not doing the updating, so I leave the decision to the people doing that work.

Comment 13

[Rail Aliiev [:rail]]

(In reply to Chelsea Novak [:chelsea] from comment #12)
> 1) We can enable and disable locales from getting the What's New page via
> the update snippets mechanism? I just want to make sure I'm understanding
> that correctly. 

Yes, we can. We did this for Firefox 14.0.1. See bug 767207 for the details.

Comment 14

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

I'm on the hook for 17.0 so this is mine to implement too.

If we go with no WN at all then there is no action to take, as we're already blocking that in the config left from 16.0. 

If we wanted to enable WN for all (Laura's #1) then I'd like to know on or before the day we go to build, so I can change the config before the release automation starts.

If we go for a subset showing WN then we'd need to know the list by the day as the go to build, which the calendar says is Friday 16th. We'd block WN by default, and the generated snippets would be post-processed to allow the subset.  [removing actions=silent]

re Axel's second proposal, specifically to enable more locales later - the snippet changes are similar to showing the initial subset, but I'd agree there is some extra QA to do.

re Axel's server side negotiation idea - the WN url is hard coded in the app, but can be overriden in the update snippet. We haven't used that mechanism in anger so there's non-zero risk there, but in principle we can do that. [in the complete snippets: actions=showURL, openURL=<some fixed url>]

Comment 15

[Chelsea Novak [:chelsea]]

First off, Nick this is great. Thank you so much. And thank you to Axel for the great solutions. We will have the subset list for you by the 15th for sure

Comment 16

[Laura Forrest]

Update: Due to marketing campaign timing changes, we will not be using the What's New page for the Firefox 17 launch next Tuesday. 

We will, however, use it once timing is re-established. 

Closing this bug for now.

Comment 17

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

Laura, does it mean that there will be no whatsnew page displayed at all, silent update?

Comment 18

[Laura Forrest]

(In reply to Pascal Chevrel:pascalc from comment #17)
> Laura, does it mean that there will be no whatsnew page displayed at all,
> silent update?

Correct -- although we'd like to explore other options and want to finish building out the web content because: 

1. We may try to use a Hotfix to fire this page if needed between releases. The same content/localization would be needed then, so let's continue to build it out. 

2. We may use this with Firefox 18 launch. If so, the same content/localization would be needed then, so let's continue to build it out. 

Let's follow up on that within the WebDev implementation bug 808117

Comment 19

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

(In reply to Laura Forrest from comment #16)
> Update: Due to marketing campaign timing changes, we will not be using the
> What's New page for the Firefox 17 launch next Tuesday. 

OK. I double checked that we're already suppressing What's New in the update snippets, that's the silent at
 http://hg.mozilla.org/build/tools/file/aae9aa4f3891/release/patcher-configs/mozRelease-branch-patcher2.cfg#l4