869191 - Migrate plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin to plugins.notifyMissingFlash

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 870112

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Desktop Nightly (23.0a1 2013-05-06) on my Linux desktop is prompting for plugin install every time I visit a page with flash. If I click on 'Install Flash' the plugin finder always says "No suitable plugins were found." This is annoying

I'm surprised we're encouraging people to install plugins for embedded content at this point. That aside, can we not prompt if the plugin's never going to be available? This is a confusing user experience.

Comment 1

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl]]

I believe bug 836420 will take care of this.

Comment 2

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Looks like it.

I gather from that bug this isn't new behaviour, and it's just that my "Don't ask" pref has been reset?

Comment 3

[Christian Sonne [:cers]]

(In reply to Ralph Giles (:rillian) from comment #0)
> Desktop Nightly (23.0a1 2013-05-06) on my Linux desktop is prompting for
> plugin install every time I visit a page with flash. If I click on 'Install
> Flash' the plugin finder always says "No suitable plugins were found." This
> is annoying

I would have thought that bug 839206 would have at least partially solved this - how does the prompt you see look?

Comment 4

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Attachment: screenshot of the doorhanger

Here's a screenshot of the prompt. If I click outside the doorhanger it goes away, and can be brought back by clicking on the plugin icon at the start of the awesomebar.

Comment 5

[Christian Sonne [:cers]]

(In reply to Ralph Giles (:rillian) from comment #4)
> Created attachment 746087 [details]
> screenshot of the doorhanger
> 
> Here's a screenshot of the prompt. If I click outside the doorhanger it goes
> away, and can be brought back by clicking on the plugin icon at the start of
> the awesomebar.

And clicking the arrow and selecting the secondary action "Don't ask again" doesn't make it not open that doorhanger anymore? The icon should still show up though, to give you some indication that something is missing, and clicking it will open the door hanger...

Comment 6

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

"Don't ask again" works as intended. I was complaining about prompting at all when no plugin is available.

Comment 7

[Christian Sonne [:cers]]

(In reply to Ralph Giles (:rillian) from comment #6)
Ah, sorry - then yes, bug 836420 should take care of that.

Comment 8

[Benjamin Smedberg]

The part I don't quite understand here is why no plugin is available. Flash is available for Linux, and we should be finding it now, as well as when the "new/simple PFS" is done.

Comment 9

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Maybe nothing is marked compatible with FF 23 for 64-bit Linux? Searching addons.mozilla.org doesn't show anything for official flash even if I ask for FF 20 compatibility.

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ offers "Adobe Flash Player version 11.2.202.280
Your system: Linux 64-bit, Firefox | 4.3 KB"

Comment 10

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Ah, yes. Bug 839206 removed the usage of plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin, since the default UX is much better (eg, instead of a big bright notification bar, you get a subtle icon. Flash is a special case, in that it shows the panel by default.)

I guess we were mostly thinking about new-user experience, and not so much for the small number of users who manually set this semi-obscure pref.

I think it would be reasonable to add some pref migration code so that if plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin is true, we set plugins.notifyMissingFlash to true as well. Let's use this bug for that.

The PFS part should be "working" just as it did before bug 839206, but even the "working" UX is pretty terrible so it might be hard to tell. :( I think it will tell you that it failed, and then give you a manual link to http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer. 

What happens if you run an older Firefox (previous Nightly, or a current Release) in a new profile, with plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin left at the default value, and trigger the install process from the notification bar?

Comment 11

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Attachment: screenshot of the PFS failure

Hmm. my normal profile has plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin at the default (false) value.

The PFS says, "No suitable plugins were found," and at the bottom has a link which opens http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/ There's no link to Adobe or other suggestion how to obtain flash. See attached screenshot.

If I open Firefox 20 on a clean profile, I get an "Additional plugins are needed to display all the media on this page" banner instead of the doorhanger. Clicking the 'install' button opens the PFS with the same result as in Nightly.

Comment 12

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Ok, so PFS was already broken. New bug?

https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni/blob/master/services/pfs.py

flash_re = re.compile(r'^(Win|(PPC|Intel) Mac OS X|Linux.+i\d86)|SunOs', re.IGNORECASE)

This regex doesn't work so swell when the UA has "Linux x86_64".

Comment 13

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Nice. I've filed bug 869721 against Zamboni.

Comment 14

[Christian Sonne [:cers]]

Attachment: Migrate pref and rename old pref to match new purpose

Comment 16

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Morphing title to reflect new focus of _this_ bug.

Comment 17

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Comment on attachment 747196 [details] [diff] [review]
Migrate pref and rename old pref to match new purpose

(Now that the missing-plugin notification bar is gone, having another bar share a pref named for something that no longers exists is confusing, so let's just make it dead. I don't think there's any need to migrate to the new pref -- the old intent was overloaded.)

Comment 18

[Christian Sonne [:cers]]

Attachment: Migrate pref and rename old pref to match new purpose

Comment 19

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

This patch already landed, but the commit referred to bug 870112. So changing the direction of the dupe.