872820 - Current design of the Add-ons manager makes troubleshooting difficult

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 259057

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[jt98989]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:21.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0
Build ID: 20130511120803

Steps to reproduce:

I opened about:add-ons with the intention of trying to determine whether a problem was in an add-on itself, or in a conflict with other installed addons.  I then attempted to disable all addons except the one with problem behavior.


Actual results:

I was only to disable one add-on at a time.


Expected results:

I should have been able to use standard Windows controls like CTRL + A, CTRL + Click, or SHIFT + Click to select all, or some selection, on the add-ons, and then have been able to operate on the entire set with one click of the "disable" button.  Later, I should have been able to repeat the process, and click the "enable" button to re-enable a set.  

Without this capability, a basic, standard troubleshooting activity becomes very time-consuming for any user having a substantial number of add-ons installed.

Comment 1

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Thank you for the bug. We already have an open issue for this request.

Comment 2

[jt98989]

I propose that Kevin's resolution be changed so that bug 259057 is marked as a duplicate of this one, or that neither is marked as a duplicate of the other.  Kevin's resolution virtually insures that this aspect of the browser will never be improved.  

Bug 259057 was written almost 9 years ago, and reopened almost 8 years ago.  It has been dormant ever since.  I believe that is attributable largely to its original intent, and the way it was therefore written. The initial statement of 259057 deals with a problem involving updates for add-ons that was subsequently resolved, with the result that the bug was closed. It is only in later comments that the idea is presented that being able to select multiple add-ons would be good for other purposes as well. In other words, the original problem addressed by 259057 is not a duplicate of this one.  The fact that comments raise my issue should not constitute grounds to determine that the bug itself is a duplicate. I believe that the proper procedure years ago should have been to close that bug as resolved, and raise the idea identified in the comments as a separate bug.  

Inadvertently, I have now done that. It's not coincidental that my search of Bugzilla did not indicate that the issue had been raised before.  By contrast with 259057, this bug immediately identifies an inadequacy of a component of the current version of the browser, and directly states what would need to be done to improve it.  That, coupled with the fact that this bug is new, make it more likely that this issue would catch someone's attention, and thus actually lead to browser enhancement.

Comment 3

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

We dupe bugs to the oldest existing bug. It does not matter the bugs age or activity. If you would like to discuss the future of the feature https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/firefox-dev is best.