901747 - When startup time is slow, point users to the Firefox Reset article

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Verdi [:verdi] NI or PM me]

In bug 836010 a notification is triggered that sends people to https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-takes-long-time-start-up 

We should change that to https://support.mozilla.org/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems This is the best suggestion to fix slow startup times. It is the first thing suggested in the article and it's what is suggested when FHR detects slow startup times. 

Alternately, we can directly prompt users to reset Firefox. As of Fx 25, resetting will save your session data.

(In reply to Stephen Horlander [:shorlander] from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836010#c46
> I have to agree. If we are telling users that Firefox is slow they probably
> just want us to fix it rather than us sending them on a troubleshooting deep
> dive. 
> 
> Although I would be a little hesitant to link directly to the Profile Reset
> while it is still throwing away session data.

Comment 1

[Matt Grimes [:Matt_G]]

Any updates on this? It is a much better experience to offer the Firefox Reset button directly rather than pointing the user to a Help article.

Comment 2

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Attachment: Patch v.1

Trivial patch.

Looking at the article and current strings in the notification bar ("Firefox seems slow… to… start. [Learn How to Speed It Up] [Don't Tell Me Again]"), I think this is both appropriate and doesn't need any change to message/buttons.

Bug 872172 is the likely long-term answer (ie, drop people right into a browser-rest flow), or maybe some kind of handwavy FHR-driven process. But this is a righteous tweak we can make and uplift right away. (And helps give some experience/data if pushing slow-startup users toward a reset is the right or wrong thing to do).

Comment 3

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Comment on attachment 794856 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v.1

Review of attachment 794856 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

::: browser/components/nsBrowserGlue.js
@@ +542,5 @@
>        {
>          label:     win.gNavigatorBundle.getString("slowStartup.helpButton.label"),
>          accessKey: win.gNavigatorBundle.getString("slowStartup.helpButton.accesskey"),
>          callback: function () {
> +          win.openUILinkIn("https://support.mozilla.org/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fix-most-problems", "tab");

It would be good to use openHelpLink but I think we'll need an identifier created for it. Simply calling openHelpLink('firefox-takes-long-time-start-up') goes to a 404.

Comment 4

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/f19b628e81e6

Comment 5

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Comment on attachment 794856 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch v.1

[Approval Request Comment]

This is a trivial URL change, to point users at a different SUMO article when they're experiencing slow startups. Should be risk-free. There's no particular urgency to get this on Beta, but seems like we should just do it.

Comment 6

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f19b628e81e6

Comment 7

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-aurora/rev/e56e99a1ce5f
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/c8bd0aac66c0

Comment 8

[Bogdan Maris [:bogdan_maris], Release Desktop QA]

Is there a way to force firefox on a slow start? I opened ~30 tabs, unchecked "Don't load tabs until selected" and selected "Show my windows and tabs from last time" in order to force a slow start. 
I tried this on my Windows 8 machine on which it takes about 33 seconds to load FF but no notification appears.

Comment 9

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

The pref browser.slowStartup.timeThreshold is set to the amount of time that the average must surpass in order for the warning to be shown.

It defaults to 60000, which would be 60 seconds. To make it easier to test, you can could change it to 5000, which would be equivalent to 5 seconds.

Comment 10

[Bogdan Maris [:bogdan_maris], Release Desktop QA]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0

Thanks Jared. I was able to get that notification bar on Firefox 24 beta 6 (buildID: 20130826142034) and latest Nightly (buildID: 20130827030201) by toggling with the value of browser.slowStartup.timeThreshold but not every time I opened FF (1 out of 5 tries). 
Is it safe to call this verified?

Comment 11

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Yes, in fact it may have required 5 times since we require the average of five samples to be above the threshold.

Comment 12

[Bogdan Maris [:bogdan_maris], Release Desktop QA]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0

Verified as fixed with latest Aurora 25.0a2 (Build ID: 20130909004001).

Comment 13

[Bogdan Maris [:bogdan_maris], Release Desktop QA]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0

Verified as fixed on latest Aurora 26.0a2 (buildID: 20131010004002).