915906 - Remove Troubleshooting Information from the help menu

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Menus, defect)

Description

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

The Troubleshooting Information page doesn't provide easily actionable information. Even when providing this information to SUMO, it doesn't make it more likely that a user's question will solved except in the case of a crash. See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gXkY9GQnclyajYpdYEpJzS5Y-oDhf8_pBNZnUVYx7_k/edit 

And the support site now uses a restartless add-on - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/troubleshooter/ - to make providing the information on this page easy; without a trip to Troubleshooting Information. In the future, the plan is to build this facility in Firefox. See Bug 732527

For the users that still rely on this page it would still be accessible via about:support.

Comment 1

[M** A****]

Surprisingly enough SUMO is NOT the only source of help for Firefox problems and phone home addons are getting less and less popular because of the NSA debacle.

Comment 2

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to M** A**** from comment #1)
> Surprisingly enough SUMO is NOT the only source of help for Firefox problems

That's a fair point. Maybe finding a better name for the menu item would be an option? Such that end users won't use it thinking it would directly provide them with the necessary information to solve their problem themselves.

Comment 3

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Wontfix?

Comment 4

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

(In reply to Chris Ilias [:cilias] from comment #3)
> Wontfix?
Sorry - other things have taken my time in the last six months. I'll be back on this very soon. This bug is part of a larger plan for the help menu - bug 915908 & bug 872240

Comment 5

[Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11]

If you don't want this in the 'help menu' perhaps it could be moved to DevTools ?

Nightly testers use the Troubleshooting page for quick access to features it provides in its current form:

about:buildconfig
about:memory
about:plugins
UA string
Quick access to Crash-reports

Valuable quick information about video drivers and the condition of HWA, (on/off), 
Incremental GC 

Nightly users have already found bugs in the past when IGC got disabled by a bad patch, otherwise no one would have noticed I suspect. 

Its quick and easy to flip the main page and buildconfig when filing bugs to include the cset tested, and UA string, just to name a couple uses that I'm sure Nightly testers find valuable.  

I suppose that perhaps also the about:xxxxx noted above could be integrated into FHR.

Comment 6

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

(In reply to Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11 from comment #5)
> If you don't want this in the 'help menu' perhaps it could be moved to
> DevTools ?
Thanks for the suggestion Jim. Putting these things in FHR has been suggested before but dev tools hasn't - very interesting.

Comment 7

[merfius]

Replace it with "Troubleshoot a problem" that either attempts to troubleshoot the problem or instructs to attempt restarting with add-ons disabled / a new profile.

Comment 8

[Paul [pwd]]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #2)
> (In reply to M** A**** from comment #1)
> > Surprisingly enough SUMO is NOT the only source of help for Firefox problems
> 
> That's a fair point. Maybe finding a better name for the menu item would be
> an option? Such that end users won't use it thinking it would directly
> provide them with the necessary information to solve their problem
> themselves.

May I suggest "Technical Information".

Comment 9

[rsx11m]

(In reply to Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11 from comment #5)
> If you don't want this in the 'help menu' perhaps it could be moved to DevTools ?

In light of comment #8 and the earlier comments it's referring to, moving that basic support information into a nightly-users extension (assuming that this is what's suggested here) wouldn't be helpful for non-SUMO support provided by forums or within a user's own institution. Thus +1 to retaining that menuitem in one form or another with the current information for future release versions as well.

Comment 10

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

Michael, could you elaborate more on what "doesn't provide easily actionable information" means? I'm unclear on what the problem is and why you want it removed?

Plus, I don't see a discussion about the plan in firefox-dev. Did you post a summary there?

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Chris Ilias [:cilias] from comment #10)
> Michael, could you elaborate more on what "doesn't provide easily actionable
> information" means? I'm unclear on what the problem is and why you want it
> removed?
> 
> Plus, I don't see a discussion about the plan in firefox-dev. Did you post a
> summary there?


(In reply to rsx11m from comment #9)
> (In reply to Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11 from comment #5)
> > If you don't want this in the 'help menu' perhaps it could be moved to DevTools ?
> 
> In light of comment #8 and the earlier comments it's referring to, moving
> that basic support information into a nightly-users extension (assuming that
> this is what's suggested here) wouldn't be helpful for non-SUMO support
> provided by forums or within a user's own institution. Thus +1 to retaining
> that menuitem in one form or another with the current information for future
> release versions as well.

seconded. An addon is a non-starter - and especially inconvenient for testers of any channel who may choose to use zero extensions for example in new profiles or in safe mode

Comment 12

[Verdi [:verdi] Best to slack me]

I'm no longer working on this so clearing the NI. I think we have better solutions to this issue but I think it will be a while till we get to them.