950799 - About dialog incorrectly says that firefox is up to date

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[hartnegg]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:17.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/17.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130618114625

Steps to reproduce:

help / about / check for updates


Actual results:

claims that my version is up to date (17.0.7esr).
Tried several more times with same result.
After a while and another check it noticed that there is an update and downloaded it.


Expected results:

When it does not get a response from the server (my guess), then it should not claim that it is up to date, but say that it cannot check right now.

Comment 1

[hartnegg]

Checked my guess and found it confirmed. When I unplug the PC from the network, the updater always claims that the software is up to date, regardless how many versions it is behind.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

This is specific to the Firefox About dialog and outside of app update so moving to the correct component. The behavior was decided by Firefox User Experience in that if there are X number of failures (typically 5) in a row then you will be notified of the failure when the background check occurs.

Comment 4

[Ioana (away)]

Issue reproducible on Linux too, with Firefox 17ESR, 24ESR and release. When opening the About dialog with no internet connection, it says the app is up to date (no matter how many times you open it for it to check again).

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Philipp, should we really be lying here rather than saying something like "Firefox couldn't check for updates on your network. Perhaps our servers have issues or your internet connection is down?"

Comment 7

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Yeah, we could be more helpful there. How about:
»Firefox couldn't check for updates at this time. Please check your network connection or try again later«

Note that this shouldn't mean that the user gets any additional notifications. I'm only talking about improving the copy in the about dialog when the user opens it manually.

Comment 8

[Filipus Klutiero]

Also happens on Firefox 34.0.5 on Windows. Tried multiple times, no way to update from within Firefox.

Comment 9

[Filipus Klutiero]

Firefox now offered the update. This might be a coincidence, but it happened after restarting Windows.

Comment 10

[Jeff Rivett]

The wording definitely needs to be changed. I find myself wondering whether the About dialog is checking for the absolute availability of a new version, or checking whether an update is available via auto-update. My understanding is that Mozilla rolls out auto-updates gradually across the Internet (i.e. not to every segment at the same time. Clarification would be nice.

Comment 12

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 3 duplicates.
:mossop, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 13

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.