986969 - Better update dialog experience

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 893505

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

Every few weeks (days), everyone one of our Firefox installs display a big dialog that says "hey do something or don't do anything":

https://twitter.com/dougturner/status/447800485223735296

Is there any value in this dialog?  iirc, the typical session length is sub 10 minutes, so maybe it isn't that annoying to most people.


If I may be prescriptive, using an infobar similar to the one we use to notify people of their rights (first run) might be a cleaner experience.

Comment 1

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

The picture looks like an ambient display. Short of some magic to detect we're in that situation, or a kiosk or just about to start a presentation, the solution is to disable updates when setting it up.

For general users, the nag screen is to encourage the user to get up to date. The wait before showing it (via app.update.promptWaitTime) is 12 hours for nightly, 24h for Aurora, and 48h for beta/release/esr. In the last case there security-exposure implications in removing the dialog completely, but perhaps the same encouragement can be applied in a different form. Semi-related, I find the toast notifications are too transient for me to pay attention to them.

Comment 2

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Two points:

Most users never see these dialogs. These will only appear for users who haven't restarted after downloading an update in the last 48 hours. Most users restart more often than this (It's possible that frequent restarts are part of the update issues that we do have).

If anything, we need to make this dialog more in your face. We can clearly do some UI work, but anything that makes this dialog easier to ignore is the wrong way to approach it. Infobars are notoriously easy to miss and ignore. I love the window approach, but we could do some better UI work here :)

Comment 3

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

(In reply to Doug Turner (:dougt) from comment #0)
> Every few weeks (days), everyone one of our Firefox installs display a big
> dialog that says "hey do something or don't do anything":
> 
> https://twitter.com/dougturner/status/447800485223735296
Definitely not everyone.

> Is there any value in this dialog?
Yes there is. That UI is to get people to restart to apply an update. Without it those few people (iirc less than 2% of users according to test pilot) that don't restart within 48 hours after an update has been downloaded and applied could have security vulnerabilities.

>  iirc, the typical session length is sub
> 10 minutes, so maybe it isn't that annoying to most people.
Glad to see you backed off from it being everyone!

> 
> If I may be prescriptive, using an infobar similar to the one we use to
> notify people of their rights (first run) might be a cleaner experience.
The infobar is page specific and was shot down as a possible way of notification. There is already a bug filed for cleaning up the general UI and there is already a bug filed for providing an app notification UI from many years ago to get rid of this as well.

Bug 347585 is for the app notification widget.
Bug 752996 is for using doorhangers

Comment 4

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

> Definitely not everyone.

Re-read.  I am talking about our installs for the displays we have about the office.

> Glad to see you backed off from it being everyone!

Snarky, unhelpful.

> The infobar is page specific and was shot down as a possible way of notification. 

I am pretty sure we use the infobar to display non-page specific content such as about:rights



Duplicating a bug against something that is 6 years old is depressing.  Is 347585 really a dup of this?  Maybe a dup of 893505?

Gavin, Any advice on moving this forward?

Comment 5

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

(In reply to Doug Turner (:dougt) from comment #4)
> > Definitely not everyone.
> 
> Re-read.  I am talking about our installs for the displays we have about the
> office.
Re-summarized for that case then.

Typical user settings are likely not what is wanted for the displays around our office and the preferences can and should be set by the maintainers of the install for the non-standard use case to prevent this if that is what they want.

> > Glad to see you backed off from it being everyone!
> 
> Snarky, unhelpful.
1) at least it was an accurate and true statement.
2) uninformed, inaccurate, and snarky twitter posts set the tone of the conversation.

Let's both of us keep it civil without assuming things are just the "the dumbest dialogs in software" or that you already know that there are preferences to prevent that.

> > The infobar is page specific and was shot down as a possible way of notification. 
> 
> I am pretty sure we use the infobar to display non-page specific content
> such as about:rights
About:rights gets away with it by displaying on startup on the last tab displayed.

> 
> 
> 
> Duplicating a bug against something that is 6 years old is depressing.  Is
> 347585 really a dup of this?  Maybe a dup of 893505?
> 
> Gavin, Any advice on moving this forward?
Gavin, it would be great to have app wide notification area and after talking with a couple of people earlier today I have been told that sync is using an infobar along the bottom for app level notifications.

Having said that, there are bugs for dealing with the cases I thought this bug was about. With this being about essentially non-standard systems moving this bug to an IT bug to configure these systems so the dialog to ask the user to restart is not displayed 48 hours after an update has been downloaded / applied would be a good thing.

Comment 6

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

> With this being about essentially non-standard systems moving this bug to an IT bug

Did you see Kev's comment about how he uses his PC?
     https://twitter.com/deadsquid/status/447903399238201344

Comment 7

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

(In reply to Doug Turner (:dougt) from comment #6)
> > With this being about essentially non-standard systems moving this bug to an IT bug
> 
> Did you see Kev's comment about how he uses his PC?
>      https://twitter.com/deadsquid/status/447903399238201344
and we want the user to restart the browser for that scenario per both security and release drivers. Anyways, that is a different scenario from the one you said this bug was about. I am in no way saying that a better application level notification isn't needed and I have wanted one for app update for several years now with no joy. I also think that the bug I referenced handle that case.

So, is this bug about the unmanned scenario you said it was about in comment #4 or is it for the multi-user scenario?

Comment 8

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

I don't want to be prescriptive, but this is bug should be about moving from the dialog that we have now to the application infobar that we use for about:rights or sync.

Comment 9

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

We already have bug 893505 for simplifying the UI which is essentially a UI rewrite and would include moving to the new sync infobar as I suggested as a possible solution to you after Ally brought to my attention that sync had an app level infobar notification with Ally (as previously noted in this bug and in email, about:rights aiui gets away with showing the tab specific infobar by showing it on first run only on the displayed tab).

So, if you want the notification cleaned up then this is a dupe of bug 893505. If you want IT to configure the unmanned systems to not display the UI as you stated this bug is about then this should be moved over to IT to configure those systems.

Comment 10

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

Sounds like it's a dup.  Let me know if you need help on any of it.