Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

On Aug 16, 11:23 am, jez <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Aug 15, 9:35 pm, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > It's simple. We are moving to a release model that makes version numbers
> > meaningless and unactionable for consumers. In that model, version
> > numbers go away.
>
> Implicit is the idea that consumers should never see anything that
> might be meaningless or unactionable to them.
> That idea is certainly not true in general -- some consumers pay a
> premium for watches with a visible mechanism, but I'm sure nobody
> would claim that the cogs and escapements are meaningful or actionable
> to the majority of the people who pay extra to see them. So why is it
> true here? I personally don't see how a consumer who doesn't care
> would hurt himself on being confronted with this mysterious thing
> called a "version number."
>
> My data point is: I rarely look at the About dialogue, and when I do
> the ONLY reason is to check the version number. I expect About: to be
> a purely informative dialogue, I don't expect it to make any changes,
> such as an update. Have you considered putting this update stuff under
> an item called "update." I don't see how putting "update"
> functionality in the non-descriptive "about" dialogue is more
> discoverable than menu items that just do what they claim to.
>
> How do other users use the "About" dialogue, if at all? Does anybody
> bring that dialogue up who doesn't want to find the version number?
>
> Small suggestion: consider announcing the date & time of the last
> update, rather than the time since the last update. I'll always
> believe the date and time, I might not believe "20 minutes ago,"
> especially if the dialogue has not just been opened. Big suggestion:
> consider that "about" is the wrong place for this update stuff.
>
> Jez.

Another thing to bare in mind is hiding the version number introduces
a barrier to an ordinary user submitting a useful bug report. Surely
we want users to be able to easily submit bug reports without exposing
them to a genuinely scary page like about:support.
Making this harder surely leads to bug feedback which is more and more
skewed towards geeks?

Jez.