Re: Linux and Software Freedom

SmoothPorcupine wrote:
> On Aug 16, 8:33 pm, Asa Dotzler<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> There's a perfect example up-thread where a user didn't know if he was
>> up to date when he had Firefox 5.0 installed but Google or some news
>> report or some friend told him they had 5.0.1.
>
> True enough. But the chronology is backwards here. That comment
> happened after this decision was "made." If that specific type of
> situation had been the sole cause of removing the version from the
> About dialog, but not from the Troubleshoot page, then I'd expect that
> explanation would have been given much earlier. It wasn't given
> earlier, as far as I can find, so it leads me to think that there are
> yet uncited reasons for the removal of the version string from the
> About window, but not the Troubleshoot page. I would love to hear
> these other reasons if there are any.

The goal was to remove version confusion and make the most common use of 
this dialog: to check if you're up to date, as usable and obvious and 
functional as it could possibly be. I referenced the above case an a 
real world example of confusion and lack of usability for the use case 
of a user wanting to know whether she is up to date or not.

>> Answering the question "am I on the latest version"
>> is the primary usability goal of the About window for Mozilla. We think
>> we can answer that in a way that isn't confusing for most people and
>> doesn't require users to guess about whether "the Web" or "a friend" of
>> "something I read on twitter" are reporting accurately on what the
>> latest version is for that user.
>
> If someone gets caught up in such a situation, and they open the About
> window to find Firefox saying it's up to date, but with a lower
> version than they saw cited in the "gossip," and decide to distrust
> the dialog, and research it anyway, then will they not come out of the
> experience with more trust in what Firefox says? The learning process
> may be arduous, but the results would be positive, would they not?

Users shouldn't have to learn how to find out if they're up to date. 
Features like this should just work. If the primary reason we have the 
version information in the about dialog is, as I assert, to help users 
determine if they're up to date then the feature is not terribly usable 
as is. If we change it to remove confusion and to be explicit about the 
up-to-date-edness of the user's Firefox, then we have made it more usable.

- A