Re: Thoughts on Bug 678775

L. David Baron wrote:
> On Aug 16, 10:58 pm, Asa Dotzler<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> Will Peavy wrote:
>>> As a user, I like the idea of this update. When I check the "About"
>>> view, the first thing I want to know is - how up to date is my
>>> browser?
>> And I believe we can give you just this in a much more usable way than
>> we have ever done before.
>>
>> The current way that we help you learn if you're up to date is that we
>> give you a number.
>
> But that's not the only use case for having the version number
> in the about box.  It's also important for communicating about
> the software that users are using.  For example, users reporting
> a problem with a Web site may want to tell the author of the site
> (or be asked by the author of the site) what version of the browser
> they are using.  (And there isn't only a single version:  we have
> multiple release channels, and we frequently throttle large updates
> out gradually.)  Likewise for users seeking support, either through
> official channels or through family and friends (who may not know
> about about:support, but may well know enough to solve the
> problem).  The information for users to communicate what version
> of software they're using should be readily available where power
> users (those who are going to be doing support for their frends, or
> getting bugs on their Web sites) expect it to be so that they can
> at least tell the users they need that information from where to look
> for it.
>
> -David

You brought up two troubleshooting cases. We have a menu item for that.

Help->Troubleshooting is not difficult. We already put Help-About in a 
different place from pretty much every other browser so people already 
have to figure out discreet paths to the version information for all of 
the popular browsers on all of their different platforms. Given that 
they all have to re-write their support script or doc when any browser 
moves the menu item to a new location (from a menubar to a Firefox 
button on the left side of the browser to a gear button on the right 
side of the browser, etc.) I don't see the hardship in someone doing 
support learning to ask the user to go to Help-Troubleshooting rather 
than Help-About and they'll end up with a much more complete picture of 
what could be going wrong with the site or with Firefox.

- A