Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

Okay - I've finally made it through all the posts on bugzilla and here.

And I still have not seen a rational, compelling reason presented for removing the version number from the Help:About box.

@Asa posits that the version number generates confusion and anxiety:
On Aug 16, 1:27 pm, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
> Now you're confused because you heard about 5.0.1 and 6 and your browser
> says 5 and you're wondering what's up. You were up to date and yet
> you're left thinking you're not because of these mostly meaningless and
> awfully confusing numbers. That's unfortunate. Version numbers are
> confusing and caused you unnecessary anxiety.

However, this was a misunderstanding of the original post, in which the user managed to query the FTP server between the time the latest (6) version of the browser had become available via FTP and the time (shortly thereafter) when the version became available via the automatic update.  The actual situation was an extreme corner case that shouldn't bear much discussion (with all respect to the OP of that datum).

@Asa also notes that Firefox support people are on board with this change:
>On Aug 16, 9:49 am, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
>Ron, I've spoken at length with Firefox support people and they're 
>completely OK asking users to go to About->Troubleshooting rather than 
>About->Firefox to give them the data they need to troubleshoot with the 
>user."
But I've a feeling that these are the Firefox support individuals with Mozilla ties, and not those support individuals who support Firefox, but are not paid by/volunteering for Mozilla (e.g., Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo end users - Aunt Ethel and Uncle Fred who bought their systems from one of the major OEMs).  And I'm sorry, Asa - Robert's defense of you being passionate about your ideas notwithstanding - a lot of the people posting here, and on the Bugzilla, and on Slashdot are Firefox support individuals. We do it because we love Firefox, a lot of us do it because we love Mozilla.  We aren't paid by Mozilla. We may not even be "active in the community" by way of development or engaging deeply in the discussions in usenet (honestly, until this issue came up, I thought usenet had basically desc
 ended into pr0n, and hadn't looked at it in nearly a decade); but we are active advocates of Mozilla products, and because we are advocates, those who take our advise and adopt Mozilla produ
 cts come to us for support.  And we would like the version number to remain in the Help:About dialog (whether it's a box, or a tab, or something else) until the version number has become meaningless.  This should be a trailing change, not a leading change. We are not on board.

In an attempt to dismiss the argument that "Help:About" is the location to find the version number, you make the point for that being the location of the version number clearly:
>On Aug 16, 4:06 pm, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
>Firefox 3.6: Help->About 
>Firefox 4+: Firefox menu->Help->About 
>IE 6-8: Help->About 
>IE 9: Gear menu->About 
>Chrome: Wrench menu->About 
>Safari: Gear menu->About 
>Opera: Opera menu->Help->About 
Demonstrating that regardless of the application or version, the version number is always in the About box (although sometimes the About box isn't nested under the Help menu).  (And to answer the inquiry about Mac OS X - every application I've used there on my daily-use system contains the version information under "ApplicationName:About ApplicationName".)

And while Help:Troubleshooting Information will continue to contain the version number, violating a documented UX guideline published for the major OSs upon which Mozilla products run seems like a net-loss endeavor (again, noting that if this is implemented as a trailing change, rather than a leading change, to the de-emphasization of the version number, it could at that point become a "well, duh" change).

I've two questions to ask: First, can we get some actual study numbers on the number of users who open the About box to discover if they are up-to-date, vs. the number of users who open the About box to discover what version of the application they are running? and
Second, I'll reposit the question that has been asked before but not succinctly answered: What is the value-add of removing the version number from the About box?  I get that the goal is to de-emphasize the version number, but even with that in mind, how is this change value-add before the version number has been de-emphasized to non-relevance?