Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

On 17/08/11 00:36, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>
>
> jez wrote:
>> On Aug 16, 6:08 pm, Asa Dotzler<[email protected]> wrote:
>>> jez wrote:
>>>> 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?
>>> This is silly. It doesn't impact users submitting bugs in the least bit.
>>> Maybe you haven't used Bugzilla?
>>>
>>> Bugzilla inserts the user's User Agent, Version, and BuildID when they
>>> file bugs through the default interface.
>>>
>>> If they're advanced enough to switch from the default interface to the
>>> advanced interface, they're advanced enough to use
>>> about->troubleshooting.
>>>
>>> - A
>>
>> Yes I have used bugzilla, but only through the web interface.
>> Isn't it quite common to want to submit a bug report using a browser
>> that isn't broken?
>
> Both the basic and the advanced interfaces are Web based. The basic
> interface that the overwhelming majority of new users picks up the
> browser's identifiers. In the far less frequent case that the user is
> not using Firefox (where Firefox is so broken that it cannot file a bug
> report -- something that happens about one day every two or three years)
> then the user should go to About->Troubleshooting in Firefox, click the
> "Copy to clipboard" and paste all of that information into the bug
> report. If the user doesn't do that, she will probably be requested to
> do that by someone triaging the bug.
>
> However, if Firefox is so broken that the user cannot use it to file a
> bug report, the chances are that About->Firefox and
> About->Troubleshooting are both broken. In that case, the user will have
> to look at the Firefox uninstall entry or inside the Firefox install
> directory to determine which version she's on.
>
> - A

As a triager, I've seen bugs at bugzilla.mozilla.org which had been 
reported using Internet Explorer. In that's case it's obvious that the 
bug is not reported about the browser whose UA string is on top of 
comment #0, and, if the reporter didn't think of it, we can ask for a 
copy-paste of the last line of the about: page (the one with the 
user-agent string) from the buggy browser.

However, I've also seen bugs reported about one version of Firefox or 
SeaMonkey, after upgrading (or sometimes downgrading) to a different 
version of the same browser, than the one with the bug. In that case 
it's not so obvious, and we may try reproducing the bug... on a version 
other than the buggy one, and failing because of that.

Even if the reporter thinks of mentioning that the buggy version is not 
the one being used to report the bug, we need to know (as exactly as 
possible) which version was the buggy one. If the reporter knows which 
version had the bug (because he remembers having seen it on the about 
page), he'll hopefully mention it. If he doesn't know it, it's lost, so 
yes, in some cases (which are perhaps marginal, but they exist) hiding 
the version from the average user (by moving it to someplace where it 
won't be obvious to him) does make bug solving more difficult.

And about an "uninstall entry", I don't know about Windows, but on Mac 
OS X (where uninstalling happens by dragging the old version to the 
dustbin) or on Linux (where uninstalling happens by removing the 
installation directory and all its contents, typically by typing

	rm -Rvf /usr/local/firefox

at a shell prompt, there _is_ no record left of that uninstall once the 
Mac OS X dustbin has been emptied or, on Linux, as soon as the uninstall 
is done.


Best regards,
Tony.
-- 
Egotist, n.:
	A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"