Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

Isaac Stitz wrote:
> On Aug 20, 12:20 am, Asa Dotzler<[email protected]>  wrote:
>> We have a current user base of about 450 million people all over the
>> world. In the coming years, we intend to grow that to 1 billion people.
>>    We cannot design Firefox to work perfectly "out of the box" for every
>> possible users. We must design for the larges audience possible and then
>> offer customization, including add-ons, to help those who are not happy
>> with the defaults to configure a Firefox that works just right for them.
>
> I bet a vast majority of those users don't take advantage of FF's
> feature to block third-party cookies either.  So clearly it should be
> removed and relegated to an add-on, right?  Same goes for the new anti-
> tracking and FF Sync functions.

Isaac, that argument doesn't take into account how our mission pushes us 
to help users learn about and take advantage of those features. Our 
mission does not ask us to help users understand software version 
numbers. Not all features or software capabilities are equal.

It seems like arguments like this are just about winning, even at the 
expense of progress and understanding. Can we not do that?

>>> It sounds to me like you think a little too much of your own intellect
>>> and a little too little of your users'.
>> I think this discussion would probably result in better outcomes if we
>> avoided personal attacks or insults.
>>
>> Let me try to address that statement, though. I think about 450 million
>> users and how they interact with the Web through a web browser. That's
>> my job. It's also the job of Mozilla's UX team -- a collection of
>> experts in usability and design.  We do not think of users as dumb or
>> incompetent or anything like that. We look at the challenges they face
>> interacting with the Web and we design features and workflows that try
>> to make their use of the Web as empowering and enjoyable as possible.
>
> I'll make you a deal:  I'll refrain from "personal attacks" (really
> just criticizing your attitude) if you refrain from personal ego
> inflation by telling everyone what super talented experts you are.

This is not my ego. This is how Mozilla operates. People with talent and 
skill and persistence rise to positions of authority within Mozilla. 
They become the decision makers. There is nothing wrong in saying that. 
There is also nothing at all wrong in articulating the different roles 
that are played by people with great feedback and an acute interest in a 
problem and the people who are responsible for solving that problem and 
have been delegated that authority by the project because of their 
experience and their skills.

I wish that you didn't interpret that as "we're important and you're 
not" but it seems like there's not much I'm going to be able to say to 
convince you that is not the case.  Because I don't think you're willing 
to give me the benefit of the doubt, perhaps my own fault, I'd ask you 
again to go read about how Mozilla works in the official documentation. 
Maybe that will explain it better than I can.

http://www.mozilla.org/about/governance.html
http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/module-ownership.html

> Back on topic:  How does removing the version number from the About
> dialog empower users?

In the new rapid release system, users are always up to date or in the 
process of updating. They no longer have to worry about whether or not 
they've got the latest version and how and where to get it and install 
it. But, we're not yet to a place where users have the confidence in 
this new model and are going to all just assume that it's working and 
that they are up to date.  So, we've created a feature, a simple update 
check to help with that. When a user opens the about dialog (where they 
have traditionally gone to find out what version they're on and if that 
version matches the latest version being offered at the Website for 
download and install) we do a quick ping of the Mozilla server and we 
let the user know that "Hey there. I've just checked in with Mozilla and 
you are indeed running the latest version so everything's great."

That's the message we want to convey. That's the use case we're 
developing for. That does not require the version number and there are 
cases where including the version number could actually lower the user's 
confidence that they are on the latest version.

There are a few other use cases we're also addressing. The next most 
important one is troubleshooting. Users sometimes have problems with 
Firefox and they call a friend or the help desk or they go to the web to 
get help fixing Firefox. The first step in almost every troubleshooting 
scenario back in the days of software getting out of date (something 
that doesn't happen in the world we're designing for) is to ask the user 
what version she is on, and then to check with Mozilla's website to make 
sure that's the latest version and then to tell the user to update if 
that's needed. As I said, that step shouldn't be needed going forward, 
modulo bugs, and so the the person helping troubleshooting can move to 
the next set of steps which often include questions about which 
extensions and plug-ins are installed, whether hardware acceleration is 
enabled, which preferences have been set or not set, etc. We've created 
a really amazing resource to help the troubleshooters in this use case. 
It's a page called Troubleshooting Information and it's located on the 
Help menu.

But to give a more direct answer to your question, Firefox's versioning 
and updating system are designed to empower users by keeping them safe 
and secure on the Web and by delivering them the rest of Firefox 
features which help put them more in control of their online lives. 
Making that system more effective helps empower users.

> Yes, I know we'll be able to see that we have the latest release --
> Which is?  Let's say I'm a user and I know that FF version X is going
> to have some killer feature that I really want to learn and use.

If that feature has shipped, then you'll have it. If that feature has 
not shipped then you won't have it. If you know it's shipped and you 
can't see the feature, then you'll want to find the documentation that 
tells you how to find and use it.

> However, I have no clue when that release is going to be pushed out to
> me.  Is it already installed?  Is Mozilla releasing it a little later
> in the day?  Did they hit a snag and hold back the release for a
> week?  For me, this would just be an inconvenience.  For users who
> don't know where the version number has been hidden, I can see it
> being a major source of frustration.  But who does it help?

I think you're trying to solve a problem for a very small number of 
users that is already solved by having the version number in the 
Troubleshooting window. If you're the kind of user that's so excited 
about Firefox and you absolutely have to know each day if a feature 
(which isn't visible in the UI, presumably) has arrived yet, you're very 
likely to be the same kind of person who hears that Firefox's version 
number is available in the Troubleshooting window.

> It sounds like users are going to see a lot of disabled add-ons and
> wonder why they're disabled.  Especially the users who allegedly get
> confused by version numbers.

Firefox will tell a user if the add-on she has already installed is 
disabled by an update. If I'm able to get the feature added, that user 
will even be able to turn the add-on back on to experiment with it and 
see if "enough" of it works for her.

> I'm not an expert like you guys, but I don't have a hard time
> envisioning User Bob saying:  "Huh?  It says, 'Not available for
> Firefox 6.0'.  Is that what I'm using?  I can't find my version
 > number anywhere."

Add-ons won't say "not available for Firefox 6.0" they'll allow you to 
install them if they're compatible and they won't if they're not. The 
various places where add-ons are found by the vast majority of users 
(addons.mozilla.org and within the Firefox add-ons manager) "just work" 
in that they don't ask users to think about versions.  The ones that are 
compatible will be available and the ones that are not won't.

> In the above case you did not *remove* the standard behavior; you
> *supplemented* it.  Users are still free to have as many FF windows
> open as they like.

Yes. That is currently the case. We replaced it for the users who use 
one window and we supplemented it for the users who use multiple 
windows. Whether or not that will remain true is up for debate. There 
was a time a while back when lots of users were demanding that Firefox 
move to a "single window mode" where there could not be more than one 
Mozilla window and all activity happened in tabs. I wasn't a fan of that 
idea, but with features like Panorama and full-screen mode, you can 
start to see where there are already cases in which it makes a lot of 
sense.

> Hiding the version number does not make the dialog's message more
> credible.  It makes it seem like it's... hiding something.

We disagree. Here's a case where the message becomes less credible if 
you have both the up to date communication and a version number. Pretend 
that we shipped a version of Firefox 5 called Firefox 5.0.1 just to fix 
a bug that affected Mac users. Now pretend that the Web filled up with 
reports that the latest version of Firefox was 5.0.1. Now pretend that 
you're a Windows Firefox user and you've just heard that Firefox 5.0.1 
is the latest release so you open your About window and Firefox says 
"Hi, I've just checked with Mozilla and you are absolutely positively up 
to date. You've got the latest and greatest that Mozilla has to offer 
you" and underneath that it says "Firefox 5.0"

Now, for most people looking at that, one of the three pieces of 
information she has must be untrue. Either 5.0.1 is not the latest 
release as she's been assured by all her friends on Twitter and 
elsewhere on the Web.  Or, Firefox has lied and it is not actually up to 
date with the latest version of Firefox. Or the version Firefox has told 
her she's using is wrong.

What's a user to do? Which of those three pieces of information is most 
credible?

No, you can stop pretending for a minute because this isn't a thought 
experiment. This is what happened.

So, if the primary goal here is to help the user understand if she is up 
to date, Mozilla must convince her that it is telling the truth and that 
the things she heard on the web are not credible. One way to do that is 
to make the up to date text more insistent. We could change that to "Hi, 
I've just checked and you are up to date. I swear. On my mother's grave. 
Don't trust anything else you read, anywhere, even in this same window. 
I'm the authoritative source of truth." Something like that might work. 
But something else that's much easier and doesn't have any real cost, 
moving the version number somewhere else where it can't be 
contradictory, is a pretty obvious solution.

Hopefully we don't have too many cases like that where some of our users 
are on a version named one thing and other users are on a version named 
something else. But it's happened many times in the past, and it will 
certainly happen again in the future.

So we go back to first principles. What is it that we are tying to help 
the user accomplish with the About window. With our new rapid release 
and always up to date model, what problems will the user be trying to 
solve when she opens the About window.  We believe that the most common 
case is to be assured that she is indeed on the latest version, and in 
the rare case that she's opened the About window before and update has 
finished, that we can assure her that the update is in progress (and 
hopefully finish it out really quickly.)

>> I've offered the best answers I can. I think I've given far more than "a
>> token explanation" here and elsewhere in this forum. Also, I don't think
>> anyone at Mozilla thinks of our Firefox users as peasants. I think we
>> all try very hard to put our process and our work into the public and to
>> listen and respond to as much feedback and criticism as we can. I think
>> Mozilla does this better than most other software projects and it's one
>> of the reasons I've been contributing to Mozilla for the last 13 years.
>
> The best answer you can offer is the one that pleases the most users
> while displeasing the fewest.  This change has not even been released
> yet, and thousands of your users spread across various communities are
> up in arms.  Before this, were there thousands of users up in arms
> about the version number being in the box?

We are generally not trying to optimize to prevent criticism and 
feedback from people who follow Firefox development closely. We are 
trying to optimize for the hundreds of millions of users who depend on 
Firefox to help them live their lives on the Web.

Most of the time we can do both. But some of the time those two are in 
conflict. I think that it's unfortunate that so many people 
mis-understand this change or have conflated this with all of their 
concerns about our rapid release process -- and I accept responsibility 
for that. I'm trying to help those who are sticking around longer than 
it takes to threaten my life or compare me to hitler to better 
understand what it is we're doing and why.

I'll just add, that even if we just dropped this idea today, the next 
feature that has anything to do with Firefox changing to better support 
this rapid release model, could just as easily turn into the same kind 
of pitchfork rally.

It's my hope that by trying to explain this change better, and 
committing to try to explain future changes better, that we'll avoid 
some of that. But I suspect that most of the "various communities up in 
arms" are up in arms because they're confused or concerned about the 
rapid releases and not any of the various small changes in service of 
the new model.

I guess we'll see.

>>> Sadly, they seem to have forgotten that their greatest strength was that
>>> they *weren't* just another Google or Microsoft.
>> I certainly don't think that Mozilla is another Google or Microsoft?
>> Those are giant multi-billion dollar corporations...
>
> That's true.  They have money to fall back on when they make a mistake
> that loses them market share.

Mozilla is not magically impervious to making mistakes. I've clearly 
made a mistake in not communicating this change well. We've made 
mistakes in the past. I think we probably made a mistake in working to 
build a tracing JIT for our JavaScript engine before we built a method 
JIT and that may have cost us a year of mindshare while Chrome's 
JavaScript engine won on many benchmarks. We recovered though. We built 
the method JIT and caught up and now we're working on Type Inference and 
IonMonkey and that could very well propel us back into the lead.

So yes, we make mistakes. I've made plenty of them in my 13 years at 
Mozilla. But we also recover from mistakes and we have been recovering 
from them for quite a while. My replies to you, though you don't seem to 
be terribly receptive, are about trying to improve the communication 
that was lacking when this feature hit the bug database.

- A