Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

On Aug 21, 7:16 pm, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
> Well, in some ways it is a dictatorship ;-)
>
> "The ultimate decision-maker(s) are trusted members of the community who
> have the final say in the case of disputes. This is a model followed by
> many successful open source projects, although most of those communities
> only have one person in this role, and they are sometimes called the
> "benevolent dictator". Mozilla has evolved to have two people in this
> role - Brendan Eich has the final say in any technical dispute and
> Mitchell Baker has the final say in any non-technical dispute. This has
> been the case since 1998 for Brendan and 1999 for Mitchell."

I saw nothing on those pages describing the structure indicating what
the process is for replacing one of those roles when they are not
doing a good job.  I guess that couldn't happen.

> But yes, you are correct in that project leaders absolutely should
> listen to user feedback and should listen to feedback from contributors.
> Listening is a key role for project leaders.
>
> But I dispute your suggestion that "Based on our knowledge and our
> experience, we think we're doing the right thing" is not a sufficient
> reply in some cases. I think I've gone well beyond that in this group
> and given a handful of use cases and how Firefox will handle those use
> cases. I've gone on to talk about use cases that are no longer as
> important as they were under our old development model. If you read my
> responses to various people in this forum, you'll see that I've put many
> many hours into offering responses to users and other contributors.

You have been answering like a politician, misunderstanding completely
straight forward questions and answering them in round about ways to
match your predetermined conclusion.

> That, in the use case we optimize for, providing the user with precisely
> the right information to answer her question and no more, is the ideal
> approach.

Why would anyone look in help->about for whether they are up to date?
That's what help->check for updates was for and still is in many
applications.  How does help->about make sense for that?  Who would
look there?

That's where you really went wrong.  You are solving the wrong problem
and should be solving the problem you created in FF5.  Help->check for
updates should be where you go to see if you are up to date and it
should tell you 'yes you are and I just checked 20 minutes ago'  Help-
>about should NOT contain such nonsense but rather just what program
is this, and usually the version number or build number or something
else that makes this particular program identifiable.

No sane user that doesn't know much about software would think 'help-
>about' to find out if they are up to date.  There is nothing in
'about' that says 'check if I am up to date'.

> The use case we think is most important, and the one we've optimized
> for, is the user who wants to know if she's on the latest version of
> Firefox.

Which is exactly why it shouldn't be in about since that's not what
the word about means.

Going to about should not trigger any action.  'Check for updates'
should do that.  It says so in the name.

If you can't see that, stop working on user interfaces.

> You haven't read all of my answers here then. Before characterizing
> them, can you take the time (and offer me the courtesy of reading the
> responses I've put many many hours into writing)?

Oh we have read them.  They entirely read as long winded attempts at
justifying a predetermined opinion with no willingness to accept a
mistake has been made.

> I've given several examples where including the version number makes the
> interaction far less usable. Please find and read those. I put a long
> time into writing them and I'm doing you the courtesy of reading
> everything you're writing here so presumably you can do that for me too.
> (I don't mean that to sound mean or anything, but I don't want to keep
> writing the same thing over and over. I've got other work to do.)

And in all your examples, the user should never have been in that
dialog box in the first place.  Putting update triggering and checking
in about in the first place was non obvious and abuse of the dialog
and should be removed entirely and put somewhere it makes sense.

> I think I've done that. I've certainly tried. I'll ask again that you
> read what I've written in the rest of this group. If you have questions
> about those specific posts, please ask on those posts rather than
> asserting that I haven't even made those posts. Thanks.

Lots of people have.  You have just kept dodging the questions by
either declaring it off topic or heading off on a tangent.

> Actually, I think you'd be surprised. I've read all the comments in this
> thread and it appears that is indeed the topic for just over 2/3rds of
> the posts that people have made. I've tried to respond to both that and
> to the specifics about the version number.

Whether the rapid release is a good idea or not is not the question,
never mind how much you seem to claim it is.

Some people want to be able to find the current version, and help-
>about is where that should be.  The troubleshooting page is full of
useless crap about printers (many of which I don't even have anymore),
and a few bits of useful stuff, but mostly crap.

If users want to check if they are up to date (and most users don't
even think to check for that since why should they if your rapid
release model is actually working) would look for a 'check for
updates' option, which used to exist until FF5 removed it.  Well
simple solution: Put it back, it was a good feature.

> (In the very beginning of the thread, I tried to get people to talk
> about the rapid releases in a more appropriate forum where I'd be happy
> to discuss further but the response was that I was trying to avoid
> answering and so I've just decided to let this discussion thread include
> both topics.

We know about it.  Some people like it, some think its a bad idea.
Who cares.  It has nothing to do with this.

You claim that removing the version number from about is required to
make people stop worrying about version numbers.  Well that's wrong.
If you make the rapid release model work, then users won't care about
version numbers and won't even bother to check for them.  The only
people that will want to check help->about are those looking for the
version number, not those looking if they are up to date.  And if you
didn't mess up the menu in FF5 versus FF4, there would still be a
vastly superior menu for them to go to if they did want to know if
they are up to date.  How much more obvious could that be?

> Firefox was a pretty big removal. It removed all of Seamonkey :-) If you
> want to go back and read the forums there, you'll see the months of
> complaints of all of the absolutely critical features that Firefox was
> removing that were going to absolutely kill it dead.

But it didn't do it right away.  People could have kept using
seamonkey if firefox didn't work out.

> We're talking about that. But I'm mostly convinced that will only
> satisfy a minority of the people complaining on this thread. Have you
> read all of the commentary on this issue around Mozilla forums and the
> Web? It really is mostly focused on the rapid release model and a
> general aversion to *all* change.

Most people here really don't care about the rapid release issue.  At
least that's not what they are complaining about.  Only you seem to
for some reason think that's what they are complaining about.

> I'm not mistaken. Some of you are deeply concerned about the version
> number. But not all. I encourage you to read more of this discussion,
> the bug comments, the discussion threads at slashdot and other tech news
> sites. It's really only a minority of commenters who are at all
> interested in the version number change. There are literally dozens of
> comments that are in the form of "We loved version x.y, go back to that
> and stop changing".

I haven't seen many (maybe a couple) of those on this discussion.  I
have seen many people legitimately point out reasons they need the
version number.  You seem to believe that upgrading firefox and
disabling a few extensions is perfectly reasonable to get a more
"secure" browser.  Well some people don't agree.  They want their
browser to work as they want it to work, and if upgrading will break
that, then the upgrade can wait.  After all the last version had
security problems to be fixed, so well the new one will too, they just
aren't known yet.

If you want people to not care about the version number, then first
make them not have any reasons to care.  That means extensions and
plugins never break on upgrades ever.  Once everything just works,
they will stop caring.  Then it doesn't matter if there is a version
in about or not, because they won't look at it.  You are trying to
solve the symptom rather than the problem by removing the version
number from about.

> I'm sorry you feel that way. I hope that's not the general consensus
> because if it is then I've wasted a huge amount of time responding to
> you and others trying to help you understand why this change was
> proposed. That you either haven't read those or don't think they were
> informative is a shame.

I certainly see that as a general consensus.  Your explained reasons
for the removal are bogus and as I said above, is an attempt at
attacking a symptom of what you consider to be a problem (that people
want to know if they are up to date), rather than a problem.  The fact
that help->about even has anything to do with updating or checking for
updates is the problem.  It's an illogical place for that to be.

> I disagree with your characterization of the people who actually care
> about the location of the version number as "a notable portion." Now, of
> the people who do care deeply about the location of the version number,
> yes, there are a notable portion of that tiny group who are very
> passionately opposed to it being moved. As I've said several times
> above, though, I don't think that most of those people understand the
> change or that Mozilla's moved to a rapid release model that makes the
> considerations around the location of the version number very different
> than they were 6 months ago. That leaves some people who care about
> version numbers, who understand our rapid release model, who understand
> why we want to make this change, and who still oppose it. I see several
> of those people in this forum. I'm trying to respond to those.

Oh we do understand it.  We aren't stupid.  How come you can't
understand that a rapid release model does not have anything to do
with removing the version number from the about dialog?  You can have
your rapid releases just fine while still showing version numbers.
There is no relationship here.  Well there is, but it is backwards
from what you are trying to claim.  Removing the version number
requires a rapid release model.  Having a rapid release model does not
require removing the version number.

> I'm not convinced yet that you're one of those people though ;-) I'm
> going to try to convince you that with rapid releases, and for our
> largest audience, the version number belongs in the Troubleshooting page
> and not the About page. I suspect you will try to convince me that's
> wrong, and I hope you'll try by providing use cases where not having a
> version number in the About window will hurt our users.

You can't convince people of something that is wrong.  And you are
wrong.  The version number does belong in about if it belongs
anywhere.  What could be more 'about' a program that its name and
version number.

What does NOT belong in about is update checking.  That is what needs
removal from there and to be put somewhere users can actually find it,
like where it was in FF4.

--
Len Sorensen