Lending a Hand

Today, I had the opportunity to help someone, minefied, one on one with an issue. This is, by far, the most rewarding part of being an experienced member of MozQA. The conversation began as someone seeking help with an issue with getting nightly updates which quickly turned into a general Q&A session about Firefox. I think the simplest way to run this down is to outline the Q&A session…

The discussion started with a problem: minefied was unabled to get the nightly update. I explained to him that I was able to get the update and that he should try again. Discussion of the issue seemed to stop there. We quickly became distracted as the discussion spun off into a number of varying topics (metrics, promoting Firefox, crashing, Firefox 4, etc).

On the topic of browser usage metrics, he asked where he might find accurate browser metrics, citing Statcounter as one source. I explained to him that browser metrics are a hard thing to prove and disprove. I didn’t want to speculate on what sources were accurate and which ones were untrusted, being someone not of the metrics world. Usage is certainly on the rise, that is not deniable. I think the best thing to do here is base your assumptions on the commonalities across multiple metric sources.

It quickly became apparent that minefied wanted to use metrics as a proof of concept for why people should be using Firefox. He explained to me that he had some friends he wanted to get off Opera and start using Firefox. I smiled and explained to him that it is better to highlight Firefox’s merits over its user base. In otherwords, get people to use Firefox for the good it provides and not for the number of users. He concurred and explained that his friends using Opera had actually been using Firefox but stopped after it kept crashing.

He said it was most likely due to third party apps interacting with Firefox. I smiled again. I acknowledged that Firefox 3.5 does seem to be a lot more “crashy” than previous versions but the Firefox team has been working diligently to reverse that trend with each update. Minefied seemed to agree with my explanation saying that he thought Firefox 3.6 will crash less than 3.5 and was looking forward to its release. This made me real happy for two reasons: someone else was testing Firefox 3.6, and all the hard work that has gone into Firefox 3.6 seems to be paying off. I was wondering, however, if he had managed to resolve his Nightly Update issue, so I broached the subject again.

He said he rechecked for updates and had got the update the second time but thought that was strange. Why did it not find the update five minutes ago? I explained to him that the servers are not perfect (sorry RelEng, but it’s true and you know it). Sometimes Firefox won’t find an update, especially when the servers are serving a lot of requests. I explained to him that it is a very rare occurrence when this happens and that he should simply recheck in a couple minutes if an update is not found. Firefox will also check for updates on it’s own and notify you when it has found an update. Luckily this was the case for Minefied and not a bigger underlying issue.

Minefied then asked me which version of Firefox I preferred. I explained to him that as a member of MozQA I use all versions. Whatever version of Firefox QA is testing that day is the version I use. Whether it be 3.0.x, 3.7a1pre and everything in between. When asked what browser I use day to day, I said that I use the Minefield nightly.

Naturally, this started a conversation about upcoming releases. Minefied, like many users I suspect, is very excited about features coming in Firefox 3.7 - 4.0. He wanted to know about upcoming changes for Firefox 4.0. He referenced the project page numerous times and was clearly excited to see some of these features land soon. He pressed me for a specific date he would see these features. I responded by telling him it’s hard to specify a date because the project is largely in the prototype/design phase. I also told him they will land in the nightly before anywhere else and encouraged him to keep banging on the nightly.

Finally, the most rewarding part of the conversation…

minefied> thanks very much for your explanations
ashughes> no problem
minefied> no question marks left in my mind
ashughes> feel free to ask me any time
minefied> you are so helpful
ashughes> you're welcome

This was truly the most rewarding experience I have had with the Mozilla community. It’s great to be able to help someone one on one like this. For those who are interested, I’ve posted a raw version of the conversation.