Support/Firefox.Next

This is a list of ideas and enhancements that could be made in Firefox.next that would make troubleshooting Firefox users' problems simpler for our SUMO community.

• Diagnostics window that does a bunch of basic checks and offers tools to simplify self-diagnose [1] [2]
  • Would be available as a Help menu item, e.g. Help » Diagnose (perhaps taking you to an about page, e.g. about:support)
  • Items to diagnose and report in this window:
    • Integrity of files (places.sqlite, etc)
    • Any disabled features that may cause problems (cookies, javascript, "warn me when sites reload/redirect the page", pipelining settings)
    • Any settings that are indicative of malware (changed homepage, keyword.URL, searches etc with ability to reset in a click)
    • Active extensions (and disabled ones) -- include version numbers
    • Recent crashIDs (with times)
    • Connectivity ("You are using a proxy, click here to try connecting with the proxy disabled")
  • Available tools for self-diagnose:
    • Button to restart Firefox in safe mode
    • Button to open current profile folder
    • Button to copy all diagnostics info to the clipboard (so users can paste to SUMO)
• Diagnose which extensions are causing slow startup/leaking memory or stalled and alert users accordingly.
• Automatic gathering of info about active extensions using Javascript, with UI similar/identical to geolocation [3]
• Automatic background diagnostics when idle and not on battery power?
  • The above about:support diagnostics could be done in the background when Firefox is idle to catch problems without the user actively seeking to solve them
  • Corrupt files should be repaired or replaced without user intervention
    • If there's a risk of dataloss alert user with steps to fix or link to sumo)
  • Make sure we offer UI to disable this as users will complain about Firefox using up CPU.
• Automatic check of connectivity problems -- especially after upgrading to a new version of Firefox
  • Could it connect to the internet before it upgraded?
    • Likely a firewall issue
    • Link to relevant support docs on SUMO
  • Can it connect to to some trusted/reliable websites?
  • Are DNS requests taking a LONG time? (bad settings, massive hosts file)
• If Firefox crashes more than once on startup, show a dialog asking if the user wants to launch another browser to troubleshoot on SUMO - would obviously have to be a native app that doesn't crash itself
  • Or we can try starting in safemode or with plugins disabled or with a temp profile
• In the post-crash "This is embarassing" dialog, show link to "Search for solution to my problem" that performs a search on SUMO similar to the way crash-stats already works
• In the Socorro dialog, add button to search for solution to my problem (same as above)

Other general feedback

• Go through XUL help pages and make sure we link to relevant SUMO info where appropriate