Johnathan Nightingale wrote: > So, I will make the assertion that at least 80% of our users are not > going to benefit from the technical details we include in that error > message, and that while we could do another round of wording > improvements to try to finesse that, the issue goes deeper. 80% of > users don't want to know what a certificate is, or how it is used to > secure a TLS channel, and the wording in the rest of that error page is > already an attempt to make the issue more concrete, without delving into > the specifics. > > There were calls in fact, in 3.0 and 3.1, to just remove the technical > details altogether, but people like Nelson persuaded me that this was an > essential debugging tool for support, even if end users couldn't make > heads or tails of it.
And Nelson is right on that! I think that the attitude of not bothering the end user with technical details is the wrong direction because people with technical knowledge need the details to help the end user. Especially since there's not always face-to-face support. > In that vein, the 3.1 error pages have a happy > quirk where, even when the technical details are collapsed, selecting > the error page text and copying will include them, suitable for pasting > into tech support emails. I'd really prefer if the user would not have to click on yet another button/link or whatever to obtain the technical details of an error. End users tend to send screenshot of the first error message to the helpdesk. > I know you likely already know this, but do keep in mind as well that if > you are someone who *does* understand this information, flipping the > browser.xul.error_pages.expert_bad_cert pref in about:config will show > the details sections by default. Sigh... Ciao, Michael. _______________________________________________ dev-tech-crypto mailing list dev-tech-crypto@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tech-crypto
