Hi Adrian, Again thank you for taking the time to voice your concerns. The pain points you identify are important to us and we'll really try to do better next time. We don't expect you to drop what you're working on to spend time debugging our things, and we're striving to keep you happy doing great apps. Sorry if we failed you on that regard.
But to be honest, the change was not unannounced, and was not without transition. Clearly it could have gone a lot smoother (I do like Marek's suggestion to add a hint in the App Manager to try out the new IDE) but as soon as the WebIDE code landed (disabled by default, on June 23) we published about it on our blog: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/webide-lands-in-nightly/ We then tried to be as vocal as possible about it, reposting it, doing live demos, etc. We explained how to try it out to whoever was listening. It even stayed on Hacker News' front page for a while, which allowed us to receive heartening user feedback like: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7932994 (still the top comment on the hacker news entry) - https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/481149771793854465 - https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/481149682811674624 Maybe we missed a few channels, and if you have ideas on how we could have communicated better about this, please let us know. Please also keep in mind that we're a small team, and we prefer to fix bugs and develop useful features rather than spend a lot of time communicating. My take on it is that we could have been more vocal about this on our mailing lists. Another point I'd like to bring up is that Nightly remains a playground for (sane) experiments. It's where new code arrives daily (well, nightly) right after it's been reviewed and tested. Sadly, this doesn't prevent things from breaking, or just not working right, and Nightly is another layer to keep Firefox safe. It's not something reliable you can expect to do stable, productive work on. True, it does receive a lot of bug fixes, but it's also where all the nastiest bugs and regressions happen before we can catch them. Thanks a lot for being one of our test pilots, helping us catch the problems before the code rolls over to stable and to millions of trusting users, but judging from your remarks maybe Nightly is not the best experience you can have of Firefox. Lastly, we often ask users to file bugs, because it's the most effective way to register problems and get them fixed. I understand that bugzilla is not the user-friendliest tool, and that many people don't have the time to learn it / be bothered. That's why we also take a lot of feedback from whichever channels our users find easier to use, and we then file bugs for them. It's very time consuming, but it allows us to access feedback we normally couldn't. We follow mailing lists, irc, hacker news, stack overflow, google+, twitter, probably many other channels I don't even know about, and we actively search for new and better ways to understand what's bothering you about our tools and how to make your life easier. One of the latest examples I discovered is a uservoice page allowing users to upvote the ideas they'd most love to see in Firefox DevTools: https://ffdevtools.uservoice.com/forums/246087-firefox-developer-tools-ideas, and I thought that was a pretty good idea. Thanks for bearing with us through the hurdles of great ideas and big mistakes! Jan On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 9:37 PM, Adrian Custer <[email protected]> wrote: > On 8/18/14 11:03 AM, Julien Wajsberg wrote:> > > Just a note that you're all using Nightly here. Nightly is where > > no-transition changes happen, so that we can test new things in the > > wild. And sometimes we disable them after some days, or when it goes > > to aurora, or when it goes to beta. > > > > So, yeah, we used to say to use Nightly for Firefox OS development > > (because this is how we keep up with the changes) but obviously this > > also comes with such disagreements. > > > > To enable/disable webide, you can have a look to about:config, and > > look for the pref "devtools.webide.enabled". > > > > Please report anything that you dislikes about WebIDE by filing bugs, > > before or instead of disabling it. That's basically your duty when > > using Nightly :) > > > > Maybe we should have a separate pref to enable/disable App manager so > > that we can have both side by side? My fear is that users don't use > > WebIDE at all once they disable it... > > > > > > - -- > > Julien > > On 8/18/14 2:49 PM, Paul Rouget wrote:> Marek Raida wrote: > >> Well, I agree heartily on this. We need ate least some level of > stability, this is too turbulent... > > > > ... stability, in Firefox Nightly? > > > > Please file bugs if WebIDE doesn't meet your requirements. > > > >> Much approach better would be leave AppManager as as - probably add > some hint that from now one try IDE - but remove it sounds bad practice to > me... > > > > You can always access the app manager by loading about:app-manager. > > > > Hey WebIDE and App-Manager developers, > > do you really not understand why it was such a bad idea to *replace* the > menu entry for App Manager rather than *add* a new entry for WebIDE? > > > > That our points of view differ so dramatically on this issue suggests a > need to address our differences. > > I am having a hard time figuring out your point of view. You are > apparently writing tools for us to use to write great Firefox OS apps and > make the platform kick a**. However, you do not seem focused on our needs. > First, you make a change with little concern for our workflow and day to > day work. Then, when faced with push back like this thread, your instincts > are to answer with self-justification rather than trying to figure out what > the user need actually was and why friction arose. > > The transition could have been a delight. You could have announced the > tool, given us access to it, helped us discover and learn to use it and > listened to feedback. All the while we would have been productive with > whichever tool was working for us. Instead, in using a no-transition > approach, you were essentially saying "Hey, it doesn't matter that your in > the middle of something potentially complicated like muddling your way > through derivatives of cartographic projections, today, before you do > anything else, you have to drop everything and learn to use our new tool > just to get your code running on your device." From my point of view, that > lacks respect. REALLY. I did not like it. > > The puzzling thing is that your approach was totally, completely, > absolutely unnecessary. Had it been neccessary, and accompanied by an > 'Sorry folks but we are having to do a no-transition upgrade on the app > tool that will land next week. Find out more ...' one could have > understood. But it turns out it was totally unnecessary and it caused a few > hours of confusion, angst, failed reversion attempts and pain until I > re-discovered the magic 'about:app-manager' URL. > > So, you all need to decide on your priority: is it writing your tool or > helping Firefox OS developers get work done? From that decision, lots will > follow naturally. > > > > Okay, I'm tired of this thread but to clear up some issues. > > NO ONE IS ASKING YOU TO KEEP WORKING ON APP-MANAGER, to fix its bugs, to > not build WebIDE. We all expect you have great reasons for your start from > scratch approach to the tool. Great, go for it. I look forwards to using it > when it is stable and noticeably better than App-Manager. Also, we are all > enthusiasts and will move to WebIDE sooner rather than later; Julien's > 'fear' seems groundless to me. > > Asking us to file bugs is fine; using it as an excuse for your > no-transition is bullshit. We file bugs (though given the lack of follow up > on Mozilla's end, that is starting to suck too). I just spent an hour > trying to isolote and file a bug in Nightly's handling of canvas size. I'll > get around to filing bugs on WebIDE someday, but not today, I have work to > get through. Okay? And please, never ask me to drop everything to use a > tool that will probably break and file bugs when I have my own work to do. > > Nightly if we are going to be productive using it, can not be a 'Mozilla > does whatever the fuck it wants'. Nightly, first and foremost is the latest > browser code. That's how we get bug fixes for browser issues, maybe even > issues we have just filed. So your developer tools in nightly should play > nice with letting me reliably and safely use the latest browser code. Yes, > per the shared understanding of Nightlies, you are *allowed* to do > no-transition changes on Nightly. But why, unless it is strictly necessary, > would you? Do you not appreciate any of the issues such transitions cause? > And if ever you decide to do such a change, given their cost, it probably > makes sense to do a lot of coordination around them, not just amongst > yourselves but with your users as well. > > > So. Thanks for the new tool and I look forwards to using it someday. > Congratulations on all the hard work it took to get here. Sorry that we > didn't manage a more graceful transition. > > cheers, > ~adrian > > _______________________________________________ > dev-b2g mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-b2g >
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