Any feature that phones home should have a user-visible off switch. Period. Anything else is disrespectful of the privacy of our users.
-Colin On Jul 28, 2011, at 4:01 PM, Jordan wrote: > Are there plans for any sort of fall-back or more 'advanced' toggling for > these preferences? In other words, some of the items that can be removed from > the UI could still be optional toggles that are configured purely with hidden > prefs. I'll use the Sparkle Update option as an example: > > remove "Automatically check for updates", in my opinion users should always > get informed about new versions (pks) > I'm unsure. Pretty much every app I know that uses Sparkle has this > setting... -Robbie > I feel the same as Robbie, although I must agree - I can't think of a > situation where anyone would actually disable this? (paulwilde) > What about adding a checkbox "Do not remind me again" to the > update-information-window? (pks) > Disagree. We always need an opt out for auto updating because it involves > phoning home. Also, IT people want to do manual updates of software. It must > stay. -Colin > Disagree. Opting out of options that phone home is important. -Steve > The suggested solution (by pks) to use a "Do not prompt me for updates" > option in the update window does provide an opt-out to prevent the > application from phoning home. Colin brought up the point that IT personnel > would always toggle this off, so removing it would annoy those folks. Why not > also have a hidden pref for this. Hidden prefs are exactly the kind of thing > IT personnel are accustomed to making use of. They're likely scripting their > installs anyway, so using a command-line toggled hidden preference is perfect. > > We have transitioned certain options to hidden preferences in the past and I > don't recall there being any major problems resulting from it. I think some > people suggested at the time that continuing to use a hidden preference still > provides complexity to troubleshooting that wouldn't be there if the > preference were removed altogether. This is true in theory, but I don't think > we have run into that problem in practice all that often (I can't think of a > single occurrence from when I was more actively involved). > > While I think that where possible a complete removal of any given preference > would be great, there will always be cases where someone comes up with a good > reason not to remove it; this can be seen at this very time by skimming > through the comments on the PreferenceReduction2011 page. Hidden preferences > may provide exactly the happy-medium required to allow for UI simplification > while still appeasing power users. > > Cheers, > > Jordan > > ---- > Sent with Sparrow > > On Thursday, 28 July, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Colin Barrett wrote: > >> I've updated it with my feedback. Would be great to get input from more >> people. >> >> http://trac.adium.im/wiki/PreferenceReduction2011 >> >> -Colin >
