Asa

Would be nice to know the "Process / Protocol" Mozilla.org
follows when an individual submits a website URL via "Reporter".

Thanks

Sorry for sounding like a troll/fanboy in FF developer's weblog, but FF is moving again in Opera direction. BUT...
It is really a good news, Asa, about this tool - "Reporter". "Report a site problem" works great in Opera and I believe it will work great in FF too. We all know that threre many sites which do not work properly in both FF and Opera and to report to developers about such sites is a good way to gather useful information about non-standard sites and make both browsers compatible with them by fixing some bugs in the browser or contact webmasters of those sites. You know that with this feature, FF developers will get lots of info coming from users and it will take a lot of time to manage this info, which is quite difficult.

T26NOV.ragnarok, maybe you should stop trolling and have a look at Safari

Am I trolling? Will you read the first line of my post, ok?
So, excuse me, if this feature was implemented in Safari first. Is it called "Report bugs to Apple"?
But it makes no difference who was the first. I just expressed my opinion about the importance of that tool.
If you failed to express yours - it is up to you - it is not obligatory anyway.

Can't help myself.. :)

It's really not hard to at least acknowledge the existence of similar features in other browsers. For example, look at this conversation on an Opera developer's journal at MyOpera.com, concerning Opera's implementation of UserJS:

-- by: jdunck

"Was this inspired by Greasemonkey (http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org ), or was it done without knowledge of that extension? Is there any interest in keeping roughly similar features / coding styles? I'm involved with Greasemonkey, and am excited to see Opera offering a similar feature!"

-- by: hallvors (opera developer)

"Of course we're aware of Greasemonkey! However, I don't know enough about the features and coding styles to comment on whether we are interested in matching it, I think it would be difficult.

Actually, the User JavaScript idea predates Greasemonkey - it was more based on the way [user] CSS works and the way you can make Opera apply your own user style sheets to all pages. The feature has been planned for years - the first implementation that actually went public was the famous Opera Bork edition that loaded a given external JS file into all MSN pages to mangle their language . Google for Opera Bork if you don't know that story... "

Notice Hallvors does not bash FF, and claim it is "moving in the Opera direction." Without disguised anti-Firefox FUD, like Asa commonly uses against Opera, he simply states that, to the best of his knowledge, Opera's UserJS implementation conceptually predates Greasemonkey.

Playing nice can be fun!

Just so everyone knows, the previous post was not necessarily posted in response to FF implemeting the site reporting feature. That is no big deal really, compared to some of the previous things he's said here.

It was more a general anti-Asa post. I really can't stand this guy ever since that wave of anti-Opera FUD he spewed out after Opera 8 was released.

Nunya,

Thanks a lot, that's really relevant here! Take it to email if you don't like him, nobody cares besides you.

Another feature nicked from Opera. Sigh.

Come on guys... drop this crazy contest on who got which feature first.

Frankly, I don't care who got which first. The timing of the addition of features doesn't matter. Plus, the timing is not important to the success of softwares, just a tiny factor that all. What is important that the features are THERE. There are several examples:

In 1980, the most popular Operating System of that year was CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers), written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research. That OS inspired Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products to write an OS very similar to CP/M by creating all of similar features to CP/M. Paterson named his OS, Q-DOS, which later brought by Microsoft and renamed it to MS-DOS. Microsoft got IBM's attention and put MS-DOS on all IBM's PCs of the time. Thus, led to making Bill Gates the richest man in the world. The point of this example is that CP/M was here first, but MS-DOS took the spotlight because Microsoft gave the most effort pushing it.

Now don't get me started about Unix and Linux... Unix was here first, but Linux became the most popular Unix-based OS and the 2nd most popular OS in the world today (sorry MAC fans... MAC came in 3rd). All because the Linux fans gave the most effort pushing it AND the fact that Linux is still developing with adding new features and fixes everyday.

Now look at the browsers... Netscape was here first, but because of massive resources, Microsoft's IE (with similar features as Netscape) won the browsers war. Now enter about a dozen of browsers, all has similar features as IE and Netscape plus some more. The only way to develop is to add or improve the inevitable features like tabbing, etc.

My point is that what make softwares successful is two main factors: Development and Support. If the software is being improved everyday and enough users pushing/supporting it, then that software has 99.9% chance to be successful. The timing of addition of features has NOTHING to do with it. It doesn't matter. The features will be there as long the softwares are in development because those good and useful features are inevitable.

Opera don't have really many users pushing it (just about 1% of marketshares and a private company with ads), but Firefox has MANY, MANY users pushing it (spreadfirefox.com, IBM, OSS community, around 10% of marketshares, security experts, countless bloggers, etc.). Both are getting better everyday, but if you consider users support factor of both browsers. I am inclinded to say that Firefox has very high chance to beat Opera in browsers war, plus has good chance to beat IE.

So drop this crazy who got which inevitable good feature first contest and focus on supporting and developing our favorite browsers, shall we?

Now, back to the topic...

The reporter sounds great! It will definity help the Firefox developers on finding the bugs in the rendering engine or in how Firefox handle webpages.

Also, im curious, how the Reporter will handle it if the webpages are broken by GreaseMonkey or other extensions?

@GamingFox
>>Also, im curious, how the Reporter will handle it if the webpages are broken by GreaseMonkey or other extensions?

Maybe, with the info sent to to Mozilla site there will be a list of extensions, especially, more attention will be paid to GM extension.

And of course, it is a great feature
The more developers are aware of buggy sites, the better will be handling of poorly written code and bug fixing in the browser itself.
BTW, will there be any system like bugzilla to trace for such sites with submitted site-reports?

Proving that GreaseMonkey broke the site, not Firefox, would be tough to prove. Of course developer can disable GreaseMonkey to test to see if Firefox broke it, but you could enable GreaseMonkey and not broke it anyway because of the scripts. Some bugs are very tricky and very tough to verfy. So how you know that GreaseMonkey really did broke it or not? Only the user who report it can by disabling the GreaseMonkey and reload the webpage. Sadly most users are not that bright, disabling GM to test the webpage.

Some bugs are very hard to verfy, and now GM is in the mix. I believe it will be a challege for developers who doesn't want to throw up their arms and said "NO WONDER! He is using GreaseMonkey! Let ignore this report and move on!"

"Only the user who report it can by disabling the GreaseMonkey and reload the webpage. Sadly most users are not that bright, disabling GM to test the webpage."

Eh? Those users won't have Greasemonkey installed in the first place. I'd say Greasemonkey is only used by the very top sliver of the advanced geek users.

>> I'd say Greasemonkey is only used by the very top sliver of the advanced geek users.

Am I the one? I use some stuff from GM as a User JS in Opera.

Of course, if a person wants to submit a report about a broken site he should check everything, which might interfere with this site. Including GM extension. Otherwise, Mozilla developers will be flooded with many reports with false info about pseudobroken sites.

"... Mozilla developers will be flooded with many reports with false info about pseudobroken sites."

I very much doubt that will turn out to be the case. I think the percentage of people reporting sites with Greasemonkey installed, and at the same time not knowing what they're doing, will be very small. (What is required for this problem is installing a greasemonkey script which breaks a site, and then the user reporting the site as broken... Probably won't happen all that often.)

" Probably won't happen all that often."

Ok, let's hope so and keep our fingers crossed.

I just tried out the Reporter tool, works very well. Simple enough for any user to understand, and lets you enter supporting info as necessary. I also like that the dialog is non-modal, so you can move to the page you're reporting to extract info from it.

I sent in report RMO11163439650506.

Let me leap your discussion and ask, how is the list of non-standard pages going to be presented? I think reporting itself is not enough. Also, I believe a automated validation can confirm or reject listing.

Let me leap your discussion and ask, how is the list of non-standard pages going to be presented? I think reporting itself is not enough. Also, I believe a automated validation can confirm or reject listing.

In my opinion, thats won't work... Webpages are made up multiple elements like links, iframe, java, images, html, etc. Now supposed a site where Firefox broke an iframe element, but the validation rejected it because of broken links (incomplete coding, improper usage of tags, etc.). Not a good way to go.

Also, I believe a automated validation can confirm or reject listing.

Since virtually no sites validate, this has no real use. For fun, I tried a random sampling of "large" sites: CNN, BBC, NY Times, ABC, Mozilla, Netscape, Sony, Dell, IBM, Intel and AMD. Of those, only Mozilla and IBM validated.

Also, just because a site validates, doesn't mean that the site is usable. It's easy to code something which is validates and displays as intended in one browser, but not in another. A grotesque example of this would be www.babolat.com, which has used an erroneous Flash-detection script for at least a year that only works on IE (and possibly NS4, since the code checks specifically for that), failing on e.g. Firefox and Opera. Since the site is only available in Flash (sigh), it's simply inaccessible with those browsers - even though it could easily be perfectly valid HTML (which it probably isn't - I won't bother checking).

" Since virtually no sites validate, this has no real use. For fun, I tried a random sampling of "large" sites: CNN, BBC, NY Times, ABC, Mozilla, Netscape, Sony, Dell, IBM, Intel and AMD. Of those, only Mozilla and IBM validated. "

Hey Reporter is not for reporting sites which don't pass the W3C validator...

I'd like to know whether reports will be made public, as crashes are through Talkback... Kind of a name & shame list of b0rked sites :p

Reports are publicly available at: http://reporter-test.mozilla.org/app/

http://reporter-test.mozilla.org/app/report/?report_id=RMO1116381315004

"Description: Says I need to use IE... that stinks"

LOL, that got to be my favorite report. Why? Because thats the report on windows update site. LOL.