On Jul 17, 12:54 pm, FoamHead <[email protected]> wrote:
> Now that 1.4.0 has been released, some of this discussion is academic,
> but a few points warrant a reply:
>
> > > Re: Active List
> > > Looking at the "A Simpler Model" section
> > > ofhttp://groups.google.com/group/firebug-working-group/web/firebug-user...,
> > > I now fully understand how 1.4 tracks the active list. IMHO, having
> > > this kind of documentation for a 1.4 full release would be _very_
> > > helpful to users.
>
> > Well what does that mean? The web page you point to exists. I've
> > written a bunch of blog posts. I've replied to a billion newsgroup
> > posts. What else?
>
> The documentation for FireBug is pretty poor to begin with, but I have
> yet to see anything that clearly points new users to any discussion of
> the new activation model.
The first "Learn More" link on http://getfirebug.com is
http://getfirebug.com/doc/enablement/enablement1.4.html
Here's a run-down of the FireBug
> documentation locations I'm aware of:
>
> http://getfirebug.com/docs.html
> It looks like this info hasn't been updated in years and there is
> certainly no mention of the new activation model. Since these appear
> to be the official docs, this presents a brick wall for new users who
> don't want to go digging through the inner workings of the FireBug
> project. IMHO, either maintain these as official, up-to-date docs or
> delete these pages entirely.
I wonder what resources informed your opinion? As far as I am aware,
only the FAQ is seriously out of date. I fixed that one.
>
> http://getfirebug.com/releases/
> The 1.4 section makes no mention of a new activation model. I expected
> to see a statement like "The way FireBug is enabled/activated has been
> streamlined. Users of previous FireBug versions should read about the
> details." with "read about the details" being a link to a specific
> discussion of how the old and new models compare.
Your contribution can be posted to the issues list.
>
> http://blog.getfirebug.com/
> There are some blog posts about aspects of the new activation model,
> but blogs are about timely, topical discussion of issues a-la a
> newscast -- they don't work well for a reference or guide style of
> documentation which is what is needed here.
But I can do them quickly.
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/firebug-working-group/web/firebug-user...
> This is the best source of information about how the activation model
> works. However, I'm not aware of any "top-level" links to it (I know I
> would have never found it unless you linked it first) and even if I
> wanted to look for it, its name does not match what it contains. I
> can't see how you'd expect anyone to find this without it being
> directly referenced.
>
> So let me turn this around to you -- where is the official FireBug
> documentation that includes a discussion of both the new activation
> model for new users and a comparison of the old vs new activation
> models for veteran users?
Where ever you post it and let us know about it.
>
> > > Of course, my original request is still valid: FireBug is tracking a
> > > series of domains in the Active List and it is taking actions based on
> > > that list. IMHO, FireBug should provide a little pop-up that allows me
> > > to view the Active List and delete one or all entries. Adding entries
> > > is via the pop-up is unnecessary since visiting the page and turning
> > > FireBug On does that. In the short term, this could be done easily
> > > enough by adding the Active List to the icon's right-click menu --
> > > selecting a site would delete it from the active list. This is simple
> > > to implement yet does enough to ensure FireBug isn't "hiding" anything
> > > from its users.
>
> > I agree that an output of the activation URLs would be nice. Removing
> > annotations would be easy.
>
> Awesome! With 1.4 released, is this on the slate for 1.5 then?
Well, not if I'm writing documentation.
>
>
>
> > > > Based on our overall experience with 1.4, I plan to make one important
> > > > change: we need to shorten the release cycle. 1.4 had a lot of UI
> > > > changes and that caused users to be unable to react to individual
> > > > changes, defeating our efforts to learn from their experience.
>
> > > I don't know how long your dev cycle for 1.4 is/was, but IMHO the
> > > complaints don't derive from the number of changes in one release.
> > > Rather, the fact that users were forced to upgrade to a beta that has
> > > little-to-no documentation on those UI changes combined with a default
> > > setting that can easily cripple FireFox is what caused a lot of the
> > > pain. I'm all for 3-6 month dev cycles, but please don't overlook the
> > > root causes or this will occur next time.
>
> > I have no control over that particular cause. I can cause a shorter
> > dev cycle. Plus I don't completely agree with you analysis. By
> > pushing out one change at a time we help users focus on the issue
> > without mixing it up with other issues.
>
> IMHO you are *dramatically underestimating* the value of good
> documentation. All other concerns aside, if you simply
> hadhttp://groups.google.com/group/firebug-working-group/web/firebug-user...
> fully fleshed out in the official FireBug documentation along with an
> old-to-new transition/migration page, many, many users would have been
> able to help themselves. Sure, there will always be some that don't
> bother to look for their own solutions, but most programmers are used
> to digging through documentation to solve their own problems. So when
> you combined a forced upgrade with no place for users read up on the
> changes, you got a bunch of unhappy users.
Ok, suppose I gave you the choice: shall I work on outputing
activation URLs or documentation?
>
> Cheers,
> -Foam
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