631909 - about:support label 'Modified Preferences' is incorrect

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Toolkit :: General, defect)

Description

[John J. Barton]

The current label in about:support is unequivocal: the modified preferences are listed. Based on that label, I have made several mistakes in trying to help users solve Firefox problems. The list is only "A few modified preferences", and not even critical ones for the way Firefox works. For example 'browser.privatebrowsing.autostart' has a huge impact on how Firefox operates and it is not shown.

If the label said: "Key Modified Preferences" I would have realized that the list was incomplete.

Below copied from mozilla.dev.platform

My undertsanding is that only a set of whitelisted prefs (& pref-subtrees) show up in about:support, to protect users' privacy, so they can paste about:support contents into bugs / SUMO support sessions without many privacy concerns.

The whitelist (and a descriptive comment) are at:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/content/aboutSupport.js#48

If you have a particular pref that you think should show up in about:support, you can definitely file a bug on getting it whitelisted.

~Daniel

On 02/05/2011 07:46 PM, johnjbarton wrote:
> I discovered through a painfully long debugging exercise with a Firebug
> user that the seemingly fabulous "about:support" page does not in fact
> show all of the Modified Preferences. You can see for you self:
> 1) create a new profile,
> 2) set Tools > Options > Privacy > History > Never Remember History.
> 3) about:config, verfiy that browser.privatebrowsing.autostart is user set
> true,
> 4) look at about:support: it's not listed!
>
> Is there some reason for this omission?
> jjb
> _______________________________________________
> dev-platform mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform

Comment 1

[Dave Garrett]

I agree. The current section heading is misleading and should be clarified.

See also bug 593443 for a request for some new prefs to be whitelisted.

Comment 2

[[not reading bugmail]]

about:support is silly, since its doesn't show much of anything worthwhile, can show stuff that I changed as a user?  Not just what firefox changes or extensions change?  It should keep track of those 3 triggers so we better whitelist options. But the way it is, is useless.

Comment 3

[:aceman]

I can patch this string change.

Comment 4

[:aceman]

Attachment: label update

Comment 5

[:aceman]

Attachment: v2, label update

Identifier change needed.

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Comment on attachment 582719 [details] [diff] [review]
v2, label update

I think "Key Modified Preferences" is just as confusing. How about "Important Modified Preferences"?

Comment 7

[:aceman]

Attachment: v3 patch

Comment 8

[:aceman]

Attachment: v3, corresponding Thunderbird update

Comment 9

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Comment on attachment 583580 [details] [diff] [review]
v3, corresponding Thunderbird update

Review of attachment 583580 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Looks good.  Thanks for thinking of Thunderbird!  :)

Comment 10

[:aceman]

It would break otherwise as the old entity would get undefined ;) It is just sad it has to have aboutSupport.xhtml duplicated.

Comment 11

[:aceman]

Well, as the patches were left here to bitrot, either these or the ones in bug 559500 will not apply anymore...

Comment 12

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/6630cc3b20a7

Comment 13

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

The Thunderbird patch was committed to comm-central as http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/c01205ffb4f8

Comment 14

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6630cc3b20a7

Comment 15

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I was just made aware of this change, and I want to clarify a couple of things:
* the intent of the modified preferences section is to list as many modified prefs as possible. It's not a matter of which prefs are "important" or "key" or presumed "useful".
* the reason why not all are listed is because publishing some prefs may compromise privacy. 

Long term: we should go through all possible prefs and try to add them (pending privacy review), then revert this change. If you see any prefs that should be added, file a bug to get it added. Adding prefs to the whitelist is so easy, even /I/ can do it. In fact, I added browser.search prefs in bug 728981, which should appear in Firefox 14.

For browser.privatebrowsing prefs, I've filed bug 752268.

Comment 16

[Dave Garrett]

If it uses a whitelist then it will always be partial for all users with addons installed that have their own prefs. If the whitelist is expanded to include all browser prefs with a privacy filter just hiding the values for some, then the label probably should be "Modified &brandShortName; Preferences" to make that clear.