[tor-bugs] #7495 [Firefox Patch Issues]: Create browser-based update notification mechanism

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#7495: Create browser-based update notification mechanism
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 Reporter:  mikeperry             |          Owner:  mikeperry
     Type:  enhancement           |         Status:  new      
 Priority:  major                 |      Milestone:           
Component:  Firefox Patch Issues  |        Version:           
 Keywords:  SponsorJ tbb-bounty   |         Parent:           
   Points:                        |   Actualpoints:           
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 The check.torproject.org update notification has several problems. It's
 web-based, overloaded, and unmaintained.

 From a usability standpoint, I think I like the idea of an ever-present
 notification ribbon/toolbar thing on *all* windows rather than a popup
 that appears only when the check interval expires, so long as it can't be
 confused with something from the content window.

 Note, we'll also want to make sure that such a ribbon does not change the
 size of the resolution values from your CSS + window.screen patches...
 This might actually be fairly tricky in practice, due to there not being a
 lot of slack in the current window sizing code in Torbutton (
 https://gitweb.torproject.org/torbutton.git/blob/master:/src/chrome/content/torbutton.js#l4358).
 See also #6146, for example... We could handle this issue by simply giving
 a larger buffer for maxHeight in that function, though.

 Another option could be some sort of icon hint in the Toolbar (for
 example, Google Chrome places red up arrow over it's 'menu vent'), but
 that is even more likely to get ignored.

 In either case, the notification should provide a link to the TBB download
 page, and should pass the OS and architecture to this page in the form of
 an anchor/fragment (see #4238).

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7495>
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