[tor-bugs] #4234 [Tor Browser]: Investigate the Firefox update process

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#4234: Investigate the Firefox update process
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     Reporter:           |      Owner:  mcs
  mikeperry              |     Status:  accepted
         Type:  task     |  Milestone:  TorBrowserBundle 2.3.x-stable
     Priority:  major    |    Version:
    Component:  Tor      |   Keywords:  tbb-bounty, tbb-usability,
  Browser                |  pantheon, chronos, tbb-firefox-
   Resolution:           |  patch,TorBrowserTeam201408,MikePerry201408R
Actual Points:           |  Parent ID:
       Points:           |
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Comment (by arma):

 Replying to [comment:46 mcs]:
 > Currently we have app.update.enabled = true and app.update.auto = false,
 which corresponds to "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to
 install them" in the prefs UI.  That seems like a good first step; it is
 still "opt in" in the sense that people get to choose whether to download
 and apply an update.

 I remember long ago the Mozilla usability people were proud of their
 switch to a "download it silently in the background anyway, and then the
 pop-up for the user is about whether to update to the thing they'd already
 fetched" design, showing that having the update already downloaded greatly
 increased the update rates. So, will our update do it that way? Should it?

 Assuming we're doing the update over Tor, a) how many bytes are we
 talking, multiplied by all the users who will pull the update
 approximately at once? and b) I wonder if there are other tricks we should
 do to avoid screwing the usability of Tor while it's fetching the update
 -- like using Tor's circuit isolation feature to make it use a different
 circuit than other activity uses?

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234#comment:47>
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