Quality Feedback Agent

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Revision as of 18:00, 15 April 2006 by Ispiked (talk | contribs) (Removed link to old FastFind page (this is unnecessary))
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Talkback (aka Quality Feedback Agent) is a program that activates when Mozilla Suite, Firefox, or Thunderbird crashes. It lets you send stack traces and other development information to mozilla.org engineers. This information helps developers make future versions of the software crash less.

Installing

Talkback is usually bundled with Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozilla Suite. However to install it you may need to do a "Custom" installation and select "Quality Feedback Agent" component manually. If you installed the program without Talkback, the best way to do this is to reinstall (you won't lose your settings).

How to tell whether Talkback is installed

If you're using Firefox 1.0.x, look in the "components" subdirectory of the application directory. If you have "talkback.exe" file there, you almost certainly have Talkback installed. If you're using Firefox 1.5.x, look in Extension manager for an extension named Talkback.

Turning Talkback on or off

The first time you crash, a window appears asking whether you want to turn the agent on or off. If you change your mind, you can change it under the Settings menu in the Talkback UI.

Talkback UI

The Talkback interface can be accessed by running talkback.exe in the components directory in the installation directory. The easiest way to find it is to search your computer for "talkback.exe".

In OSX you can start the UI by opening a terminal and starting the following executable (Path might vary): /Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents//MacOS/extensions/talkback@mozilla.org/components/talkback/Talkback.app/Contents/MacOS/Talkback

The UI will contain a list of all the incident IDs (ex: TB12345678A) that were sent to Mozilla servers. This incident ID is very helpful for troubleshooting when posting in the forums or filing bugs.

What data is sent

Contained in the data sent is a stack trace (where in the code the crashed occured and how it got there), the version and operating system, how long the program ran before crashing, and any data that you fill out.

Uses of the data

  • Statistics are compiled on all the incidents. Periodically, someone looks at these statistics and files bugs for the most frequent types of crashes, called "topcrashes".
  • Individual incidents can be looked up with Talkback FastFind to help users find immediate solutions to crashes.

External links