Talk:Quality Feedback Agent

dvgrn 4/6/2005> The "example Talkback crash report" link (under "What is a stack trace?") is probably going to keep going out of date periodically, as old crash reports are deleted from the database. I just updated it to the newest possible Talkback report, so it should be good for a while. (But I don't know enough to say for sure whether this new random sample is a good example of a stack trace...)

crashing threads

I have a crash2.cpp (linked on the page - the host does referrer checking) that lets you crash in a specified thread on WinXP; you still need the process and thread IDs from process explorer, and plus I don't have a binary. Someone take this and run with it? ;) --Mook 15:40, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Needs name change

The name is now Quality Feedback Agent, is it not? Consider editing this article throughout. I don't think I can change the title or I would. --AnotherGuest.

The program is called "Quality Feedback Agent" (qualified by "Mozilla" or even "Netscape") in its own displays, but the executable is called talkback and the Extension Manager lists this component as Talkback. IMHO no change is required from the present state of affairs (have one name redirect to the other, mention in the top paragraph that both names are synonymous and later use one or the other depending on context). -- Tony 01:37, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Screenshot

Can someone update the existing screenshot of the UI to one that shows incident IDs?--Np 18:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. -- schapel 14:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Link to Breakpad

Current trunk builds of Fx3, Tb3 and Sm2 use Breakpad instead of Talkback now to report crashes. Shouldn't this article mention the fact, with a link to some Breakpad article? I'm not sure how to phrase it. -- Tony 00:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I added a sentence to the intro that Fx3, Tb3, and Sm2 will use Breakpad instead of the QFA and linked to the Breakpad MozillaZine KB article. Alice 02:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Talkback in SeaMonkey builds

I added the following to the article based on the reference given, but later removed it:

Note that, because of licensing issues, the Quality Feedback Agent is not included in SeaMonkey versions released to end users, although it may be included in SeaMonkey nightly builds [1].

.... Can anyone verify whether or not Talkback is still included in any nightly or (Linux) released builds of SeaMonkey? Tony? The reference is to a mozilla.support.seamonkey NG thread where you posted information. Alice 01:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Trunk builds (Sm 2.0a1pre) are now packaged with Breakpad, even on Linux. I don't know about branch builds (Sm 1.0 = latest-mozilla1.8.0, Sm 1.1 = latest-mozilla1.8) but I suppose they are still using Talkback. -- Tony 06:15, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Trunk builds (Sm 2.0a1pre) are now packaged with Breakpad, even on Linux. That being the case, I think we should remove the reference to SeaMonkey 2 (2.0a1) under Quality_Feedback_Agent#Find_out_where_the_agent_is_installed as well as the reference to "SeaMonkey 2.0a1 and later" under Quality_Feedback_Agent#Linux. I started doing that but backed out of it since I thought I should suggest it here first. Even if SM2.0a1 builds did include Talkback in the past, anyone now testing SM2 should be using a current build, and that would include Breakpad, not Talkback. Alice 16:46, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, the reference to "SeaMonkey (1.5a or earlier)" under Quality_Feedback_Agent#Linux should make clearer that SM 1.5a refers to nightly test builds (e.g. seamonkey-1.5a.en-US.linux-i686-gtk1.installer.tar.gz 01-Jan-2006) and not versions released to end-users ..... or, change the SeaMonkey entries so that they only refer to released builds (SM1.0.x and 1.1.x). If only SeaMonkey nightly builds included Talkback then maybe we should remove that information and replace it with Mozilla Suite information, since that's what is given in the Windows and Mac sections. Alice 16:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I think SeaMonkey branch nightlies (nightlies for Sm 1.x) include Talkback but I cannot check it because I don't use them. (I'm using only trunk nightlies of SeaMonkey.) If no one else answers here, maybe you should ask in one of the Sm newsgroups on news.mozilla.org ? As for Sm 1.5, it was never released: trunk builds got their version changed from 1.5a to 2.0a, about when the Mozilla tinderboxen started building them with Toolkit rather than xpfe. Whether or not you mention it is a question of taste IMHO. -- Tony 18:43, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I do vaguely remember that the SeaMonkey trunk changed from 1.5a to 2.0a shortly before I first tried out a trunk build, which was SM 2.0a1 (seamonkey-2.0a1pre.en-US.win32.zip 23-Jun-2007). If I remember right, I wanted to try a SM 2.0 build because of all the new changes. Before that, I stuck to released SM1.0 and SM1.1 builds. To tell the truth, I'd rather not mention nightly builds at all if Talkback was included in any of the released SM versions (SM 1.0.x and SM 1.1.x). Do you know whether or not Talkback was ever included in any SeaMonkey final releases? If only nightly builds (either 1.5a and earlier, or 2.0a1 prior to "Breadkpad builds") included Talkback then maybe something to consider would be to eliminate SeaMonkey altogether from the Linux chart and substitute Mozilla Suite, ... but unfortunately, I don't know anything about Linux. The chart shows /usr/local/seamonkey/components/talkback/talkback for SeaMonkey (1.5a or earlier). However the installation directory article doesn't include SeaMonkey for Linux and only shows Mozilla Suite /usr/lib/mozilla-<version> For example: /usr/lib/mozilla-1.7.3 (?) so I would rather have a Linux user do that (and hopefully add the correct information for both Mozilla Suite (if wrong) and SeaMonkey to the installation directory article (could you?) Alice 00:20, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I see. I believe that (at least some) released versions of SeaMonkey (i.e., Sm 1.1.x and earlier) include Talkback but I can't be certain because (what concerns SeaMonkey) I only use the latest trunk nightly. Maybe you should ask on the newsgroup/mailing list, or else, find Robert Kaiser's KB user name (I suppose Kairo mightn't be a bad guess) and ask him in a private wiki message? (He's the SeaMonkey project leader, or what amounts to it.) His email is rather well known but private email might not be the best thing to try unless all else fails. -- Tony 20:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I looked through the mozilla.support.seamonkey newsgroup and saw that Robert Kaiser posted on Jun 19 2007 that SeaMonkey released builds don't include Talkback. He also posted on Apr 19 2007 that We have no talkback in SeaMonkey release builds. That's the problem of this software being closed-source and our build machines being outside of mozilla.org :( Talkback is only available in trunk nightlies, which are compiled by mozilla.org machines. Before that, Robert Kaiser said on Apr 15 2006 that SeaMonkey 1.0.x (as well as 1.1) probably never will ship with Talkback, as we have no access to the source code of that proprietary product. That's actually part of the general problem with closed-source software :-/ . That's good enough for me and I edited the article accordingly. I rethought my earlier suggestion to consider substituting Mozilla Suite information for SeaMonkey (in the Linux section). I suppose it's really too late for that, since we should be thinking about removing content from KB articles that only applies to Mozilla Suite 1.7.xx and earlier, not adding it. Alice 01:47, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Putting that aside for now, I went ahead and removed references to SeaMonkey 2 under Quality_Feedback_Agent#Find_out_where_the_agent_is_installed and "SeaMonkey 2.0a1 and later" under Quality_Feedback_Agent#Linux for the reasons given above. Alice 13:09, 18 November 2007 (UTC)