Network Down page

Status

Team

Open issues/risks

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Stage 1: Definition

1. Feature overview

Currently Firefox shows the "Server not found" error message for both a website misspelling and a network problem. Since it's possible to detect that there is a network issue we should show a separate "Network Down" message in those cases.

This would provide more meaningful error messages for people and give us the opportunity to give them better suggested troubleshooting steps.

This is especially important because after new Firefox releases many Firefox users find themselves unable to connect because Firefox is being blocked by a firewall (up to 50% of support questions are about this). Currently in these situations we show them the "Server not found" message and the first troubleshooting step we suggest is to check the url for typos. If we instead show them a "Network Down" message we can also suggest they check firewall settings if they've just completed a Firefox update.

What this feature would do:

• When unable to load a page, Firefox can check to see if it can still access the internet and that this isn't just a case of mistyped URL.
• If Firefox can't connect to the internet it will display a "Network Down" error page with troubleshooting suggestions.

2. Users & use cases

• Internet Security software blocking Firefox
• Proxy errors
• DNS errors
• Problems with IPv6
• The computer is connected to a wi-fi access point that doesn't have an active internet connection
• The computer does not have an active internet connection

3. Dependencies

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4. Requirements

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Non-goals

The ability to link cached support articles from this page would be a separate, future enhancement/feature.

Stage 2: Design

5. Functional specification

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6. User experience design

New Network Down message:


A Network Down message would require changing the Server not found message:

Stage 3: Planning

7. Implementation plan

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8. Reviews

Security review

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Privacy review

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Localization review

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Accessibility

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Quality Assurance review

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Operations review

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Stage 4: Development

9. Implementation

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Stage 5: Release

10. Landing criteria

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Feature details

Team status notes