Comments on: User-friendly terminology

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:51:48 +0000

Any of the options talking about “sharing your private/personal/etc data” seem like complete non-starters. That sounds like a serious bug, not a feature.

I added “Many computers, one Firefox.”

By: monk.e.boy

monk.e.boy — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:15:29 +0000

I don’t think I understood the question – sharing means to share between two people. But you mean, mirroring my firefox settings to a new computer?

I think a whole paragraph explaining it would be better.

BTW I am an old firefox user, been using it since firebird. I write web spiders in python as my day job. So if I don’t really understand what you mean, I doubt my mum will either

Ask some people at your local shop, they’ll soon tell you where you are going wrong. Buy a clip board and a fake smile.

By: Kim Sullivan

Kim Sullivan — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 09:32:56 +0000

I personally believe that “sharing” is mostly out – not because the connotation with p2p sites, but also with sites like del.icio.us and a host of other “social bookmarking sites” (share your bookmarks), flickr (share your pictures).

But more importantly, I think that “multiple computers” (or similar) should be stressed. While “Share your bookmarks…” could be almost anything, “Share your bookmarks between multiple computers” is much better. You don’t start thinking of p2p sites or social bookmarking sites. It’s clear that you’re not sharing between people but between computers (that are, presumably, yours).

If the current favorite “Sharing your bookmarks and other settings…” would have been “Sharing your bookmakrs and other settings between multiple computers”, it would have been my pick

By: Wayne Woods

Wayne Woods — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:31:26 +0000

I think the title has to contain important keywords, as well as being user-friendly to read. Someone scanning through a list of headings won’t be reading them all first. I suspect “profile” is a user-friendly enough word for anyone at the level of using their profile on several devices, and I think “multiple” is the most obvious word to describe an ambiguous number of devices (though “other” may also suit). Like others before me, I’m uneasy about the use of “Sharing” since in the digital music age it conjures up images of other people on the network seeing your bookmarks and using them.

By: Steuard

Steuard — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:02:36 +0000

I really appreciated the phrase “bookmarks and other settings” compared to any of the other options, mainly because I myself was unsure what exactly was included. (It really is the whole profile, then? Does that include extensions?)

However, I agree with Faaborg that the word “sharing” is entirely the wrong one to use here: my first thought is definitely “sharing with the whole world”. A term like “synch” or “synchronize” might be a good replacement for “share”. But his “Using Firefox on more than one computer” may be the best option yet: it might be nice if it mentioned bookmarks and settings somewhere, but to some degree that’s implicit in the topic.

By: Majken

Majken — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:56:29 +0000

Is this about moving profile data (the importing article?) or is it about using the same profile across different machines (like having the profile on a network drive)?

By: Faaborg

Faaborg — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 22:32:31 +0000

Think carefully about the user’s goal when determining the best name. All the choices (except for one) start with “sharing..” However, I don’t think users are going to think about sharing, because sharing is something you do with other people, when was the last time you shared something with yourself?

The user is probably thinking:

“I want to use Firefox at work and at home”
“I want to use Firefox on my desktop and laptop”
“I want to use Firefox on more than one computer”

So I would go with “Using Firefox on more than one computer” The user isn’t going to be thinking about data types or profiles yet (if at all), and they should recognize this article since it is the root of their problem.

By: Aleksej

Aleksej — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:33:07 +0000

I voted for â€œSharing your Firefox settings…â€, though â€œ”Sharing your bookmarks and other settings…”â€ is also good.

AndersH: P2P file sharing is not always illegal.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:12:37 +0000

I’d take “Sharing your bookmarks and other settings..”, but what are the other settings? This is also the problem with the other options. As Jason already said, it’s about context. Information/settings/data can mean anything. You could list the data in the heading (bookmarks, passwords, history,…). The problem would be, that this might be a very long list. You could also say “Sharing your Firefox data/settings/information/whatever”, but you should list the different data in the article then. If you are good, you could measure what part of the profile data regular users are most interested in and say “Share $data and other settings”. You could also have multiple headings pointing to the same article.

By: Chris Ilias

Chris Ilias — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:53:10 +0000

> â€œSharing your Firefox settingsâ€ appears twice.

Both were added by guests, not me.