Opened 4 years ago
Last modified 32 hours ago
#17400 new task
Decide how to use the multi-lingual Tor Browser in the alpha/release series
Reported by: | gk | Owned by: | tbb-team |
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Priority: | Medium | Milestone: | |
Component: | Applications/Tor Browser | Version: | |
Severity: | Normal | Keywords: | ux-team, tbb-usability-stoppoint-wizard, TorBrowserTeam202002, AffectsTails |
Cc: | mcs, brade, mikeperry, whonix-devel@…, ilv, isabela, linda, arthuredelstein, emmapeel, antonela, intrigeri, cohosh | Actual Points: | |
Parent ID: | Points: | ||
Reviewer: | Sponsor: |
Description
Now that #12967 is fixed, we should decide on how we want to make use of a multi-lingual Tor Browser. For the hardened series we just ship one build with all locales. We could do that for the alpha and the release series as well but maybe there is a smarter way to strike the balance between usability (downloading just the localized bundle I want) and resource scarcity (hosting all the localized bundles on our infrastructure).
Mike had the idea a while ago to ship the most important bundles localized while putting all the other locales in a generic bundle (see: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-dev/2015/tor-dev.2015-08-10-18.01.log.txt). I think I like that idea. Is that still something we want?
Child Tickets
Change History (29)
comment:1 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | tbb-usability-stoppoint-wizard added; tbb-usability removed |
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comment:2 Changed 4 years ago by
comment:3 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201511 added |
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comment:4 Changed 4 years ago by
From #17616 (resolved as a duplicate of this ticket):
However, for better consistency and not breaking TBB downloaders in future, please consider producing also stable TBB bundles with language "ALL".
comment:5 Changed 4 years ago by
Cc: | whonix-devel@… added |
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If you go for "ALL" bundles only, could you please consider adding web redirects from language specific links to to "ALL"? At least from "en-US" to "ALL"? This would help not breaking TBB downloaders.
comment:6 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201512 added; TorBrowserTeam201511 removed |
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comment:7 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201601 added; TorBrowserTeam201512 removed |
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Tickets for Jan 2016.
comment:8 Changed 4 years ago by
Great task! Solve all Localization problems in one ticket!
It is still being solved by IT industry for now ;)
But due to the security nature of the project there are some key moments that make a solution more definite:
- Tor Browser emulates some "common" browser to the web, and it's better for it to handle all locale-specific features of the web (not only language), because it is being built potentially for everyone (or not?).
- Fingerprinting problem leads project to bundle in future (?) Unicode fonts with it to be OS-independent (a lot of megabytes each).
- Best UI is MUI that can switch on the fly and has "same as system" option.
- Localized versions (Mozilla style) are needed anyways if you want people that know only one language to use it. Localized site, localized installer, localized app - no "select language" dialogs (in English!). MUI installer with OS language detection might be used.
- To reduce size TBB can download LPKs (xpi) from your site when user switches language in UI (and can restart automatically to apply), but users in restricted locations cannot switch this way.
Hope that differences in UI will not be exposed to the web - it's the main concern.
comment:9 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201602 added; TorBrowserTeam201601 removed |
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Putting stuff on the radar for February.
comment:10 Changed 4 years ago by
Cc: | ilv@… added |
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comment:11 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201603 added; TorBrowserTeam201602 removed |
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comment:12 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201604 added; TorBrowserTeam201603 removed |
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comment:13 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201605 added; TorBrowserTeam201604 removed |
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Moving tickets
comment:14 Changed 4 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201606 added; TorBrowserTeam201605 removed |
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comment:15 Changed 3 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201607 added; TorBrowserTeam201606 removed |
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comment:16 Changed 3 years ago by
Cc: | ilv isabela added; ilv@… removed |
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comment:17 Changed 3 years ago by
Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam201608 added; TorBrowserTeam201607 removed |
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Moving items to August 2016.
comment:18 Changed 3 years ago by
Cc: | lnl added |
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comment:19 Changed 3 years ago by
Cc: | linda added; lnl removed |
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comment:20 Changed 3 years ago by
Keywords: | ux-team added |
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comment:21 Changed 2 years ago by
Cc: | arthuredelstein added |
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comment:22 Changed 17 months ago by
Cc: | emmapeel added |
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comment:23 Changed 17 months ago by
Cc: | antonela added |
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comment:24 Changed 17 months ago by
Replying to gk:
Mike had the idea a while ago to ship the most important bundles localized while putting all the other locales in a generic bundle (see: http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-dev/2015/tor-dev.2015-08-10-18.01.log.txt). I think I like that idea. Is that still something we want?
It does seem like an easy next step that what we do now, and it would help some of our users now without inconveniencing the others much.
Are there reasons not to do it? :)
comment:25 Changed 17 months ago by
I was talking with arthuredelstein about this, he said the plan is to start adding a couple of completed languages each release starting with TB8, until all the completed languages are available on the download page
comment:26 Changed 16 months ago by
Cc: | intrigeri added |
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comment:27 Changed 16 months ago by
Keywords: | AffectsTails added |
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comment:28 Changed 16 months ago by
My 2cts from the PoV of the Tails ISO build system: currently we download all tarballs because we need all langpacks; it would be awesome if we could instead download a single, multi-lingual tarball. Any incremental change in this direction is good for us :)
comment:29 Changed 32 hours ago by
Cc: | cohosh added |
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Keywords: | TorBrowserTeam202002 added; TorBrowserTeam201608 removed |
I assume the advantage of shipping packages for each locale is the smaller download size. But the impact of including many locales is not too high. Here is some data from some alpha builds I made yesterday:
locale-specific package:
63M tor-browser-linux64-5.5a3_ar.tar.xz
76M tor-browser-linux64-5.5a3_ar.mar
"ALL" package with 15 language packs:
67M tor-browser-linux64-5.5a3_ALL.tar.xz
82M tor-browser-linux64-5.5a3_ALL.mar
The size increase over a locale-specific package is about 4MB for the .tar.gz files and about 6MB for the complete MAR files. That does not seem bad at all. Should we just switch to the "ALL" package? Or are we planning to increase the number of Firefox language packs we ship?
We can greatly reduce the footprint on the web server and mirrors by producing multi-locale packages.