Kee update notification changes?

Kee browser extension
1

I’ve been thinking about developing a better way to handle Kee update notifications.

The current approach is the officially recommend way to do this but it does cause quite an irritating interruption to users when an update occurs, at least in my opinion as a user of many addons, all of which behave in the same way as Kee.

Does anyone else find the surprising appearance of the release notes “Kee has been updated” tab annoying?

To remind you of the context of this feature, we must inform all users when an update has occurred because each update can contain changes to the extension’s appearance or behaviour that being unaware of could increase the risk of security or privacy missteps, not to mention the usual benefits of seeing what new things are now possible that were not before.

One idea I have is to show a slowly flashing modification to the Kee icon in the browser toolbar for an hour after an update. The user could then click on the icon to launch the release notes when they reach a convenient point in their work.

Technically it shouldn’t be too hard to implement but it’s not trivial so I’d like to get some feedback before spending time on it in case we should just leave it as is or tweak my idea in some way.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

PS: The rough implementation plan would be like this:

  • Track the current version number in local storage; only update it when the release notes have been displayed
  • When an update occurs, start flashing an “up arrow” overlay on the icon every 15 seconds - probably between two colours, possibly implemented as a Unicode character on a standard icon label but if not then using a similar technique to displaying the multiple matches number overlay on the form field icon
  • If the browser is restarted in the mean time, start the flashing period again, but only for 5 minutes (and perhaps at a faster rate than once every 15 seconds)
  • New notification inside the main panel with button to click to launch the update notes (not necessary if we can change the behaviour of the icon to not show the panel when it is clicked in this flashing state, but I’m not sure that’s possible)
  • If the time limit expires before the user asks to see the release notes, show the tab as per current behaviour
  • [stretch goal]: Gradually speed up to 2 or 4 times per second as the one hour limit expires, like a bomb about to explode :boom:
2

Using a couple of the WebExtensions APIs, I’ve implemented a change to Kee v3.6 which will delay the extension update if user is busy, for up to 8 hours.

This isn’t a perfect solution because the user may be exposed to a security risk or serious bug for up to an extra 8 hours but all things considered I think it is a worthwhile improvement.

A user will be considered “busy” if their web browser says that they have not been active for 15 minutes or longer (or, for some web browsers, if they have locked the screen).

The change will take effect for updates from Kee 3.6 to a future update, so not for some time yet.