Answering Questions on the
Support Playstore Tool
What Makes a Good Contribution
Build your reply (Basic Reply format)
Find a response for some common issues:
Slow loading perhaps due to web compatibility
Suggest user to file a support request (email attachment issue)
Search Widget (removed a year ago so we probably won’t get a lot of reviews about this)
SD Card as well as Add to Home Screen
Camera or microphone or both running without my permission
It's easy to get started answering reviews. Don't worry, you don't have to be an expert to make a difference. Most questions are already answered by a Knowledge Base article and you can post a link. We’ve also shared a number of responses below that you can take, customize and use.
Volunteering for support at Mozilla is an important role. You are not just helping users, you are representing Mozilla and the Open Source movement in general. It is therefore important to understand how we give good support.
To help guide what good support means, we’ve written down a few principles to follow.
Please ensure you have read this before you start contributing and if you have any questions please reach out at slack: #sumo2
What makes a good contribution
If you get stuck on a difficult support question here are some resources,
If you want to include a link to a SUMO KB article, use https://bitly.com/ to generate a shorter URL.
Start with the easy ones!
When you first start replying make sure you select reviews that you understand and that you feel comfortable enough to tackle. You don’t need to reply to every review out there. Feel free to skip until you find a review that makes sense to you. Don’t worry, the more reviews you reply to, the easier it will become afterwards to deal with more complicated issues.
Before you reply make sure to carefully read what the user has written first. It doesn’t matter if that means it will take longer to reply. This is not a race! The more we understand what the user’s issues are, the better our replies will be.
It is important that the solutions we provide to users are as technically accurate as possible. When you’re done with reading the review don’t jump into replying immediately, do a little bit of research first. Check the canned responses, ask the more senior contributors or staff members and only reply when you’re 100% comfortable with what you’re going to write.
Greeting ------------> Hi,
Empathize ---------> I’m sorry you’re encountering [summarize issue].
Suggest ------------> You might want to try [x, y, z suggested fixes]
Provide a helpful link---------> Or check out this article or forum [insert link].
Ask for feedback (optional) -> Please let us know if this is helpful by leaving an updated review.
Sign it (optional) -> ^[Your initials]
When using Canned Responses
Canned Responses are just a template that can be used to quickly and easily get an idea of how to respond to reviews. It is always recommended that you customize all of your response, but it is important to at least personalize your response. The best way to do this is to refer to the specific problem the customer is reviewing.
Customer:
“I'm left handed and the UI is not comfortable to be used with one hand. I know that only small percentage if the population use left hand as primary, but we still exist. Could you please consider adding the opportunity to flip controls over the left side?”
Responder:
“Hi [REVIEWER’S NAME]. Thank you so much for your feedback, we really appreciate it. We are always looking for ways to improve our browser, so we will pass this back to our developers and see what we can do about a left-handed UI in a future update. [Your initials if you like]”
The anonymity of the internet causes people to act strangely. My mother and I have been called all manner of things in the process of customer support through no fault of our own. The thing to remember is that ranting and name calling is unacceptable AND it’s also not personal. Especially when users are moving to other browsers. This is your chance to delight them and have them reconsider that choice. Always be friendly and assume the best. And don’t forget to do your technical research as well
Issue Raised in the Review | Sample Comments | Response (pls CUSTOMIZE) |
Requesting a new feature | Why cant Firefox Preview do “x”? | Hi [INSERT REVIEWER’S NAME] Thank you for your feedback and interest in what we are doing. This is still a preview of what we are working on and we hope to bring more features in future updates. |
Requesting Add-ons | “Add-ons option is missing.... without add-ons support this browser is useless to me. I'll be using old Firefox untill you support add-ons in this new browser.” | Hello [REVIEWER’S NAME]. Thank you for taking the time to let us know what you’d like to see out of our new browser! Since we are still in the preview stages, we hope to release many more features like add-on support with future updates. |
Extremely Slow/ Choppy / crashes | “Very slow. Good for basic sites but extremely SLOW. Chrome and Opera much better” | Example 1: Hi [REVIEWER’S NAME]. Please make sure you have the latest version of Firefox Preview. You can try clearing the cache too: open Android Settings - Apps - Firefox Preview - Storage - clear data and cache. If this doesn’t help, please ask for help on the Support Forum https://mzl.la/new-question Example 2: Hello [REVIEWER’S NAME]. We’re sorry about the slowness! Sometimes updating to the latest version of Firefox Preview or clearing cookies/cache can help with this: open Android Settings - Apps - Firefox Preview - Storage - clear data and cache. If this doesn’t make things quicker, we offer support on our forums here: https://mzl.la/new-question |
General Hate (I hate it) | “Bad” “It’s rubbish” | Hi [REVIEWER’S NAME]. We’re sorry about any troubles you’ve had with Firefox Preview. This is still an early release and may have unresolved issues, but perhaps we can help solve your problem on the Support Forum - lots of people are there to help each other out. https://mzl.la/new-question |
Keyboard / Spell checker issues | Cannot type in characters on web page I have been using Firefox for long time on my Nexus 5, but after upgrading the OS to 6.0, I could not do any typing on web page because the keyboard did not pop up after clicking a character input bar, e.g. Google's search, yahoo search etc. Chrome did not have such problem so I ruled out the possibility of language setting problems. Please have a look. | Maybe the keyboard app that you’ve installed is not up to date. I recommend you open the Play Store app & update your apps including your keyboard app. If this does not help, perhaps we can help solve your problem on the Support Forum - lots of people are there to help each other out. https://mzl.la/new-question |
Can’t Switch my Search Engine | “Yahoo sucks Cant change default search engine on my tablet. And its starting to get slower. Not worth using” “Firefox I like using Firefox, but it's slower to load websites and the yahoo searches are nowhere close to as good as Google” | Firefox Preview lets you choose your own search experience. Here's how to add, remove and set a default search engine in just a few taps. https://mzl.la/set-search-engine The Search Suggestions feature even lets you preview popular results before you finish typing in your search. |
App file sizeBattery issues | Very large file You need to reduce app size. There are more apps in market, which are very less in size with high speed engines. Developers should concentrate on this. | We do our best to make the application as small as possible without removing features we know people like and use. This is something we keep under review and do look at on a regular basis. |
Firefox Sync | I have signed in to Firefox Sync and it is not working. | I’m sorry to hear Firefox Sync isn't working for you. Please ensure you’ve selected the items (bookmarks or history) you want to sync across your devices. Sync will then pick up any new bookmarks you save or remove. If this does not help, perhaps we can help solve your problem on the Support Forum https://mzl.la/new-question |
Bookmarks | It is difficult to believe that the bookmark handling is as bad as it is. But then that's also why I never use firefox on PC. Can't wait for Vivaldi to get a mobile version. While fitefox sucks, it's still the best mobile browser out there. Browsers are in sad shape in the world of mobile devices. | Perhaps the following article will help you better handle your bookmarks https://mzl.la/manage-bookmarks If this does not help, perhaps we can help solve your problem on the Support Forum https://mzl.la/new-question |
Accounts | I recommend that you have a read of this support article https://mzl.la/setup-sync that will help you to get started with Firefox Sync. Perhaps we can help solve your problem on the Support Forum https://mzl.la/new-question | |
Privacy | I do not know how Firefox Preview protects me online. | We appreciate your feedback. Have you tried Private Browsing with Tracking Protection? https://mzl.la/tp This will keep all of your browser history private while using your Android device. Hope this helps make your Firefox experience better! If so, please consider updating your review. |
Clear history | I do not know how to clear the pages that I have visited. | Here’s how to clear history: Tap the Firefox Menu - Your Library - History - Delete browsing history at the top and then tap Clear to confirm. |
Search Widget | Firefox used to have a search widget, where is it? | Firefox Preview does have a home screen widget. Long press on the Android homescreen and select “Widgets” and scroll down the list. For more support see: https://mzl.la/support-widget |
SD Card as well as Add to Home Screen | We cannot download files directly in SD card | You can’t download directly to an SD card, but this is something that I hope we can include in a future update. |
Add to home screen | Unable to add shortcut to my favourite site to home screen | This is currently not available in Firefox Preview, but is something that may be included in a future update. |
If a user has many vague/general problems, first specifically mention one of the problems e.g. in this case blank screens and then, updating Firefox Preview and then offer support forum as a final alternative | IDK what's going on but all of a sudden I get blank screens, not responding notifications and now I cant close any bleeping tabs. I hope you guys fix this soon. I'm disabling and installing a different browser until I learn you've fixed the problems. | Sorry you’re having issues like blank screens. I recommend that you make sure that Firefox Preview is up to date. If this doesn’t help, please ask in our Support Forum https://mzl.la/new-question |
Zoom/font size scaling slider | The browser itself is fine but for some reason they don't give you a font size scaling slider in accessibility settings like Chrome and other browsers on Android. This one feature is a deal breaker for me. They only let you select to match the system level font size which would require me to set my phone's font to large. In Chrome I can scale the font to whatever size I want without adjusting my entire phone's font size. It also means that you only get a choice of two font sizes on my phone because at the system level I can only pick normal default size or large and that's it. If they ever add a slider to scale text size I'll reinstall and change this review, but won't be using it without this basic feature. | Thank you for the suggestion to help improve accessibility issues! Have you tried pinch/zoom to change the font size in Firefox? If that doesn’t help, perhaps we can help solve your problem on the Support Forum - lots of people are there to help each other out. https://mzl.la/new-question |
Webcompat - most issues aren’t truly webcompat but rather other issues leading to non rendering of a page | Sometimes pages won't load although Chrome will pull up the same page asap. | Please make sure you have the latest version of Firefox Preview. Try clearing storage, which will be similar to:open Android Settings, tap Apps, Firefox & from there clear Firefox’s storage. If this doesn’t lead to pages loading quickly, please ask for help on the Support Forum https://mzl.la/new-question |
Positive 1 | Positive review with ½ star ratings. | Thank you for the kind review! We appreciate the love & support! Your low star rating doesn’t match your positive comments about Firefox :-) Could you please update your star rating to something more positive like 4 or 5 stars? |
Negative | I give up! I used this program several years, beared a series of continuous crashing, bookmarks deleting whatsoever. but finally I give up. I definitely deserve way better than this. no more firefox for desktop or mobile even if you will became the world's only internet browser. thanks | Sorry to hear about your issues. We do update Firefox Preview with fixes and new features. We hope that you consider trying Firefox Preview again in the future. |
Camera or microphone or both running without my permission | Got warned 4 times by system notification on galaxy note, that firefox was detected using the camera. Uninstall it people. It's a serious invasion of privacy and no way to disable it in settings. | I should be able to help you with this. From the Android home screen, open the settings app (typically a cog wheel icon). Select "Apps and Notifications", followed by "App permissions". You can then select "Camera permissions" and change the setting as you require for Firefox. I hope that this helps. |