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Bug 52334

Summary: Help users to configure firewall
Product: platform Reporter: Martin Ryzl <mryzl>
Component: -- Other --Assignee: issues@platform <issues>
Status: NEW ---    
Severity: blocker CC: eadams, jmzourek
Priority: P3    
Version: 4.x   
Hardware: PC   
OS: All   
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT Exception Reporter:

Description Martin Ryzl 2004-12-13 14:48:02 UTC
IDE uses several ports and some external programs
that also use ports. The most common scenario is
that when user installs and then start IDE + java
for the first time, a firewall dialog appears
notifying about network communication required by
processes netbeans, nbexec, java, emulator (mobile). 

It may be a good idea to have  a dialog (or
whatever) that would tell user that IDE needs to
open some ports and offer a help with firewall
configuration. Then it could initiate several test
connections to show what types of connections.
Users could create appropriate rules and test
whether those rules are correct.

I don't know how many users would be interested in
such feature, thus I'd propose to get some more
data and possibly include this in a usability study.


Complete story [reported by Evan Adams]:
3) I double-clicked on the desktop icon and
immediately two
   dialogs came up. The first one, so the one on
the bottom,
   was from Windows:

    Windows Security Alert

    To help protect your computer, Windows Firewal
blocked
    some features of this program.

    Do you want to keep blocking this program?

    Name:  java
    Publisher: Unknown

        [Keep Blocking] [Unblock] [Ask Me Later]

   This is a new dialog that I'm seeing
occassionally since I
   installed SP2 on WinXP.  It's very annoying and
does not
   give me much info to go on.  It's saying that
java is trying
   to do something the firewall does not like,
presumably this
   is the IDE's autoupdate feature but, as a new
user, how
   would I don't know.

   It would be really good to find a way to
prevent this dialog
   from appearing at all.  It requires the user to
know that
   the "java" executable refers to NB and, as a
new user, I
   have no idea what sort of access NB is doing so
I'm in no
   position to answer the question.

   Is there at least a way to set the Publisher field?

   The second dialog is from NB saying:

    Settings created by a previous version of the
IDE were
     found on your system at <pathname>.  Do you
want to
    import them?

            [Yes] [No]


   Nothing really wrong with this dialog except
that it
   comes up over the firewall dialog.  Maybe NB
needs some
   special code to deal with the firewall
question, before
   continuing.

   It is always a bad idea to have multiple
dialogs come
   up at the same time.

   I answered Ask Me Later to the firewall
question and
   no to the import question.
Comment 1 Peter Pis 2007-08-10 09:25:04 UTC
I would expect such a feature in new Plugin manager. Reassigning to "autoupdate"...
Comment 2 Jiri Rechtacek 2007-08-10 12:42:07 UTC
Plugin Manager doesn't care of Proxies. It's responsibility of Proxy Options.