UITelemetry data format (obsolete)

Note

UITelemetry is deprecated. As of Firefox 61, UITelemetry is no longer reported.

UI Telemetry sends its data as a JSON blob. This document describes the different parts of the JSON blob.

toolbars

This tracks the state of the user’s UI customizations. It has the following properties:

  • sizemode - string indicating whether the window is in maximized, normal (restored) or fullscreen mode;

  • bookmarksBarEnabled - boolean indicating whether the bookmarks bar is visible;

  • menuBarEnabled - boolean indicating whether the menu bar is visible (always false on OS X);

  • titleBarEnabled - boolean indicating whether the (real) titlebar is visible (rather than having tabs in the titlebar);

  • defaultKept - list of strings identifying toolbar buttons and items that are still in their default position. Only the IDs of builtin widgets are sent (ie not add-on widgets);

  • defaultMoved - list of strings identifying toolbar buttons and items that are no longer in their default position, but have not been removed to the palette. Only the IDs of builtin widgets are sent (ie not add-on widgets);

  • nondefaultAdded - list of strings identifying toolbar buttons and items that have been added from the palette. Only the IDs of builtin widgets are sent (ie not add-on widgets);

  • defaultRemoved - list of strings identifying toolbar buttons and items that are in the palette that are elsewhere by default. Only the IDs of builtin widgets are sent (ie not add-on widgets);

  • addonToolbars - the number of non-default toolbars that are customizable. 1 by default because it counts the add-on bar shim;

  • visibleTabs - array of the number of visible tabs per window;

  • hiddenTabs - array of the number of hidden tabs per window (ie tabs in panorama groups which are not the current group);

  • countableEvents - please refer to the next section.

  • durations - an object mapping descriptions to duration records, which records the amount of time a user spent doing something. Currently only has one property:

    • customization - how long a user spent customizing the browser. This is an array of objects, where each object has a duration property indicating the time in milliseconds, and a bucket property indicating a bucket in which the duration info falls.

countableEvents

Countable events are stored under the toolbars section. They count the number of times certain events happen. No timing or other correlating information is stored - purely the number of times things happen.

countableEvents contains a list of buckets as its properties. A bucket represents the state the browser was in when these events occurred, such as currently running an interactive tour. There are 3 types of buckets:

  • __DEFAULT__ - No bucket, for times when the browser is not in any special state.

  • bucket_<NAME> - Normal buckets, for when the browser is in a special state. The <NAME> in the bucket ID is the name associated with the bucket and may be further broken down into parts by the | character.

  • bucket_<NAME>|<INTERVAL> - Expiring buckets, which are similar to a countdown timer. The <INTERVAL> in the bucket ID describes the time interval the recorded event happened in. The intervals are 1m (one minute), 3m (three minutes), 10m (ten minutes), and 1h (one hour). After one hour, the __DEFAULT__ bucket is automatically used again.

Each bucket is an object with the following properties:

  • click-builtin-item is an object tracking clicks on builtin customizable toolbar items, keyed off the item IDs, with an object for each item with keys left, middle and right each storing a number indicating how often the respective type of click has happened.

  • click-menu-button is the same, except the item ID is always ‘button’.

  • click-bookmarks-bar is the same, with the item IDs being replaced by either container for clicks on bookmark or livemark folders, and item for individual bookmarks.

  • click-menubar is similar, with the item IDs being replaced by one of menu, menuitem or other, depending on the kind of item clicked. Note that this is not tracked on OS X, where we can’t listen for these events because of the global menubar.

  • click-bookmarks-menu-button is also similar, with the item IDs being replaced by:

    • menu for clicks on the ‘menu’ part of the item;

    • add for clicks that add a bookmark;

    • edit for clicks that open the panel to edit an existing bookmark;

    • in-panel for clicks when the button is in the menu panel, and clicking it does none of the

      above;

  • customize tracks different types of customization events without the left, middle and right distinctions. The different events are the following, with each storing a count of the number of times they occurred:

    • start counts the number of times the user starts customizing;

    • add counts the number of times an item is added somewhere from the palette;

    • move counts the number of times an item is moved somewhere else (but not to the palette);

    • remove counts the number of times an item is removed to the palette;

    • reset counts the number of times the ‘restore defaults’ button is used;

  • search is an object tracking searches of various types, keyed off the search

    location, storing a number indicating how often the respective type of search has happened.

    • There are also two special keys that mean slightly different things.

      • urlbar-keyword records searches that would have been an invalid-protocol error, but are now keyword searches. They are also counted in the urlbar keyword (along with all the other urlbar searches).

      • selection searches records selections of search suggestions. They include the source, the index of the selection, and the kind of selection (mouse or enter key). Selection searches are also counted in their sources.

UITour

The UITour API provides ways for pages on trusted domains to safely interact with the browser UI and request it to perform actions such as opening menus and showing highlights over the browser chrome - for the purposes of interactive tours. We track some usage of this API via the UITour object in the UI Telemetry output.

Each page is able to register itself with an identifier, a Page ID. A list of Page IDs that have been seen over the last 8 weeks is available via seenPageIDs.

Page IDs are also used to identify buckets for countableEvents, in the following circumstances:

  • The current tab is a tour page. This will be a normal bucket with the name UITour|<PAGEID>, where <PAGEID> is the page’s registered ID. This will result in bucket IDs such as bucket_UITour|australis-tour.

  • A tour tab is open but another tab is active. This will be an expiring bucket with the name UITour|<PAGEID>|inactive. This will result in bucket IDs such as bucket_UITour|australis-tour|inactive|1m.

  • A tour tab has recently been open but has been closed. This will be an expiring bucket with the name UITour|<PAGEID>|closed. This will result in bucket IDs such as bucket_UITour|australis-tour|closed|10m.

contextmenu

We track context menu interactions to figure out which ones are most often used and/or how effective they are. In the contextmenu object, we first store things per-bucket. Next, we divide the following different context menu situations:

  • selection if there is content on the page that’s selected on which the user clicks;

  • link if the user opened the context menu for a link

  • image-link if the user opened the context menu on an image or canvas that’s a link;

  • image if the user opened the context menu on an image (that isn’t a link);

  • canvas if the user opened the context menu on a canvas (that isn’t a link);

  • media if the user opened the context menu on an HTML video or audio element;

  • input if the user opened the context menu on a text input element;

  • other for all other openings of the content menu;

Each of these objects (if they exist) then gets a “withcustom” and/or a “withoutcustom” property for context menus opened with custom page-created items and without them, and each of those properties holds an object with IDs corresponding to a count of how often an item with that ID was activated in the context menu. Only builtin context menu items are tracked, and besides those items there are four special items which get counts:

  • close-without-interaction is incremented when the user closes the context menu without interacting with it;

  • custom-page-item is incremented when the user clicks an item that was created by the page;

  • unknown is incremented when an item without an ID was clicked;

  • other-item is incremented when an add-on-provided menuitem is clicked.