(Yet another) Firefox update

[Tolya]

Man, this is starting to piss me off. Firefox apparently decided it needs to have a bigger number than IE, meaning another nonsensical update. Normally we would be where, 4,1 now?

My biggest grief is that each time Firefox releases a new update, almost all of my plugins go to shit. And it can't fix itself, as apparently there isn't yet a Firebug version for 7.

Keep this up Mozilla, I am suddenly being attracted to Opera/Chrome/whatever.

[HeadCreeps]

Not saying you shouldn't switch, but Chrome is frequently cited as the reason why Firefox is even getting so many version number updates - because Chrome has the same kind of release schedule. Firefox is presently working on v10 in their nightly releases. I'm going to stick it out with Firefox as I'm not really experiencing any problems, but I don't use Firebug.

[Crazy_Vasey]

The main problem with Firefox's update schedule as compared to Chrome is that the update is an awful lot less transparent. My experience of Chrome is that it just does it. You'll start up one day and it'll be a new version. You won't even notice half the time unless you check the version number. Firefox's update process is nowhere near as slick about its work.

And, add-ons. That situation is improving and if you install the nightly tester tools to disable the compatibility checks almost everything will work, but it's obviously not great when some of your add-ons get ganked every six weeks. If you're the sort of person who uses a lot of them and they're important to how you use your browser, it must be really annoying.

It's not bothering me all that much - I like getting new versions with improvements baked in on a regular basis - but I'm a total computer geek. I'm running Aurora because I want the latest and greatest and don't really care if it breaks every so often when I can just roll back to the ordinary version for a day or two if necessary. Not that it has broken, it's remarkably stable for as alpha builds go so far, but I doubt many people would bother.

[White Haven]

Chrome doesn't use updates as marketing grist, because it doesn't even tell anyone about them. Nobody cares what your version number structure is if you don't cram it back into their faces.

[Executor32]

Yeah, I just updated to 7.0 a couple days ago, after ignoring it for a couple weeks until my addons were updated. Now it's bugging me about updating to 8.0, with some 7-8 updates incompatible with it. Really, with this new release schedule, you'd think addon authors would just make maxversion=10 or something and release bugfixes in the event that something breaks.

[Executor32]

Ghetto Edit: Apparently I was subscribed to the beta update channel for some reason. Downloaded 7.0.1 from the Mozilla site and I'm now subscribed to the release channel. I'm sure 8.0 will be making it there in a few weeks at most, so it's only a temporary reprieve.

[Enigma]

Ghetto Edit: Apparently I was subscribed to the beta update channel for some reason. Downloaded 7.0.1 from the Mozilla site and I'm now subscribed to the release channel. I'm sure 8.0 will be making it there in a few weeks at most, so it's only a temporary reprieve.

6.0.2 and 7.0 disabled most of my plugins while 7.0.1 brought most of them back.

[HeadCreeps]

The main problem with Firefox's update schedule as compared to Chrome is that the update is an awful lot less transparent. My experience of Chrome is that it just does it. You'll start up one day and it'll be a new version. You won't even notice half the time unless you check the version number. Firefox's update process is nowhere near as slick about its work.

All I ever see is about 10-15 seconds of "hey, Firefox is updating, give me a sec" and then it's up. Is this what you mean about being transparent?

/puts on oldmaninitis hat

God damn kids don't know what transparent pain in the ass is. Why, back in the win98 days, you knocked over your giant ass stack of CDs to go find wherever the crap you put the win98 CD so you could install a driver which took 10 minutes only to find out no it doesn't work still and now you have to dial up the internet to find a website WITH NO GOOGLEZ for why your PC device suddenly stopped working even though you didn't do anything and wait 30 min to 1 hour for the 3 mb driver to finish downloading and hope it wor

/

Though I'm guessing it's more about the fact that the secondary plugin aspect of Firefox makes compatibility an issue, which is common with every piece of software that supports heavy and multipurpose usage of secondary plugins. Of course I don't disagree that firefox's new policy is a poor one.

[Tolya]

Well, as mentioned earlier, Chrome updates seamlessly. You don't even get 10-15 seconds, not to mention restarting (which is annoying when you have 15 tabs open and it takes a moment to restart them all).

In Chrome, you don't even have to know which version you are running.

[KhorneFlakes]

The continuous updates are starting to piss me off. I can't even log on to my Gmail account anymore because the newest Firefox updates fucked up cookies for certain websites. At least SDN isn't constantly logging me out anymore. Anyone else who uses Firefox having this kind of problem?

[Dave]

You're trolling, aren't you? But in case you're not and you're just being stupid:

It's updates mean your site that was working for years, suddenly isn't, and of course, it's your fault.

No fucking shit, just like any other update to any other kind of configuration to any other system that ever existed. Updates CAN mean breakage.

Perhaps you're complaining about silent updates? If you don't like silent updates, then SAY you don't like SILENT updates, not updates in general.

How often do you see a Chrome update break something? I'm curious if you can point to examples or your just generalizing because you want to keep your rant from losing steam.

What a piece of shit. Chrome has never been respectable.

And what the hell does "respectable" mean? I smell an untrue Scotsman.
I like it because it is fast, the UI is clean and responsive, and you don't lose the whole browser when Flash, JavaScript, or some overtaxed webserver tosses its cookies. I suspect other people like it for similar reasons. Also it doesn't get in the way when it updates, which (to me) is nicer than Firefox. To me, it's a feature, not a pain in the ass. Chrome, I think, comes the closest to the "it just works" mentality that a lot of people like (see: Apple).

Now sure, you, I, and many other technically-minded and critical people can find plenty of technical flaws in ANY browser that make it "suck", various UI failures and other odds and ends. (For a long time Google Chrome didn't have a "Print Preview" option.) But Chrome and Firefox work, they work well for most people, and they have non-negligible market share. Picking and choosing problems you hate about browsers is not going to change that.

Finally, I would also point out that much of the innovation you see in IE these days is credited to the pressures put on it by Firefox and Chrome, with a nod to Opera, whom I am told pioneered a lot of that. Were it not for that, we might still be using IE6 or something close to it.

[Alyeska]

Firefox was always shit? What about when Firefox was pretty much the only viable alternative to IE6? Back in the dark days of 2004 and 2005 when Microsoft let IE grow stagnate thinking they were going make IE7 a Vista only product.

[Alyeska]

IE6 was better than Firefox 1? I question your sanity. Security wise, add blocking, and popup blocking; Firefox blew away IE back in the mid 2000s.

[Aniron]

What a piece of shit. Chrome has never been respectable.

Has Chrome fixed the way it allows ad-blocking, where adverts are blocked outright instead of being downloaded and then blocked?

[HeadCreeps]

Which IE version was the one where it stopped handling large javascript pages ineffectively? I know there for a while it really struggled to keep up with FF. Was before Chrome existed I believe.

Not that I really care which browser is better - they're all acceptable enough that it's down to people whining about tiny little quirks in the system which get fixed within days instead of entire versions (with year long release cycles) like it used to be. I've definitely heard good things about IE since its latest version release that had people on various boards admitting it may very well be unquestionably better than FF at the moment.

[Alan Bolte]

I recall I switched to Firefox 1.5 from IE6 primarily because I was tired of the lack of PNG support. I'm still on Firefox, mostly because I've been too lazy to try anything else.

We're still stuck with IE7 on WinXP at work. It crashes reliably every 3-5 hours and takes every window with it. I guess that could mostly be blamed on our Silverlight application, though. I dunno.

[Ford Prefect]

I didn't like Opera 9, but opera 11 was even fucking worse. It was so abysmally slow I couldn't even stand it for the few minutes I had to use it.

I have the invincible Newtype quantum reflexes of youth compared to whatever decrepit meatspace wetware your withered and ancient body is running, and I don't understand what you're complaining about here. One second to open new page = fast enough for everyone not named the fucking Flash.

[Lord Baal]

I use both Opera and Firefox without any trouble at all. Right now I'm at Opera. I quite don't like Chrome but out of personal tastes not performance issues.

[HeadCreeps]

I just took a look at your IE release dates post. It seems I had issues until IE 8 then, because I distinctly recall IE 7 being released and not solving the issue. It could have just been an anomaly (and is an anecdote), though.

[Enigma]

I've got both IE8 and FF7.01 and I'm sticking for the time being to FF. I've been using FF for so long that I've forgotten why I stopped using IE. But when I wanted to upgrade IE8 to 9, I can't, I need to have Win7. Sorry but I think FF is the way to go for me despite daily Flash crashes.

[Skgoa]

In my experience IE was slow, prone to crashes, was a prime vector for maliscious software and often didn't have the features or add-ons I wanted. So I switched to firefox very early on. (We had been using Netscape's various browsers before, so it was no big change.) And to this day NoScript, AdBlock and a couple of other essential add-ons are what keep me using FF.

[Skgoa]

Regarding the faster drawing: Yeah, thats exacly what I meant. I love that FF does that. I am someone who likes to get on with his browsing; I often close tabs before they finished loading, if I see they don't have the content I was looking for. Really, its the difference between starting to read the page, but having to wait, until it finished loading to read all of it and having to sit there watching a blank tab for a while. To me, that was the single biggest reason to use Firefox.

Regarding safety: I don't care what I could have activated in some menu. I liked that I didn't even have to, since in the early days I wasn't even in a viable target demographic for hackers. IE crashed (and still does) or gets maliscious code onto the system from webpages that other browsers just shrug at. Have you never gotten one of those "funny" links that, e.g., spawn 10k browser windows? More than once I heard or read IE users cry out in exasperation when all I thought was "is something supposed to happen?"
And what you describe one should do is several orders of magnitude more work than installing two add-ons. AdBlock removes all ads and NoScript removes all that unneccessary JavaScript web developers seem to love - and I can choose what parts to switch back on very very easily. Add to that add-ons like GreaseMonkey, BetterFacebook, etc., and its just that much easier and plain more fun to browse the web.

[Executor32]

Speaking of Chrome and not displaying things right, I went to a service call the other day where the customer (using Chrome on a MacBook) was having issues with streaming video, namely Youtube and some 'make money online' site he was getting into. Mostly the problem was a faulty wireless router from Comcast, as Youtube worked fine after switching out the router, but the Flash videos on the other site still weren't loading. I tried loading the video page in Safari and, lo and behold, they loaded perfectly fine there.

[Xon]

I've always been dubious of wc3 "standards". These are the same asshats who thought xhtml 2.0 was a great idea.

[Xon]

You touched on one of the largest complains I have against wc3 as a standards body, that reference implementations and compliance tests appear to be something they hate and refuse todo.

Any standard which refuses to have an actual reference implementation to actually demonstrated that the standard is implementable in the first place is an amazingly dubious one.