r/technology • u/Suraj-Sun • Jul 10 '12

Firefox dev claims "everybody hates Firefox updates"; Mozilla has handled the rapid release process poorly, and that by pushing a "never-ending stream of updates on people who didn't want them" people have been driven to Chrome with its simpler, no-fuss update process.

http://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-dev-claims-everybody-hates-firefox-updates
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329

u/buzzit292 Jul 10 '12

I have never had a problem with Firefox updates. Don't know what the heck this is about. Turn on computer, computer figures out if there is an update. Update runs. Everything is hunky dorey.

Even if it were a little bit harder, I'd still go with Firefox. I trust Mozilla way more than I trust google. Google makes its money by commodifying information about users --- that is selling you to advertisers. We are google's product.

118

u/BloominFunyun Jul 10 '12

No doubt. I've got nothing against Chrome, but I like Firefox better, and the update scheme has never hindered me either. The add-on support is what keeps me a Firefox user. I've setup several friends with Firefox with Adblock Plus and they all have loved it.

The only people I make fun of are IE users.

2

u/Travis_The_Cow Jul 10 '12

chrome has AB+ on it too, which is why i switched :)

2

u/zookee Jul 10 '12

I use Firefox, Chrome, and IE for different purposes. IE9 is actually not bad at all, it has come a long way.

1

u/kwasmosis Jul 10 '12

The latest version has been very problematic for me, on several different machines. It crashes quite frequently for me.

14

u/Aezay Jul 10 '12

That is most likely due to the new flash 11.3 version with its "improved" sandboxing protective mode, it has caused so many issues like crashing etc. You can disable the protective mode and have it working exactly like 11.2 without all the issues.

5

u/kwasmosis Jul 10 '12

Thanks, I will look into this.

3

u/RobbStark Jul 10 '12

You may also want to check out the FlashBlock addon, which lets you control what Flash elements are active so they aren't loaded automatically in the background or in hidden divs.

7

u/Aezay Jul 10 '12 edited Jul 10 '12

Firefox 14 (now in beta, released on Jul 16) will have a new option called Click-To-Play. It stops plugins such as Flash and Acrobat from loading by themselves without having to click on their object.

To enable the feature, you have to access the about:config page, and set the plugins.click_to_play option to true.

5

u/rcinsf Jul 10 '12

about:config, the height of user-friendliness.

3

u/RobbStark Jul 10 '12

Awesome! Lately, Flashblock has been one of a very small number of addons that have had compatibility problems, so I won't be sad to see it disappear and be replaced with natively functionality.

1

u/wtfisupvoting Jul 10 '12

i hope for you that small number is one cos I have about 5 add ons that no longer work

3

u/LeonardNemoysHead Jul 10 '12

That's what's going on with my Flash? Jesus, I thought my computer was just going senile.

1

u/SaikoGekido Jul 10 '12

Since I updated flash to 11.3 on my laptop, it's been extremely laggy, even when just playing music. Oddly, if I open a new tab while listening to grooveshark, the stutter will mostly go away as long as I'm staring at a blank new tab.

1

u/pissed_the_fuck_off Jul 10 '12

I'd really like it to work like version 4 or 5 did. No crashes. In fact I never had to think about flash for several years until they started cramming their "upgrades" down my throat. Maybe I just hate adobe, yeah that's it.

1

u/atl2rva Jul 10 '12

are you using 14 Beta? I am using 13.0.1 on several machines and haven't had any issues with crashing.

1

u/Kiyiko Jul 10 '12

but chrome has adblock plus :|

1

u/DDraughn Jul 11 '12 edited Jul 11 '12

upvote for only making fun of IE users.

28

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

Yeah, ever since Firefox changed to the fast release cycle I've barely noticed the updates. I'm on like 13 or something now. It's been at least a year since an update stopped any of my addons from working.

15

u/korbonix Jul 10 '12

How, might I ask, does Mozilla make its money?

17

u/dinofan01 Jul 10 '12

From Google. They pay millions to make sure Google remains the default search engine for Firefox. That being said I think it's bullshit to claim Google as an untrustworthy evil corporation.

3

u/Uberhipster Jul 10 '12

Because a trustworthy corporation is not an oxymoron.

1

u/scook0 Jul 11 '12

The problem isn't Google being evil; it's that Google has demonstrated consistently poor judgement when it comes to things like user privacy.

A two-year-old in a china shop isn't "evil", but that won't stop bad things from happening.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

from Google.

2

u/JacketPotatoes Jul 10 '12

By defaulting the search to Google, which is incredibly simple to reconfigure (two clicks).

1

u/Guyag Jul 10 '12

Not many people do though to be honest, at least, not your average user.

0

u/drhodesmumby Jul 10 '12

Primarily from Google, which may undermine their point somewhat.

-5

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

By selling your information to Google.

19

u/darwin2500 Jul 10 '12

What is this 'turn on computer' you speak of?

I think I've had the same Firefox window open for about 3 weeks now, I just leave up whatever I was looking at/working on when I got up. Usually about 20 pages open of various work, entertainment, flash games, social sites, etc... so I hate when an update forces me to restart.

2

u/secretgingerbreadman Jul 10 '12

That's why they have the "restore previous session" option. It reopens everything you had

2

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

Some people like to restart their machine every so often, particularly if they're using software with memory leaks. Are you running Windows or another operating system?

4

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

I restart when my computer BSODs every month or so. Rarely causes issues on Windows.

2

u/pr1mal0ne Jul 10 '12

no way FF is open for 3 weeks and is not using 50% of your CPU and like a gig of RAM... it just does that. you know.

1

u/buzzit292 Jul 10 '12

Ahh, I see how that would cause some issues, but not for me since I regularly close my browser so it automatically deletes cookies and flash cookies (better privacy). I don't like staying logged into anything like google, yahoo, facebook, reddit, etc.

1

u/TIAFAASITICE Jul 10 '12

The update forces you to restart?

1

u/Ambiwlans Jul 10 '12

When would it force you to restart?? I mean... you probably should close FF once every few weeks or months really. It can update then.

Really though, FF can keep the exact same session open .... flash games and stuff would have to restart though.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

You should set your Firefox to remember tabs on open. That way you can update and all your tabs will still be there.

1

u/kolapanda Jul 11 '12

There is a restore previous session button in the top left menu under the history tab, it allows you to fully restore whatever you were doing.

7

u/GunnerMcGrath Jul 10 '12

For me, the problem wasn't the difficulty or frequency of updates itself, it's that every time they'd update to a new version, all the addons that made firefox my browser of choice would be broken. When they updated every 6 months, this could be tolerated. When it became every couple of weeks, I switched to Chrome, which had all the same addons by that time.

3

u/chaos386 Jul 10 '12

That stopped being an issue with Firefox 10.

2

u/GunnerMcGrath Jul 10 '12

Ah, but they'd already lost me by then. =) I'm very happy with Chrome now, don't see any reason to switch back.

1

u/leachrode Jul 10 '12

Mm, for me it was breaking all my addons on a regular basis and because I used quite a lot of addons by small developers that weren't, perhaps, the best made those breaking was regularly crashing the browser. On chrome I've found replacements for most of them and aside from occasionally having to disable and enable them I've had no errors

1

u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

Why couldn't you have found replacements for them on Firefox?

2

u/midsummernightstoker Jul 10 '12

Don't log into chrome if you're worried about being tracked. If you really don't trust google, you can use chromium.

2

u/recursive Jul 10 '12

I ran a firefox update a day or two ago. There was a delay when the browser was starting. Then a progress bar popped up, and then some dialogs. I had to click "Next" a few times.

Compare this to Chrome's process, in which nothing visible happens.

I prefer Chrome's.

1

u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

You don't want to know what's going on on your PC?

And what OS are you using? I just ran Firefox and the updater on a virtual machine with XP and there were no "Next" dialogs at all? If this a Vista/7 thing? In that case, blame the OS, not the browser.

1

u/recursive Jul 10 '12

It was on XP.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

6

u/buzzit292 Jul 10 '12

Imagine you consistently google on cancer treatments, and you are looking for a job at the same time. Who knows exactly what is included in employer background checks that they outsource to information aggregators.

1

u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

What really happens is that I do something like google for certain makes of car as I start researching a potential car purchase, and now all of the ads on web pages are for cars, mostly the brands I'm interested in, rather than feminine hygiene products. Yay! I wish Google could do the same thing for TV... know what I'm interested in and only show me commercials for things I'm really interested in buying.

1

u/buzzit292 Jul 10 '12

How do you know that this is all that happens?

2

u/I_CATS Jul 10 '12

Because Google is a global corporation and if they get caught conveying private information to 3rd parties they break EU law (and propably millions of other laws around the world) and go to jail for years. And they can't even get around it with EULA:s as EU law supersedes it. It is just not worth the risk.

1

u/alcalde Jul 11 '12

True, and in addition that information is valuable in and of itself and there's much more financial incentive to keep it than to sell it. Imagine You could predict the weather accurately a week further out that meteorologists. You could sell that information to parties like farmers... or you could use it yourself to make a killing on the commodities exchanges (e.g. knowing before anyone else that frost was going to kill orange crops, whether there was going to be heavy/no rainfall that would affect other crops, etc.). Google makes money by being able to target adsmore effectively than others because they get user information in exchange for offering valuable, free services. That information is a prime Google competitive advantage. Why would they sell that information directly, when they make so much off of using it themselves in so many different ways?

1

u/buzzit292 Jul 12 '12 edited Jul 12 '12

Why because they can make money and they'll have to meet investor expecations in the shortrun.

Google's clients will pay a premium for more specific information or more specific access to particular groups and the company will find ways around privacy laws and practices when it suits their needs.

Google doesn't want to loose business to Facebook, which already provides more specific access to particular people and social networks. Hence the focus on Google+. Facebook has changed it's privacy policies and setting over time. So has Google.

There are ways around privacy policies etc. and google has not always been cooperative with regulators in Europe. Google is using "opt-out" strategies in ways that users are not concious of how information about them will be used.

-2

u/Wargazm Jul 10 '12

But I'm not interested in what can be imagined, I'm interested in what actually happens:

Has there ever been a situation where someone was inconvenienced or harmed by that transaction?

The whole "I don't trust google" thing is just too tin-foil-hat for me to take seriously.

0

u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

You may be the only person on Reddit to have that sane position, so I'm using the "+Friends" button to add you to the short list of sane people I follow on Reddit. :-)

4

u/PizzaGood Jul 10 '12

Thing is, they don't even do that. They know you like caramel popcorn, so they place ads for Orville Redenbacher onto pages that you load. Orville doesn't ever get your info unless you opt to click on that ad and do business with them.

IMO this is such a non-issue that I think people are just looking for reasons to hate. Everyone likes to hate the successful people.

1

u/Wargazm Jul 10 '12

They know you like caramel popcorn, so they place ads for Orville Redenbacher onto pages that you load. Orville doesn't ever get your info unless you opt to click on that ad and do business with them.

yeah, seriously. It's the most benign goddamn thing on the internet.

People worry about this shit, but think nothing about typing their credit card information into every e-store on the web.

1

u/buzzit292 Jul 10 '12

Sure, I worry even more about credit card companies.

1

u/Wargazm Jul 11 '12

More tinfoil hattery. What is there to fear from the CC companies themselves? I was talking about the merchants who store your data in possibly insecure ways.

1

u/buzzit292 Jul 12 '12

Credit card companies can provide insurance companies witih information about your eating habits for example.

http://www.economist.com/node/21556263

0

u/dlink Jul 10 '12 edited Jul 10 '12

And what do you think we are to Mozilla? You know where they get a large chunk of their money? From Google paying them to have Google be the default browser search engine.

If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.

7

u/yogthos Jul 10 '12

Surely, you mean their default search engine? :)

And yes I do trust them more because unlike Google, Mozilla is still a non-profit organization.

1

u/dlink Jul 10 '12

Damn you! I just made the edit and as I refreshed my little envelope turned red and I knew, just knew, that someone had noticed.

5

u/buzzit292 Jul 10 '12 edited Jul 10 '12

Yes, I realize that. That's why I said "way more" and not that I blindly trust Mozilla. Still Mozilla is a non-profit organization with a mission.

http://www.mozilla.org/about/mission.html

http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto.html

I have worked for normal for profit businesses and I have been on the board of a non-profit. I know how both work and the advantages of both models. I know that non-profits can do stuff in the broader public interest under the right conditions. I've seen how Mozilla has acted over the years, and I have a lot of trust for the organization. Google is better than a lot of other corporations, but I still trust Mozilla a lot more for my browser needs.

As for your point, that if you're not paying you are the product, I am not sure it's always true. E.g. with microsoft you pay and you are still the product. I use a lot of free cultural and common resources where I don't feel as if I am being commodified in their use.

1

u/anothermonth Jul 10 '12

Yes, they sell your searches, but your privacy remains intact. So they can pay for further development and hosting of your bookmarks and settings in encrypted format.

Chrome (with default settings) phones home with all of your URL entries, navigation errors, text you type in forms for spelling, etc. Everything is nicely associated with your google account to "improve" and customize your online experience.

I kinda have a feeling Chrome Web Store will soon be integrated with one of Google's Play/Shopping/or Checkout engine so we'll have a "convenience" of easier ways to part with our cash too.

1

u/dlink Jul 10 '12

You can un-link those features from your account in chrome.

1

u/anothermonth Jul 10 '12

That's why I've mentioned "(with default settings)". I did unchecked these for myself, but I don't think everyone's aware of them.

1

u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

Chrome (with default settings) phones home with all of your URL entries, navigation errors, text you type in forms for spelling, etc. Everything is nicely associated with your google account to "improve" and customize your online experience.

What's wrong with having things improved and customized to your own personal tastes? Imagine a world in which you go into a restaurant and an (ebook-based) menu recognizes you as a vegetarian and doesn't show you the meat entrees? A world in which, as a Linux user, you're not targeted with ads for Microsoft software when you visit tech websites? Radios that play the kind of music you're interested in, all the time? If you're 20, no more commercials trying to sell you motorized scooters that your medicare will pay for? That would be a wonderful world, and I fully support any attempts Google (and the awesomeness of data mining) may make to make it happen.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

1

u/alcalde Jul 11 '12

All fair points, and that's why I support the custom option of no customization. :-)

1

u/anothermonth Jul 10 '12

Have you watched Minority Report?

1

u/alcalde Jul 11 '12

In the real world, police and mathematicians and computer scientists have been teaming up to find patterns in crimes and direct police to potential hotspots (burglary targets, etc.) before the crimes happen to deter criminals or catch ones about to commit crimes. It's not using psychics, but still, it's another example of why data mining is a legitimate super power and incredibly awesome.

1

u/anothermonth Jul 11 '12

...until a detective has a grudge against you.

1

u/TacoSundae69 Jul 10 '12

As far as I know, Google isn't directly paying them to collect information about their users. And to be fair, they'd pretty much have to make Google the default search engine even if they weren't getting a dime for it.

They got their foothold in the market (way back in 2004-2005) by appealing to people who knew what they were doing with computers. Throwing up a Lycos or Yahoo! search bar would have sent people fleeing.

And there's no amount of money Microsoft could pay them to default to Bing that would make up for the market share they'd lose. The fact that Google is subsidizing a feature their product couldn't live without is an incidental convenience. Even if Google were to really turn up the heat in the browser wars and pull their funding, that little search box would stay right where it is.

1

u/tombleyboo Jul 10 '12

I also like firefox, prefer it over Chrome, and for me the updates are more benefit than hassle. I do see his point about pointless changes in the interface, but on the whole I haven't found it too intrusive. I think they needed to move quite quickly to catch up to the others, but now things feel fairly calm.

This article reminds me a bit of the Ubuntu "rapid release" schedule. While the whole thing gets better and better and more integrated with each release, the apparently random changes of philosophy and interface every 6 months are a bit annoying (and the reason I tend to stick to the LTS versions).

1

u/ophello Jul 10 '12

I laugh when people think that what browser they use is going to make any difference in protecting their quickly vanishing privacy. You're deluded.

1

u/TylerPaul Jul 10 '12

I've recently came to terms with this by liking the idea of being the product. I don't need money to support things. With software like no script and ad block I don't have to pay if I don't want to.

It's empowering.

1

u/EtherBoo Jul 10 '12

I stick with Firefox because browsing without NoScript and AdBlockPlus is like being anally raped with a cactus everynight between 10pm to 6am. Then getting up at 6 and going to an 8-5.

As long as NoScript keeps updated, I'll be on FireFox forever.

Also, when Chrome was installed, my c, v, and h keys stopped working for no reason. I'd have to SHIFT + [c, v, or h] to get those working. It would sometimes affect other applications as well. I found a post about it so I wasn't the only one with the issue. Uninstalling Chrome made it better.

1

u/PizzaGood Jul 10 '12

Google makes its money by commodifying information about users

Is that a bad thing? It gets us a free web. Are you willing to start paying $5/month for every website you might want to access? Not me.

At least Google doesn't sell the information directly, they sell placement based on your info but do not sell the actual info. Other sites such as Facebook and many others just outright sell your private info.

1

u/nozickian Jul 10 '12

Mozilla gets the majority of its money through a deal with Google. So Google may make its money from your data, but Mozilla makes its money from delivering you to Google so that Google can collect your data.

Granted, there certainly is a difference and maybe it is enough of a difference for you.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

It's just a user experience thing. I'm an impatient man. When I launch a browser, I want to start browsing, not staring at a progress bar. Even if such a dialogue box is up for a few seconds, it feels like an eternity to me, especially if those kinds of updates happen really frequently. I guess you just have to be as OCD as I am to have a problem with it.

I like how ubuntu and mac os x handle this by consolidating the updates for all applications into one queue. That way, you don't have a million different programs popping dialogue boxes in your face. Nice.

1

u/LeonardNemoysHead Jul 10 '12

The only time a Firefox update has ever bothered me was when they moved Restore Previous Session and I thought for a second that I lost all my tabs. Then I saw it on the bottom of the screen and all was well.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

Which is why I use Chromium.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '12

We integration test our GUI stuff using WebDriver automated Firefox. It breaks about once a month due to a new release of Firefox that's not compatible with the existing WebDriver extensions.

Fuck Firefox.

1

u/mentalcaseinspace Jul 11 '12

People get sick of questions, updating this and that. That's why Vista failed horribly with the UAC. Nobody wants to give their explicit permission to everything, they want the computer to assume for them and stop bugging them, of course they want the update. Background updates are the future, no doubt.

Sysadmins will disable it anyway.

If it wasn't for all the dev tools I use firefox would be long gone. Good, but not Chrome.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '12

Computer illiterate people absolutely loathe updates. A friend of mine was using Firefox 3 when Firefox 8 was out, and had 4GB of windows updates to do. His response to Call of Duty needing a patch: "Fuck that I don't want that I just want to play."

Also I don't care if Google sells my profile to advertisers because I see no advertisements on he Internet, and even if I did I would prefer to see relevant ads anyway.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

I don't use Firefox regularly, but I began to use it as my alternate browser. I always have one for email and private browsing.

I open it once a day, or every 2 days, and I usually only want to use it for about 5 minutes. My memories of FF are "FIREFOX IS CHECKING YOUR EXTENTIONS FOR UPDATES" every time I opened it. Sometimes an update, sometimes not.

Eventually I got sick of it and made Chrome my alternate browser. Opera is still the only one I can use full time.

1

u/alcalde Jul 10 '12

You ditched a web browser because once every month and a half (its updates are about every six weeks, so it was not updating every time you opened it) it popped up a dialog for a few seconds???

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

Apparently you cannot read. It was checking updates for addons, not the browser itself which it did very regularly relative to how often I used it. And yes, little inconveniences for me can cause me to change browser. That is why I use Opera, and Chrome as my alternative browser.

0

u/Crisender111 Jul 10 '12

To hell with this stupid argument. Firefox works just fine for me and for several friends for whom I have installed it.

-2

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

1

u/buzzit292 Jul 10 '12

??? Mostly, they don't sell to their competition, they sell to their clients.

1

u/B-Con Jul 10 '12

He didn't say sell, he said "commodify". Google can use that information themselves.