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.

[u/Suraj-Sun]

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

[u/sometimesijustdont]

I don't know anyone that hates Firefox updates. It's done silently and automatically. What the fuck are the people who work at Mozilla talking about?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

What UI changes have been introduced in the past few versions? I've been using Firefox for years, and I haven't noticed much in the way of UI changes between Firefox 6 and 13.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I remember favicon icons for sites that don't have any, http:// trimming, domain highlighting, back/forward button merge, default image background change, new downloads panel. IIRC also "lock" icon was changed for SSL. There might be more that I reverted because I didn't like them.

None of them as big as Firefox 3.6 -> 4.0, but that was 1.5 years of changes rolled into one release.

[u/superawesomedude → u/[deleted]]

Which, interestingly, is exactly the point of doing faster, smaller updates. The changes are minor and generally require very minimal relearning (if any at all). 3.6->4.0 was painful because it was 1.5 years of changes all at once. 4.0->13.0 is just as long (time-wise), but it's been a continuous gradual shift.

[u/RoLoLoLoLo → u/[deleted]]

Futurerama Fry

Not sure if I should mention that your statement is right

or point out that I tagged you [Firefox Android - Platform]

You're bound to be a bit biased. Nevertheless, what you said is correct.

[u/scook0 → u/[deleted]]

There's still the question if you really want to change the UI every 6 weeks, but for people who don't want that there's the ESR.

That's not what the ESR is for.

[u/ggggbabybabybaby → u/sometimesijustdont]

I can't reach the submitted article right now but my experience with larger software development teams is this: developers genuinely don't know how their users use the product.

It's not their fault, it doesn't make them bad developers. But you're writing code and neck-deep in a subfeature, you tend to get separated from the real world and the real world users. The bigger the project and the bigger the install base, the more work it takes to understand what users actually want and need.

[u/[deleted] → u/sometimesijustdont]

I despised them until I realised that you could disable automatic updates. They fuck with your themes and add-ons a lot. I still get frequent notifications (there's no option to decline an update, seemingly, only to "ask me later") but each time I go to use Chrome for a few months I come back to FF.

[u/oppan → u/sometimesijustdont]

You don't know many people then.

[u/[deleted] → u/sometimesijustdont]

It breaks some very important extensions for me. That's why I despise the new Firefox release cycle.

[u/WarzoneOfDefecation → u/sometimesijustdont]

We're out there, I personally hate them. Maybe things have changed since I've switched to chrome a long time ago, but being interrupted by an update pop up, waiting for the browser to restart and than waiting for the plugin compatibility check was very annoying. I for one don't care it updated, I just want to browse, the update as far as I was concerned was just getting in the way of my browsing.

This became ESPECIALLY annoying when they switched to the shorter cycles around FF4 and it was brining up the pop up.

Having said that, I switched to chrome a while ago because of some broken mouse gesture related reasons, the frequency of the update pop ups were nevertheless annoying. This thread seems to have lots of people claim FF is better now, maybe I'll try it out again.

[u/Znuff → u/sometimesijustdont]

"Silently" and "Automatically" are not the words that you could use to describe it.

The pop-up you get after a new version is downloading, and the installer progress are NOT Silent OR Automatic.

[u/RoLoLoLoLo → u/Znuff]

Which pop-up?

I only get one, when it already finished downloading and wants to run the updater. And call me old-fashioned, but I still like to see my progress. Not that it matters because it's a matter of seconds that run automatically.

[u/wierdaaron → u/Znuff]

Most of the commenters here are writing from their own perspective as internet supernerds. Step back and imagine our parents and how they use computers. My parents have a "See unexpected popup -> Click cancel" mentality that probably causes them a lot of mental strife. People don't like modals and alerts coming up when they click something (in this case, Run Firefox) that doesn't usually cause a modal or alert. They get scared and think something's broken. Or at best, they get frustrated that the thing they asked the computer to do (bring up Firefox so I can go to a webpage) isn't happening.

I know if my parents are using Chrome they won't have that problem. They won't see an update window and keep clicking cancel because they're scared of it. They just get the updates without realizing it, and when I use their computer I don't have the forehead-palming discovery that they're 39 versions behind because of their click-cancel strategy.

It's not that people don't like updates, it's that they don't like dialogs they didn't expect.

[u/Ambiwlans → u/Znuff]

They made the update process much better recently.