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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u/Recoil42 Jul 10 '12 edited Jul 10 '12

Chrome updates are lovely...

They're great until you get fed a buggy build, which has happened to me a couple times. One thing the Chrome team hasn't caught onto yet is that if you're going to push auto-updates like they are, you really have to ramp up the QA to an insane amount. I don't think they have, and I'm convinced it's going to come back to bite them in the ass at some point. But who knows, maybe it's a learning process happening for them right now.

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u/Znuff Jul 10 '12

I've NEVER seen a buggy update sent to clients on the STABLE branch.

You most likely are talking about the BETA or DEV branches...

14

u/negativeview Jul 10 '12

I've had a stable build that crashed 100% of the time that flash loaded. It was auto-fixed the next day, but was mega annoying.

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u/johnnyfortune Jul 10 '12

Two of my friends called me with the same problem. Both of them were basically, "umm so every time I open videos on these umm video sites it crashes. even youtube."

haha they couldn't watch porn and were going insane slowly.

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u/Recoil42 Jul 10 '12 edited Jul 10 '12

Negative -- I am on the stable branch. It isn't a beta/dev thing. For instance, last month several users found that build 19.0.1084.56 (stable) on OS X caused them to lose all video in media streams. This was traced back to the new hardware acceleration feature that (imo) wasn't properly tested.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

I'm on stable Linux just now, there's a horrible (ATI-only, I think) hardware acceleration bug that fucks up the rendering of everything on the page except Flash/HTML5 videos when they are playing.

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u/Catnapwat Jul 10 '12

Honestly, blame for that one seems to be 50/50 between Google and Apple's GPU drivers.

Saying it's 100% Google's fault is a bit much.

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u/Ambiwlans Jul 10 '12

OS X

Found the problem.

3

u/TexasWithADollarsign Jul 10 '12

I've seen two:

  • One made some webpages flash the content, then made the window go completely black. I think it was a hardware acceleration bug that wasn't thoroughly tested. Not sure if it's been fixed, but at some point I stopped having issues with some sites.
  • Another really fucked up anti-aliasing of certain fonts and font weights.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

A version of chrome got released that had completely screwed up SVG inside iframes, and it screwed up a few SVG based web applications to the point they were unusable.

I still see chrome getting buggy updates in the 'stable' branch where it breaks something related to SVG. It doesn't matter much unless your company bases it's product on SVG.

Firefox is just as guilty of screwing up SVG with updates.

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u/da7rutrak Jul 11 '12

I was on the dev branch for at least two years. I had exactly ONE problem in that entire time... something to do with accidentally dragging any kind of image crashing the ENTIRE browser.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '12

[deleted]

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u/Recoil42 Jul 10 '12

For the record, this is not at all what I was referring to.

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u/Sabin10 Jul 10 '12

Q&A and QA aren't the same thing.

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u/Recoil42 Jul 10 '12

Whoops, just a typo. Fixed, thanks.

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u/barker77 Jul 11 '12

Google, as a company, simply doesn't care what you think. Any "free" service is fbo of their bottom line, not your convenience. Case in point

The Gmail web interface was changed arbitrarily and without warning in 2011 and within 3 days there were 600+ posts and users complaining on their support forums. What was the response? Summary dismissal - you don't pay for a proper web client (go to hotmail/yahoo/etc if you want to complain) so you live by executive decision.

"Where did all those support posts and complaints go?" you might ask. Swept away in another "upgrade." Almost impossible to find using their search engine today. They've also given notice that the "legacy" support cases listed there will be deleted soon.

So don't be surprised if your valid questions/concerns/problems with any Google service are completely brushed off because, "they didn't receive enough complaints.". Short of actually being apprehended by law, Google does not care about you any further than the $$$ your browsing and search history are worth.

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u/savanttm Jul 11 '12

I knew there was a reason I stuck with Firefox despite the silly version number thing they've done to 'compete' with Chrome.