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Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

zdnet.com

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Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#21

Post by daave »

slowpoke wrote: post #17
bradgessler wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is awesome, great work. I hope unnoticeable updates become the norm for all desktop software. I have to ask, when do you plan on dropping the version number from Firefox releases?

>I hope unnoticeable updates become the norm for all desktop software. As long as you can turn that off, sure. I don't like software bypassing my package managers. Firefox is so far the sole exception I'm okay with since I'm using the Nightly builds and don't update as often. But for everything else, that would be a nightmare. I like to be in control of my updates, thank you.

It's time to let go and trust the developers of the software you're using to know when updates are stable, or when you really need a critical bug or security fix (if you don't trust them, why are you running their software anyway?).

Package managers are a great upgrade from having to manually update individual applications, and are still great for servers or other cases where upgrading can break crucial pieces of infrastructure - but for consumer desktop applications, there's no reason to waste your time doing sysadmin work.

When everything is a web app you'll have to get over it anyway. :)

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#23

Post by gcr »

daave wrote: post #21
slowpoke wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hope unnoticeable updates become the norm for all desktop software. As long as you can turn that off, sure. I don't like software bypassing my package managers. Firefox is so far the sole exception I'm okay with since I'm using the Nightly builds and don't update as often. But for everything else, that would be a nightmare. I like to be in control of my updates, thank you.

It's time to let go and trust the developers of the software you're using to know when updates are stable, or when you really need a critical bug or security fix (if you don't trust them, why are you running their software anyway?). Package managers are a great upgrade from having to manually update individual applications, and are still great for servers or other cases where upgrading can break crucial pieces of inf…

For some things? Absolutely. For everything I currently use? The three hours I spent last week downgrading my Xorg thanks to a botched nvidia driver update force me to disagree.

Granted, it was an nvidia driver update; I should have known better. But that's exactly my point.

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#25

Post by grannyg00se »

asadotzler wrote: post #7

Firefox 8 is light years ahead of 3.6 in performance and memory usage. It's light-weight and blazing fast. If you've been away for a while, delete your old Firefox profile and re-import your setting. You'll be surprised at how much better Firefox is.

Is that manual cleanup really necessary?

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#26

Post by rprospero »

ericabiz wrote: post #19
asadotzler wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the Director of the Firefox Desktop product (I wasn't at the time of the move to the new release cadence) and I agree with you 100%. We've been busting our butts for the last couple of months to get our updates ironed out and smooth. We've already shipped some of this in Firefox, including not nagging users to restart, killing the "What's New" tab that would interrupt your start-up, and reducing the number of inc…

I'm really hoping you can get the remaining 3.6.x users to force-upgrade. We still have a couple people using 3.6 on our web app (where some pages won't render properly--we've labeled this 'wontfix' in our system since Firefox 7.0+ renders these pages properly.) Any word on whether there is any way to get them to upgrade? Last I saw, it upgraded them to a newer 3.x version, but then opened a page on your site with a…

Firefox 3.6 user here. I'd love to upgrade, but the new versions don't run on PowerPC

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#27

Post by gkoberger »

bradgessler wrote: post #13
asadotzler wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the Director of the Firefox Desktop product (I wasn't at the time of the move to the new release cadence) and I agree with you 100%. We've been busting our butts for the last couple of months to get our updates ironed out and smooth. We've already shipped some of this in Firefox, including not nagging users to restart, killing the "What's New" tab that would interrupt your start-up, and reducing the number of inc…

This is awesome, great work. I hope unnoticeable updates become the norm for all desktop software. I have to ask, when do you plan on dropping the version number from Firefox releases?

Already the version number isn't really advertised -- especially compared to Fx 1 through 4. However, it is an incredibly useful thing to know if you ever need support.

Version number shouldn't be dropped, however it should be, has been and will continue to be deemphasized.

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#28

Post by gkoberger »

aidenn0 wrote: post #24

So, what a Firefox 3.6 user is missing out on is running a bunch of artificial benchmarks faster?

If you haven't tried updating past 3.6, you should. Benchmarks may not be 100% accurate, but you can see the difference in JS-heavy apps (like GMail). The UI has been cleaned up and revamped. There are a ton of new HTML/CSS/JS features. Better memory management, and Firefox as a whole is faster. Restartless add-ons. The list goes on and on :)

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#29

Post by darklajid »

gcr wrote: post #23
daave wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's time to let go and trust the developers of the software you're using to know when updates are stable, or when you really need a critical bug or security fix (if you don't trust them, why are you running their software anyway?). Package managers are a great upgrade from having to manually update individual applications, and are still great for servers or other cases where upgrading can break crucial pieces of inf…

For some things? Absolutely. For everything I currently use? The three hours I spent last week downgrading my Xorg thanks to a botched nvidia driver update force me to disagree. Granted, it was an nvidia driver update; I should have known better. But that's exactly my point.

I don't get the point.

Was the nvidia driver update forced upon you and done behind your back? Or - did you do that intentionally and broke (by accident) stuff?

If the latter (and that's what it sounds like to me), isn't that totally unrelated to silent software updates and just anecdotal bad press about the nvidia driver and its stability?

Re: Firefox 3.6 vs 8.0

#30

Post by megablast »

darklajid wrote: post #29
gcr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some things? Absolutely. For everything I currently use? The three hours I spent last week downgrading my Xorg thanks to a botched nvidia driver update force me to disagree. Granted, it was an nvidia driver update; I should have known better. But that's exactly my point.

I don't get the point. Was the nvidia driver update forced upon you and done behind your back? Or - did you do that intentionally and broke (by accident) stuff? If the latter (and that's what it sounds like to me), isn't that totally unrelated to silent software updates and just anecdotal bad press about the nvidia driver and its stability?

He is saying something he wants to control the updates on, obviously the important stuff. The video driver is very important, but the browser is also very important, since a lot of people would not be able to get work done without it.
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