Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

evilbrainjono.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 205 posts

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#41

Post by jono_x »

smacktoward wrote: post #12

I think the takeaway from this should be slightly different than the one the author found: don't fight users' expectations of what your product is. When Chrome came out, it was a new product; users had no expectations of "what Chrome is." So Google could do with it essentially whatever they wanted. Firefox was in a completely different position. When Mozilla moved Firefox to rapid release, the product branded "Firefo…

Hi Smacktoward, I'm the author of the post and I agree with everything you said here.

How to reach out to new users while keeping your existing users happy is one of the oldest and biggest problems in software development. There's no perfect solution, but I like the suggestion of creating a new product name for the new thing. That can sometimes get you into trouble too, as you end up competing with yourself, Microsoft-style, or get users who are confused about which version they should use. But it might be the least bad option.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#42

Post by overcyn »

breadbox wrote: post #7
Geee wrote: post #4

The problem isn't about 'rapid release cycles', but about the UX design of the update process. Even before the rapid release cycles, Firefox would check for add-on updates every time it was started. Chrome's update mechanism is completely seamless and invisible and requires zero user attention.

Which, ironically, is almost as bad, when you suddenly realize that you basically let Chrome change the UI, and there's no way to return to the UI you once knew.

Is it almost as bad though if people are moving from firefox to chrome?

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#43

Post by zobzu »

So its been a few month without bashing firefox and thus its that time of the year for that again?

Except it has better memory management than any other browser now.

Except its the fastest browser on Android now.

Except the upgrading no longer break addons as they're compat by default now

Except upgrading is now silent (no dialog box, no UAC prompt, no "welcome to the new firefox tab" - yes; on windows)

Except if you need a Firefox that doesn't change version at all, you can use Firefox ESR.

Cause it's not having things fixed now that matters. Nope. Never!

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#44

Post by dangoor »

Karunamon wrote: post #35
ck2 wrote: post #31

I have not had an extension break since FF7 (now on FF14) Firefox has come a long way and I as a developer I don't like how Chrome hides everything. It's also super easy in Firefox to turn off automatic updates and only update manually when you are ready (help -> about firefox)

>I have not had an extension break since FF7 (now on FF14) It's been my experience that extensions don't 'break' (i.e. stop working as expected) as much as they self validate against the currently running version of FF and refuse to load unless the developer has flagged it as workable. Every time a major release comes out, half of my plugins are disabled. Then, I go and download the compatability reporter plugin (whi…

I believe it was Firefox 12 or 13 that made add-one compatible by default. Except for add-ons with binary parts, I don't think you should find so many turned off with each update now.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#46

Post by azakai »

1. The download/restart takes forever and interrupts your work with a bunch of intrusive dialog boxes.

This is a valid complaint. Firefox did rapid release before it perfected the update process to be fully automatic and silent, that definitely caused some users issues. Mozilla has recognized that publicly and taken responsibility for that decision - and meanwhile fixed the update process as well as launched an extended support release version of Firefox that updates far less frequently.

2. The update may break stuff that you counted on, either by removing features you were using, or by breaking compatibility with other software you use. Maybe the developers never tested your use case, or worse - they tested for it but decdided it didn't matter because only 2% of users used it. Tough luck to you if you're one of those 2%.

This point is ironic - because the claim is that users are switching to Chrome, which is the inventor of the 6-week update process. Chrome's 6-week updates can break websites or features that you rely on (I heard devs complain about breakage in the plugin interfaces for examples), just like Firefox's 6-week updates can.

When you update software every 6 weeks, and you make those updates real updates (not small security updates), then you risk breaking stuff for users. If you don't like that, you can't use either Chrome or Firefox. You might prefer IE, Safari and Opera which are slower-updating (there is also the Firefox extended support release as mentioned before).

So yes, the Firefox implementation of rapid release did not begin 100% smoothly, issues were admitted and worked on. But if you argue against the principle of rapid release, then you can't say in the same breath that users are leaving one rapid release browser (Firefox) for another (Chrome).

Side note, there is definite anecdotal evidence for users leaving Firefox for Chrome over rapid release. But there is also anecdotal evidence of users moving in other directions. Looking at the browser market share statistics, Firefox has declined a little and stabilized, with most of the previous decline coming from users of Firefox 3.6, not the modern rapid release versions. Of course the anecdotal stuff could still be right - perhaps 3.6 users move to the modern version, and some modern version people leave for another browser. But it's hard to differentiate that from people just leaving 3.6 directly (and people on modern versions being happy and staying), the data is hard to interpret.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#47

Post by azakai »

smacktoward wrote: post #12

I think the takeaway from this should be slightly different than the one the author found: don't fight users' expectations of what your product is. When Chrome came out, it was a new product; users had no expectations of "what Chrome is." So Google could do with it essentially whatever they wanted. Firefox was in a completely different position. When Mozilla moved Firefox to rapid release, the product branded "Firefo…

> I think the takeaway from this should be slightly different than the one the author found: don't fight users' expectations of what your product is.

That's a fair point, but also true is "don't let your product stagnate by keeping it familiar and unchanging". People get bored with similarity and want new shiny things.

There is something to be said for too much change, and something to be said for too much sameness.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#49

Post by tshtf »

jhatax wrote: post #18
breadbox wrote: post #3

The takeaway quote: "After years of aspiring to improve software usability, I've come to the extremely humbling realization that the single best thing most companies could do to improve usability is to stop changing the UI so often!" I wish I could ink this command onto the right hand of programmers (and program managers) everywhere.

Very few user interfaces have withstood the test of time. There are notable exceptions, of course - the iOS UI, uTorrent, and the Chrome browser immediately come to mind. Other applications and operating systems have continued to evolve their user interface over 18-24 months. In some cases, the evolution is necessary for the sake of usability. Take Android for instance: The UI update in ICS dramatically enhanced usab…

The author of this blog (jono_x) has posts showing up as dead. Probably another innocent HN hellbanning victim. This is what he said in his reply:

> I do think that they go half the distance sometimes with their privacy measures - "Do Not Track" is unchecked by default, and Firefox accepts and keeps "Third Party Cookies" until they expire.

There's a good reason "Do Not Track" is unchecked by default. If it was checked by default, then advertisers would have the perfect excuse to ignore it: "oh, that's not really the user's preference, they're just sending that header because their browser sends it by default; let's go ahead and track them."

By making it opt-in, we ensure that a site receiving a do-not-track header knows for sure that it represents an active choice on the part of the user.

You may remember that IE was going to turn it on by default. But then Mozilla and the rest of the do-not-track collaborators explained this principle to them and they went back to off-by-default.

The third-party cookie thing, though, I don't have a good explanation for. When I worked at Mozilla I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that we should block third-party cookies by default. (Especially after I started working on Collusion and saw how prevalent they are.) I kept getting the same response: "We can't block 3rd party cookies, it would break the web."

I don't agree with this, obviously. Before pop-up-blocking became the norm in all browsers, you could have made the argument that pop-up-blocking would "break the web" too. I believe 3rd party cookies are a giant security hole, and breaking sites that use them would be a small price to pay for closing it.

But, I couldn't convince Mozilla of that. It's one of the reasons I decided to leave.

> Are curved tabs really better than rectangular ones? IIRC from the UI design talk where the new "Australis" redesign was introduced internally, the motivation behind the curved tab redesign was to look "friendlier" and more "organic".

One thing the Australis redesign does which I do think is important is that it finally provides a consistent location for add-ons to add buttons. (The status bar used to be this, but it was hidden in Firefox 4 to recover screen space for content.)

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#50

Post by jono_x »

larrik wrote: post #6

"There's no UI better than one you already know, and no UI worse than one you thought you knew but now haver to relearn." This just isn't true. In a web browser, sure, the UI barely matters. Going through the menus in Firefox or Chrome is rare, enough so that Chrome tends to look different every time I do it. But for real programs, the UI defines the workflow, and that should be optimized, even at the expense of fami…

> "There's no UI better than one you already know, and no UI worse than one you thought you knew but now haver to relearn."

Yeah, I guess I was overstating the case for rhetorical purposes. I don't think there's never a UI change that improves on what you already know. Once in a while a new interface comes along that's so much more efficient that it's worth retraining yourself. What I'm trying to say is that these changes are rare. I think designers tend to overestimate the benefit of a change and underestimate the power of habituation.

(P.S. thanks for catching my typo ("haver"). Fixed it.)

Post reply on HN