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Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

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Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#111

Post by samspot »

goostavos wrote: post #63
samspot wrote: post #29

"Your users do not "love" your software. Your users are temporarily tolerating your software because it's the least horrible option they have -- for now -- to meet some need." This is the hardest lesson, and what I need to remember most. As a developer I really do like to tinker with new software (most of the time), but as a rule users do not and we had best not forget it! I knew the firefox updates annoyed me but I…

I recently slammed into this as well. I'm am far from being a "real" developer, but I do occasionally write software for work on my own time. I spent a couple of weeks laying out a simple gui and getting all the pieces to work. I then "released" it to the office, and after seeing people clumsily poke through the menus, I decided that they must have been laid out poorly. So I rearranged everything, and redid a lot of…

You can mitigate a lot of this with budget usability testing (show your mom :)).

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#112

Post by lazylland »

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."

I hope this doesn't become the epithet of Windows 8!

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#113

Post by smashing »

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…

"All software sucks. Users would be a lot happier if they had to use a lot less of it."

According the the author, Chrome isn't the solution.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#114

Post by jhatax »

keeperofdakeys wrote: post #57
jhatax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Chrome definitely have changed their UI over time, however the changes have been so small you probably have forgotten (just removing buttons). It's surprising to think about it now, but it used to have a lot more of them.

The incremental changes to Chrome's UI have been subtle, resulting in very little, if any, friction for the user. The point I was making was a UI that is thought-through and well-designed withstands the test of time rather well. Details change but the fundamental interactions retain their familiarity.

As regards the Windows UI, Windows 7 and Vista were different from XP which was different from Win2k which was ... The introduction of Glass, in particular, caused a lot of frustration for users that were upgrading from XP. Drivers were broken, their applications were borked, etc. Windows 7 fixed all of those problems, but a number of companies have not upgraded from XP because they don't want to deal with re-training their users.

In many ways, like Vista is to the Windows brand what the Rapid Release Process is to the Firefox brand. Both ideas caused mass defections to the competition. The jury is still out on how users will react to Metro. The dual-desktop story has two problems: the switch between the Classic and Metro desktops is not very intuitive; people are going to miss the Start Button. I think click-based heat maps should be "a" factor in making UI decisions; not "the" factor in such decisions!

Here are my closing thoughts on why a UI change should be as non-intrusive as possible. In my experience, people hate software because it has a way of making them feel stupid. The reason to be careful with changing the UI and/or removing features is that there is a good chance that the changes will people will feel stupid all over again. This is an invitation for defection to the competition.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#115

Post by mbrubeck »

jono_x wrote: post #52
mbrubeck wrote: post #48

Hey pg (or other moderators), it would be nice if you could unban jono_x who is the author of this post and signed up to respond to comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jono_x (For now, you can read them if you set "showdead" in your HN profile.)

I'm banned? (My posts were showing up for me, so I had no idea.) Did get banned because I broke a rule I wasn't aware of? Or is it that a newly registered account needs to be approved by a moderator before the comments show up?

Yay! You are unbanned now. The spam filtering algorithms are not open source, but I believe they are a bit trigger-happy when it comes to brand new accounts that post a lot of comments at once. My uninformed guess is that you were caught by an overzealous filter.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#116

Post by edanm »

This is a lot of analysis when the answer seems very simple and is hidden in the article: Firefox Updates weren't done as well as Chrome Updates, which is why they weren't popular.

I've been using Chrome for years (after using FF for years). With Chrome, I never realize there are updates. The idea of updating Chrome just doesn't enter into my consciousness. So the fact that they update all-the-friggin'-time doesn't matter to me - it never registers in my mind.

With FF, every update I would realize it. So even if the updates were just a popup "hey, we've updated", doing it once every two months will cause me to acknowledge their updating once every 2 months. Which I don't want to do, because I don't care, at all about Firefox updating. I just want to browse the web.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#117

Post by pkamb »

uxp wrote: post #88
breadbox wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that Chrome has never really changed it's UI. The presentation at the end of Google's 2012 IO Day 2 keynote actually timelapses through the UI. The only change is the removal of the home button outside of general micro-tweaks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtJd6AzU8c&feature=playe...

The only one that's really bothered me is the removal of the "Go" button on the right side of the URL bar. Still miss it.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#118

Post by Someone »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #24
jhatax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Firefox, Windows (minus Metro), and earlier releases of Android - not so much. I think Windows interface has withstood the test of time pretty well. The basic UX paradigm is essentially unchanged from Windows 95 with whatever that followed basically being tweaks rather than big changes.

I think that is partly in the same way roman numbers withstood the test of time: being well-known made them appear easier than they are. For example, one annoyance is the rule for what ends up in alt-tab. I work with XP at work and regularly cannot alt-tab to windows I alt-tabbed to seconds ago because they popped up some dialog (or is that only with alerts?)

The rule for what ends up in the task bar also is incomprehensible for mortals. For awhile, every new release of Office managed to introduce a new variation (yes, Word is MDI, but all its windows show up separately being one variation)

I guess that, if you ask users about these features, they will just say "yes, sometimes it does that".

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#119

Post by chris_wot »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #61
zobzu wrote: post #43

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…

BTW, you're being downvoted (not by me, though it's tempting) because at least a few of those are untrue. edit: Chrome is still faster on Android for me, addons and extensions break all the time for me in Firefox, and I don't find the memory management to be any better. It's still horrendously slow in Linux and on my work machine with 12GB of ram it just freezes no matter what.

I love how you know the reason for being downvoted...

Memory management is definitely better and we have no idea what extensions you are using.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#120

Post by lovskogen »

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 disagree, and I think you're set on the auto-update in Chrome and Firefox on being equal – they're not. Average Joe doesn't care about a update that brings support for a new css selector – but he cares if that update smacks him in the face. Firefox smacks him in the face, Chrome doesn't.
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