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Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

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Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#161

Post by lelele »

gcp wrote: post #151
lelele wrote: post #130

The worst thing about Firefox updates is that... they didn't work for me. On my Debian box, I had to manually download and install each new version. That, and Firefox crashing several times a day without giving me a clue about what happened, what I could have done to fix the issue and the bug-report process always failing to submit reports, made me think that Firefox's days as a better browser had long passed. I'm a…

Was this Iceweasel or Firefox? Debian doesn't ship Firefox by default.

Firefox. I don't use Debian's Iceweasel.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#162

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mbrubeck wrote: post #115
jono_x wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>The spam filtering algorithms are not open source //

The moderation of this social network is completely opaque and often, it seems, whatever algorithms or feelings the mods use to guide them are wrong. That's probably survivor/selection bias but who's to know ...

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#163

Post by pbhjpbhj »

conradfr wrote: post #36
dredmorbius wrote: post #13

A lot of agreement. Some disagreements. Yes, frequent updates, especially those that break plugins, suck massively. Each update is a huge leap of dread into the "well, what's going to break this time" sea. The biggest single fault I've got with Firerfox (running FF13) isn't updates, it's memory usage. It still leaks massively, and pretty much requires a daily restart. State preservation is good enough that this doesn…

Yes, memory has become better, but only marginally. That's why I use the "restartless restart" extension. And if you use Firebug, you are screwed as well, only quicker. I never really liked Chrome, but it's so fast and snappy, and Firefox has still not catch up in that area.

I had severe memory problems. Then on upgrade to, I think it was, FF11 firefox became so crash-prone that it was crashing on about every fifth page. Even "safe mode" wouldn't help.

Then I created a new profile and it was amazing. FF has been running without crashes since (not one) and memory usage seems well balanced.

Just FWIW.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#164

Post by cpunks »

nnethercote wrote: post #101
thaumasiotes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit firefox purely over its tendency to leak my entire RAM and force restarts. I was told at the time, and do believe, that the memory leaking was an addon problem. However... firefox was sold on the idea of addons. When your two main messages are "we're the most convenient browser; just look at all our awesome addons!" and "you can't use the addons, or your computer will implode", you've got a serious problem.

Please try FF15 when it comes out on August 28. It has a fix that prevents 90%+ of leaks from add-ons. See http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/05/07/update-on-lea... for some details (and note that all the follow-on problems mentioned in that post have now been fixed).

The problem is not add-ons. Let me repeat that -- THE PROBLEM IS NOT ADD-ONS. I left Firefox about a year ago, once Chrome was good enough, because my plain-vanilla Firefox, with all the tweaks to limit memory usage enabled, would still leak memory until it crashed (my laptop has 1.5GB RAM and Ubuntu; it also had a few GB of swap). Closing tabs did not help either. The only response from Mozilla was 'add-ons.' Chrome does just fine with 30+ tabs open on the same machine.

Any organization that can live in denial for years and years about the core issue with their product is going to die. Mozilla is tightly connected to the web developer community, but has a complete disconnect from the problems facing its actual users. When Firefox shipped, it was a great, light-weight alternative to Mozilla. From my point of view as a user, I haven't seen any substantial improvements since 1.0 shipped in 2004 -- spell check is nice, and given how often it crashes, restoring tabs when the browser is opened is nice -- but that's all. Otherwise, if not for security issues and web site compatibility issues, I'd be on Firefox 1.0 (which worked fine on sub-GHz machines).

Aside from that, virtually all development effort has been aimed at making a better IDE for web developers. I guess that benefits me since, ultimately, I can visit nicer web sites in Chrome.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#165

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nnethercote wrote: post #105
human_error wrote: post #53

I'm still trying to figure out why the "add-ons" you install appear in "extensions" window and what's the difference between an extension and an addon. I can search and install Firebug but can disable/remove it from extension section.

I too didn't understand this for quite some time. "Extensions" are things like AdBlock Plus and NoScript. "Plug-ins" are things like Flash. "add-ons" is a term that covers both extensions and plug-ins. That's why the add-ons manager has tabs for both "extensions" and "plug-ins". To confuse the issue, people very frequently use "add-on" when they really mean "extension".

Isn't that really because Mozilla don't make the extension vs addon vs plugin distinction clear themselves?

If you go to the Firefox add-ons in about:addons and do a search for an addon called "flash" then a link to the [Adobe] flash plugin isn't presented (as either best match nor name match). It's got to be amongst the top 10 addons used surely?? Certainly one of the top 10 for the keyword "flash". So?

Equally the https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ page doesn't mention plugins at all, not even under the "more" top menu. If you search at the addons page you only get extensions and no plugins offered to you (eg https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=flash).

Extensions are found at addresses like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/$extensionNam...; shouldn't that be /en-US/firefox/extension/... ?

In short Mozilla don't make it clear to users so how should a user be expected to see the difference? Is there a real difference or is it just an arbitrary Firefox UI distinction?

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#166

Post by tedunangst »

dbaupp wrote: post #89
tedunangst wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to believe you, but since every Firefox release is faster than ever and uses less memory, if that were really true Firefox would run on an Atari and be so fast it would literally travel into the future to fetch pages. But that's not the case.

Your assertion is entirely false. Just because something keeps getting larger/faster/smaller doesn't mean it will eventually be arbitrarily large/fast/small. e.g. the sequence 1, 1 + 1/2, 1 + 1/2 + 1/4, 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8,... keeps getting bigger and bigger, but it never goes past 2. (Futhermore, in my personal experience, Firefox has been using less and less memory.)

Your sequence is growing, albeit at a decreasing rate, so I'm not sure it's a good fit for memory usage. Unless you meant to say the rate at which Firefox is bloating is slowing. I could believe that. But Firefox is claiming memory usage is following a sequence more like 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, ... Which should approach zero.

If you meant your sequence to represent performance, maybe that's what's happening, but then I think they should stop saying "now 1/1024 faster than before" as if it's a reason to upgrade.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#167

Post by gaius »

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 iOS UI, uTorrent, and the Chrome browser

These things have not been around long enough for "the test of time" to apply.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#168

Post by gcp »

cheeaun wrote: post #153
gcp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Implement Electrolysis ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis ). From my observation, the real problem with Firefox is not the memory usage but its slowness. Electrolysis does nothing to solve this, which is why it was abandoned. I'm thinking that if Firefox has Chrome-like multi-process architecture, the interface would be more responsive and memory management would be even better. Memory usage is far worse with…

At least, it could make the UI more responsive. Even though multi-process may use more memory, I think it's easier to reclaim/cleanup unused memory when for example, closing a tab.

At least, it could make the UI more responsive

There's no technical reasons for that to be true.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#169

Post by keithpeter »

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…

"In my experience, the designers of unchanged interfaces put a lot of thought into almost every interaction a user could have with their application/operating system. Armed with the use-cases, the designers invested time and effort in creating the core UI "right", and determined a seamless way to make incremental updates."

I know that this reply was in the context of Web/Browser/Desktop, however, I deal on a daily basis with some fairly clunky business applications that have pretty gungy UIs (think Visual Basic circa 2000 with lots and lots of tree controls and combo boxes).

Another more specialised business application has had a recent 'face lift' and my colleagues are using it much less because they find it hard to find things that used to be easy.

I know my way round the screens, and I know the shortcuts. I'm dreading a 're-design' of the one I use.

Re: Everybody Hates Firefox Updates

#170

Post by keithpeter »

Bjartr wrote: post #60
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the ribbons took over everything.

But only after extensive testing found them quantitatively better than the old menu system.

Testing with users inexperienced in both UIs or testing with users who knew pre-ribbon Office well? A reference?

I find it takes a bit of time to find where functions have moved on Office 2010, and I seem to be taking a long time to internalise the 'logic' for finding less used functions. Probably all those years on Office old style.

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