
Everybody Hates Firefox Updates - krakensden
http://evilbrainjono.net/blog?showcomments=true&permalink=1094
======
breadbox
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.

~~~
jhatax
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 usability.

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. Chrome and iOS are, again, perfect examples of
this concept in action. Firefox, Windows (minus Metro), and earlier releases
of Android - not so much.

Firefox's UI changed radically in version 4. A good number of users revolted
and there was uproar about the theme refresh, but most of the users that stuck
around got used to the changes. That they are changing the UI again, only 24
months after the fact, does not reflect very well on the design philosophy
behind the 4.0 refresh. Lots of questions come to mind - Did the designers not
do adequate research during 4.0? Was the development time-frame too short? Was
4.0 just an interim solution to what they perceived a bigger problem? Are
curved tabs really better than rectangular ones? Do I get back a lot of screen
real estate? Is this a case of Not-Designed-By-Me syndrome?...

I continue to use Firefox today, partially because I know my way around the
application so well but mostly because I trust that Mozilla values my privacy.
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. In these specific cases, I
understand that these are measures taken to ensure they can keep the lights on
at their headquarters. With the impending changes to the UI, I will be using
the app only on the basis of my trust in Mozilla. And we all know that trust
is a tenuous thing to hang by...

~~~
keeperofdakeys
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.

~~~
jhatax
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.

------
mbrubeck
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.)

~~~
jono_x
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?

~~~
mbrubeck
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _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 ...

------
Legion
What killed Firefox for me wasn't just the plugin breakage on updates, but the
_unnecessary_ plugin breakage.

For most of my broken plugins, the immediate solution was, "edit the XML file
inside the .xpi, and update the maxVersion to include the latest version of
Firefox."

Firefox 10 changed this behavior, making plugins assume to be compatible by
default, unless set to a strict mode by the plugin author. But Firefox 10
released in January of this year, by which point I had long since moved to
Chromium.

------
bengoodger
It would be funny if people were switching to Chrome because they were tired
of updates. Chrome updates _all_the_time_. Also no one gives a hoot about
version numbers. I don't think people hate the updates, they hate the nagging
popups. There's not really much difference between a browser notification and
one of those annoying "I see you've been on my site for 23 seconds, take my
survey!!!11" screens.

I wrote about this at length last year:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/105636695715347097518/posts/G9hb...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/105636695715347097518/posts/G9hbCEMC2wF)

A prerequisite to a non-annoying rapid release cycle IMO is silent update.
It's why we spent the time to get that part of the technology stack working
first. I predict user frustration with Firefox will decrease now they've
implemented this.

------
larrik
"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 familiarity. Just be sure that it actually
IS better.

So yes, the quoted advice should probably be considered and possibly adopted
by FireFox and maybe Chrome. But desktop software shouldn't accept it without
a huge dose of salt.

~~~
jono_x
> "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.)

------
smacktoward
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 "Firefox" had been in users' hands for
_seven years_ \-- _nine_ if you count pre-1.0 versions. Over that time, users'
expectations of what a product branded "Firefox" was settled into a particular
place.

Rapid release was painful because it _broke_ those expectations. Suddenly
Firefox didn't behave like people expected a product labeled "Firefox" to
behave anymore. It's like opening a bottle labeled "Coke" and having orange
juice pour out. "But orange juice is better for you!" Yeah, but that's still
not what I expect to get when I open a Coke bottle.

There's a simple way Mozilla could have avoided this: just call the rapid-
release product _something else._ Create a new brand, and put it on a version
of the browser that receives updates every six weeks. Call it Fastfox or
Frequentfox or really anything _other than Firefox._ Then encourage users to
start moving from Firefox to the new hotness. Make the new product compatible
with Firefox extensions, but don't do the version-number compatibility check
that Firefox does, so users aren't constantly being prompted to update working
addons.

(Yes, both products are the same code under the hood. _That doesn't matter._
The important thing is that you communicate to users that _this is a thing
that is something other than Firefox,_ which resets their expectations.)

Eventually you'd have most users on the new product, since that's where the
cool new features that get users excited would be showing up. Curmudgeons and
enterprises would stay with boring old Firefox, but that's OK, because you
make "Firefox" just a periodic snapshot of Frequentfox development. "Firefox"
becomes a legacy brand, maintained for those who care about it. But the new
brand is clearly established as the new hotness.

This lets you move your users without violating their expectations. They
_expect_ the new product to behave differently, because _it's a new product._
It's got a different name and everything!

Violent changes in direction for an established product, on the other hand,
_always_ tick off users, because they do violence to those users' expectations
of what that product is.

It's better to send your well-loved legacy brand gracefully off into the
sunset, in other words, than to try and shock new life into it with electric
paddles.

~~~
earl
The other thing is that Chrome updates work. They've only broken something
once in I think 3 years of daily use at this point (some update unchecked
"warn before quitting"). They also don't generally create popups and the
update process itself is literally invisible.

Firefox on the other hand... sigh. I really liked that browser, but the
updates, and the broken plugins, and the shit memory management, and the
developers' heads up their shitty asses denying their shit memory management,
and did I mention the enormous memory usage on OSX? Chrome essentially has the
same uptime as my laptop, ie months. Firefox required daily restarts with the
same browsing patterns. Plus they regularly corrupt the backing file that
holds the sites you had open in your browser, so before restarting the browser
to get ram back, it's a best practice to copy the location of each and every
open tab to a text file.

We got my gf's laptop 8 gigs of ram to accomodate ff and I'm working on
talking her into chrome. A browser written by people who know how to use
free(3). Plus the updates don't hork random stuff. Plus on the rare occasions
I've restarted the browser it has never broken the backing store holding the
open tabs.

~~~
dangoor
Actually, Firefox developers care a good deal about memory management. More
than Add-on authors unfortunately.

We've had a project called MemShrink running for about a year and it has been
making steady progress. and that progress has been shipping to users.

The current Aurora channel release even has a fix for most add-on bad
behavior.

Firefox actually stacks up really well in memory usage (even in third party
tests).

(I work for Mozilla but was not involved in MemShrink. Also, I wrote this on
my phone, so I hope there are no embarrassing misspellings. )

~~~
thaumasiotes
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.

~~~
forrestthewoods
I quit using Firefox due to absolutely horrific memory management and I never
used a single add-on ever. It was extremely frustrating because every time I
went to a forum seeking help the first and only thing people would do is blame
add-ons.

It was so bad that I had to close firefox when I wanted to do anything else.
If I played a full screen game it would work great for about half an hour the
suddenly it'd chug along at 10fps. Without fail the issue was Firefox deciding
to consume 90% CPU. And again this is without installing a single add-on ever.

It may be better today. I don't know. I don't care. I switched to Chrome and
haven't looked back since.

~~~
botj
Haters-be hate'n. And how exactly does the one process per tab of chrome
address memory issues? Chrome is complete garbage for me after 30ish tabs.
Talk about unresponsive...

~~~
wanderr
The great thing about this model is that closing the tabs kills the processes
and therefore frees up memory. Last time I used FFx extensively (6
months-1year ago) I could not say the same thing, even after they announced
having a pretty major fix for leaks.

------
city41
One thing I've not seen anyone bring up in the comments here is Chrome updates
just as often as Firefox does. Chrome might even update more often than
Firefox does. I don't know because _Chrome solved the rapid update problem
exceptionally well_. Chrome could update every hour and I probably wouldn't
even notice, let alone care. Rapid updates in and of themselves are not the
problem here.

~~~
Tangaroa
Here are the two major problems that I see in Mozilla's "rapid updates"
process:

1) Interruption of user work process

Firefox freezes for a few seconds at startup to see if there are any updates
to the core or plugins. If this were handled in the background in a separate
thread that did not freeze the browser, no one would care about it except for
privacy advocates who don't want their version number being leaked.

Then there are the popups and request to reboot that also interrupt the user's
work process, given that the user has probably been trying to get work done
while the download was going on.

2) Stupid versioning

For as long as software version numbers have existed, most vendors have used
the major.minor.patch pattern. A change in the major version number usually
means a break in the public API, so software vendors provide a different API
library for every major version that they release, and they allow plugins to
decide what API version to use.

Mozilla decided to increase their _major_ version number for every _patch_.
Firefox's latest version 420 or however high they are now should probably be
something like 4.2.20. The stupid numbering will only annoy users who expect
Mozilla to follow best software development practices, but it shouldn't affect
plugins. If Firefox is doing their updates correctly, they will be exposing a
separate API library for every major version update that they've done in their
rapid major version update schedule.

Of course, they're doing it wrong. Plugins built for version 4 or version 5 no
longer work because FF is only providing the latest API version 420, and only
until next week when 421 comes out. Mozilla's solution is for all plugin
vendors to update their plugins after every FF update, and for users to wait
until the plugin vendors have done this.

There would be no plugin breakage if Mozilla had updated the patch and minor
version numbers for non-breaking updates. I've said this on /. but the Moz
devs argued that their choice was between rapid major version updates or no
updates at all. I find that hard to believe. Something is wrong with their
toolkit if they cannot support minor version number updates.

~~~
nfm
I don't think any of the major web browsers do semantic versioning. Mozilla
doesn't increase the major version number for every patch either - they
increase it for every scheduled release (ie every 6 weeks). Patch releases
(typically security fixes) do increment the patch number.

------
jpxxx
This is easy to say as someone who has never managed a product, but I feel
silent self-update is table stakes for consumer-facing products at this point.

Requesting permission to update throws a significant amount of users. They're
typically not capable of determining if the request is legitimate or not,
they're fearful of updating things they rely on, and god help them if it's not
a one-click update.

~~~
ja2ke
Yep, most "consumer-level" end users would prefer to not be asked. I'm
probably a bad nerd, but it's even true of me. When I go to my parents house
for some holiday or another, I used to meticulously check everything on my
mom's computer to make sure it was working well. Now I basically just jam on
the manual software update button for everything she has installed that
doesn't autoupdate, because she's too afraid or inconvenienced by the manual
update button. Everything else, though, is just managing itself and she
doesn't notice.

------
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!

~~~
drivebyacct2
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.

~~~
gcp
_Chrome is still faster on Android for me_

Please give some example where.

 _addons and extensions break all the time for me in Firefox_

Which ones? I haven't had a broken extension in months (since Firefox 10), and
I use quite a few.

 _on my work machine with 12GB of ram it just freezes no matter what_

Are you implying Firefox is using 12G on your machine?

To be honest, I think what's happening is that one of those "extensions that
keeps breaking" is crap and what is using all that memory. Real Firefox has
none of the problems you describe (very vaguely and without specifics), so
it's hard to take you seriously - let alone see how it could be fixed.

------
Geee
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.

~~~
breadbox
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.

~~~
uxp
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...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtJd6AzU8c&feature=player_detailpage#t=3579s)

~~~
grabastic
Although... to my great frustration, Chrome has made pretty big changes to
their preferences pages over time.

------
samspot
"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 had no idea they bothered the
general population just as much. I actually switched to chrome because of the
memory leak in firebug so I didn't have quite the same experience.

~~~
goostavos
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 the graphics, and swapped the
versions without telling anyone. I received a crap storm of negative feedback.
Ended up having to write a guide for how to use everything, and then _still_
didn't learn my lesson! I thought X would function way better if combined with
Y, etc, etc.. Pushed another version with some new features and some feature
removed, and again, a torrent of confused coworkers asking me where things
went.

The only good decision I made was to stop messing with it... which is hard.
Each time I see people interact with it I feel there is a glaringly obvious
change that _needs_ to be made to ultimately benifit the user. But alas, I
leave it be.

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

------
cheeaun
Here's what I think Mozilla/Firefox should have done before starting the rapid
release cycle:

1\. Migrate all extensions to restartless/JetPack. Extensions for Firefox are
very powerful but may sometimes break when new versions are released, which
then the compatibility check feature is introduced to "solve" this. Before the
rapid release cycle, I've already seen some users reluctant to update and
would wait for extensions to be updated first _before_ updating to new version
of Firefox. So now with this cycle, it just annoys them further. If all
extensions were done in a more standard (and simpler) extension API first,
this would have reduce the impact on the upgrading process. Users don't have
to worry so much if the extensions that they depend on, would break.

2\. Remove 3rd-party themes and embrace the 'Personas' (simpler themes/skins).
Or at least improve theme development into something more standardized like
JetPack. Since the Mozilla days, theme development hasn't change much.
Extensions have JetPack, but themes have nothing (Personas is entirely a
different thing). The case with themes is exactly the same as extensions. I
know some users wouldn't upgrade to Firefox because the theme is not updated
yet. I'm not sure if anyone still install custom Firefox themes, but themes
played a decent role in attracting users (from IE?) in the early days.

3\. Implement Electrolysis (<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis>). From my
observation, the _real_ problem with Firefox is not the memory usage but its
slowness. When users notice that the browser is getting slower (slow startup,
slow tab-switching, slow UI response), they probably look at the number of
tabs, try to find out the problem and saw that huge GBs of memory used.
Firefox is now better at memory management, but the problem is still there.
I'm not 100% sure about the implementation details; 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.

So, after this, implement rapid release cycle, enabled by default for new
users/installs and prompt existing users to optionally opt in. Make the update
process unobtrusive and it would be a win-win situation for everyone.

(I created one of the first 3rd-party themes for Firefox, since the Phoenix
days.)

~~~
gcp
_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 multi-process, it's one reason Firefox uses
__less __memory than Chrome.

~~~
cheeaun
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.

~~~
gcp
_At least, it could make the UI more responsive_

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

------
samspot
I hate firefox updates because I use it infrequently enough that I have to
update just about every time I open it. Also on this list is my Playstation3,
which wants me to do system update and a software title update on the rare
occasion I try to use it. Makes me not even want to turn the thing on.

So, note to developers: Frequent updates drive your infrequent users crazy.

~~~
recoiledsnake
> Also on this list is my Playstation3, which wants me to do system update and
> a software title update on the rare occasion I try to use it.

The Xbox 360 also does constant updates that need a reboot. Since most people
leave it connected to the power socket, I wonder why they don't wake it
sometime and do all the updates and go back to being powered off.

~~~
samspot
True, but my xbox is broken. However when it was working the updates went
pretty quickly. PS updates often take up to 45 minutes.

~~~
tedunangst
As far as I can tell, all ps3 system and game updates are hosted on some
dude's dsl line. And they can't be bsckgrounded probably the worst part.

~~~
samspot
It doesn't help that they show you a 'do this in the background' option but
it's always grayed out.

------
Tloewald
The big problem with Firefox updates for me, and this predates the rapid
release BS, is that they occur when you launch Firefox, wasting your time
precisely when you're in a hurry. If they just waited until you were idle and
then updated in the background they'd be hugely better. (Extra points for
figuring out if compatible versions of plugins are available yet first,
downloading them too, etc.)

~~~
mccr8
I believe that background updates are coming in Firefox 15.

------
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.

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

I think this is the single most important thing in this article and cannot be
stressed enough.

Anybody that has ever had to interact with users knows this, but for
developers this is very hard to believe, they choose not to see it.

Most people see software (i.e. "computers") as a tool to get some work done,
or to get some entertainment. The work and the entertainment are the goal, and
if it were possible to achieve it without using any software, they would do
it.

Even technical-types think about software this way, not even knowing that
they're doing it. Think about this: we mostly put up with complicated software
and in-your-face software that's not contributing to our work or entertainment
because we are _learning_ something. Learning is just another goal that's not
really the software itself. Once we notice that we aren't learning much
anymore, the aforementioned software becomes a pain to use.

Or maybe it's just me...

------
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.

------
benthumb
I guess I'm in the minority in that I _liked_ the updates: it was like getting
a suprise gift ... but the incompatibility w/ the latest version of flash has
forced me, unfortunately, to move on.

It's not even necessarily Mozilla's fault, but my other browers don't have
this issue. I'm trying out __Opera __for the umpteenth time ... it always
eventually disappoints, but I'm going to give it another go.

------
Macha
Mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://evilbrainjono.net/blog%3Fshowcomments%3Dtrue%26permalink%3D1094&hl=en&safe=off&client=ms-
android-google&sky=mrdr&site=webhp&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

------
tsotha
I agree with everything he's written. I was a diehard Firefox fan. The
plethora of releases was annoying in itself - it's a damn browser, fer
chrissake. Mature technology. Removing all the buttons so it looks like Chrome
isn't improvement, it's just change.

But even then I stuck with it until they managed to break it completely.
Loading a page with a lot of external links would take, literally, five
minutes. I tried disabling all my plugins, disabling javascript, etc, etc. No
joy. Finally I gave up and downloaded Chrome.

I still use Firefox at work, but only because I'm using an OS for which
there's no Chrome.

------
jbk
> Ironically, by doing rapid releases poorly, we just made Firefox look like
> an inferior version of Chrome. And by pushing a never-ending stream of
> updates on people who didn't want them, we drove a lot of those people to
> Chrome; exactly what we were trying to prevent.

To me, this is the most important. Usually, people prefer the original to the
copy...

IMO, trying to catch up with (or just copy) Chrome all the times gives the
messages to the users that they should use the original...

------
smsm42
Never had any problems with Firefox updates. Switched to Chrome because
Firefox leaked memory like crazy and because unusable after less than a week
of work. I use browser quite intensively and keep tens of tabs open at all
time. Firefox seems to be unable to deal with it. I suffered for years but
once Chrome got decent extensions that was it.

~~~
nnethercote
How long has it been since you tried Firefox? Its memory consumption has
improved a lot recently. And FF15 will prevent the vast majority of add-on
leaks (which was the biggest remaining problem).

------
ck2
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)

~~~
Karunamon
>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 (which gives you the option
to override the version check), and 9 times out of 10, every single plugin
works fine.

Also, what did you mean "how Chrome hides everything"? I'll admit the plugin
system isnt near as robust, but for web development, I'm in passionate love
with the Chrome/ium developer tools.

~~~
dangoor
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.

~~~
kwierso
10, actually.

------
human_error
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.

~~~
nnethercote
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".

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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/$extensionNam...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/$extensionName); 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?

------
technojunkie
The top three reasons I switched to Chrome:

1\. Memory bloat on Firefox. It's ridiculous that I have to restart the
browser every day or more often just to get back more memory. 2\. Plugin
breakage. I'm sure it's better now but too little too late? 3\. Separate
processes for each tab and speed. Chrome FEELS faster even if it might not be,
but it's amazing that if one tab crashes the whole browser doesn't.

#2 appears to be much better, but if Mozilla implements #3, then #1 won't see
so bad and I would definitely consider using it again more often.

~~~
gcp
Mozilla has already said they will never implement 3 because it's pointless.
Separate processes per tab make the browser slower, not faster. Crash
resilience is obtained through sandboxing the plugins that were crashing in
the first place (hi Flash!), instead of entire browser instances. It's one of
the reasons Firefox uses _less_ memory than Chrome.

------
melling
I get a Firefox update every single day because I'm on the Nightly. If people
would quit complaining and embrace the rapid upgrade cycle, we can advance the
web at an accelerated pace. Almost half the people on the Internet are getting
an upgrade every 6 weeks. The next three years could see as much change as the
last 10, for example.

Btw,yes I understand we have legacy browsers and they won't get the full
experience, but when they finally do, they'll get that better browser.

------
DigitalSea
The number one issue with Firefox is the fact the developers who make the
changes and the people who tell the developers to make the changes do not
listen. It's the same issue with the Wordpress development team as well, both
open source projects being led in the wrong direction ignoring absolutely
everything the community asks for.

Firefox used to be completely about open source in the sense of the meaning;
change what users want changed, add in features the users want added in, but
then Firefox got popular and didn't have to try as hard to impress people any
more and the downward spiral continued.

I'm one of those people that switched to Chrome. I only switched about 6
months ago because I had hope that Firefox would come to their senses and fix
their damn browser, but it never happened. Chrome has it down-pat in terms of
backwards compatibility for plugins and themes and no memory issues.

The number one complaint I had with Firefox is the plugins I needed to do my
job and keep myself entertained were being blamed for the memory issues of
Firefox when it has been a known problem in Firefox for sometime. Every few
releases the Mozilla team touts new memory optimisation fixes that will make
the browser more stable, but the browser still feels clunky and buggy.

Fair enough the developers of Firefox addons should be doing their part in
terms of proper memory management (releasing memory when not needed, etc) but
seriously addons are Javascript, HTML and CSS mostly and Mozilla should have
worked out a way to effectively auto manage memory even for really bad
plugins. I know the Aurora channel supposedly has a fix for the bad plugin
behaviour issues, but the whole poor addon memory management issue has been an
issue with Firefox since the really early days (around version 1.5 I believe).
For years Mozilla denied any memory issues with the browser, it wasn't until a
little while ago when the market share started dropping of Firefox that they
started feigning interest in the memory management issues.

------
chalst
Excellent article, with one quote in particular that seems to make a well-
grounded, broader point:

> I have another theory, too: When software companies get to a certain size,
> they start taking their users for granted. They start treating their users
> as pawns in a battle against some other company. Faceless millions. Gotta
> copy everything the other company does, or risk falling behind. So they end
> up doing everything the other company does whether the users want it or not,
> and probably doing a crappy job to boot.

> In our case, we started thinking of everything in terms of the battle
> against Google Chrome. Oh no, Chrome is doing such-and-such; we'd better do
> something equivalent or we'll fall behind! We thought we needed a rapid
> update process like Chrome. We were jealous of their rapid update
> capability, which let them deploy improvements to users continuously. We had
> to "catch up" with Chrome's updating capability.

> Credit where it's due: the way Google handled Chrome updates was very, very
> smart. They recognized that updates are one of the hardest things to get
> right, so they solved that problem first, before releasing version 1. The
> first release of Chrome was little more than an empty box of a browser, but
> it was wrapped around an excellent updating system. This let them gradually
> transform that empty box into a full-featured browser, without the users
> ever realizing they were getting updates.

> Firefox did not do such a good job with rapid releases. I've written before
> about the specific mistakes we made, so I won't go into detail again. To
> summarize: we did the updates in a very intrusive way, requiring lots of
> user attention, which made people annoyed because it happened so often. When
> people restarted after an update to find no visible difference, they
> wondered what was so important about that update. (Remember the rule that
> the benefit of the update needs to outweigh the pain? We broke that rule.)
> Worse yet, we didn't do enough to preserve add-on compatibility, making the
> updates extremely disruptive to people who depended on certain add-ons; and
> we kept going with our old version-numbering scheme even though the meaning
> of the numbers had changed completely, leading to mass confusion.

This reminds me of certain OS races: Microsoft trying to upgrade its 16-bit,
cooperative multitasking Windows 3.1, and then ditching it for a new model
based on NT, while Apple flounders with the Mac OS's 6 to 9, until it finally
got a reasonable architecture with OSX - leading to Microsoft floundering with
Vista. But the problem here is the opposite - the difficulty in competing is
the same, but the two companies were reluctant to recognise the edge the
competitor's system had on theirs until it was costly to fix.

~~~
digikata
Funny thing, I recently came across my first Chrome update failure - from 19
to 20 on OSX. The instructions to try to resolve the issue involved going into
odd directories and deleting entries. This made for a oddly microsoftian
feeling fixup process, which, in the end, didn't fix the problem. The only fix
was a fresh download of Chrome. Makes one wonder if the Chrome project could
be wandering from it's original reliable because it's simple, fast, & self
updating to a state more like Firefox.

------
dredmorbius
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't
matter a whole lot, but the change I'd like to see is one in which a small
handful of tabs (I may easily run over 100) are considered "current and
active" (foreground, pinned apps), and the rest function more as a stateful
bookmark. Which, given that on crash recovery I tend to leave tabs unrefreshed
until I actually open them, they largely are.

 _State-tracking in browsers really sucks._ I've begun using the vimperator
plugin, and it does a hugely awesome job of helping with this, mostly in the
close/undo mode that handles history, and in being able to do partial matches
and tab-completion (based on history _and_ bookmarks) when opening new tabs /
navigating to a page.

 _Chrome isn't all that hot._ It's fast, it offers a _different_ broken memory
model (groups of tabs run in isolated processes, but consume much more memory
on a per-tab basis), and it plays well with Google's own Web properties.

But it lacks the extension flexibility Firefox has (especially UI tweaks such
as Vimperator, Tree-style Tabs / Tabkit (sadly incompatible with recent
releases), and Remove it Permanently) which I find highly useful,

As for updates: call it old age, call it maturity, but I prefer things _not_
change, _especially_ UIs. Much of the greatest frustration and outcry on Linux
has been over desktop UI metaphors (GNOME and KDE especially), and Microsoft
is rapidly heading into the same fray. As much as I _dislike_ actually using
the Mac interface, I have to admit that Apple have kept it highly consistent
for the 11 years of OS X. Yes, we can eventually get over it, but big changes
should happen _very_ infrequently, and then be left alone for a goodly while.
If you need a sandpit to play in, fork a conceptual project, and realize that
your userbase for this will be _very_ different from the mainstream, though it
may provide some valuable insights.

 _Frequently interrupting my workflow really, really, really sucks, more than
you can possibly imagine._ It's one of the joys of running on Debian GNU/Linux
-- so long as you're on stable, big changes are infrequent and small changes
are all but invisible. Best of both worlds.

 _IF you are going to rely on a plugin architecture, THEN get the damned
baseline worked out and keep it stable._ Screwing with APIs pains everyone. It
screws your users _and_ your developer community.

 _I'm becoming of the opinion that we want a bifurcation of the browser._
There's an app platform, for Web 2.0 stuff, where it's really necessary. And
there's something closer to ePub / Readability / Readability Redux /
Instapaper, which presents deep textual content in a format that's both
device-appropriate and highly nondistracting. When I find myself using Chrome
with the Developer Tools window open, editing page and style elements as I go,
something is very, very wrong with the Web.

~~~
conradfr
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.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
I'm always surprised with peoples experience with Firefox memory usage of
recent, it has been excellent for me. I can sometimes get upto 200+ tabs,
while only sitting on 1.5GB of used memory. This is in Linux, but most of the
memory-handling code shouldn't be that different between OSs in terms of GC
algorithms.

As for restartless extensions, I think mozilla should really push people to
switch their extensions to use the api. The other advantage is version
independence, which helps with some of users pains of firefox.

~~~
achal
I still don't understand why there is almost no push towards restartless
extensions on the AMO site apart from one "restartless" badge for addons. The
front page[0] has literally no mention of them. For a while, they didn't have
too many restartless add-ons. Recently, they've been getting more popular;
Adblock Plus added restartless support a while back, after much work, and
there are quite a few others [1]. It would be a decent time to start featuring
these much more prominently, if not exclusively.

[0] <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/> [1]
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/tag/restartless> [the only way, as
far as I can tell, to get this list is to manually search for this tag]

------
josteink
As someone who converted from Firefox to Chrome, I think this mostly sums it
up pretty well. Especially the part about being community-driven and then not
listening to the community.

I see others have also mentioned memory-usage and that is also a fair point.
At some point, Firefox would have memory leaks so huge that it spent most of
its CPU time constantly trying to GC, slowing to a complete halt.

And then, just like with the updates, you had to restart. Restarting Firefox
was a pain. But somehow restarting Chrome when updates come along is not. Why
is that?

My desktop is a quad-core system with hyper-threading. That's 8 logical cores
for the machine if utilized correctly. By Chrome having a process-per-tab
model and Firefox not, everything else being the same Chrome can reduce its
startup times to 12.5% of that of Firefox. It's an order of magnitude
improvement.

You don't care about restarting Chrome because it just takes one second and
you are back where you started. Firefox takes almost 10. That's way beyond
annoying your users.

When you are the browser spending ages doing a restart, you're not in a
position to force updates on your users.

Another thing which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere, which has been broken
in Firefox since the very first releases is the add-on and add-on
compatibility checking. It's retarded and I cannot believe it hasn't been
fixed yet.

The typical Firefox update process goes like this: 1. Firefox informs you
there is an update and you need to restart. 2. You accept a restart 3. Firefox
shuts down, updates, and restarts. 4. upon restart _after the update has been
installed_ , it checks if your addons are compatible. WTF?!?

Usually that works out fine, but every now and then it doesn't. And then it's
too late. That's retarded.

Why on earth would you check compatibility when it is already too late to do
something about it? The process should be re-ordered. Compatibility checking
should be done _first_. Then Firefox could say "There is an update and all
your add-ons are compatible. Would you like to update now?".

A simple re-ordering of things it already does would have solved one of the
two biggest issues people have with the update-mechanism. Why hasn't this been
done already?

I'm a Chrome convert now, but I keep coming back to Firefox to see if things
have improved, because I really believe in what Firefox stands for and what it
represents. Unfortunately, I keep coming back to Chrome because for me, it
just feels like a better browser.

~~~
Jgrubb
I did the exact same thing last year. Tried switching back from Chrome to FF
and using FireBug again. FF kept crashing on me. Gave it two days, switched
back to Chrome.

------
lelele
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 happy Opera user now. Opera's update
system is integrated into Debian's.

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

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

------
kraemate
Is it just me or is firefox's update system completely broken? I am using some
firefox 3.x version because the software-updater never finds a new version
(and i do not wish to download a new executable). This is on OSX. On ubuntu,
because updates are controlled via apt, i'm again forced to use ancient
firefox versions. The last time i had a successful update was during the 1.5
days.

------
csaba
I mostly use windows 8 now, and firefox there simply does not works! Maybe it
is only on my machine, I don't know, and I don't really care anymore. I really
wanted to test the new non-memory eating firefox, but if tabs are
disappearing, and flickering in a weird way (some random image appears instead
of the tabs), than I can't use it.

------
comex
Site seems to be down. It would be very nice if someone made a service like
Mirrordot for HN.

~~~
jono_x
Hi, author of the post here. I never anticipated HN-style traffic on my
personal blog. My poor lighttpd server couldn't handle it. I just rebooted;
should work now.

------
nwmcsween
Chrome uses courgette, now if it actually became a standalone project that
could be used outside of google (you need to jump through their frankly stupid
build system) I'm sure it would see adoption.

~~~
mccr8
Courgette is very cool, but all it does is make updates smaller, which is only
one part of making updates less annoying. Also, Google was sued in 2009 for
patent infringement for the algorithm, which likely makes other people nervous
about using it. I'm not sure if or how that was resolved.

------
brownbat
I went back to Firefox for a bit when Ubiquity was under active development.
I've never seen a new drop-in user interface add so much to my productivity...

I've never fully understood why it was shelved.

------
yaix
Rapid release cicle: Good.

Changing extention APIs or UI: Bad.

------
halfninety
A bug report from last year on the plugin compatibility problem:

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=691336>

No one ever cared.

~~~
gcp
Mostly because Firefox 10 sidestepped the entire issue with a much better
solution.

------
gwillen
jono_x: For some reason your account appears to have been banned from the
moment of creation. Nobody can see any of your comments.

------
drucken
There is a reason many people still use Firefox 3.x and it not's just for
legacy or development reasons.

I cannot stress smacktoward's astute post enough.

------
its_so_on
Not me, I think it's great. For once you can run firefox, as opposed to some
specific version you downloaded eons ago - the 90's model of software.

