

Mozilla fixes the UI problem that has been crippling FF3.5 takeup - sailormoon
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=534090

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yason
Slightly offtopic but on crippling Firefox, too: I didn't need automatic
updates because I used the nightlies of FF3.5 before it was called FF3.5,
mainly to get my hands on the javascript JIT.

But then Chromium came.

Now I'll wait until Electrolysis fixes the biggest problem in the current
Firefox: the sluggish bottleneck of the single UI thread that does all events
and rendering for everything. It's not only slow but a single Flash video can
bring down all my dozen tabs and while Firefox can restore them, it takes
forever to load them in "parallel".

WebKit is quite crappy and odd, Chromium is still in its infancy but the user
experience is an order of magnitude better almost solely because of
multiprocessing.

It's amazing how a single thing can make so much of the difference merely by
coming from the next decade. Now I'll just have to wait for the copycats to
work their duty and I can go back to Firefox.

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houseabsolute
Answers the question: why should automatic updates be opt-out rather than opt-
in.

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mhansen
This is why I install Chrome on my family's computers. Set it and forget it -
auto silent background update means they'll always have a current browser.

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rbanffy
This is what I love so much about Linuxes and package management. I set them
up, software update notifications pop-up (I liked it best when they appeared
in the notification area) and everything is quickly updated mostly behind the
scenes.

I find the idea of every program having its own independent self-update
mechanism ludicrously primitive.

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samstokes
Apparently Google agrees: when you install Chrome on Ubuntu it uses the OS's
update manager to keep itself updated (by adding its own APT repository).
Nifty.

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cake
Firefox updates are pretty annoying, I hate to launch Firefox only to wait for
him to update. I wish they could fix that.

Chrome is great because he handles all this dirty job in the background and
you can browse almost instantly.

I guess Firefox could try to de the same job as Chrome, I don't know why the
typical user wouldn't want to update it.

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taitems
So if I understand this correctly: they fixed poor uptake by making it so you
cannot opt out of upgrading to the next major. It just does it without asking?

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dangrossman
No no, that's not how I read it at least.

There are two types of update notifications in Firefox. There's a little
overlay slider that pops up in the lower right telling you about a minor
update available. Then there's a large dialog window that can pop up to tell
you about a big update.

Unless the user left the browser open for at least 12 hours, they were never
being shown the big dialog notifying them that the upgrade to Firefox 3.5 was
available, only the small notification. The fix is to make the big dialog pop
up. It is not to make it install automatically, you still have to click the
button to say you want that update.

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codexon
I think they should just get rid of those annoying pop-ups and make a red
notification bar to the right of the help menu whenever there is an update.

