
Why People Don’t Upgrade Their Browser – Part IV - mbrubeck
http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/21/why-people-don%e2%80%99t-upgrade-their-browser-%e2%80%93-part-iv/
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mhb
I'm surprised my reason isn't more common, but maybe it's included in some
other category. I want to know which of my add-ons won't work before I install
the update.

~~~
moeffju
In my experience, Firefox has been checking add-on compatibility before
updating for quite a while now. Have you tried it recently?

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mhb
I don't understand how to benefit from their checking. Are you saying I should
expect all my add-ons to work or that there is a place where they say which
add-ons will work? Or does the installer give a warning before installing
about which add-ons won't work?

~~~
moeffju
The updater checks whether your add-ons will be compatible with the version
that is to be installed. You can then cancel the upgrade if you want.

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po
No time to upgrade but they time to fill out a survey? I don't get that. Maybe
a prediction of how long an update will take. People might think they need to
reboot their machine.

I also wonder how many of the people who didn't upgrade and didn't fill out
the survey would have said "no time".

~~~
alextgordon
It would also help if they prompted for permission at the _end_ of users'
sessions, not at the start. No relaunch necessary and users don't have to wait
for an update to install before they can start browsing.

~~~
Kejistan
That doesn't seem feasible, most people (that I know) leave FF running all the
time; or if they do close it the last thing they want is the application
taking even longer to shut down because it wants to ask about running some
updates. Think about the scene from Office Space.

Nagging people while they're trying to do stuff obviously isn't ideal either.
So as just about everyone has mentioned: Chrome's silent updates are a big win
for convenience. Because should the average user really have to think about
keeping their software up to date?

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mynameishere
The awesome bar. Any non-deterministic address bar is infuriating to me.
Chrome's is pretty bad. IE is the best out of the modern browsers. Best bet is
to stay with an old version of firefox: 2.0 or earlier; you can spoof any
naggy sites like youtube by updating the version in about:config's
general.useragent.extra.firefox. The day you find any diminished functionality
should be very novel.

~~~
acg
I can't believe that you select you browser based on the address bar. What
about page loading speed, rendering and security?

Some of the awesome bar's functionality can be turned-off. For example:

    
    
       browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
    

could be set to zero.

~~~
jackfoxy
Chrome is my current default @ home, IE8 my current default @work. I keep them
both up to date. FF has been my default in the past. It's my business to keep
up on our web sites' x-browser compatability, so it's important for me to
switch browser from time to time.

I got shot down about this on HN in the past, but I'll say it again. The only
thing I don't like about Chrome is forcing me into the Omni Bar, and not
giving me the CHOICE to have a secondary search gadget for secondary and
tertiary search engines (like FF and IE do). The keyword/tab option does not
work well for Wikipedia because it does not propery handle spaces in the
search string, and even if it did I just like having the secondary search box.

~~~
acg
There is an extension called "Search Box" that might do what you want in
chrome. This is a secondary search gadget.

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padmanabhan01
Main reason: Too frequent updates with little noticeable improvement is a
hassle.

~~~
robin_reala
The frequent updates are security patches. You want them to be frequent and
not to change things beyond the security issue.

There is a definite case for those to be a silent install though.

~~~
mattw
I was surprised to find disdain for Chrome's silent updates in the comments of
the article. The fact that Chrome silently handles such security updates and
never nags me about them was one of the (lesser) reasons I switched away from
Firefox--even though Firefox's minor updates are fairly quick and relatively
painless, I still found myself annoyed when it kept asking me to install them.

~~~
_delirium
As long as there's no user-visible changes and it just silently fixes some
internal bug, I'm okay with that. I'd be annoyed if anything user-visible
changed without Chrome telling me it was upgrading, though.

(And the real push-back will probably come if a silent update accidentally
breaks things, so I guess there's extra incentive to make sure that doesn't
happen.)

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tvon
People are scared to touch their computers, that's why they don't upgrade
anything.

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jamesbritt
For me, it's because upgrades are not simply "what you have now, but
incrementally and linearly improved", but a mixture of "stuff you liked, now
gone", "some things fixed", "some things now broken", "new cool features", and
"crap you don't want but now have to live with".

For example, in FF2 all the profile stuff was text. I could easily copy
cookies form one machine to another, or tweak some settings file. Now I have
some sqlite db files in there that are much less easy to hack on.

I've had useful add-ons stop working in FF3 as well. And I haven't seen any
real improvements in FF3 or FF2. Doesn't seem any better with memory, doesn't
seem to crash less often.

I've considered making Chrome my main browser, but until recently (as far as I
know) it broke some essential command line behaviour: when I start an app from
the CL I want it to always open a new instance. I do not want a new tab in an
existing instance. Especially if that existing instance is on some other
desktop.

But Chrome is still lacking some of the add-ons I like for Firefox (though
that's improving as well).

Dear LazyWeb: Is there something like Ruby Version Manager, but for browsers?

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byoung2
This explains why people don't upgrade _FireFox_ but I want to know why people
don't upgrade from Internet Explorer to a better browser.

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shalmanese
Here's what I think would be ideal from a User Experience perspective: Firefox
silently prepares the update as soon as it's received but keeps the old files
around. At either the start or end of the browsing session, it asks whether
you would like it to update or not and, if you do, all it has to do is flip a
bit switch and you're updated.

The major pain in updating is that the point where I'm starting my browser,
I'm usually in the middle of _doing_ something. Interrupting that by 30
seconds is not my idea of fun.

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johnl
I know when I upgrade applications I want to hesitate since some previous
upgrades have changed the user interface significantly enough that it does
take a while to "relearn" the interface. Mozilla might try to query those who
have upgraded to show that "down time" is at a minimum, if seen at all, and
one can contribute to the growth of the browser by doing so.

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j_baker
The most important reason seems to just be a variation of the status quo bias:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias>

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crististm
Did anybody notice that Firefox 3.6 and later forgets address bar history?

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FlorinAndrei
That's a dangerous article for Mozilla to publish. You know, what with Chrome
gaining ground and whatnot...

