Holy fuck! This just came out of nowhere! Firefox 4.0 just came out in March, I think, and now 5.0 is already out. According to Wikipedia, Firefox 6.0 and Firefox 7.0 are each supposed to be released before the end of the year. What is this madness?????
Each update includes fewer features than old updates. This is supposed to decrease stability for the platform and plugins. Also, believe it or not, they want to catch up to version numbers. Chrome and IE are way up there. Stupid, I know, but whatever.
Gave it a try. It set itself to be my default browser without being asked and without even notifying me that it would do it. Removed it immediately.
I really hope they do this, I'm sick and fucking tired of the Flash plugin randomly crashing with Firefox.
Mozilla is realizing that it's going to keep losing market share if it doesn't speed up the release process. While you are waiting 2 years to wrap up your changes, your competitors are making 5-10 releases with real noticeable improvements. The entire idea of a browser version needs to just go away (it's almost going there with Chrome). The user shouldn't have to know or care, the updates should just happen, and the browser should just keep itself secure and compatible with new standards.
I would amend that to, "shouldn't have to...but should be able to." Nontransparent updates are about as appealing to me as cloud computing. Very nice as an option, untrustworthy on an exclusive basis.
[YT="..."]_n5E7feJHw0[/YT] As if any internet-connected program couldn't do untrustworthy things without requiring an update. And as if one would be able to recognize a dangerous / malicious update when it showed up.
It's not any farther. The door is already wide open, you can't open it any further. You can of course fool yourself into thinking you are safer. It boils down to whether you trust Mozilla/Opera/Google/Microsoft/Apple more than the people trying to find cracks in their software.
I can do untrustworthy things without being given a handgun. Does that mean I should be able to get a handgun without a background check? I can recognize a brand-new update and refuse to install it until other suckers have had a chance to field-test it properly for me. I can recognize a bloatware update (Yet another fifty megabytes of fishy URLs? Seriously, Norton?) or spyware update and refuse to install it at all. I can, furthermore, learn some of the jargon by reading the update summaries and become a more informed consumer as a result.
I guess I just have this old-fashioned, stubborn desire to know what's going on with a machine I paid for. I don't like being kept out of the loop. Let the developers do what they want with software -- but I insist on knowing what they're doing. Just that same old-fashioned attitude, I guess. I prefer to be an informed consumer.
Knowing what's happening and having numbered versions of software are two different things. There's no reason you have to have "Mozilla Firefox 6.0" to have a list of changes available. Also, you don't really know what they are doing. You just know what they say they are doing. Like I said before, it still boils down to trust. If you simply can't trust anyone, you can use a fully open-source browser, read and understand all the code, and compile it from source yourself. But most people can't do that, and of those that can, very few are willing to invest the time necessary.
How would I know that it's actually a different version? For that matter, how would the dev team? I'm not sure whether or not you understand how complex collaborative efforts are, and not just in software. Granted, some concurrent versioning systems don't output version numbers -- some do. The reason they do is so that collaborators know how far along the product's development cycle they are immediately on opening a project from the CVS repository. The reason clients need to know is for the purpose of making an upgrade or downgrade decision. If all I see is: I won't want that version. But what version did I have before that update? How do I downgrade if I don't know which build or release number the previous iteration had? Trust comes from transparency. If I don't have that from a software dev, their app has no space on my hard drive. Exactly, which is why it's more reasonable to have at least the option of tracking software development through build and release numbers. I'm not saying it must remain the de facto standard, only that it ought to remain an option.
Having a build number is not the same as marketing a version number to the public. It's also not the same as releasing a whole new separate installer rather than just letting you upgrade seamlessly from within the app. Also, a build timestamp works pretty darn well if you don't want to pick an arbitrary version number. Well, being that I am a software engineer at one of the most competitive companies the whole world I think I have some idea how complex it is to work with software. Source code version control is totally different from the version applied to software products. A very tiny minority of apps actually do use the version from their VCS, but it's very rare. You can bet if you look at the repository for firefox, the version is NOT 5.0. You are not seeing my point. I'm not saying you shouldn't have some sort of version available. However, it shouldn't be part of the product name. What's the difference between releasing 4.3.9 and 5.0? or 2011-06-25 or 534234340303? There isn't one, other than the dev (or marketing, or sales) team deciding the changes are big enough to warrant a new number. Making up these arbitrary divisions makes sense for a shrink-wrapped product (like windows), because the (old and dying) business model is to charge money for each "big" version. Browsers don't work that way. They don't charge money and they can't compete if they stick to slow monolithic release schedules. Chrome handles this the right way. You can see the version number (current on stable channel is 12.0.742.100), but it's not CALLED "Google Chrome 12", and it doesn't make a big fucking deal when you install a new version (Hey dude! You're using 1 higher version number than before!!), and it doesn't decide to leave arbitrary versions of the software behind with no more bug/security fixes or feature updates. How do you downgrade to the previous version of wordforge if the vBulletin software gets updated? How about the previous version of Google search, Gmail, Hotmail, etc? How about the old version of facebook? You already use hundreds of "versionless" applications that update without you knowing it, and there's no way for you to downgrade. Furthermore you don't even notice 99.9% of the updates. Hate to say it but that's the way the future is, especially with applications that don't charge you money. If you don't like the software anymore after an update, you always have the power, as the consumer, to stop using it. The developer (especially for free software, even more especially for open-source software that you could fork yourself), has zero obligation to support your old version or provide you with installers for the old versions. Again, if you don't like it you can always use something else. And if enough people are upset by changes that don't get rolled back, then that developer will lose in the market. Of course. Again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be a log of changes somewhere, or that there shouldn't be a way to identify a given version. But there's no reason to slice up one product into arbitrary release versions unless you are trying to charge for each version separately. How many web apps do you use have version numbers in their name? How many let you use the old version? How many apps on your iPhone/iPad/Android release different numbered versions on the app store that can be downloaded separately? The entire concept of "numbered" versions being built into the name of an application is a relic from the days of off-the-shelf software where you pay to upgrade on some arbitrary basis that helps the company hit their revenue numbers.
Whoop. Dee. Doo. I hope you didn't expect me to just know that, because if you sent out a 50 page dossier on your credentials, I never got it. Gonna interrupt right here and cut it off, because it looks like both of us weren't seeing each other's points. You seem to have thought I want the version number to be part of the product name. I don't. Right now, I'm posting from Safari 5.0.5 (7533.21.1). I don't give a damn about "5.0.5 (7533.21.1)" being in the name. Don't care. At the prompt for upgrade, it's enough that the next one tells me it's going to be... oh, let's say "5.5" and shows me a changelog. That's all I care. I want to know when it's being updated, I want to be asked permission to allow the update, and I want to know why I should give permission. That's it. As for what you said about webb page/app hybrids -- don't care. I agree with you on those 100%, because those aren't dependent on taking up space on my machine. Google can do what ever the hell it wants, so can any other hosted site. Just don't care. But if it's sharing space with my documents, I insist on knowing when and how it changes, bare minimum.
Well first, with HTML5 local storage, more and more webapps will be using your storage space. Second, see my iOS/Android comment: how are these apps different from one on your regular computer (protip, they aren't different at all. The new version of OS X is going to use the "Mac App Store" which will have the same model as iOS, and lots of software distribution tools on PC do this as well (for example, on Steam, I don't get a new version of a game every time a patch comes out, and while I can read patch notes, I have no choice but to accept the patch). Lastly, I respect your right to insist on whatever arbitrary stuff you want. However, I still think the notification of updates and interruption caused by them is bad for almost all users, and furthermore, almost all users do not care to keep track of what is changing. It annoys them, and it increases the time that bugs and security holes that they have on their system. Automatic seamless updates, with a log of changes available somewhere, is the best way to go. Again, I can understand if you don't like this model, but I still think it's vastly superior for nearly all users. Luckily we have a lot of browsers out there so you can pick the type you like, but I think Chrome's momentum, and the popularity of web apps and iOS/Android apps is showing what users prefer: a product that handles bugfixes and improvements with minimal interruption.
The iOS model works just fine for me -- but, and maybe you have your iOS device set up in a way I'm unaware of -- iOS updates aren't automatic. Prefetching allows the system to automatically notify you that they are available, but user permission is still required before app updates are downloaded and installed; on the same page where the "Install" button resides is also a brief changelog. That, to me, is a perfectly sufficient model. Automatically check for updates; advise the user when updates are available; provide a brief changelog along with the choice, for the user, to install the update. As I said, maybe it's just that I'm old-fashioned in this respect -- I don't want my machine making that decision for me. Inform me; don't decide on my behalf. If there's an update to one of my apps, show me a brief overview describing the benefits of accepting that update -- then leave it up to me to say yes or no to that update. I paid for the machine. I paid for the apps. The decision rightly belongs with me, not with the developer. Maybe I don't want "Widget X" that's an integral part of the update. Maybe I do want "Widget Y" which the update eliminates. That ought to remain my choice. Additionally, I can only express extreme skepticism regarding your claim that a majority of users don't want that choice. Remember when an iTunes update some time back bundled a Safari install by default, and how great the outcry was about that? Users want to retain that power of choice. Granted, I can see how an update every few days would be tiresome -- but most major releases don't come along at that frequency. In any case, for those who want to have updates installed silently, that should be an option. For those who want to be given an informed choice before changes are made to their software, that, too, should be an option. That's all I'm saying. Not saying it shouldn't be available -- just saying, for those of us who want a greater level of control over the software running on our machines, the traditional prompt/permit/install model shouldn't be discarded.
