Mozilla Forcing Firefox 3.5 Users to Upgrade

[exfileme]

There are 12 million users on Firefox 3.5, and Mozilla plans to force an upgrade on each one even if it means dangling a carrot.

Mozilla Forcing Firefox 3.5 Users to Upgrade : Read more

 

[alidan]

i wont upgrade for allot of reasons.

1) extentions, i have everything i need right here, and if i upgrade the odds that a critical extention doesnt work is great

2) i hate reseting up the user interface, and i hate when they change things that arent broken. its the same reason i refuse to go to win 7. if i hate the look and feel, i will not upgrade

3) i know the ui can change, but it was a month long process to get 3.5 to look and function like i wanted it too. and damnit, i don't want to deal with that again, if you can give me a native ui that is exactly like 1.5 than we will talk.

4) 3.5 has a smaller ram footprint than 4.0, even if i have a 64 bit os, and a crap ton of ram, i would still hit a wall with how much ram i use, because if i have it i use it. firefox having a smaller foot print is a BIG reason why its my #1 choice in browser, with google chrome #2 and opera a distant #3

mozilla devs, fix the above and i will get firefox, but as it stands, i hate the direction you are going.

 

[davewolfgang]

Why would you want any company to keep support OLD TECH???

It's 2011 - get WITH the times. Programs require updates to keep up with the security threats. And they NEED to update to incorporate the new programming tech.

And so you don't want them to update - because YOU might have to spend a few minutes making things like you want....????

 

[Guest]

I can see why you might not want to upgrade to version 4, be it the new UI (which is horrid, but there is a theme and extension which reverts it back to the good old style), extensions not working yet, or whatever your reasons may be, but there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't at least be using 3.6. It's a minor version update, no extensions are broken...it's like using Windows 7 and not upgrading to SP1.

 

[therabiddeer]

[citation][nom]PeopleRIdiots[/nom]I can see why you might not want to upgrade to version 4, be it the new UI (which is horrid, but there is a theme and extension which reverts it back to the good old style), extensions not working yet, or whatever your reasons may be, but there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't at least be using 3.6. It's a minor version update, no extensions are broken...it's like using Windows 7 and not upgrading to SP1.[/citation]
Not the best of examples, SP1 has produced some very bad errors for some people that end up being very frustrating.

 

[ravewulf]

Not wanting to go to FF4 yet I could see (add-on support, etc), but not wanting to go from 3.5 to 3.6?

 

[nebun]

well it looks like i am back to my trusty IE....i don't like it when a company forces me to upgrade to something that hasn't been proven to work....btw my games on facebook don't work well at all on FF4...they work very well on IE9

 

[areszues92]

If they try to force 3.6 users to 4 I'll be pissed

 

[ProDigit10]

I wonder when firefox will stop being like internet explorer/netscape of the 1990's, and again start being firefox?
It feels that lately they surely bloated and slowed down the browser quite a bit!

HTML is not that heavy, it's just all the plugins, and java and .net framework that makes it so heavy!

 

[yyk71200]

Supporting old stuff takes away time and resources so it is a good thing to drop support for old.stuff after a reasonable amount of time. People should learn to move with times. I am not telling to jump on every single new version release (I completely skipped Vista for instance), but old stuff is old, a drag weight behind. I still have XP on my laptop, but I won't bitch about lack of support for it. I also have Linux on it, and mostly use it. It is a secondary system with limited use anyway.
About Firefox, when 3.6 gets like three releases behind, it will be time to move for everyone. I don't really miss anything from old software.

 

[cyb34]

If more people would embrace beta and latest versions, perhaps we would have a better, more advanced browser.

"I don't need more than IE6/FF2" = traditionalism. You know.... the thing that doesn't let you evolve.

 

[mitch074]

...Mozilla was still supporting 3.5? Daaaang!

Considering the differences between 3.5 and 3.6 (they are few: integrated support for Personas, plugins sandboxing since 3.6.4, a few CSS3 properties, and a faster JS engine), NOT updating is foolish; in fact, I would more see problems with users of 3.0 who refused the ugrade to 3.5/3.6.

The extension problem is a false problem: 3.5 extensions have, by now, gotten more than enough time to update for 3.6 support - so it's pretty much instantaneous, when you load 3.6 for the first time, a few of them will be upgraded and that's it. Except if you disabled support for extensions updating.

As for 4.0's UI being much different than 3.x: go to Firefox button, Toolbars > Menu Bar reverts a bunch, uncheck 'tabs on top' on that same menu, and there you have it: pretty much the same as before. There is an extension restoring the status bar, and at that point you go back to Firefox 3.0's interface; and then, there is a theme reverting Fx 4 to Fx 2/3's appearance!

So, not updating reverts to "using deprecated, dangerous, non-supported extensions on your main browser". Like running with scissors.

 

[Guest]

If mozilla expects anyone but the average home user to use their software then they better incorporate some corporate functions. As a network admin for a medium sized business I was nice enough to adopt FF a few years ago for everyone's pc. And then just last week I started getting strange phone calls about why someone's timesheet software would no longer work. Turns out the plugin required for our billing software IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH FIREFOX 4. But due to the relentless popup's about half our company ended up installing it anyway, and now they cant even complete their weekly timesheets.

Their only option is to make IE their default web browser, which I'm about more than happy to do and say good riddance to FF forever. Dont get me wrong, I love FF and use it on all my PC's at home. But forcing a manual update that has no central control can wreak havoc on a network that uses hundreds copies. If Mozilla is this shortsighted, then I dont really trust them anymore.

 

[eddieroolz]

So basically when Mozilla forces upgrades users won't make a fuss about it, but when Microsoft tries the same its all about "taking the choice away" and "forcing bloat" onto the users.

Heh.

 

[cknobman]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]i wont upgrade for allot of reasons. 1) extentions, i have everything i need right here, and if i upgrade the odds that a critical extention doesnt work is great2) i hate reseting up the user interface, and i hate when they change things that arent broken. its the same reason i refuse to go to win 7. if i hate the look and feel, i will not upgrade3) i know the ui can change, but it was a month long process to get 3.5 to look and function like i wanted it too. and damnit, i don't want to deal with that again, if you can give me a native ui that is exactly like 1.5 than we will talk. 4) 3.5 has a smaller ram footprint than 4.0, even if i have a 64 bit os, and a crap ton of ram, i would still hit a wall with how much ram i use, because if i have it i use it. firefox having a smaller foot print is a BIG reason why its my #1 choice in browser, with google chrome #2 and opera a distant #3mozilla devs, fix the above and i will get firefox, but as it stands, i hate the direction you are going.[/citation]

Your gonna upgrade and your gonna like it!!!!!!!

 

[Guest]

@FUfirefox: It's your own darn fault for allowing your users to install software on their computers. If they are working from home or on a personal laptop, I could understand it, but there's no excuse if they are on a corporate network.

 

[ravewulf]

I've got 3.6, but I'm waiting on 4 mainly because Tab Kit doesn't support 4 yet. I'm also a bit annoyed they took away the "Save and quit" option. I did find an addon that puts a "Save and quit" button on a toolbar, but it's not as convenient as the regular close button.

 

[Guest]

It was obvious that they have been trying to get users to upgrade since their release of their Alpha build Aurora (http://www.softwarecrew.com/2011/04/firefox-aurora-release-heralds-new-development-cycle-for-firefox/ ), so that they can speed up their development cycle and lure users off of older versions.

 

[virtualban]

I only wish they stopped treating the users as imbeciles who can't make their own decisions. If they wish to drop support for older Firefox, it's fine, users should know old versions will not be supported forever, should not even be supported this long. But, nagging the users as the article says is very bad in my book. Forcing updates in the background as chrome says is bad also. Leaving users out of update as IE9 and XP is bad also. Everything is bad if I want to see it that way.
I can see it the good way: they are forcing users to be in a more secure environment and bla bla, all true, all good reasons. Let me chose please.

p.s. I got FF 4 and FF 3.6 side by side. I use FF 3.6 more. And I updated manually. Automatic updates are off. I tried to stop the update of Chrome, but each time I thought I did it, upon the new Chrome I found it "downloading new version" and after a bit "your version is up to date". If chrome gave me the choice, I would let them update automatically as they do a good job at it, it's just the silly resistance of wanting my control over my computer and what gets in or not. Since I can disable automatic updates in Windows, I generally leave them on both on the Windows7 machine and on the Windows XP. But Windows is the OS, while of FF I can have a few side by side (I still have FF 2 somewhere, never used)

 

[vir_cotto]

I recently downgraded from FF4 to FF3.6 as it didn't work with the ticketing program that I use 🙁.