Malik wrote:

Another Firefox update (?today) - 20.0.1. […]
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Another Firefox update (?today) - 20.0.1.

Some people think very frequent updates are signs of very active developer community with adding of non-stop improvements.

Others think, too frequent 'updates' ( - 'patch' in disguise) shows the product is not complete, with lots of holes to patch up, or even half baked and with lots of errors - hence the needed workaround.

I don't know which one it falls into.

Why not both ?!?

I think it really is both, active development but also to patch/fix bugs etc...

I seem to recall some people thought the shift to rapidly-changing version numbers was basically a "marketing" thing intended to keep Firefox looking as attractive as Chrome or Opera.

Chrome, of course, probably updates just as frequently as Firefox, if not more so – only it's a good deal more sneaky about it. I did not like that at all.

Jorpho wrote:

I seem to recall some people thought the shift to rapidly-changing version numbers was basically a "marketing" thing intended to keep Firefox looking as attractive as Chrome or Opera.

Chrome, of course, probably updates just as frequently as Firefox, if not more so – only it's a good deal more sneaky about it. I did not like that at all.

You're right: using Chrome in a Mac, for example, I see now that I'm running 26.0.1410.43 and "it's almost finished updating". I check the version number for time to time and it always changes, just it does it silently.

Edit: now it's 26.0.1410.65

On that subject, I did come close to installing Chrome. The last thing that gave me pause was reading their web page and realizing they had it set up to automatically update itself without permission. I dislike that kind of behavior and the attitude it indicates.
New Firefox versions do the same thing, as does Thunderbird.

It seems to be popular nowadays that browsers, and even some other apps, adopt an aggressive posture towards supposedly protecting people from themselves. I'm sure there's many people in the general population who don't mind, but I find that attitude in a development community to be oppressive.

1) Autoupdate should be optional, and the default should not be enabled. If you really think it's important - ask me on the first run *before* you've already updated something. And don't hide the setting under a cryptic hidden configuration screen that requires internet research to even locate.
2) Even if I was paranoid about security updates, that doesn't mean I want to be forced into whatever messed up general application changes one of your developers dreamed about last night. Give an option for minor updates only (bugs/security) and people like me might appreciate it.

Another problem with AutoUpdate is, that if the requirements of the software increase and your system does not fulfill the requirements of the new version then the update takes place, while the software does not run anymore. Usually the installer still runs. This leaves you with a non functional result.

There is another thing that annoys me. If you mark a line of text on a webpage to the end and put this into clipboard by CTRL-C f.e. then Firefox adds a CRLF at the end and Internet Explorer a Space. In the marked area Internet Explorer shows the Space however.
Now why has this to be different and not even like in any normal simple text editor, where you mark a line to the end and the last letter on screen is the last letter in clipboard. CRLF is included if you move the mouse down and mark also the start of the next line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSp2I0ObdW4

firefox - world's worst browser by now. its time to look after a different one.

thats one thing that they was still unable to implement multiprocessed/multithreaded browsing in the stable version, even 10 years after the cpu-s having multiple real/virtual cores, so you have to wait 2 minute for facebook to render, if you open 10-20 tabs with your notifications.

but they not even attempted to fix any of the bugs i reported to them, some exist since 4 years by now, and they dont give a shit.
for example, to display a few simple web-page, it needs 1 gbyte of RAM. if you save a lot of images, and run the software for a while, the save popups forget to appear, or they just cant download any more. if you have lot bookmarks, it takes minutes to load it by its sql-javascripted interface. if it have chance, it dumps 1-2 mbyte to the disk per minute, your pendrive will be happyly die after days, if you have the portable version. even if you disable all cache saving, of course, without that, it can be 20-30 mbyte per minute, rofl.

this browser is purely pathetic in every mentionable ways. this program is the example of a communist state in software form, the example when the productivity of a group is smaller than the productivity of the smallest element of it.

however, all opensource software is like this.

One of these "The downfall of X" threads again.

Geri wrote:

firefox - world's worst browser by now. its time to look after a different one.

Then do so?

Rod Primitive wrote:

One of these "The downfall of X" threads again.

then look elsewhere?

2 year kicks ?
No thanks.