Firefox Users Stay Ahead On the Update Curve

Reader Alex links to news of a study comparing the currency and patch level of various Web browsers, excerpting: "Firefox users were far and away the most likely to use the latest version, with an overwhelming 83.3 percent running an updated browser on any given day. However, despite Firefox's single click integrate auto-update functionality, 16.7 percent of Firefox users still continue to access the Web with an outdated version of the browser, researchers said. The study also revealed that the majority of Safari users (65.3) percent were likely to use the latest version of the browser between December 2007 and June 2008, after Safari version 3 became available. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Internet Explorer users ranked last in terms of safe browsing. Between January 2007 and June 2008, less than half of IE users — 47.6 percent — were running the most secure browser version during the same time period."

Comments

Well jeeze, you guys!

[iminplaya]

If I spend all my time keeping up with upgrades, I won't have any time left to actually use my damn computer. And sometimes an older version works better for me. All that automatic crap is turned off. My disks are backed up...I think... I'll upgrade if something breaks. I hope you're ok with that.

Re:Trust

[martin-boundary]

I'm not in favour of auto-update type features for software. IMHO, it's much better if the updates are integrated directly with the system package manager, so that all the software on a computer can be upgraded consistently and regularly.

If users are asked to upgrade their software shortly after they've launched it, it's firstly an annoyance, but secondly it means that the software they don't launch regularly won't get updated regularly, and other software which might need to interoperate will fall out of sync with the new version.

Perhaps it's time to define a standard package manager API (not a standard package manager, just an API available in all major languages), before we get a culture where every piece of software manages its own updates interactively?

Stop making it optional

[linzeal]

Firefox developers heed my call. Stop making security updates optional past a certain version.

Web developers heed my call. Stop making websites accept security corrupting browsers because half the time they are pry zombies. Look at your logs and see the rate at which these computers increase revenue. Drop them at whatever delta you think prudent.

Re:Trust

[DigitAl56K]

When Mozilla sends out a buggy update, which has happened twice to my memory, a) it doesn't cripple the entire system, and b) there's a new version the next day. This goes back to my personal definition of trust: I don't necessarily expect a software vendor to be perfect 100% of the time. That's unrealistic. But I expect mistakes to be infrequent, non-severe, and for them to correct them quickly so that I'm not inconvenienced too much.

OTOH when Microsoft sends out a buggy update you have to keep your fingers crossed for something to be available in a few weeks. I don't want to come across as anti-Microsoft, but realistically that's the difference between the two in my experience.