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Firefox To Get a Nag Screen For Upgrades

ruphus13 writes "Firefox has been pushing version 3.0 very aggressively, and firmly believes that it is a solid product. The Download Day was just one of their ways to drum up user support for the new release. Now, Firefox is going to 'gently nudge' users of Firefox 2.0 to upgrade. Some users may have been waiting for their add-ons to get upgraded, but now Mozilla is planning to apply a little nudge. Sometime within the next week, people using Firefox 2.0.0.16 will see a request to upgrade and though you'll have the option to decline, it's likely Firefox will ask again anyway. Users will most likely be offered a second chance to upgrade after several weeks. (Mozilla will stop supporting version 2 in December.) It will be interesting to see if this speeds up the rate of upgrade by users, as well as upgrades of the add-ons."

8 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. Why not earlier? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since the release of Firefox 3, my previous 2.x installations have at least twice pulled subsequent 2.x upgrades - Why can't I automatically upgrade to Firefox 3? It's not that much harder to manually upgrade, but the automatic 2.x series upgrades process was so simple.

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    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  2. Firefox 3 doesn't run on Windows 9x by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It will be interesting to see if [advertising Firefox 3 to users of Firefox 2] speeds up the rate of upgrade by users, as well as upgrades of the add-ons.

    Mozilla Firefox 3 for Windows requires Windows NT 5.0 or later. This currently includes Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista. What will Firefox 2 say to users of nearly decade-old PCs that still run Windows 98 or Windows Millennium Edition, which cannot run Firefox 3? (Yes, they still exist; one posts regularly to the forum at tetrisconcept.com.) Will it nag them about upgrading to Puppy Linux?

  3. Re:marketing speak infected. by RealGrouchy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was ambivalent too, until I used the history.

    I'm running OSX with XP on parallels for some mandatory windows apps. Since my web browsing is primarily done on OSX, I figured I'd try FF3 on XP to try it out.

    Within a couple of days, I had wanted to find a couple sites I had visited a few days earlier in each browser. In FF3, the interface is excellent, allowing you to search in many ways and organizing the presentation in a very user-friendly manner. In FF2, the history is literally just a list and a search box.

    I'm not sure if the OS has anything to do with the difference, but I find that history feature to be a killer function. (Still to lazy to upgrade on OSX, though)

    - RG>

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    Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
  4. Options for unsupported OSX? by DigitalCrackPipe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What about unsupported OSs like OSX 10.3.9? I'm supporting a box running this, so I need to decide between leaving the browser at Safari 1.3.2 (not updated in quite a while), Firefox 2.0.16 (won't be updated after 2008), or purchasing the new OSX for a old machine that can't really take advantage of most of the new features anyway.

    Any free advice? :) I'm not a mac guy so I didn't notice this situation until recently.

  5. Re:just like vista by sjhs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    why are they stopping the V2 security updates half a year after v3 was released?

    Because they have finite resources and want to concentrate on keeping v3 fully secured.

    The beauty is, since FF is open source, this potentially opens up a market for some third party to continue patching FF2 where Mozilla left off (if in fact there is any sizeable contingent of users who just cannot bear to upgrade). That's much less likely to happen with a closed-source browser simply because of the code being proprietary.

  6. Re:I'll upgrade when... by Speare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some websites just shouldn't be kept in the history, if you ask me... unfortunately, they also can't have a "don't remember these sites" list for obvious reasons.

    I agree with the first part, but don't see the problem in the second part. A list of HASH DIGESTS of "don't remember these sites" should be perfectly fine. You command it to not remember "www.hotgrits.com" and the system hashes that into 1DE4A5D7BE9EF6F3E2ED1FA1C0E, and throws it into a garbage heap of other touchy hash digests. If the hash is already in there, then don't remember the URL for typeahead. For plausible deniability, the browser should have a random handful of hashes in there to begin with. Letting your mom or daughter see a bunch of hashes should not give them any concern.

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    [ .sig file not found ]
  7. Re:just like vista by schwaang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To make that risk worse, when any Firefox add-on gets updated, the browser opens that add-on's project page. For example, after updating NoScript, FF will show you a page like this so you can see the "release notes" for the latest version of the add-on. What a *perfect* place to insert a browser exploit, where everyone is forced to go.

    So now you depend not only on the security of FF code, the add-on code, but the add-on's external *website* as well.

    Anyone know what they were thinking, and how to turn off this feature? I trust NoScript, but I don't want to visit their website after after every update.

    At a minimum, viewing the add-on's website after an update should be a *default-off* option for every Firefox add-on.

  8. Re:I hate it! by sm62704 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All these responses to my original post which stands modded at -1 troll, look guys it's NOT a fucking troll; I use and love Firefox. I want to know what's better about the new one! Not ONE of all these responses did a single damned person say why it will help ME to upgrade!

    Yours came the closest. "Firefox 3 is a much better web browser than firefox 2"

    What's better about it? What improvements does it bring? One guy said it was crap, unless it's better I don't want to upgrade.

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    mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest