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Mozilla Updates Firefox To Appease FarmVille Users
CWmike writes "Just three days after adding plug-in crash protection to Firefox, Mozilla rushed out another release because people playing FarmVille on Facebook complained that their browser was shutting down the game. Although complaints about Firefox's quick killing of hung plug-ins were not limited to FarmVille, that game was the squeaky wheel that got the update grease. 'A lot of people play FarmVille. To ignore those people for any length of time could have a significant effect on Firefox's share of browser users,' said Firefox user Jeff Rivett on Bugzilla Sunday. 'The problem already existed, but the perceived impact suddenly changed, giving it a much higher priority.'"
I'd been wondering why Mozilla rushed out an update so quickly after releasing 3.6.4, because they'd been testing that crash protection for months. I think I installed the first release candidate at the beginning of May, and they released several more candidates between that time and the final release.
Now we know: The type of user who is willing to beta-test a web browser is a lot less likely to play Farmville, or else has a super-fast computer that Farmville doesn't hang. Otherwise, this would have been caught a month ago.
Behold, decades of networking research and painstaking software development has brought us to this moment--watering tomatoes on a website.
Actually those of use that recommend FF are more sophisticated, but those we recommend it to may not be. Plus you have to realize Farmville is like catnip to females. Don't ask me why, but I haven't seen a game so many females play since the original Age of Empires. Even my GF who frankly thinks games are a waste of time ended up hooked on Farmville and that treasure hunting game they have on FB.
So like many other times in life we simply have to put up with it because the females love it, kinda like those God Awful "relationship" movies, AKA chick flicks. Why we can't teach the female population the artistic merits of big guns, huge explosions, and tons of CGI? It is a riddle for the ages my friend, a riddle for the ages.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So instead of having a simple dialog box one has to wade through the about:config for an obscure setting? Really?
Citation needed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's not crap :(
Some types of complex applications are just not possible in HTML5, and even if they were, wouldn't be available to 50%+ of our users (eg people using IE). So the only solution if we want to get our product to market today, is to use Flash. Believe me, I hate Flash ad banners and crappy Flash navigation websites as much as the next guy. But when you're doing an advance online collaboration application, your only choices are pretty much Java, Silverlight, or Flash. And for various reasons, Flash sucks the least out of all three of them.
When HTML5 is sufficient and has the marketshare to do what we want, I'll be right up there with RMS trying to port my apps to it, but it's just not the reality today.
tl;dr; sorry for feeding the trolls.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
Extending this reasoning, if any website takes too long to load, Firefox should simply close the tab, and tell the user that the website has crashed? I guess you're right, that would definitely put pressure on web developers to make sure their sites loaded fast enough to not get rejected by Firefox...but I think this heavy-handed approach is the wrong way to go about it. Pop up a dialog telling the user that XYZ is going too slow, the plugin is hanging, and would you like to kill it? This will let them know why their PC is going slow, but still giving them the choice to continue if they wish. I thought choice was the whole reason people like Firefox, Open Source, etc.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
"Firefox quite often complains about various security problems with Zynga games"
That's because zynga games are quite often malware in disguise. It's probably something to do with zynga's sloppy coding combined with the fact that their applications all try to push their advertising crap onto your machine in a covert way. Firefox is working as intended.
I realize that you aren't complaining here, but your post almost reads like "My antivirus keeps trying to delete all these viruses I downloaded".
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
So instead of playing harmless games like Farmville, or watching TV to relax, we should be making the latest and greatest burning-man rejects? No thanks. Playing Farmville has exactly as much value as your ridiculous car, and wastes a lot less money and resources to do it. There will always be someone who thinks their entertainment of choice is superior to yours. Some would say you were wasting your time building art cars when you could be reading the world's great literature, or seeing the best painters, or learning to make music, etc. While you were busy fucking around with your car, the founders of Zynga were busy building a company that makes them ridiculously wealthy while bringing millions of people some enjoyment. And for the record, I have never played Farmville, nor do I have any interest in it, and I probably watch a total of 3-4 hours of TV a week. But I realize my hobbies would seem quite boring or uninspired to some, even though I enjoy them, and I realize mocking others for enjoying something I don't enjoy makes me the asshole wasting his time, not them.
If all you have is Bugzilla, everything looks like a bug.
THOSE are the type of people that play FarmVille.
There are about a billion PC users - 900 million or so running Windows.
But only a million Slashdot geeks.
For the alternative browser to maintain traction, the momentum has to come from ordinary users, not the evangelist with his forced conversions.
The evangelist doesn't have that many friends, he meets resistance, he hits a wall, he stalls out.