Slashdot Mirror
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.
That Firefox users were smarter internet users.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
people playing FarmVille on Facebook complained that their browser was shutting down the game.
"It's a *Feature*.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
Behold, decades of networking research and painstaking software development has brought us to this moment--watering tomatoes on a website.
The other annoying thing about this "hung plugin detector"? It counts a Flash plugin paused for debugging (so you can look at the call stack, step through code, etc) as hung. For weeks I've been cursing Flash for always crashing in Firefox, because when Firefox kills the plugin, it displays the same generic message as if the plugin has actually crashed. Only recently did I find out that Firefox is the real cause of my pain, not Adobe!
I wish they had done it like Chrome, or like Firefox already does with JS, where instead it pops up a little dialog telling you that the plugin is unresponsive, and would you like to kill it? Seems very suspicious, I wonder if there's someone at Mozilla with an anti-Flash agenda that wants to make Flash look more unstable than it really is?
sig? uhh, umm, ok
You can adjust the time, but it's in an obscure about:config setting, like many of Firefox's advanced settings.
I think terminating the plugin automatically is the wrong choice. If JavaScript takes too long, they don't terminate it, but instead ask the user if they want to keep running or terminate. One has to wonder why they give more leeway to applications written in JavaScript than applications written in ActionScript, seeing as how either one is just as capable of hanging your browser.
Notably, Chrome gives you the same popup dialog for both JS applications and plugins. My guess is Firefox devs are more anti-Flash, and don't mind killing it, and only relented when they realized how many of their userbase they might lose when they start interfering with people's Farmville addictions.
sig? uhh, umm, ok
I don't think that was a bug, looks like more of a sign of AI on the browser's part.
Oh, by the gods I hope this works. My wife has come close to throwing her nice, fairly-new laptop against the wall for the last several days. EverQuest fanatics don't hold a candle to Farmville players.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
This seems like a marketing decision to me, it's to protect the mindshare of Firefox in everyday people's minds.
Is it really Firefox's responsibility to hide bugs from users?
This sounds like Microsoft's perspective on compatibility*. If you ask me, it would have protected the user experience if Firefox did not update the crash detection. If a Flash application is sluggish and bringing the computer to a halt, it is poorly programmed. Making the slow to respond Flash plugin highly visible should force Zygna to fix the problem, increasing the web experience for all.
It's ridiculous case of a problem being overblown. In perspective, it's like a television manufacturer fixing the stream of a particular television channel because it is incorrect. Firefox should not be protecting third party website owners from their mistakes. Second they should not be protecting poorly coded third party plugins. That is why we have the crash protection to begin with! It's the same reason why too many content producers give up with standards because invalid code 'just works'. Where is the incentive to get things right?
The crash protection is like the halting problem but could be wrapped up into something reasonable to make the web easier to use. If your Flash is unresponsive for 30 seconds, I am going to get angry. Bye bye!
ActionScript programmers really have no clue what polling really means for performance.
*Microsoft contend with thousands of compatibility patches for third party applications that run on their platfor, written by people doing it wrong.. This is because people make mistakes and they want to protect their product. Unfortunately it increases complexity and keeps the industry in a methodological infancy -- bandaids rather than really learning from our mistakes.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I used to play FarmVille, and it astonished me the way it could demolish my <1-year-old MacBook Pro. Does anybody know what exactly it's doing that's so CPU-intensive? The paranoid in me figured it was probably running some sort of password cracker in the background. Is faux 3D tile-based gaming really that expensive on a modern CPU? Is it doing a bunch of unnecessary communication with the server? Is it just really poorly written? That's my best guess. Anybody know what's the deal?
See also this Good Samaritan Cartoon:
Guy in street, prone man at his feet:
"Oh, Great, as if I have the time or inclination to help a dying homeless man"
Same guy in front of computer:
" What's this?!! Sally needs a bag of fertilizer for her FarmVille Farm? I better get right on it."
1-Crawl 2-Cnfg 3-ATF 4-Exit ?
It picks some arbitrary value because the browser is not psychic. It can't tell the difference between a plugin which is dead and one which is unresponsive. So it picks some reasonable value and assumes that once the plugin passes over that line that its dead. Unfortunately things like low memory, swap, CPU consumption elsewhere could mean the plugin takes longer to respond than normal and gets clobbered.
Funnily enough Firefox finds itself in the same pickle that OLE2 used to have on Windows. In OLE2 you can embed an object running from one process into a window of another process. Works well enough except for times when the object server goes dead and the host is trying to do a window resize or whatnot. The host can't resize because commands to the object are timing out. MFC used to install a message filter for this situation which kicked in too fast when the embedded object became unresponsive leading to a meaningless Cancel / Retry message appearing. Firefox has discovered its own version of the same issue.
but it reminds me of the last LAN party I went to. Someone suggested we play Farmville. To which the resounding reply was "FUCK YOUR MAFIAFARMWARSVILLE... quarium".
The game.
The alternative is either going without
Going without provides 0 revenue; you're effectively giving your business away to your competitor who uses a browser plugin.
writing a desktop application
The first-time user having to find the icon in the downloads folder and double-click to install it kills the spontaneity of trying out the application.
or (reliance on) browser plugins. Trying to hack in desktop behavior by resorting to Flash is the worst choice available.
Flash Player is a browser plugin. So how can it be both "the alternative" and "the worst choice available"?
You're welcome! I swear that game used to draw in so many females my former boss bought a case of the game, and then had me install it on every PC. I was like "WTF Doug? AoE 1? Two is out already!" and he just put a couple of PCs running the game in the windows and said "Watch and learn kid" and sure enough, it wasn't 20 minutes before girls started walking into the store going "Age of Empires? I looove that game!". We really increased sales to women by offering that game free with any PC purchase.
I think it is because unlike most games you never have to fight to succeed in AoE1. There are several ways to win without violence, such as building a monument, or a strategy I watched played many times by my sister I call the "Priests o' doom" where you build large walls around your camp and then send priests out to convert the enemy. With a large enough priest brigade one can take over entire villages without firing a shot.
But if you like long games with several ways to play give it a shot. I'm sure with the expansion packs you can get it for a little of nothing on Amazon, and with its random level generator you'll never play the same game twice. You might also want to try Good old games for tons of great strategy and other games, all under $10. For RPG I would suggest Divine Divinity or Sacred Gold (both great and looooong) and for strategy/rpg try King's Bounty: The Legend. By concentrating on magix you can kick butt on the above games without resorting to violence, and KB:The Legend even has your play affected by which woman you choose as a wife later in the game (don't choose the frog princess, she is seriously whiny!). All of the above are quite fun for both sexes IMHO. Enjoy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.