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Firefox 12 Released — Introduces Silent, Chrome-like Updater
MrSeb writes "Firefox 12 has been officially released, with only one major new feature: A silent, background updater. Now you will have to approve the Firefox Software Updater when you first install Firefox, but after that the browser will update silently — just like Chrome. In other news, the Find feature now reliably centers the page on any matches — hooray!"
Here are the release notes, the list of bug fixes, and the download page.
I suppose if you believe Mozilla knows what's best for us then this is a good thing. If you don't........
Now I won't have to go 10 rounds with the wife to keep the ff on her mac up to date.
Version 4 to version 12 in just one year... and yet it still lags behind chrome in terms of speed and responsiveness. Only area where Firefox still is the best is it's customizability.
I'm very happy to hear about the find feature properly centring. It irks me when I search for something and then have to look over an entire page of text trying to figure out were on the page the key word is. This will save me a lot of time in the long run.
We already can't use chrome where I work due to the difficulty of wrangling then push updates. Bussinesses can't tolerate the lack of control of external root access to their computers. Even without root access pushed updates are a bussiness intelligence leak vector. while one can cabble work arounds to this, assuring thaey are intact on every computer is a hassle.
There is of course a raging debate if it's better to be up to date by default or to manage the bussiness approved updates. One can see benefits from both.
What would really help here is some third party paid seal of approval that bussinesses could contract to be the gate keeper on vetting third party updates.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So then we will stop getting a post about it every 6 weeks? If version numbers don't matter like Asa claims then why such a big fuss and fanfare over their ridiculous version inflation?
Now can we switch back to a sane version numbering system, so that extensions do not mysteriously stop working after a silent update?
Palm trees and 8
As long as I can opt-out of the silent updates, I see no problem with this. The quicker we can get users to update, the better. Developers, on the other hand, need stability and control.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
So...how will this get on with the system package manager?
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html
and Tbird:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/organizations/all-esr.html
i use root (superuser) in an xterm to install it, then how is firefox going to update itself without my root password?
it can not do it, thats fine with me because i dont want firefox or any other application or part of my OS updating itself without my knowledge
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Good, two birds with one stone...
1. People 'forgetting' to install updates and leaving themselves open to vulnerabilities.
2. People complaining about the version numbers, as the version number is now something you should only encounter when you go looking for it.
I do wonder what security issues will pop up with this background service that has some privileges to deal with the installation, rather than Chrome's method of s/appdata/programfiles/, though.
However, the 'search result gets displayed in center' is much more interesting to me from a usability viewpoint.
I'd like to take this space to thank (since I never saw a donate button) White Alice0775 - whoever that is - for writing 'Find To Center' which had largely implemented this functionality for previous FireFox releases.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/find-to-center/
Your addon was well and truly appreciated.
...reset the maxVersion on all of my Add-Ons to 99 so they won't all break with every upgrade...GRRR!
Firefox was unique because it gave control to the user with their add-ons. It's my computer. I won't tolerate software that changes without my permission.
I could do a few rounds with her for you.
Accord to their feature site, the auto-update is windows only?
Windows: Firefox is now easier to update with one less prompt (User Account Control)
So it's not really auto-update, just makes it a little nicer/easier for windows users.
Its not what it is, its something else.
but after that the browser will update silently - just like Chrome.
Chrome installs the browser into the user's folder in order to silence the UAC controls.
.
Firefox is continuing to install in the protected system area, without the benefit of the UAC warnings, bypassing any Windows security.
Will Firefox now become a new attack vector for exploits?
The developers said this move was in response to the complaints about the flurry of versions being released. But I have to say, I'd rather have fewer versions released than to have a new security exploit vector installed.
Stick with the stable version (extended support release 10) rather than use the beta version that comes out every six weeks. I don't they don't called it a beta, but that's effectively what it is. The extended support release will be supported for 12 months at least.
Firefox simplifies the update process for Windows users by removing the user account control dialog (UAC) pop-up while maintaining the security of your system. Once a user gives explicit permission to Firefox on their first installation, they will not be prompted again for subsequent releases.
yeah, nothing could possibly go wrong with having a service running that never prompts the user when it is doing something. Lazy devs strike again.
So then we will stop getting a post about it every 6 weeks? If version numbers don't matter like Asa claims then why such a big fuss and fanfare over their ridiculous version inflation?
You tell'em Desler!
Why in my day, you could get the most up to date software for less than 1.0! And you still had features leftover! Now, what does a 1.0 version get ya?! Nuth'in! You got to go all the way up to version 12!
This is all because we're off of the "Gold standard". You see, back in my day, software wasn't released until it was Gold.And we got an update once every two years - and we liked it! And I had to walk, uphill both ways!, to get all those floppies to stick in. An update took a better part of a day and if started snowing, well, we updated in the snow! And liked it!
And when we did it, we listened to good ole Rock&Roll music; none of the BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM talking about nonsense over a drum beat! We had a melody! Wailing guitars! And solos that's grow hair on your chest! And the songs were about cool things too!
I'm outta breath, now. This Gerotol stuff is great! I'm on my second bottle of the day here - gotta keep me strong!
Great, now our plugins will break and we won't know what to blame.
i just updated, and it didnt prompt me about anything, it just installed a service called
"Mozilla Maintenance Service"
set to manual start, if i try to start it, it gives an error
The Mozilla Maintenance Service service on Local Computer started and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they have no work to do, for example, the Performance Logs and Alerts service. ...
and thats it
needs more work i guess
I recently rewipped my PC. I am developing a business oriented website where users have older browsers (sigh) and I installed FF 3.6 since many corporations still use it.
My god was it a pig. I ran a ni nite installer which updated FF by accident (I wanted 2 installed versions) to FF 11. I have not run FF = 3.6 in over a year. BIG IMPROVEMENT.
I rate it as fast as Chrome when it comes to starting up, debugging, and scrolling up and down, and even running javascript. It uses much less ram and is quite competitive. I hate the auto updating but I give Mozilla credit it greatly improved it.
The only thing it stil lacks over IE 9 and Chrome is decent hardware acceleration for smoother scrolling with the arrow keys and a sandbox for security. Otherwise I would use it fulltime.
I may even switch back to it now if Mozilla ads better multi core CPU support, threads/process per tab, and a sand box. Versions 3.6 and 4.0 were quite bad and even IE was faster than 3.6 last March. How embarasing? I ran the benchmarks and even switched to IE 9 for a month or two before going to Chrome. FF has come a long way.
http://saveie6.com/
Thank you Google and Mozilla, for making major versions obsolete. Now all we have to rely on is... eh... nothing?
Just askin'.
if it will stop crashing on my Ubuntu box. It crashes like crazy.
I switched to Chrome after giving up hope that this bug would ever be fixed. Mozilla has done nothing but point fingers at Adobe (but this bug doesn't exist in Chrome or IE with the debug Flash Player).
For being the only commenter to mention the "Find" feature. And it speaks volumes about registered users of Slashdot when only unregistered users have nice things to say.
Opera here I come. Here's a grand 'up yours' to Mozilla. Is this some kind of human condition where once you've gained the trust of a large group of people, you are innately driven to shit all over it?
... offer us the same 'feature'?
Under the old system, where UAC would ask about the potentially bricking updates, how would an end user tell a bricking update from a non-bricking update?
It would be nice if the ESR version had this too. That would help out enterprise quite a bit (especially if it could be configured to update from a intranet server.
You can disable auto-updates, regardless of whether or not you're running the extended support version.
Preferences -> Advanced -> Update.
You can also download every version of Firefox we've ever released here. We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.
Can't they just finish the damn program already, then we never need anything again except security patches? Why this constant adding of new features that no one asks for, why this constant evolution of HTML that negates the meaning of "standard"? Is this movement for the sake of movement? Developers maintaining job security at the expense of users?
These foxes breed like rabbits !
That something is up when you can't opt out of an update, so Chrome, Firefox 12 and Google Earth are all suspect.
Who knows what gets pushed to your box.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I use FF on Mac OS X. It's been steadily becoming one of the worst browsers for the platform, performance-wise, but certain plugins still cause me to use it as my primary browser.
FF has always been shaky about remembering which monitor it should be on, but if I kept it there once I got it to open on the right monitor, it would at least always open where I left it. Well, in FF12, they have added this fantastic feature where all new windows open up on the primary monitor. Hooray! This should really increase my productivity. It might seem minor, but it's not minor to me.
Alright, that's annoying, but I decided to upgrade on day 0 of the release. My mistake assuming that they would stick with random interface changes, and not break lower-level functionality. I'll just roll back the browser. Fired up Time Machine, and I rolled back to the previous installation. Now, FF randomly hangs on various pages for up to a minute. Maybe the profile is hosed? Rolled that back, too. No, still hangs. Also tried starting in "safe" mode - it still hangs.
So, this isn't necessarily FF fault, maybe the rollback was corrupted. I'll just download FF11 and reinstall it. Except, since it's no longer the latest-and-greatest, it's not available. I couldn't find it without manually editing the FF12 link to point to 11.0.
Firefox, I don't know how much longer I can bother dragging your sorry carcass around with me. Your 3D transforms are so slow they are often unusable and the rapid update cycle is starting to cause real issues. Of course, I can't forget the random interface changes like removing favicons from the URL bar, because the interface is so terrible you can't tell the favicon from a security marker. I've now got almost as many interface hacks (via Stylish and plugins) as I do normal plugins.
I don't know what the solution is for FF, but I keep getting my hopes up, and keep getting more frustrated.
Note: I know that this might be only my computer. I don't have a lot of time or energy to set up another multi-monitor system, upgrade FF to FF12, and try it out. Since FF is one of the only applications I use that has multimon issues (besides a few random utilities), I have to assume it's something wrong with FF.
As of today 3.6 will no longer receive any security updates. So all of you netbook/low power users need to find an alternative, or bite the bullet.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Frss.slashdot.org%2FSlashdot%2Fslashdot
Perl Programmer for hire
with an arbitrary one of my choosing
How would you circumvent, say, a check that the replacement binary has been digitally signed by Mozilla Corp?
...Browser Updates You!
Yet again, we see a greatly windows-oriented release.
I think it was version 9 or 10 were all the new features were windows-only (title-bar changes, etc). This time, the *main* advertised feature is windows-centric (since it's the only OS I can think of that doesn't offer any way to update software).
Is if just me, or is the mozilla foundation moving more and more resources towards windows-centric development?
Maybe there needs to be a compromise, like one of those "Standard Install" / "Custom Install" division lines.
I am right in the zone to be a low end admin on my Win box. I'm moderately smart about knowing what I am installing if it looks like a reputable source, and I know to almost-always click "custom" install to keep unchecking the "install random toolbars". (Mostly - Internet Explorer has acquired a couple new ones, but FF is my daily browser.)
So sorry, with a reasonably competent user and 2 layers of malware protection, I don't want to click UAC buttons all day because I install 40 pieces of shareware per month from indie devs who didn't pay/whatever to get "certified". If it's a really nasty trojan I have to trust my AV to catch it, and so far I am at only like 97-3 on my guesses.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
> [FF] will update silently â" just like Chrome.
How do you turn this off?
Is there a dialog off?
An about:config switch?
There are lotsa users still on dial-up for which this is painful.
How will the auto update affect packged versions within linux distros? Won't it screw up the packager management?
The quicker we can get users to update, the better
There should be a limit on anything. Too often tiny updates can be annoying and downright disruptive.
Everything is poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison.
Paracelsus
I like firefox, and haven't yet moved to using chrome on the desktop. All my Android devices use the built in chrome-style browser though, fennec is just too slow. Mainly, I like the extensions/add-ons. But there's one killer feature I like in chrome that I WISH mozilla would immitate, and that's the incognito tab. Having private browsing close/hide all my active tabs and other active windows, and not being able to have some private and some non-private windows/tabs is really annoying. Instead they clone the crap "features", /sigh
I've got very tired of receiving phone calls from relatives about apparent major update after major update for firefox and thunderbird. So I've installed Firefox 10.0.3ESR and Thunderbird 10.0.3ESR for everyone. Still gets updates, but they are minor version updates that can install automatically and unintrusively. So far so good. I don't need to be on the cutting edge of javascript technology, nor do most people. At least for the next year or two version 10 ESR will work great. In fact I just barely upgraded from Firefox 3.6 to 10ESR on my old fedora box after running it for nearly two years without any major problems with web sites. 10ESR is noticeably slower and more bloated than 3.6, but alas that's the prices of progress I suppose.
Heads up everyone!
I'm planning to upgrade all my Firefox browsers to V12 this weekend. If recent history is any indication, we can expect FF13 to be released sometime next week.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
stopped using firefox after version .....6 or was it 7 or 8 ....LOL
YOU DUMMIES did yourselves in....
This will get buried because I'm AC but PALE MOON MOTHERFUCKERS
http://www.palemoon.org/
Custom-built and optimized Firefox browsers for Windows Operating Systems.
I disable all that I can and don't use programs where I can't.
New version every week. Enjoy.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
But one doesn't know about the breakage until after it's installed. So I guess you're assuming that installation is reversible. To make this assumption apply, would you recommend always running Firefox in a VM and rolling back the VM if breakage is noticed?
Believe it or not, more people use Firefox who don't read /. than who do.
Yes, of course. But what I am/we are afraid of is being left behind...again. I think we're all fine if you add new features, as long as we have the possibility to deactivate and/or configure them.
Seriously, /. in particular made such a huge deal over this, you'd have thought we were adding mandatory a porn filter.
Seeing Slashdot and it's users, a porn filter would have, most likely, lead nowhere near that reaction. ;)
The same goes for the status bar, the awesomebar, tabs on top, and the version numbers.
I can't remember such an outcry with the status bar (actually, I like that change...but don't tell anyone!), the awesomebar or the tabs on top...sure, the tabs on top felt like another "Google Chrome does it" thingy, but we had the possibility to pin them back down (very very easily, which is awesome). The version number is the only change in that list which we could not opt-out from...I think Mozilla has done a too great job in giving us choice and possibilities and we got used to that, to have a choice.
Is it really the end of the world (or the beginning of the end)?
That's the question, is it? I couldn't find a *really* official statement why the version number-scheme has changed, only scarce entries with "we're doing rapid releases now". Maybe I missed something there, but it adds to my experience that I couldn't hear a *good* explanation about why, and if it is "we think that's better because it's easier for us to handle if we just have one number to increment".
Mozilla is the only web browser developer fighting for you. We're responsible to no higher goal than keeping the Web open and free.
You've beaten the hell out of IE6, you've made the Internet to what it is today, without you *shudders*...*everyone* appreciates and recognizes what you people have done. I think you can even ask the hard-core-whiners here and they'll tell you "yeah, sure, back then you did an awesome job until...". But especially the FLOSS crowd is always looking more forward then back and is a hard audience...and I think we can safely apply the "everyone who's not raising the voice is a happy user" rule.
Does it occur to you that this is the tiniest nit of nits? It's a version number. Perspective.
I think it's unfair to say "they made this one change I don't understand, and it signals the end!". But it's even worse to do what you've done and say "they made this change, which is horrible" and mean "this change isn't such a big deal, but I fear what it portends." You admit that you don't say what you mean, and you wonder why we don't listen?
But if you want an explanation, here it is: In the new rapid release scheme, all releases are equal. There are no "major" and "minor" releases. There's just the next release.
If we labeled these releases as Firefox Major.Minor, that would be a lie. People would conclude incorrectly that an update from FF 5.1 to FF 5.2 is somehow smaller than an update from FF 5.2 to FF 6.
If there are no major and minor releases, it makes no sense to have major and minor version numbers.
Now, maybe you think we should have major and minor releases. I hope this is no longer a problem now that you can download ESR.
Maybe I should just write an extension that re-labels Firefox N as Firefox 3.6.(N + 24). I'm sure that would make me a hero to some.
...replace Gecko with Webkit. :-/
Seriously. And maybe change the name to Chrome as well.