Yeah, but a number of these users has lots of spyware/adware on their machines... most of which came in through IE. Figured they needed a good fix then and there. Oh, well...
First off, I'd like to say that I was the poster of this message. I chose to stay anonymous for a couple of reasons... one of which is that it's more entertaining reading flaming responses here than in my email.:)
One thing I must note, this message wasn't a plea for help (as most of you assumed). If you read the last line, the one containing the question, carefully, you'll see that I wanted to hear about others' experiences. Looking through the responses, I definitely did get some good feedback. My main concern (which this thread validated) is that Firefox is pitched as a easy to use, leaner, more secure browser when compared to IE. However, when you upgrade the browser, things inevitably get screwed up (weird things in profile, plugins, extensions, etc...). The easy solution would be to uninstall previous instances of Firefox before installing the upgrade, something that is never recommended as you go through the upgrade process.
I find this whole thing especially frustrating because I convinced many people (non-tech people) to start using Firefox while it was still in pre release. Now, some of those people have upgraded to the final release (or have tried too) and are cursing the thing out. Was I wrong to get ordinary users to start using a pre-release version of a great browser??? possibly, but the guys releasing this thing should realize that they're targetting the masses now. And the masses are fairly dumb and quick to reject new things. I'd hate to see this huge launch campaign backfire because ordinary users aren't "sophisticated enough".
And I post this to slashdot instead of Mozillazine for another reason. These sorts of usability issues plague open source.... developers not understanding ordinary users and ordinary users running back to their M$ crap. Proprietary software has one huge advantage over open source, it's marketed and sold by dumb ordinary users.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but a number of these users has lots of spyware/adware on their machines... most of which came in through IE. Figured they needed a good fix then and there. Oh, well...
First off, I'd like to say that I was the poster of this message. I chose to stay anonymous for a couple of reasons... one of which is that it's more entertaining reading flaming responses here than in my email. :)
One thing I must note, this message wasn't a plea for help (as most of you assumed). If you read the last line, the one containing the question, carefully, you'll see that I wanted to hear about others' experiences. Looking through the responses, I definitely did get some good feedback. My main concern (which this thread validated) is that Firefox is pitched as a easy to use, leaner, more secure browser when compared to IE. However, when you upgrade the browser, things inevitably get screwed up (weird things in profile, plugins, extensions, etc...). The easy solution would be to uninstall previous instances of Firefox before installing the upgrade, something that is never recommended as you go through the upgrade process.
I find this whole thing especially frustrating because I convinced many people (non-tech people) to start using Firefox while it was still in pre release. Now, some of those people have upgraded to the final release (or have tried too) and are cursing the thing out. Was I wrong to get ordinary users to start using a pre-release version of a great browser??? possibly, but the guys releasing this thing should realize that they're targetting the masses now. And the masses are fairly dumb and quick to reject new things. I'd hate to see this huge launch campaign backfire because ordinary users aren't "sophisticated enough".
And I post this to slashdot instead of Mozillazine for another reason. These sorts of usability issues plague open source.... developers not understanding ordinary users and ordinary users running back to their M$ crap. Proprietary software has one huge advantage over open source, it's marketed and sold by dumb ordinary users.