Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Firefox

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
silvershoes
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by silvershoes »

Ngamer01 wrote:Don't get me wrong, Firefox does have it's quirks, but when you have a dozen or more threads pop up with "What's up with Mozilla?" or "Firefox is doomed!" or "I hate Firefox!" (most spawned from Firefox's rapid release system), it gets old.

Firefox has been bleeding market share since late 2010 originally caused by the severe delays of Firefox 4 and currently caused by the aftermath of switching to a rapid release schedule. If Firefox never changed from Firefox 3.6, it's quite possible these numbers would be worse and Firefox would definitely be in third or fourth place in the market. Mozilla is making radical changes because if you don't adapt, you get left behind. Mozilla doesn't want to be left behind.


But the point is, do you change in a manner that pleases your users? Because if you guess wrong, you wind up losing even more customers.

I suspect you're "being bored" by so many threads because that's exactly what's happening. Mozilla's radical changes are alienating their user base, because someone at Mozilla is out of touch with what they (or rather we) want.

You can argue that they're clueless, or that they have a different agenda they put a higher priority on, or anything else you like - but the bottom line is, if you find yourself in a hole, smart people generally stop digging. There's nothing in the world wrong with trying something new, but if your customers hate it and you keep going anyway, you will be left behind in the end. Companies have done this before, Mozilla is just the latest. The other companies are no longer with us; a cautionary tale for Mozilla.
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dfoulkes
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by dfoulkes »

Kevin McFarlane wrote:Having said that, for my purposes, I have Firefox working just the way I want, but it does take patience of course. If you're the type of person who just uses what's served up for them and does not have the time or inclination to tinker then radical changes hurt.

I guess that's the main point of my response to this topic. I've made some minor ...css changes and/but I use over 40 extensions :oops: :-" here, plus a non-default theme...(and a large majority of all that stuff is so that 90%++ of what I do here is activated by my mouse)... but I like to tweak stuff (to a degree) so I'm pretty good with the recent changes. I have to think though that the majority users of Firefox may have only a couple extensions and maybe an alternate theme... and then when Mozilla releases something that causes (major headache... to them) changes to their configuration it stirs up lots of negative attitudes from them.

I've read a large number of posts around here that relate to those types of (cosmetic changes?) and I can only assume that other boards may be flooded with pissed off "general users"... not good for Mozilla :!:
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Frank Lion
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by Frank Lion »

silvershoes wrote:But the point is, do you change in a manner that pleases your users? Because if you guess wrong, you wind up losing even more customers.

I suspect you're "being bored" by so many threads because that's exactly what's happening. Mozilla's radical changes are alienating their user base, because someone at Mozilla is out of touch with what they (or rather we) want.

The 'so many threads' that Ngamer referred to, is about 12 to 18, which are indeed dull to read. However, to extrapolate the existence of 18 threads to prove that 'radical changes are alienating their user base, because someone at Mozilla is out of touch' , when it relates to 300+ million people is not only illogical, but shows, well, a lack of honesty in approach.

You guys need to learn how to think and argue logically and also how to look for truth and not just pick snippets of information that seem to back up your existing pre-conceived viewpoint.

The existence of someone praising Firefox to high heaven is not a benchmark proving that Firefox is perfect, in the same way that the existence of extreme negative views proves that all is wrong - however much people write 'My friends and family think the same!'

Think about it, why does any person holding any negative views suddenly translate as a 'typical Joe Public average user giving their 2 cents' in your minds? What proof have you of their 'averageness'?


JAB Creations wrote:http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/1633/mozilla.gif

Your 'Firefox 3.6 setup for family and friends' needs looking at - the toolbar buttons on the Nav bar are stretched horizontally. Good job you don't make themes.
Last edited by Frank Lion on December 3rd, 2011, 8:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Kevin McFarlane
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by Kevin McFarlane »

We often tend to think our own experiences are typical. E.g. almost all software has horrendous effects for some users. They may then dash off a post saying: "Doesn't company X test their software blah blah?" But it may just be that they're the one in a million who's unlucky.
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JAB Creations
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by JAB Creations »

Frank Lion wrote:You guys need to learn how to think and argue logically and also how to look for truth and not just pick snippets of information that seem to back up your existing pre-conceived viewpoint.


Followed by...

Frank Lion wrote:What proof have you of their 'averageness'?


Hm, let's see here...

Frank Lion wrote:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:10.0a2) Gecko/20111128 Firefox/10.0a2


Yeah, you're using nightly builds and you're telling us that we're out of touch with our clients?

No word from anyone using super-nightly of the cutting edge extreme builds acknowledging GUI items being moved around on users and superseding their preferences isn't in the spirit of why Firefox exists. <sarcasm>Yeah, that kind of commentary is definitely in touch with the average user.</sarcasm>

Oh and a few Firefox 3.6 users have visited my site with referrers from this thread. Regardless of whether they are signed in or not here they are about and clearly uncomfortable posting their thoughts here and frankly I don't blame them.
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JAB Creations
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by JAB Creations »

Kevin McFarlane wrote:We often tend to think our own experiences are typical. E.g. almost all software has horrendous effects for some users. They may then dash off a post saying: "Doesn't company X test their software blah blah?" But it may just be that they're the one in a million who's unlucky.


Try finishing the main quest line in shipped $60 version The Elder Scrolls V without cheating. You'd think they would play-test the main quest line in a game that ended up selling seven million copies the first week alone? So what...no family members or friends bothered with the main quest line? None of the employees. Right...yeah but there sure are a lot of people online complaining about it. They all must be out of touch though.
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Kevin McFarlane
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by Kevin McFarlane »

JAB Creations, I was just making a general observation I wasn't necessarily criticising you in this particular respect. However, you do often get posts from people who have a problem and write as though their problem must be widespread when that's not the case. This doesn't mean that their problem isn't a genuine problem though. Some years ago when I installed SP2 for Windows XP it rendered my PC unbootable. I did identify the cause but I nevertheless ended up having to reinstall the OS. But at the same time I read of loads of cases from users who had no such problems even with apparently the same setup as I had.
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JAB Creations
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by JAB Creations »

Kevin, I know the difference between sporadic and widespread instances of a given occurrence and was trying to simply share an example. Unfortunately your earlier comment was too subjective to be read as being neutral which it seems that it was. The unfortunate part of all of this is that those who are so obsessed with the cutting edge builds are dead set on the average person being wrong or ignorant. Normal people need advocates for them because I want them to use the latest and greatest as well, it's just we have to deal with people too thick headed to realize that I'm pointing out the problem and how to solve it. There is too much "your browser is really my browser so your setup should be the way I want it even if you've already made some adjustments yourself" here which is the kind of mentality that runs over at the Microsoft camp.

...and yes, there are all sorts of whacky scenarios where issues can arise in exceptionally similar scenarios and I am more than happy to fully acknowledge that. Unfortunately that's not the case for the people I'm advocating for (on many levels for many different reasons) including myself of course. One might think on a Mozilla forum more people would be open to others who are trying to help the Firefox community as a whole?
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silvershoes
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by silvershoes »

Frank Lion wrote:The 'so many threads' that Ngamer referred to, is about 12 to 18, which are indeed dull to read. However, to extrapolate the existence of 18 threads to prove that 'radical changes are alienating their user base, because someone at Mozilla is out of touch' , when it relates to 300+ million people is not only illogical, but shows, well, a lack of honesty in approach.


No lack of honesty at all. If you believe that, Frank, you're being disingenuous at best; the argument is unworthy of you.

For you to cite 300+ million people as your defense doesn't mean much in the end. You have to know who is unhappy, not just a number. If you gain 50,000 users as an example, but lose 65,000 it's still a net loss and your market share doesn't grow. Trends matter, Frank, as anyone in business knows.

It's clear people are unhappy, and that this goes beyond the usual carping that happens after every release. It hasn't gone away as more versions are released and people are dazzled by Mozilla's brilliance, it's persistent and it's growing. That's the concern, or should be once you get past all the rationalizations.

There was a time, Frank, when I'd read a board and someone would complain and someone else would write back and say, "well you really ought to use Firefox, it's better." I'm not seeing many of those recommendations lately, Frank, and that's a red flag.
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by JAB Creations »

From the Ars article here: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/internet-explorer-stops-its-slide-as-chrome-nears-firefox.ars

Image

Image

Thankfully some folks like silvershoes also see these issues. I don't think silvershoes or I would be here if we had ill-will towards Firefox or other users. I don't think anyone here would for a moment even dare think that (especially for me as a web designer and web developer) would want to see people use older versions of software. I have personally been tracking WebGL support in browsers for about two months now as I'd love to see 3D on desktops. So if someone can't agree with what we're saying then they're not agreeing with the statistics that are clearly showing there is a growing segment of people who don't like what Mozilla is doing.

...and the corporates were just finally letting people switch to Firefox too. Really, even IE9 is not good enough to be considered modern (and that's not an insult to the developers at Microsoft who are doing the actual work, I have full respect for them, it's their management I can't stand).

Does the average user know how to download an .XPI file, rename it to a ZIP, extract the RDF file, fix the maximum version string and then update Firefox because the extension author either did not bother or is simply too consumed to do that say, once every eight weeks?

Frequent releases of say IE 10 platform previews every two months or so are actually still exciting, why? Because they're still in last place and any web designer and web developer wants to see what the bottom line will be in five or six years (maybe). But the features and standards compliance support added to Firefox haven't even justified what a college professor would accept as a proper paragraph for Firefox 5 and Firefox 8. It's the equivalent to handing in your homework half finished at midnight saying you've done half the work and want that half corrected before you continue. There just isn't enough to bother talking about Firefox releases which means less publicity. Sure some sites will taught releases of Firefox but people like me who actually count and have a unique perspective to share (with a nice following I might add) are growing increasingly alienated. You lose people like me and you lose some serious support. I have spent a lot of time with Opera and honestly it's almost good enough for me to replace Firefox with. I really wouldn't mind because it's easier to maintain Opera even in a production environment where I have 14 copies installed (6, 7.5, 8.0, 8.5, 9.2, 9.6, 10.1, 10.6, 11.0, 11.1, 11.5, 11.6, 12.0).

So Mozilla wants to force users to upgrade? Just think of how that will come across people diplomatically speaking. My personal response is f#$% off, I'll use the version of my software that works and stick with it. You borked it, not I. Now imagine the mother or college student studying some really non-technical indepth topic and they have to spend five minutes (on their crappy slow computer because manufacturers don't want to build anything quality) waiting because Firefox has to update again in the middle of them needing to quickly check something. It's a massive inconvenience and for what? I'm never going to use insertAdjacentHTML or any other [b]unreliable proprietary Microsoft jScript methods that treat code like plain text and don't register nodes correctly[/i] ever and that was pretty much the only thing added in Firefox 7...and regular users were inconvenienced for that?

Too much text to read...well if what I'm saying is too much text than for those users it's clearly too much trouble to bother trying to be diplomatic about fixing Firefox. But if you care about the same browser I do then maybe those people should start considering those flags or enjoy keeping a message on your site for the next decade telling people they need to update when they won't...and we're not talking corporate users with financial reasons, we're talking about people who these bad decisions from Mozilla are putting people in a mindset that they want to use old outdated versions of software for years to come.
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Frank Lion
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by Frank Lion »

JAB Creations wrote:
Frank Lion wrote:You guys need to learn how to think and argue logically and also how to look for truth and not just pick snippets of information that seem to back up your existing pre-conceived viewpoint.

Followed by...

Frank Lion wrote:What proof have you of their 'averageness'?

Hm, let's see here...

Frank Lion wrote:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:10.0a2) Gecko/20111128 Firefox/10.0a2

Yeah, you're using nightly builds and you're telling us that we're out of touch with our clients?

Was that your 'magic bullet UA rebuttal' that you spent ages on?

Dream on -


Image



silvershoes wrote:No lack of honesty at all. If you believe that, Frank, you're being disingenuous at best; the argument is unworthy of you.

Fine, it can be unworthy of me, but what I write is still true.

No one being logical in thought and honest in approach is going to draw any meaningful userbase conclusions based on 18 threads here, let alone the conclusions you did.

For you to cite 300+ million people as your defense

You just do not get it, do you? I am not defending anything other than the defence of logic and the need for truth.

Just because you choose to take a 'position' on something, does not mean that other people are doing the same.
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by Grumpus »

Simply put I am not updating Firefox further at this time due to perceived intrusions in available updates.
I've been using it since 2005 and have tried in my feeble way to support it and this zine, as vapid as that may be to some.
The orchestrating complaint was laid out in technological terminology,not mine as I am not a technological minimalist except in theory.
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by KWierso »


Fun story: compare the advertising budgets of Chrome vs Firefox. Compare the nasty "install our random program X and we'll piggyback Chrome (and set it to default). Compare Chromes automated updater that makes only the people who explicitly opt out of updates completely are staying on older versions vs Firefox's updater where you can opt out at any point in the process (though this will be changing soonish).
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Omega X
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by Omega X »

Forced updates? Can I have a bug number please? Or some kind of proof that they're forced?

I know for a fact that they're going to be silenced so that it doesn't annoy users and that addons are going to be marked compatible every cycle(because 80+% of them are). But I heard nothing about removing the option to opt out.


In comparison, Chrome doesn't even give you the option. It locks in three separate ways to get an update and you have to disable them all to keep Chrome from talking to the update server.
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Re: Why people won't upgrade & why I am starting to hate Fir

Post by JAB Creations »

Frank Lion wrote:Was that your 'magic bullet UA rebuttal' that you spent ages on? Dream on -

Image


Thanks for reinforcing my "magic bullet"...to your own foot, a screenshot of all nightly builds, because non-technical people on the web are really going to run nightly builds.

Firefox's silent update...
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/firef ... -20111117/

I'm glad that I'm not the only one concerned for the fate of Firefox. At least Google not renewing their toolbar contract with Firefox might put a dent in Mozilla Corporate and return the reigns to the developers who care about users. Sad that I'd have to hope for that notion though because I don't think everyone at Mozilla Corporate is on drugs, just the ones forcing the bad decisions down everyone else's throats.
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