Did We Get Suckered by Firefox 3?
Everyone likes something shiny and new so it didn’t come as much surprise to see eight million people download Firefox 3 - spurred on by a brilliant campaign by Mozilla to break a world record for downloads in a single day.
While Firefox is becoming more popular, the reality is people who enthusiastically downloaded as soon as it was released into the wild may have been suckered. Among the issues is a security problem discovered by Tipping Point DVLabs that Mozilla will have to plug soon with a 3.0.1 release.
As well, many people who downloaded Firefox 3 were surprised to discover that some of their extensions/add-ons - the mini-features you can download to customize and personalize Firefox - don’t work yet.
And then there’s the location bar that has drawn heavy criticism because it auto-populates Web sites as you type in URLs. It is strange that Firefox 3 offers no way for people to turn off the auto-populate tool even though it’s a major change from Firefox 2.
Maybe Firefox 3 was rushed out the door. Perhaps, for example, Mozilla should have offered an extension test service so people could get a sense of what works and what didn’t. Based on the results, you could decide whether to upgrade now or wait.
Personally, the download for Firefox 3 is sitting on my desktop collecting dust. It’s there but, for now, I’m not going to climb on the Firefox 3 bandwagon until version 3.0.1 and some assurance that some of my key extensions/add-ons play nice with Firefox 3.
One more thought: As much as people are excited about a new and, well, improved Firefox 3, it would be great see to Mozilla give some more love to its email client, Thunderbird. In a world dominated by Outlook, GMail, Yahoo Mail and Live.com/Hotmail, Thunderbird also seems like an after-thought.
Technorati Tags: Firefox, Thunderbird
June 21st, 2008 at 9:05 am
If you visit the developers’ website, some of them have beta version available for FF3 which work perfectly fine. You probably won’t find them on the Mozilla website. That being said, developers have had FF3 available to them for some time now. Should Mozilla be responsible for 3rd party add-ons not working?
The security problems exists in FF2 as well, so they obviously didn’t know about it. You make it sound like this hole is there because they released too early.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am
Overall, I quite like FF3 but as you note it has some annoying features.
In addition to the autopopulate feature, to change the font size with the Ctrl button and the mouse wheel, you go in the opposite direction of the previous version. It makes it very confusing when you use different versions on different computers. What was the point in changing that?
Also, the download window, though more cluttered, now forces you to right-click to see the options.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:24 am
I have been using the beta for a while, so the changes come as no surprise. But to the average consumer I can see how they may be flustered. That being said, it is still blows IE out of the water!
June 21st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Firefox was definitely not rushed. I would characterize the Address bar complaints as light and really I think they will dissipate as time goes on. Though there is a way to turn it off.
As far as addons go I see your problem but I don’t know what you think the solutions should be. The code for Firefox 3 has been finalized for a month or so. As soon as it went from Beta to Release Candidate the code was in a state that add on developers could update their addons.
Which addons should they make sure work? Every one uses different ones and when the list grows to the thousands it become very impractical. Also these are not just 3rd parties but often times these addons are just made by normal people who don’t have time to update these extensions.
Some addons have larger communities behind them and have more pressure to get out the door like the developer’s tool bar and firebug. Others come from companies which depending on their dedication to the addon can also come out with quick updates like del.icio.us or compete.
While certainly Mozilla could have done more I think it’s kind of absurd for them to not release their product while they wait for a developer they don’t know to respond to an email and put out an update. Would you want to run your company that way?
June 21st, 2008 at 10:31 am
[...] Mark Evens has been complaining about the release of FireFox 3 calling it rushed and poorly planed. I saw it differently and posted this comment: Firefox was definitely not rushed. I would characterize the Address bar complaints as light and really I think they will dissipate as time goes on. <a href=”http://lifehacker.com/396312/power-users-guide-to-firefox-3″>Though there is a way to turn it off</a>. [...]
June 21st, 2008 at 11:32 am
I downloaded Firefox3… five times! Once it was installed onto my computer it appeared operational, but it wouldn’t open a window and remained trapped in my task bar. If you go to the Firefox forum, you’ll notice many other users are experiencing the same problem
http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=en-US&comments_parentId=68132&forumId=1
What a disappointment!
June 21st, 2008 at 11:48 am
I agree, Firefox 3 RC/Beta has been out for a while for extensions developers to catch up
Look at Google Browser Sync, who has been said unofficially to be discontinued (aka. no GBS for FF3, period), and that was the only thing holding me back
Yesterday I found that out, and upgraded to FF3
and found good extensions to replace some of my original extensions - Foxmark, Gesture, Forecastfox, Firebug/YSlow, Gmail etc… I am quite satisfied, now just wait for Tab Mix
Although so far I haven’t seen much memory reduction in FF3 vs FF2, but I do like the slick features
June 21st, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I sure got suckered.
That GOD-AWFUL-BAR - and the arrogance of the defenders of no choice but to have it in there - have me back on Firefox 2. But, what it’s really done is soured my attitude about Mozilla/Firefox to the point where I am going to replace Firefox with a different browser altogether.
Thank you Mozilla.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Points well taken. I’m an early adopter so I was one of the few that couldn’t wait to get it installed. I don’t use a lot of add-ons so it wasn’t a big deal to me.
Wanted to mention the oldbar add on for FF3. Tones down all that extra stuff that the new ‘Awesomebar’ url lookup bar does. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227
June 21st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
“Firefox was definitely not rushed. I would characterize the Address bar complaints as light and really I think they will dissipate as time goes on. Though there is a way to turn it off.”
The address bar makes FF3 unusable for me. The problem is with its searching and sorting algorithm, not its appearance. Its “smart” sorting based on recent and frequent visits really just means “unpredictable”.
The extension you linked to restores the appearance of the old bar, NOT its functionality, and that’s where the problem is. I’m sticking with FF2 until an extension restores the old sorting algorithm.
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
[...] a world record with over 8 million downloads in a 24hour span. Download it here. But be carefull not all FF2 extensions work with this new release, [...]
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
let me tell you that I waited a day or 2 before downloading. I was being a little contrary to the campaign, but aside from that wanted to give FF another whirl. I did so and have used it on and off - and asked my wife to use it as well, being a former Q/A tester in a children’s software company.
Neither of us has been overly impressed. At first, it seemed to load pages faster than did previous versions and IE especially. However, as time went on and I have used it, there are several things that keep getting in the way - namely the fact that my plugins for other apps don’t work correctly about 30% of the time.
In a nutshell, Firefox 3 has disappointed me in its first release. I will wait for another .1 revision as well before becoming a fan boy.
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
[...] Mark Evan’s post, Did We Get Suckered by Firefox 3?, he asks a very pointed question. Firefox topped 8 million downloads in a 24 hour period, which [...]
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I guess I missed why you felt suckered by Firefox. The only complaints you voiced are with the address bar and some Addon compatibility.
I personally love the new address bar as it has reduced the time it takes for me to visit a URL. I agree Mozilla should add a disable option but I also understand that you can get FF2 behavior by changing browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped=true” in about:config.
Concerning extensions I’m not sure I agree with your contention that this is a Mozilla problem. Addons and their subsequent updates are responsibility of the Addon creator. I was initially disappointed that Del.icio.us and TinyURL didn’t offer a FF3 compatible Addons but both released FF3 addon updates within 24 hours.
I truly enjoy Firefox so I have a skewed perspective but I don’t think anyone could support an argument of being suckered.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:33 pm
After getting Firefox 3, my computer has slowed down a lot. Thanks.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:57 am
“It is strange that Firefox 3 offers no way for people to turn off the auto-populate tool even though it’s a major change from Firefox 2.”
This text is incorrect. It is fully possible to disable the auto-populate. It is not possible to have auto-populate based only on the URLs typed and visited.
Fx3 automatically includes HTML Title attribute as well as bookmark names and other “tags” applied to bookmarks. It also does a substring match on the entire text, as opposed to a “starts with” match as was the earlier behavior. It is these behaviors that cannot be disabled.
Effectively, the entire behavior of the URL bar has been modified, with no ability to change the configuration to the previous, simpler behavior. The developer response has been effectively “suck it up or write an extension”, which is pretty poor, but has motivated some people to write extensions.
Supposedly Old Location Bar extension is mostly replicating the Fx2 behavior, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7637 , but I’ve not got Fx3 installed at the moment.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I have been using the beta version for a while and really have no complaints except for the auto-complete feature, as of now I’m still digging it, but i would like to see some of the add ons work. And as far as the security problem i didn’t know nothing of it till reading this page.
June 29th, 2008 at 12:28 am
I’ve recently switched to Safari, because Firefox 3 CONSTANTLY crashes. I’ve never had this problem with the older versions and it’s finally driven me over the edge.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:43 am
The latest product Firefox 3 sucks. As soon I upgraded to Firefox 3 at least once a day my bookmarks are lost. I tried to restore bookmarks but I am always told “unable to process backup file.” I try to do a backup so that I do not loose my bookmarks but the file cannot then be find.
Do you have any idea how annoying is to have to restart the computer everyday because of lost bookmarks? Never had any problems of this sort with the previous version of Firefox. If this continues I will uninstall firefox and use other more reliable browsers for bookmarks!