Thursday, February 2, 2006
Not Cool, Mozilla—Not Cool
Let me get one thing straight—I never enable auto-downloads in my software. Sure, I use the feature many applications have to notify me of a new version, but I never turn on the option to go ahead and download it automatically.
Mozilla, from my point of view, you committed a sin. Just now, out of the blue, Firefox popped up a window saying that it had downloaded an update, installed, and was asking me to approve restarting the browser. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that I did not turn on auto updates. After restarting, I promptly went to the preferences and turned it off. I’m a very visual person, and I would’ve remembered the user interface for that auto-download setting if I had accessed it previously. It was completely new to me.
The conclusion, Firefox’s auto-download-and-install is on by default—at least it was for me.
Very uncool, Mozilla.
Update: judging from the Firefox web site, the auto-update feature was added in version 1.5, so it stands to reason that of course I didn’t see that interface back when I first installed Firefox prior to version 1.5. But there it was in 1.5 and it then shoved 1.5.0.1 at me.
There are several reasons I don’t use Firefox as my primary browser. Add this reason to the list!
» Posted by ALBj at 10:34 AM (ET)
Category: Idiot of the Moment, Rant
Comments
To be clear, I don’t mind if a _notification_ automatically is enabled recommending that you download and install, and definitely when an application is first installed, a screen should appear during installation that offers to let you turn on auto download and install. And trust me, if I were a Windows user, I would *not* have been one of those people berating Microsoft to turn on auto install.
» Posted by Lee Bennett
February 6, 2006 06:23 PM
Sorry, due to comment spam abuse, new comments on this entry are closed until I find time to upgrade Movable Type and enable registration and moderation.
I’m not a fan of Firefox for reasons I won’t go into, but turning on auto-updates by default is probably the safest option for the majority of clueless users out there. Microsoft was berated by “experts” for not having theirs on by default, so they finally did. I however, am like you. I let it notify or possibly auto-download, but I only let auto-install go on servers that I rarely touch.
» Posted by Queue
February 6, 2006 08:26 AM