Why People Don’t Upgrade Their Browser – Part II

Ken Kovash

47 responses

When we left off, we showed that the #1 reason why people refused the Firefox Major Update offer was their frustration/preference/confusion related to the awesome bar (or location bar).  There are a few things interesting with this piece of feedback and with all the feedback more generally:

  1. Virtually everyone who provided feedback had previously used Fx3 and subsequently reverted back to Fx2.  This was 100% descriptive of this cohort and largely described all other users who were kind enough to share their thoughts.
  2. Some of the issues cited have since been resolved (since last summer).  Clearly, many users tried Fx3 when it was initially released, then reverted back to Fx2 shortly thereafter, and now they still won’t consider upgrading because of their initial experience (even if that initial issue has since been resolved).  You never get a second chance to make a first impression!

Returning to our cohort of users not fully satisfied with or fully comfortable with the awesome bar, we’ve released a series of enhancements in Fx3.5 that should resolve their concerns.  Alex Faaborg provided an extensive walk-through, and here’s one key section that should help this group of users:

Ability to Control What Appears in the Location Bar Search Results (Proactive Privacy)

When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn’t really want to have displayed. In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you. So now in Firefox 3.5, users have complete control over what types of information are displayed in the location bar (or suggestions can be turned off entirely):

location_bar

So, what actions items can come of this user feedback?

If we think this concern surrounding the location bar is solely limited to existing Fx2 users, we could consider some special messaging for them.  However, I would venture to guess that some small fraction of the Firefox user base currently on either Fx3 or Fx3.5 (93% of all users) share similar thoughts about the location bar.  If so, then it would likely be worthwhile for us consider a couple options:

• Modify Firefox itself.

Below is a simplified mock-up of just one idea I came up with (please note that I don’t know anything about UI).  I’m not sure if the average user knows about Tools->Options, so the concept here is that a person could easily understand how the location bar works and adjust it (according to their preferences) within a fraction of a second.

mock_final5

• Up-level messaging about the location bar and its latest enhancements.

Utilizing key touch points, such as the firstrun page, whatsnew page, or firefox.com page, could help users feel more comfortable with the location bar and its awesome functionality.  For example, is it more important for us to be using these critical touch points to promote open video formats and Fx add-ons, or to highlight Firefox’s most utilized feature and how it can best help a user in his/her everyday life (and not frustrate them)?  At the very least, this seems like a question we should be asking.

What are your thoughts?

47 responses

  1. Jigar Shah wrote on :

    I would suggest some permanent solution. How about per bookmark control ? And i disable history for awesome bar auto suggest. Or even better and simpler, Some filter keyword or tag that can be checked while showing auto suggest ?

  2. Kurt (supernova_00) wrote on :

    Looks good but that doesn’t help users upgrade. The major update information shown in the software update dialog should be changed to reflect being able to customize what is shown in the location bar. Include the screenshot since it is just an html page.

    The firstrun, whatsnew and firefox.com pages are only shown AFTER the user has upgraded, so if they haven’t upgraded they wont see it. The firefox.com page will only show if the user explicitly goes to that page so there again doesn’t solve the issue. Since they are mostly refusing to upgrade when prompted to software update.

    And for your UI…that should be easy and very trivial to add to Firefox 3.5.X, just use the same labels as the options dialog uses so it won’t affect l10n.

  3. Kurt (supernova_00) wrote on :

    … and the information icon is already present so no new UI is needed and it won’t affect themes.

  4. JG wrote on :

    Ah yes, porn privacy as one of the driving forces of internet product design.

    You want to let users clear the history while they’re seeing the history. Two options come to mind – put an always visible entry in the addressbar drop down so it appears when a user types or clicks the down-arrow. Or have a control appear in the addressbar like your mock but it should only appear when a user clicks in the address bar.

    Rather than setting a preference it should be a control with the most popular actions like clear history, don’t remember history, don’t suggest from history, more options.

    Of course, you’d want to put together some mocks and get it front of users for some feedback before investing any dev time in it.

  5. Ken Saunders wrote on :

    My 2 Cents
    I don’t believe that another icon should be added to the location bar. I do believe that users and Mozilla would benefit from offering a setup wizard with the options to remind me and never remind me.

    It’s definitely a good idea to utilize the first run page (etc) to provide introductory materials especially for instances like this where the user is going to be pretty surprised by a new feature.

    My $1.25
    I’ll admit that I couldn’t stand the Awesome bar when it was first introduced. I tried out several different add-ons and CSS hacks to modify/customize it etc, and in the end, I just opted to revert to the plain old Location bar and stuck with that for a very long time.
    I think that it was after creating a new (primary) profile that I left the Awesome bar as is and now I’ve grown to love it.
    I said that I “couldn’t stand” it when I should have said that I hated it. I really did, but I certainly wasn’t going to continue to use an old version. I love using and trying out the latest (Minefield etc) and I also didn’t want to miss out on all of the benefits of upgrading.

    But, I consider myself to be an experienced power user and Mozilla is my life (ya, I should get a hobby) but for those who are not, I can understand their reluctance (and rebellion) to adapt to and use something that they are completely uncomfortable with so the main thing that should be learned from here is that Mozilla needs to be really careful when dramatically altering Firefox. The Awesome bar is awesome but it is so different from what people are used to that they just aren’t willing to go with it. This is all something to keep in mind with a whole new UI in the works. I’m personally concerned about that.

    I’ll take the time to rip apart and tweak and customize Firefox to my needs and liking, but the majority of Internet users will not.
    For me, my browser is in the forefront, for others, and the way that it’s supposed to be, the browser should just be there and work. People shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how something works and where everything is when they have been using the same software for a very long time.
    Technology (and everything else) always advances, I can dig that and I love that and people are always having to learn new software and features. Just guide them through and ease them into dramatic changes and if possible, give them the option to opt out. Even Windows offers classic themes and functionality.

    I started this reply with $1.27 that was I supposed to use to buy a loaf of bread.
    This is going to be the messiest PB&J that I’ve ever made.

    Prediction:
    My spam deterrent answer will be 11

  6. Ken Saunders wrote on :

    The answer was 2.
    DOH! I hope that I didn’t just give it away for others. 🙂

  7. Majken “Lucy” Connor wrote on :

    The thing is, issues like this are _always_ raised during development. In this particular case the developers involved didn’t believe enough people would care about the privacy concern – people can find your bookmarks anyway.

    I think the other half of the solution is to see if there are ways to help developers predict or better gauge the response during beta releases. Obviously not every issue brought up during beta turns out to matter, but how to do a better job of telling them apart?

  8. BobChao wrote on :

    IMO there’s only a few users follow the whatsnew link in the firstrun page, make a attracting & brief introduction of the new features on firstrun could be a good idea.

  9. Jesse Ruderman wrote on :

    I wonder if making *minor* updates faster (bug 489138) would get users to procrastinate on *major* updates less.

  10. Jesse Ruderman wrote on :

    Did we ever explicitly tell Firefox 2 users that they need to update to keep getting security fixes?

  11. Jesse Ruderman wrote on :

    It sounds like users declining major updates is the main way we lose users to insecure versions, but it’s not the only way. Should we try surveying users who uncheck “Automatically check for updates” to find out why they do that?

  12. Ken Saunders wrote on :

    “Did we ever explicitly tell Firefox 2 users that they need to update to keep getting security fixes?”
    What an excellent question/point.

    Many users may think about security issues and the importance of updates/upgrades less than they do about a new feature or functionality that they really don’t care for.
    Or they may just lack the knowledge.

    I know that in the press releases, it is somehow stated that Mozilla strongly recommends upgrading etc, etc, but perhaps there should/could be more emphasis and details as to why.

    As far as versions that have reached their end of life cycle, yes, it should be made very clear that Mozilla no longer (officially) supports that particular version when they offer an upgrade and the dangers(?) of using an unsupported product. That’s of course if the user has auto update check enabled.
    I’m not sure how else Mozilla could reach users who have it turned off. AMO?

    The tech news and media sites all post about Mozilla dropping support for old versions, but I have the less technically inclined/hip users in mind.

    How about a massive red and yellow pop-up stating that a user’s skin will fall off of their body if they don’t upgrade? 😐

  13. emarell wrote on :

    Now I’m up to date with Firefox – however for a long time I kept v2 while v3 was available. [Never saw any survey, but…] This was in part because I had zero inkling that security updates would be abandoned. Duhhhhh. You need to say so.

  14. Stebs wrote on :

    About Location Bar Search Results Control:
    IMHO this should also be accessible with right-clicking on Location Bar.
    It’s how customizing Toolbars etc. works, so why does it not work for customizing Location Bar…

    Even deleting (Location Bar) History should be doable the instant the suggestions in Awesomebar pop up (and people are annoyed/concerned about it). Maybe also with right-clicking on such a history-suggestion (does nothing at the moment). With an dialog/menu about deleting only this entry, all history since x time or everything etc.

    This would add better access to implemented features WITHOUT new visible clutter (yet another icon in location bar etc.). And right-clicking is common, so I guess people are going to try it at least once?

  15. Anaes wrote on :

    I wrote a proposal for an extension that could passively solve the porn+awesomebar problem. Since I am not a coder, I can’t whip up an alpha proof of concept, but perhaps someone else can take a crack at it. (I pitched it to Wladimir Palant a while back, but he wasn’t interested).

    http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/2/5/43412/24669

    Apparently, there are already hooks in userChrome that allow preventing results from appearing in the awesomebar on a per URL basis:

    http://ed.agadak.net/2009/02/hiding-history-with-userchrome

  16. Andrew J wrote on :

    This is an interesting problem, and something fairly significant – especially if you consider that there are things you may not want to broadcast (such as web comic or the like) during a business presentation… but are otherwise perfectly comfortable in your bookmarks / history.

    The big thing I see though is that FF has jumped on the “well, user’s can just disable this feature now” solution… which is fine, but what about the majority of sites the average user DOES want to show up in this auto complete convention? This seems heavy handed to nuke a whole feature because a small number of sites should be considered private.

    I would think that the best would be (in addition to the broad scope options) some way to mask off folders or sites – ie don’t broadcast a folder of non-business bookmarks on a machine I occasionally have to give presentations on, etc. Perhaps this could be opt in or opt out – depending on the user’s preference.

  17. Ferdinand wrote on :

    How about temporary installing the new major version next to the old one? You would tell the user that if they find any problems they could start the old version from an entry in the start menu. You would of course tell the user that if they find problems Mozilla would love to help you solve it. But in the mean time users would not be scared that they would lose anything.
    I also think that Firefox should include a troubleshooter. Most people don’t know how to troubleshoot and some kind of wizard could help them. This troubleshooter could be integrated with the uninstalller. If people are uninstalling because of a problem that is already fixed you could provide them a link to the fix.

  18. Arne wrote on :

    Being one of those FF2 users, the points mentioned why one would avoid awesomebar totally miss my personal reason.

    With the old address bar, when I want to go to an often-visited site, it’s in most cases enough to just type the first 2-3 characters, and hit return. There aren’t many domains that start with the same char combination. “Awesomebar” searches the full domain name string for these chars and thus brings many more possibilities, making me use more time to get where I want.
    A good example is the domain from which I came to this page, intern.de – “in” as start characters are rare in my standard sites, “in” somewhere in the domain name is frequent.
    So instead of pressing 3 keys (i, n, return) I’d have to scroll down the result list or dirctly use bookmarks; both of which need much more time – and that’s simply ineffective and annoying.

    If there is a possibility to change this behaviour, it’s hidden quite good; I tried hard, and I’m open source programmer used to find documentation on the net. If Opera had add-ons, I’d be there by now.

    So I temporarily rely on second-rate security precautions (Linux’ user restrictions, turning off Javascript…) and hope some new FF will again be useable for me, or an add-on solves this issue.

    Just some direct feedback of one of those naughty FF3-reluctant users. Generally I like Firefox and other Mozilla products very much.

  19. Melno wrote on :

    I want to hide title of webpage in location bar search results. It should show only web address and icon maybe.. Some people come to my computer and type something it will reveal all my history. And yes, I dont want to clear my history.

  20. iqe wrote on :

    > users who uncheck “Automatically check for updates” why they do that?

    I’m one of those. This “updates” thing is annoying. When I do something I don’t want to care for something else. I just prepare me to do something, start the stupid program and he is demanding like bad girlfriend! Shut up. Go away and let me continue doing what I wanted.

    Instead doing what I want I have to do SOMETHING ELSE — answer stupid things about updates, or even read information that “firefox updated.” Shut up. You wonder why people don’t read message boxes — that’s why — too much programs are too chatty and interfere with what people want to do.

    Updates must be 100% unintrusive to be acceptable to be kept turned on. Don’t even show me that I’m running a newer version than yesterday! Don’t even delay the start of the program (it’s way way to slow anyway!) Store the fact somewhere and allow me to go to view upgrade history from somewhere, but not more than that. And promise not to change the behaviour of anything I’m used to for such “invisible” updates.

    I don’t use Google Chrome but I have an impression that they do upgrade when they find it appropriate and they don’t nanny user about that — the user is just happy to have less bugs in the program today than yesterday. (That’s also important — promise to not making things worse with the updates, or react so fast that that worsenings get corrected before I have the time to notice.

    Regarding “showing info” selection. It should also be unintrusive, and not in the bar. Why do you have settings dialog for?

  21. WW wrote on :

    The solution that was presented is basically ‘not enough’.

    When you talk about privacy you need a foolproof solution.

    What a stupid solution is to turn off bookmarks in awesome toolbar if anyone with access to computer can turn it on back and see it all.

    What you need is a basic and easy set up during installation – one that will allow user to turn such ‘awesome’ toolbar and search utilities for good without option to use it at all.

  22. Foo wrote on :

    @Arne: “Ditto.” (I stayed with FF1; skipped FF2 for performance reasons, damn near stayed with FF1 when FF3 came out due to the Bar.)

    @iqe: Ditto. It’s software that works. The next version might break something (an extension, a user interface element, etc) that I like. There’s no regression path if I don’t like the upgrade. If the current version works, I use it until it breaks.

    I also know that with any major version upgrade, I’m going to have to customize a lot of things in about:config. Took me a good hour or two to get set up with FF3, and although I don’t regret the upgrade (largely for JS performance on a couple of web apps that I trust), I’m still not 100% happy with it.

  23. davarino wrote on :

    One very annoying issue that crops up in any kind of an update is that the new “features” are often features only in the minds of the creators.

    When 3.0 came out I tried it and it was a horrible memory hog. I went over to Opera for awhile until things started to sort out… and I am now using 3.0.13.

    Memory still disappears like rabbits into a hat sometimes… which keeps me looking back over my shoulder toward Opera.

    I’m sure that this memory problem is discounted by developers because they tend to run the nicest machines. I imagine that developers also generally don’t worry too hard about who’s peaking over their shoulders.

    Ya see, that is part of the good contribution that can be made with a corporate, non-opensource, developer: he is ipso facto a part of the rat race that contains most of the users of the product.

  24. Richard Le Poidevin wrote on :

    Can’t people just use the Private Browsing feature? Wouldn’t that hide everything from the Awesome Bar?

    I personally love the new Awesome Bar. I think it works very well at finding things I’ve forgotten I’d even bookmarked – just type in a few tags and I remember how organised I have been, and with Weave I can share them between machines. Not everyone will like the Awesome Bar but it is definitely a step in the right direction usability wise.

  25. Lachu wrote on :

    Solution is simple: allow to run many instances with different profile in one session. Example – I have icon for normal profile on desktop and hides icon to private profile. I can set in options, that private profile will start in private mode and set special text on title of windows. All!

  26. Ken Saunders wrote on :

    @davarino Is there any particular reason why you are not using Firefox 3.5(.2) instead of 3.0.13?

    There have been many performance improvements made.

  27. Csaba Farkas wrote on :

    Developers! why not implement the hidden bookmark feature? i really want this. Normal usage not show hidden bokmarks, if enter pincode show bookmarks but limited time. i think this simple and best everyone.

  28. Rob.HUN wrote on :

    Don’t bookmark pornsites. It’s that simple. 🙂

    I really don’t understand why this issue is such a big concern.

  29. Rob.HUN wrote on :

    Oh and of course besides not bookmarking no-no sites*, after your browsing session simply clear history.

    It’s not that that comlicated. 🙂

    *why would sensible people bookmark such sites anyway – or perhaps I have too demanding expectations towards humanity.

  30. Biju G C wrote on :

    @Lachu try
    firefox.exe -no-remote -p testprofile1

    But you cant have different title unless you put some hack. Alternatively you can have different theme, or change appearance by toolbar customization.

    @webadmin
    You need to change that stupid Icons. I thought the first two meant Email. Only on looking close I found they are different icon.

  31. David Tenser wrote on :

    Great blog post, Ken! The confusion about what is listed in the Awesomebar results is indeed a real problem as evidenced by the weekly common issues reports the SUMO team has been producing the last few (many) months, where the awesome bar issue has consistently been the top complaint.

    beltzner and I chatted about this back in April and I proposed something similar to your mockup above, but less “in your face”:

    A horizontal notification bar (like the bar that appears when a pop-up is blocked) would appear _inside_ the awesomebar result listing, at the top. This notification bar would say something like “The location bar shows both bookmarks and your browser history” with a button on the right side to change the settings.

    The bar could possibly only appear when no history exists. In other words, the bar would only appear after the user has cleared their recent history and then type something in the Awesomebar.

    As an alternative, the text in the bar could say something like “Items marked with a [star-icon.png] are bookmarks. [Change settings]”

  32. Stomme poes wrote on :

    Ken Saunders wrote: @davarino Is there any particular reason why you are not using Firefox 3.5(.2) instead of 3.0.13?

    There have been many performance improvements made.

    I can’t speak for dav but I’m also using 3.0.x because I’m on debian and always wait for the .deb to appear… hate dependency hell you get when you dl from source and self-compile. I have a copy of 3.5.x on the Windows Virtual Box because I don’t care what I break on ‘Blows.

    I’m definitely a user who doesn’t care for new flashy features. I don’t mind upgrades and don’t care how much uglier my browser has become. I do hate the feature-hogginess of FF (Opera has a bazillion features I’ll never use either). Sometimes I wish for a “base” firefox with all the security junk but without the “awesome” stuff. Seriously that name is such a turnoff. Awesome bar? At least it doesn’t look like Safari’s AquaMangaTeenCandyBubblePower stuff. If it’s going to be awesome it at least needs an icon of a shark high-fiving a gorilla or something.

    P.S. I had to turn images off to figure out what the icons meant. There’s this handy feature browsers come with called a tooltip. It appears if you add a title attribute to elements.
    Also of course the alt text was still covered by the inputs due to how they were positioned. Next time I’ll post in Lynx. : )

  33. rootkit wrote on :

    I remember that this problem was highlighted during FF3.0 beta test period, but any developer took care of it.
    Now we have a lot of people that doesn’t use FF3 or later for this reason (right or wrong).
    I think people’s opinion should always be considered with care.

  34. HansImGlück wrote on :

    I would love to upgrade, however as long as the Firefox developers keep pushing the awesome awesomebar down my throat, I won’t. All I want is an simple option to revert the behaviour (autocomplete algorithm) of the awesomebar back to that of the locationbar in Firefox 2. As awesome the awesome awesomebar may be, I don’t want it and I don’t need it. I’m a professional C/C++ programmer, so I considered fixing this myself but then again why bother. Maybe I’ll just go back to IE or Opera, only thing holding me back is Adblock Plus.

  35. carpetkiss wrote on :

    @Stomme poes
    I use Debian Squeeze & I’m posting this from FF3.7a1.Don’t worry about the deb(normally I would agree 100%) – FF is OK cos it doesn’t cause dependency hell. I just download the bz2 & extract it to /usr/lib/firefox & I copied the ‘firefox’ script to /usr/bin as ‘firefox3’.I’ve still got iceweasel installed,but overwritten of course by Minefield(3.7a1).

  36. ejwm wrote on :

    I do not like the new updated version. I have went under OPTIONS several times and clicked on NOTHING in History and yet every time I get back on Mozilla it shows the same history I “supposedly” erased and have to hit NOTHING in OPTIONS again! I do not like this upgrade!

  37. Stomme poes wrote on :

    @carpetkiss
    ok, thx for the headsup re the zip… iceweasel I couldn’t handle, it crashed every time I looked at it crosswise (dunno why).
    I’d use Epiphany to avoid FF-bloat but the fonts/em-sizing on my machine were NOT cool with it… buttontext was huge and everything else was microscopic. Waiting for the webkit version : )
    I’ve been tempted to check out Minefield though.

  38. J. Couprie wrote on :

    > users who uncheck “Automatically check for updates” why they do that?
    I am one of those. Why ?
    The people in charge of automatic update program ignore a rule that you find in most sites or magazines about security : “Don’t surf using an account having administrator right but with an account with only limited rights.” The reason : this make more difficult the installation of malwares.
    As many users of Firefox, I am security oriented and surf with a limited account. With the default option FF checks for available updates, try to install it and crash ! So to be aware of new releases, I have checked “ask what to do” till I have been burnt by the update from 3.0.10 to 3.0.11 (bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=500303)
    the automatic update program has tried to install without asking anything, crashed and entered an infinite loop of crashes. It was not too easy to break it ! I have clicked off “auto-check for updates” on all my profiles of Firefox and Thunderbird. This is not too dangerous because I have subscribed to “about:mozilla” that announces updates. To have the current release, I download the full installer using a limited account, cut the connection with Internet and install it with the administrator account.
    I think that, as a minimum, update program should check if the account has administrator or writing rights ; If not exit with a message (and better if possible allow to restart to install the downloaded update from the administrator account).

  39. J. Couprie wrote on :

    I support the idea of having a program to check if all each of the extensions I use, have versions compatible with the new release before installing it.
    But I think that it is not easy to program : I have 3 profiles for Firefox and 2 for Thunderbird which have not all the same extensions.
    How to do an unique check that covers all the extensions of the various profiles used by one of the programs ?

  40. monzo wrote on :

    Suggestion: make history session-based.

    I have sessions of web-browsing, e.g. website-development where I need several manuals of a site and not any of the (generalized / specific off-topic) bookmarks. When I start a new session, the bookmarks shown (based on bookmarks) give me the ability to quickly adapt to a new situation and build a new history for this session. In the sidebar the entire history must be available to go to the complete history.

    This implementation actually uses a wide-screen more effectively (sidebar is more useful in a wide-screen environment in my opinion) and history isn’t a huge list (in the beginning of a session) so one has a nice clean workflow.

    For version 4.0 please follow Apple Snow Leopard: no new features, just improvement of the back-end. This is a part of Firefox that needs LOTS of love!

  41. David Nelson wrote on :

    Arne hit the nail on the head. The “Awesomebar” drastically over-searches, returning so many results with no priority or relevance that they are basically all useless. It is the first thing I disable every time I do a new Firefox install.

  42. Wally Wilson wrote on :

    Just some observations based upon my own experiences…

    Rule #1: These are people’s PERSONAL computers.
    Rule #2: This is MY computer and it is CAREFULLY configured in exactly the way that I want it to be.
    Rule #3: An automatic update should never change the appearance or configuration without user intervention.
    Rule #3a: Breaking someone’s theme or plugins with an update is bad, bad, bad form!

    My browser is a seriously-customized work horse that I depend upon for all manner of activities (work, play, blah). I have a physical handicap that makes these customizations all the more important to me (the one-handed computer user here). If I cannot fit the drop-down menus and the navigation/wonderbar into only two rows, then I’m not likely to want to upgrade, ever. I do not want to have to mouse all over the place to get things done!

    If something changes from one version to the next and I didn’t personally change it, then there is a problem. My workflow stops until I can figure it out. I am an incredibly patient and flexible computer power user (since 1978), but change something in my application without allowing me to review it/accept it with an explanation (browser, specifically) and I get very angry/disgusted. _I_ configured this on my time and I don’t need some developer coming along changing things willy-nilly just because they can or they somehow think it is important and I should just buck-up and listen to their wisdom on the subject.

    Let ME decide on MY computer.

    So, that is the curmudgeon-in-a-nutshell view (my personal view), and as someone who was a tech and then service manager at a computer repair store, my experience is that you don’t change things on a person’s computer…EVER. That computer is a very _personal_ physical extension into the ether.

    It doesn’t matter than if you were to look at their computer and see that everything was simply default/default/default…people have their computers set up exactly the way that they want to (yes, even if they didn’t set up a thing). In nearly every computer “problem” that has ever come across my desk, the main culprit was a change or something that created unfamiliarity on their _personal_ computer. People are creatures of habit. People rely on things being in the same place, not out of choice, but out of motor memory.

    So, yeah, I’m just jumping in with both feet, no parachute and still smoking from re-entry. 🙂

  43. Wally Wilson wrote on :

    For example…

    Firefox 3.5.4 disabled every extension I have. I will now destroy 3.5.4 and go back to something that works _now_.

  44. centaurea wrote on :

    I agree completely with Wally Wilson’s post. Basically, all I want in a new version is enhanced security and/or other invisible improvements (i.e., better speed).

    As an older user, any changes to what I’m used to — the location of toolbars or of items on the toolbars, or the addition of unnecessary items (i.e., putting Google search in the toolbar), or changes in browser functions — slow me down drastically, and it takes a VERY long time to adjust — by which time another new version with still more changes is likely to be out. This is why I’m not only still using Firefox 2, but also Internet Explorer 6. And why I’ll be clinging to Windows XP until they pry it out of my cold dead hands (and I probably wouldn’t have switched to XP if they hadn’t included the Windows Classic option). I suspect if people were offered an upgrade that looks & acts exactly like the old version but has the enhanced security, you’d get more of us reluctant upgraders to upgrade.

    I do want to add, however, that I greatly appreciate all the time and energy that developers devote to providing and improving the Mozilla products, and the fact that you are all here discussing these issues and listening to user feedback. Thank you for your efforts!

    As to some specifics of why I didn’t like Firefox 3:

    -Firefox 3 uses a combined history for the Back and Forward button. If you just want to go back to the first page you looked at, or just go back 3 pages, etc., you have to stop and read the history to try and figure out where you were. I can see no reason for this, since if you want your whole history in one list you can simply use the ‘History’ button. I can right-click on the back button for history, but again, that is not what I’m used to doing. There is also an add-on that will add a regular back history button, but it puts it on the left rather than the right of the back button, again forcing me to stop and adjust automatic motions, learned from years of having the back history button to the right of the back button. Also, even with this add-on, the forward history button still contains the unified history.

    -New version completely changed how ‘Organize Bookmarks’ works. I found it very confusing.

    -An improvement I would like to see is a return to the OPTION of automatic filling in forms like we had on Netscape 7.

    -Would also like to see Mozilla browsers start up as quickly as IE.

    -I’m another user who doesn’t like the ‘awesome bar’. I’m the only one with access to my computer and I’m not looking at porn or anything else I feel the need to hide, so I’m not concerned with the privacy issue. Rather, I had the same problem with the new bar as Arne described in his post (‘With the old address bar, when I want to go to an often-visited site, it’s in most cases enough to just type the first 2-3 characters, and hit return.’).

    I’m currently trying out the latest version of SeaMonkey and have to say that so far I like it much better than the latest Firefox, because it is more like FF2 and also more like the old Netscape which FF superceded. Except now that I’m entering this post I find it is spell-checking my entry – grrrrr! Like Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, It’s always something!

  45. FK Upgrade wrote on :

    I’ll tell you what I do every time a page tells me to upgrade my browser:

    I CLOSE THE PAGE DOWN AND GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

    It’s not your business to tell me to upgrade, it’s your business to show me stuff whatever I’m using.

    If some companies insist on my upgrading, they will lose my custom.

    Maybe I’ll upgrade in my own time, at a later date. Maybe I won’t.

  46. Kelso wrote on :

    Thanks, even though somewhat old now. This is still a great read.

  47. Eng City-Engineering Video wrote on :

    iam happy to visit this site