Firefox Hijacked - Firefox 8 Disaster

The folks at Mozilla don't have time to actually use their browser (test) before they release it to the wild with this new 6 week update cycle paradigm.  Enough already stop this madness!

I just updated to FF 8 and regret it already.  Continuous updates that cause add-ons to become incompatible is insane.  I'm not sure who is driving this train wreck, but creating this post may be the last time I use any Mozilla product. Why would I be presented with 9 tabs each asking me whether I wanted to update each individual add-on and have to check a box and hit a continue button only have to restart FF again.  FF is already so slow to start that by the time it starts I have often forgot why I was starting it.

Even worse, based on the lists below there should have been 19 more tabs to annoy me.

I can trace my use of FF all the way back to Netscape 6.2.  I remember the conversations at wired/web-monkey discussing starting the Mozilla project.  I even took part in them.  I used Thunderbird for a long time, always hoping they would come up with a decent integrated calendar.  Finally, I just had to give up and unhappily I've moved on to MS Outlook.  Now I'm about to do the same thing with FF.

Maybe somebody at Mozilla can drop me a line and let me know when they decide to start listening to their users, rather than their wiz-bang developers.  I may give it a try again for old times sake.

Another sad failure.

Here's the list of Add-ons:

COMPATIBLE
Adblock Plus 1.3.10
Console 0.8
DownloadHelper 4.9.6
Firebug 1.8.4
Fireshot 0.94
IE Tab 2 (FF 3.6+) 3.10.7.2
Norton Toolbar 2012.2.1.6
Norton Vulnerability Protection 3.2
Shareaholic 3.0.1

 INCOMPATIBLE AND DISABLED
Ad blocker 0,6,7
Broadband Speed Test and Diagnoses 1.2.5
CS Helper 1.0
Chostery 2.6.2
Go Parent Foler 2.5
IE View 1.4.5.1
Link Evaluator 0.9.9.7
Live HTTP headers 0.17
Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.2.1
Minimap Addon 0.3.13
Personas 1.6.2
RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin 1.0
Screen Capture Elite 2.0.0.20
Show Parent Folder 1.8
Skype extension 5.3.0.7550
Sothink SWF Catcher 1.3.2
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.8.6
Web Developer 1.1.9
YSlow 3.0.4

Firefox & Software Update Madness

I spent nearly an hour downloading Microsoft Office Plus 2010 after purchasing and Firefox stopped responding. The download had reached 621MB of the 650MB. Eventually I found a hidden dialog box asking me to update Firefox to 3.6.11. I clicked the button to "Ask Me Later", but Firefox still was not responding. My only choice was to kill Firefox which I did.

Firefox restarted and I chose to restore the previous session which it did. Finally checking the download manager I found it was back to downloading the Office download at about 285MB. It quickly completed the download successfully in 5-10 minutes.

I've grown used to clicking on a link in an email message and receiving a "fatal error" message from Firefox only to find Firefox wants to update some totally unrelated add-on. Performing the update gets Firefox to finally start. However, interrupting a 650MB download for an update is totally unacceptable. Mozilla, the Firefox developer, along with all the software development community have got to get this update madness under control. Each piece of software seems to think their software is the only software installed on a computer and must be updated immediately regardless what the user is doing.

Last week proved to be incredibly annoying. It was Micro$oft Tuesday and they wanted to install a massive number of updates. In the midst of the M$ mess, Adobe Reader decided it needed to be updated immediately. Then Norton Internet Security wanted to update from the 2010 version to 2011. When this happens on a weeknight while trying to update five (5) home computers and all your trying to do is read your day's email, it becomes overwhelming.

So what do you think? Has this update madness gotten out of control and do software developers need to change their paradigm on when to tickle a user to update?