Mozilla have lost their mind



  • A number of WTFs in no particular order

    1.  Firefox 4.0 Beta 11-- ELEVEN (and still going)

    2.  Beta 11 adds the "Do Not Track HTTP header" -- a feature of questionable value for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that websites are free to ignore it.

    3.  At Beta 11 and still adding new features

    4.  In such a big hurry to add the new "Do Not Track HTTP header" that they couldn't be arsed to do it properly.  To quote from the blog of a Mozilla engineer:

    "Currently, the feature shows up in the “Advanced” panel within Firefox Preferences. It pains me that it’s not under the “Privacy” panel, yet. This reflects our desire for speed in getting the feature into Firefox, as updating the “Privacy” UI and content will require additional engineering bandwidth

    5.  "Engineering bandwidth" -- who talks like that?

    6.  Mozilla Roadmap:   1.  Ship Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 in the 2011 calendar year.  (translation:  All those other browsers have higher version numbers which makes them seem newer and cooler and hipper,  so we'll just call everything a major version release so we can catch up)


  • Garbage Person

     They lost the plot AGES ago. These things are simply ongoing symptoms.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    5. 
    "Engineering bandwidth" -- who talks like that?

    Corporate people.

    @El_Heffe said:

    6.  Mozilla Roadmap:   1.  Ship Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 in the 2011 calendar year.  (translation:  All those other browsers have higher version numbers which makes them seem newer and cooler and hipper,  so we'll just call everything a major version release so we can catch up)

    This is the most ridiculous of all. Who are they fooling? Even if the entire development of 5, 6 and 7 takes place in the time it took for just the Firefox 4 beta (is taking), they'll never hit that goal.

    They're making Microsoft's IE team look like Speed Racer.

    (The real irony is that I don't particularly believe in Chrome's "ridiculous fast" development cycle. As long as, when the releases do occur, they have enough features to be worthwhile. But I know self-delusion when I see it.)



  • Seems that Mozilla are going down the same route that Netscape did with the irtransition from Navigator 4 to Navigator 6. Will be interesting to see if history repeats itself and their golden tower comes crashing down, again. If that happens I wonder how many FOSStards will slit their wrists?

    Also, I believe I've said this before, but if you're adding new features in a "beta", you're Doing It Wrong. And this game of brinkmanship they're playing with Chrome is one I don't see Google losing. (BTW, not that I condone Google's ludicrous policy of releasing a bajillion major versions that should be minor versions in a year.)



  • I guess I'm not getting the outrage. I jumped onto Chrome a long time ago...I never know off the top of my head what version number of Chrome I run, which is a pretty good indicator I have a browser that's working the way I want it.

    It's Mozilla's problem that they lost their way after Firefox 3...if they can pull off, dare I say, a more "agile" release schedule, that's fine for them. Whatever privacy features come out in the next Firefox release will come out in Chrome extensions, one way or another. I think their big problem is that extension developers have gotten used to working on Chrome by necessity (see Adblock Plus et al), while Firefox has stagnated.

    I did find out this week that Seamonkey is a nice Linux HTML editor tor the simple jobs I need it for.



  • I switched to Chrome when it turned out that FF4.0 beta 6 needed eighteen whole seconds from the double click to an interactive Google start page. Then again, maybe my system is slightly underpowered to run a web browser: i7 860, 8 GB, Win7. Maybe I should look into one of those newfangled math coprocessors?

    It got worse when I tried to be productive with it and open a few (50) tabs, at which point the single monolithic process took over my computer and developed malicious sentience. Another side-effect of said monolithic process is that when you start a new session with a few (50) open tabs you're staring at a desktop wallpaper depicting a website for a while until /EVERY/ tab has loaded. But at least it has hardware rendering now, leveraging my €400 graphics card to render blurry text and choppy scrolling.



  •  The only reason i still have FF at home, is because neither opera, nor chrome can handle belgian id card (unless one of those now supports pkcs11 libraries?) and, on unrelated point, neither opera, nor chrome works can handle the e-banking service of my bank.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    Seems that Mozilla are going down the same route that Netscape did with the irtransition from Navigator 4 to Navigator 6.


    In other words, NN 4.78 is bloated and sucks, but there's this great browser called IE4!

    IE5.5 is bloated and sucks, but there's this great browser called FF 2!

    FF4 is bloated and sucks, but there's this great browser called Chrome 11!



    I take it you're not familiar with this effect?



  • I stick with FFX because it's the better browser, and has the extensions I can't live without.

    Well, so far anyway, and I'm really expecting the slow startup to be fixed in 4-final.



  • @Brother Laz said:

    blurry text
     

    Whu?



  • @dhromed said:

    I stick with FFX because it's the better browser, and has the extensions I can't live without.

    Well, so far anyway, and I'm really expecting the slow startup to be fixed in 4-final.

    Which extensions?



  •  I can't live without FireBug.  Sure, I know it's out for Chrome, but last time I checked it was only partially functional.



  • Firebug, Stylish, TabKit and Greasemonkey.

    There's a version of Stylish for Chrome, but it's not as good and Chrome's addon-UI is a pile of shit, being unstyled Times New Roman pages. They just forgot about it, it seems.

    I tried to switch to Chrome, because yeah, it's speedy. It has equivalents of almosty every feature I use, so it's an easy switch, you'd say. Problem is that they're almost all just a bit suckier than Firefox'.



  • They should just go the same route as slackware did a few years ago and just skip a few version if they feel the need to "catch up" in terms of version numbering.



  • I hate Chromium's tabs, and last time I checked Opera still had no way of focusing the next tab to the left on tab close (for that matter, the way Chromium does it sometimes means the tab to the right is shown for a split second and then it switches).

    I should take another look at Midori and Kaze sometime soon and re-catalog why I don't use them except on my laptop.

    I've been using Midori a lot lately on my phone. Starts up quicker than Fennec and seems easier to work with than MicroB. Opera starts up quickly too, though. Maybe I'll try it out some more as well.

    ...Of course, I'm writing this from a Webkit tab in Lunascape.



  • @dhromed said:

    Firebug, Stylish, TabKit and Greasemonkey.

    There's a version of Stylish for Chrome, but it's not as good and Chrome's addon-UI is a pile of shit, being unstyled Times New Roman pages. They just forgot about it, it seems.

    I tried to switch to Chrome, because yeah, it's speedy. It has equivalents of almosty every feature I use, so it's an easy switch, you'd say. Problem is that they're almost all just a bit suckier than Firefox'.

    • Firebug Lite
    • Stylish (same developers)
    • Greasemonkey script are automatically supported on Chrome



      Come to the dark side, we have cookies


  • @XIU said:

    - Firebug Lite
    - Stylish (same developers)
    - Greasemonkey script are automatically supported on Chrome

    Come to the dark side, we have cookies
     

    So that's basically the "same but slightly inferior" problem I described.

    PS.

    Your FB Lite link links to Stylish.



  • @dhromed said:

    @XIU said:

    - Firebug Lite

    • Stylish (same developers)
    • Greasemonkey script are automatically supported on Chrome



      Come to the dark side, we have cookies
     

    So that's basically the "same but slightly inferior" problem I described.

    PS.

    Your FB Lite link links to Stylish.

    Meh :P



  •  I use Opera at home (I'm comfortable enough with its feature set), but Firefox at work, because Firefox is the only browser that works with the demonic proxy here.  It intercepts SSL requests, opens them up, and re-encrypts them, which obviously causes certificate issues that cause the other browsers issues.  It is the most evil proxy ever to be configured, and I have considered quitting for no other reason than not having to deal with it anymore.



  • @@Deprecated said:

     I can't live without FireBug.  Sure, I know it's out for Chrome, but last time I checked it was only partially functional.

    What is it that Firebug is doing for you that Chrome's built-in dev tools are not? (Or IE8's built-ins, for that matter?)

    Personally, my script has to work on all browsers, so I use the JS debuggers of each browser. They're all pretty much the same.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    5.  "Engineering bandwidth" -- who talks like that?
    So, is there also "Engineering latency"? And what's the unit? GigaEngineers per second?

    @XIU said:

    - Greasemonkey script are automatically supported on Chrome
    Yeah, except the 15% of scripts that use cross-domain XHR - which unfortunately are the 15% scripts that are most useful as even greasemonkey's own analysis says...

    @ShatteredArm said:

    I use Opera at home (I'm comfortable enough with its feature set), but Firefox at work, because Firefox is the only browser that works with the demonic proxy here.  It intercepts SSL requests, opens them up, and re-encrypts them, which obviously causes certificate issues that cause the other browsers issues.  It is the most evil proxy ever to be configured, and I have considered quitting for no other reason than not having to deal with it anymore.
    You'll have fun with another of FF4's new features then, the strict transport security header - which, among other (more useful) things, allows websites to remove the "I know what I am doing" option, supposedly to make things "saver"...



  • @PSWorx said:

    @ShatteredArm said:

    I use Opera at home (I'm comfortable enough with its feature set), but Firefox at work, because Firefox is the only browser that works with the demonic proxy here.  It intercepts SSL requests, opens them up, and re-encrypts them, which obviously causes certificate issues that cause the other browsers issues.  It is the most evil proxy ever to be configured, and I have considered quitting for no other reason than not having to deal with it anymore.
    You'll have fun with another of FF4's new features then, the strict transport security header - which, among other (more useful) things, allows websites to remove the "I know what I am doing" option, supposedly to make things "saver"...

     

    In our specific implementation, the usual certificate error page has an “add exception” button for users who “know what they’re doing.” If the connection being stopped is for an HSTS host, that button won’t be there.

    So, let me get this straight... It should be up to the server you are accessing whether you are allowed to make the request with an invalid cert?  Makes sense.



  • @Brother Laz said:

    Another side-effect of said monolithic process is that when you start a new session with a few (50) open tabs you're staring at a desktop wallpaper depicting a website for a while until /EVERY/ tab has loaded.
     

    Try installing [url=https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/bartab/]BarTab[/url].  It will restore your previous tabs on startup but not actually load them until you select them.  Cuts startup time to a minimum.  I haven't tried FF4.0 yet but it works like a charm on 3.6.  

    In fact, I seem to remember reading that this feature was going to be incorporated in 4.0 -- guess it didn't make it?



  • @cconroy said:

    In fact, I seem to remember reading that this feature was going to be incorporated in 4.0 -- guess it didn't make it?

    I almost think beta11 loads the tabs from cache on startup instead of reloading them from the web (like Opera had been doing some years back). I might be wrong though.



  • @cconroy said:

    In fact, I seem to remember reading that this feature was going to be incorporated in 4.0 -- guess it didn't make it?

    It's scheduled for Beta 14.



  • @PSWorx said:

    @XIU said:
    - Greasemonkey script are automatically supported on Chrome
    Yeah, except the 15% of scripts that use cross-domain XHR - which unfortunately are the 15% scripts that are most useful as even greasemonkey's own analysis says...

    They say that there are a few scripts that are usefull and by nature need that feature. They don't say most usefull and certainly say that "the top 15% usefull scripts use XHR".



    Personally I use 3 GM extentions in Chrome and all work without a hitch. Ever since there were alternatives for my FF extentions (about 6 months ago) I switched over because I got sick of FF bloatedness, and am still a bit amazed how fast Chrome is in comparison to FF.

    (I need to use FF when I want to see a flash vid fullscreen on my second monitor since I have flash 10.2 beta is needed for that and it's a hassle to replace Chrome's built-in 10.1)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What is it that Firebug is doing for you that Chrome's built-in dev tools are not? (Or IE8's built-ins, for that matter?).





    he's freeing his mind from the corporate tyranny of M$ and googol...
    or change is scary and hard.
    for a group of people that complain when users are scared of computers you guys really bitch when the world stops caring about your favorite piece of crapware.



  • @ShatteredArm said:

    So, let me get this straight... It should be up to the server you are accessing whether you are allowed to make the request with an invalid cert?  Makes sense.

     

    Well, it seems to be an open problem how to design decent UIs for secure connections. The current general consensus is apparently "the more it annoys its users, the more secure it must be". So this is probably the logical next step. In FF5, expect another header to be added that will cause firefox to call the cops and arrest you should you encounter a self-signed certificate.



  • Mozilla have lost their mind.

     Who is "their" and why do they have only one mind? And did you forget the "s" on "Mozilla"? Would you please translate your sentence into proper English for me? It's the only language I know. Thanks.



  • @SilentRunner said:

    And did you forget the "s" on "Mozilla"?

    Smozilla?



  •  @SilentRunner said:

    Mozilla have lost their mind.

     Who is "their" and why do they have only one mind? And did you forget the "s" on "Mozilla"? Would you please translate your sentence into proper English for me? It's the only language I know. Thanks.

    So, you understand American English but not the Queen's English?

    Here you go, translated into American English and with a more specific subject:

    Mozilla Corp. has lost its mind.



  • Just discovered another nice one today.  I haven't been able to figure out exactly when they implemented this one but I think it may have been fairly recently.  There was a Youtube video I wanted to save, and although there are programs and Firefox extensions which claim to do this for you I've never gotten them to work.  Since this is something I rarely do it's easier to just pull the file out of the browser cache.

    So today I discover that they changed the layout of the browser cache.  Instead of all the files being in a single folder, somebody decided that each file needs to be in its own separate folder.  At the time I was trying to find the Youtube file in question, the cache folder had 16 subfolders numbered 0 to F and then various subfolders under each one of those, in no immediately obvious order or numbering sequence.  All total there were 227 folders, each containing exactly one file.  What fun.



  • @PSWorx said:

    You'll have fun with another of FF4's new features then, the strict transport security header - which, among other (more useful) things, allows websites to remove the "I know what I am doing" option, supposedly to make things "saver"...
     

    Wait . . . . What?

    HSTS means more than just “access me over https in the future”. It also requires the browser to drop the connection with *no recourse* if an invalid cert is encountered. This means if mozilla.org is an HSTS host, not only will HTTPS connections be automatic, but any self-signed, expired, or otherwise erroneous certificate will cause the connection to drop and the users won’t be presented with a prompt to get around the blockage.

    That should turn out well.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    That should turn out well.

     

    What is really funny is that, since you need an active SSL connection to actually get a web page into HSTS mode, any problem with certificates will likely lead to a user experience like the following:

    (User starts at non-encrypted version of mybank.com)

    User: doo dee doo, surfing at mybank.com... what's that? "switch to secure version"? I think I'll better do that...

    (browser contacts https://mybank.com. There is a certificate error, but since the browser has no HSTS information, it shows the old-fashioned warning.)

    User: uh, what the heck? Oh, that warning again. My admin says I can simply override that. Alright... exception... yes, I know what I'm doing... yes... continue... YES... come on you goddamn piece of... YES... finally...

    (browser now has an exception stored and opens up a connection despite the cert error and does an HTTP request. But the response contains an HSTS header, so the browser immediately aborts and directs the user back to the warning. Now without override button.)

    User: what the...? Ok, that didn't work. Fine, let's do it again. Exception... what? Where is the exception button? WTF?

    (After a minute of frantic scrolling and looking, the user gives up.)

    User: Something is broken here. Alright, then I'll use the unencrypted version until they fixed that.

    (User tries to navigate back to http://mybank.com where he started. But HSTS is now active and promptly directs him back to the encrypted version. Where he is greeted with the same message again.)

    User: WTF? I can't get back! What is happening here? Help! Help!

    (Panicking helpdesk call ensues.)



  • @PSWorx said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    That should turn out well.

     

    What is really funny is that, since you need an active SSL connection to actually get a web page into HSTS mode, any problem with certificates will likely lead to a user experience like the following:

    (User starts at non-encrypted version of mybank.com)

    User: doo dee doo, surfing at mybank.com... what's that? "switch to secure version"? I think I'll better do that...

    (browser contacts https://mybank.com. There is a certificate error, but since the browser has no HSTS information, it shows the old-fashioned warning.)

    User: uh, what the heck? Oh, that warning again. My admin says I can simply override that. Alright... exception... yes, I know what I'm doing... yes... continue... YES... come on you goddamn piece of... YES... finally...

    (browser now has an exception stored and opens up a connection despite the cert error and does an HTTP request. But the response contains an HSTS header, so the browser immediately aborts and directs the user back to the warning. Now without override button.)

    User: what the...? Ok, that didn't work. Fine, let's do it again. Exception... what? Where is the exception button? WTF?

    (After a minute of frantic scrolling and looking, the user gives up.)

    User: Something is broken here. Alright, then I'll use the unencrypted version until they fixed that.

    (User tries to navigate back to http://mybank.com where he started. But HSTS is now active and promptly directs him back to the encrypted version. Where he is greeted with the same message again.)

    User: WTF? I can't get back! What is happening here? Help! Help!

    (Panicking helpdesk call ensues.)

    Well, that's the bank's fault. If you're using HSTS, make sure that you're actually using a valid certificate! (And a bank requiring users to add an exception is TRWTF, anyway.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    What is it that Firebug is doing for you that Chrome's built-in dev tools are not? (Or IE8's built-ins, for that matter?)

    You don't do any DOM exploring or CSS viewing in them inspectors, do you?

    Firebug has:

    - better element highlight when you hover over the item in the tree. By far. Webkit doesn't distinguish colors of between box, margin, border and padding and the display is generally suck, and IE isn't even trying with it flimsy blue outline.
    - better property editing & autocomplete
    - better tree editing
    - better access to all information pertinent to an element
    - far better network monitor
    - way better console output

    That said, I'm not going to rail on Chrome's inspector, because it's just fine and has a few advanatges over FB of its own. I barely use it, so I'm not hip to them all. It still feels limited compared to the wealth of information that FB gives you access to.

    IE8's devbar is a poor excuse for an inspector. It gets the job done, mostly, so it's better than nothing.

     @blakeyrat said:

    Personally, my script has to work on all browsers, so I use the JS debuggers of each browser. They're all pretty much the same.

    You may notice that I left out the debugger in my Firebug Advantages list. That's because I don't know if it's better or worse; I barely ever use it, so I withhold judgement. Breakpoints in FB sometimes give me shit, though, so it's not a totally neutral/positive experience.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    So today I discover that they changed the layout of the browser cache.  Instead of all the files being in a single folder, somebody decided that each file needs to be in its own separate folder.  At the time I was trying to find the Youtube file in question, the cache folder had 16 subfolders numbered 0 to F and then various subfolders under each one of those, in no immediately obvious order or numbering sequence.  All total there were 227 folders, each containing exactly one file.  What fun.

    Opera did this too so I figured out an easy way to find the file I wanted. To do this open the cache root folder in Explorer and type "size:>large" into the search box, (you can substitute "large" for any other kind of size descriptor, like 20MB). Obviously this only works in Windows Vista and higher. If you're using Linux you can probably find a single line shell command to do this for you.



  • @powerlord said:

     @SilentRunner said:

    Mozilla have lost their mind.

     Who is "their" and why do they have only one mind? And did you forget the "s" on "Mozilla"? Would you please translate your sentence into proper English for me? It's the only language I know. Thanks.

    So, you understand American English but not the Queen's English?

    The Queen's English hasn't been spoken or written in the UK for many, many years. What is spoken there now is called the Queen's British. It's a linguistic fact that when a group is isolated for a long time its language departs from the mainstream. Such is the case of former English speakers in the British Isles. It could also be that Arabic is putting a lot of pressure on the language similar to the pressure it's putting on the British education system. (I hear that Oxford University may soon be renamed Muhammad University of Islam.)

     Unfortunately, some media people in the United States think the British deformation of English is co-o-o-ol and are now in the process of instilling it in the US. But that effort is doomed to fail because the trend is to speak Mexican Spanish in the US where it will soon be the official language in most western states.



  • @dhromed said:

    - better element highlight when you hover over the item in the tree. By far. Webkit doesn't distinguish colors of between box, margin, border and padding and the display is generally suck, and IE isn't even trying with it flimsy blue outline.

    IE8 puts all those measures in one of its tabs instead of displaying it directly on the page. You know this, of course, having actually used it before forming your opinions... I wouldn't dare suggest that you're blindly bashing IE without actually fucking using it! Who would do that in the web developer community? I shudder to think!

    @dhromed said:

    - far better network monitor

    I use an HTTP debugger for debugging HTTP. Why would anybody use Firebug for that? Right tool for the right job!

    @dhromed said:

    - way better console output

    Since I frequently have to see the console of live projects, yet hide the console output from clients, I had to write my own anyway. So this is moot in my case.

    @dhromed said:

    You may notice that I left out the debugger in my Firebug Advantages list. That's because I don't know if it's better or worse; I barely ever use it, so I withhold judgement. Breakpoints in FB sometimes give me shit, though, so it's not a totally neutral/positive experience.

    They "sometimes give you shit?" I did not know Firebug could be used that way!

    Anyway, all I ever use is the JavaScript debugger. CSS stuff is for graphics people on their expensive Apple laptops, wearing ironic t-shirts from the late-80s, eating "fair trade" bran muffins and sipping lattes. (Note: sipping lattes can "sometimes give you shit.")



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I use an HTTP debugger for debugging HTTP.
     

    Good luck debugging HTTPS connections then.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Anyway, all I ever use is the JavaScript debugger. CSS stuff is for graphics people on the-

    Wait, are you saying you use JavaScript for everything normal people would do with CSS? That's insane! I hope I never come across any of your wobsites!



  • @PSWorx said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    I use an HTTP debugger for debugging HTTP.
     

    Good luck debugging HTTPS connections then.

    Thanks! But since Fiddler supports that, I don't need luck.



  • @derula said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Anyway, all I ever use is the JavaScript debugger. CSS stuff is for graphics people on the-

    Wait, are you saying you use JavaScript for everything normal people would do with CSS? That's insane! I hope I never come across any of your wobsites!

    I install analytics on existing websites, generally. Well, that's my job title at least.



  • @Spectre said:

    Well, that's the bank's fault. If you're using HSTS, make sure that you're actually using a valid certificate! (And a bank requiring users to add an exception is TRWTF, anyway.)
     

     Not necessarily.  If you read my original post, the proxy at your WTF company might intercept all SSL traffic and open a new SSL connection between you and the proxy, meaning every single certificate is invalid, no matter what the website does.  The HSTS might make sense for normal connections outside of companies vying for the Benito Mussolini Award for Corporate Authoritarianism.



  • Hey look, I just found out that Firefox 4 is going to pin itself to the Windows 7 taskbar if the user decides to set Firefox as their default browser. Of course, there's no API for this (imagine how easily abused it would be!), which means Firefox is resorting to undocumented hacks to do it.

    (The bugzilla link is broken for me at the moment, but their logic appears to be that since IE is pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar by default, they should be allowed to as well. The problem with this:
    1) IE is only pinned to the taskbar so the user has some visible means of launching a browser (any browser at all)
    2) IE removes itself from the taskbar after you select a default browser in the "browser ballot", even if you select IE)

    So... yeah. Mozilla is trying hard to become the RealNetworks of web browsers.



  •  There are several Firefox-only features I can't give up:

    • tabbed Speed Dial. I work with about a hundred sites, so this is especially useful for people like me; I have these sites grouped by projects and when something goes wrong for any of the clients I'm only 3 clicks away if I want to see. In IE this doesn't exist, in Opera and Chrome there is no tabbing, the only improvement Opera made to its original implementation is a useless and redundant search field.
    • Dynamic RSS/Atom bookmarks - Firefox gives me a list of thread titles, and setting up a new live bookmark is the simplest thing ever. IE 8 shows them either in the "feeds" bookmark folder, or on the favorites bar, which is why having more than 10 RSS feeds is  at the same time is impossible. Opera is completely lost, and proposes subscribing with its mail feature. Chrome hates RSS.

    I use Internet Explorer for Windows Update, I have never figured out the "slices" and can't stand the painfully long 10 seconds needed to open a new tab.

    Chrome has some neat features which don't exist in Firefox, but I use it only as the second browser. The best ones I miss in Firefox are:

    • process separation (in Firefox when Facebook goes apeshit and eats up 800MB of memory I have to restart the whole browser. Not cool, and for some mysterious reason closing can take up to 10 minutes. Easily.)
    • porn mode (private browsing). Firefox has this fucked up completely - you can turn it on or off for EVERYTHING you have currently opened, which "saves" and closes your tabs; unlike you'd expect it to behave and just open a separate window with a different color scheme. Internet Explorer and Chrome got it right. Opera didn't at all. Only Firefox did it the wrong way.
    Yeah.


  • @Kiss me I'm Polish said:

    I use Internet Explorer for Windows Update,

    Always mystified by this one. Windows hasn't used IE for updates in over a decade. It was optional in Windows 2000... I never used IE to update my computer in Windows XP, and IE won't even let you in Vista or Windows 7. Shit, even Windows 98 would pull the critical updates with no involvement from IE. What decade are you living in?

    We need some psychologist to do a study, "why do people think they need IE to update Windows?" I'd really love to see the results of that one.

    (I did love the virus a few years ago that was going to DDoS windowsupdate.com to take down Microsoft's update mechanism. Apparently the virus authors didn't realize that 2000 and XP have built-in updaters. But even dumber, they didn't realize windowsupdate.com was nothing but a redirect to a different site on microsoft.com. All MS had to do to weather the virus attack was separate windowsupdate.com's hosting from their other sites' and temporarily turn off the redirect.)


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    Hey look, I just found out that Firefox 4 is going to pin itself to the Windows 7 taskbar if the user decides to set Firefox as their default browser. Of course, there's no API for this (imagine how easily abused it would be!), which means Firefox is resorting to undocumented hacks to do it.

    I have FF pinned anyway and I've now decided that, just out of fucking spite, I'm not going to be using FF4. 



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Kiss me I'm Polish said:
    I use Internet Explorer for Windows Update,

    Always mystified by this one. Windows hasn't used IE for updates in over a decade. It was optional in Windows 2000... I never used IE to update my computer in Windows XP, and IE won't even let you in Vista or Windows 7. Shit, even Windows 98 would pull the critical updates with no involvement from IE. What decade are you living in?

    We need some psychologist to do a study, "why do people think they need IE to update Windows?" I'd really love to see the results of that one.

    (I did love the virus a few years ago that was going to DDoS windowsupdate.com to take down Microsoft's update mechanism. Apparently the virus authors didn't realize that 2000 and XP have built-in updaters. But even dumber, they didn't realize windowsupdate.com was nothing but a redirect to a different site on microsoft.com. All MS had to do to weather the virus attack was separate windowsupdate.com's hosting from their other sites' and temporarily turn off the redirect.)

    You get only the CRITICAL updates throught the built-in Windows Update. The site has optional software available - .NET framework, newer versions of hardware drivers, patches for MS Office, updates for root certificates etc. Oh, you can even get IE7 and IE8 if you really want to. 

    Hey, it's been there for 10 years! What decade are you from again?



  • @Kiss me I'm Polish said:

    You get only the CRITICAL updates throught the built-in Windows Update.

    In what OS? Windows 2000, maybe. Now you can use it for everything. And have been able to for... oh... about a decade.

    @Kiss me I'm Polish said:

    The site has optional software available - .NET framework, newer versions of hardware drivers, patches for MS Office, updates for root certificates etc. Oh, you can even get IE7 and IE8 if you really want to.

    You mean things like these:


    (Taken directly from my Windows Update control panel; this computer has never been to windowsupdate.com, except perhaps by accident.)

    @Kiss me I'm Polish said:

    Hey, it's been there for 10 years! What decade are you from again?

    Decade KOOL.


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