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Firefox 17 releasedFirefox 17 releasedPosted Nov 20, 2012 22:30 UTC (Tue) by puffin (subscriber, #86572)Parent article: Firefox 17 released
How can we get them to stop this overactive annoying release schedule stupidity? It's a horrible 21st century plague and blight to have this incessant drip feed of minor and pointless updates to Firefox and most/all apps in general it seems. Fair enough, and good, if you're on a beta/testing/etc update stream, but this is past ridiculous now for "Released" software. This is not productive, or user friendly.
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Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 20, 2012 22:41 UTC (Tue) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
How so? Hasn't release early, release often been long since considered to be good practice? If you want a release with a longer support period, you might want to opt for the ESR releases.
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 0:23 UTC (Wed) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] Users of Firefox Mobile on Android 4.2 hae been hanging out for this release as the previous version continually crashed. So not a "pointless update" for Nexus 7 users.
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 0:55 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
people want bugfixes
people want new features
people want changes that decrease memory useage (arguably bugfixes, but only arguably)
If you don't want any of this stuff, you don't need to upgrade and can just ignore these releases
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 1:54 UTC (Wed) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link]
For values of "ignore these releases" which are equal to "click remind me again later" every day, for each frequently released auto-prompting bit of software.
You're right that people want bugfixes, decreased memory usage, etc. But they may or may not want the assortment of other changes that come bundled with them, plus potentially being forced to debug "$FOO changed, so now $BAR doesn't work with it any longer" type interactions on a regular basis. (The ESR style model, plus a rolling release, is arguably the solution to these two use cases. But at least for Mozilla the ESR version seems to be a "please don't run this version" release.)
Ewen
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 7:44 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
taking a quick look in about:config (and doing no other research), it appears that there are probably several ways to disable the update
likely keys include
app.update.enabled
app.update.interval
app.update.mode (would need to look at the code to find what values other than '1' do)
app.update.url (if it's looking the wrong place for an upgrade, it won't find anything to upgrade to. you could even point this at a system you manage so that you get the benefits of auto-updating at the client, but on your schedule)
I would expect that a google search, or a search of the mozilla forums/lists would give you more concrete answers.
Personally, I run the Aurora version everywhere. It tries to update daily and I just ignore the suggestion until I feel like doing so.
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 22, 2012 5:20 UTC (Thu) by cpeterso (guest, #305) [Link]
If you toggle the about:config pref app.update.silent, then Firefox will download updates but it won't pop up the annoying "Restart Now/Later" dialog. The next time you restart Firefox, it will be updated.
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 2:37 UTC (Wed) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]
You forgot the most important, which is that people need security fixes. People who are running old browsers are, like unvaccinated children, disease vectors who are threats not just to themselves but to others.
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 7:53 UTC (Wed) by bernie (guest, #87956) [Link] If you don't want rapid updates you can try Firefox ESR, which updates roughly annually. Firefox 10 ESR was the first; Firefox 17 ESR is the second such release.
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 15:02 UTC (Wed) by Lou57 (guest, #12083) [Link] The ESR program updates roughly on par with Firefox. I deploy ESR at work and the standard release at home. This is by design. I am glad for the bug and security fixes.http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ So the frequency isn't really any different, but I have some level of confidence that I am not going to have to go through the re-education process for all my users by staying on ESR. It looks like what it is for a longer period. The constant updates are essentially identical.
Firefox 17 released Posted Nov 21, 2012 10:10 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I also use Firefox under Microsoft Windows. After seeing this LWN story I noticed that Firefox was already at version 17.
Why do you get annoyed by this?
app.update.silent Posted Nov 22, 2012 5:19 UTC (Thu) by cpeterso (guest, #305) [Link]
If you toggle the about:config pref app.update.silent, then Firefox will download updates but it won't pop up the annoying "Restart Now/Later" dialog. The next time you restart Firefox, it will be updated.
Windows users automatically get silent updates from Firefox's updater background service.
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