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Why People Don’t Upgrade Their Browser – Part IV

28 points by mbrubeck 17y ago

po 17y ago
No time to upgrade but they time to fill out a survey? I don't get that. Maybe a prediction of how long an update will take. People might think they need to reboot their machine. I also wonder how many of the people who didn't upgrade and didn't fill out the survey would have said "no time".
- alextgordon 17y ago
  It would also help if they prompted for permission at the end of users' sessions, not at the start. No relaunch necessary and users don't have to wait for an update to install before they can start browsing.
  - Kejistan 17y ago
    That doesn't seem feasible, most people (that I know) leave FF running all the time; or if they do close it the last thing they want is the application taking even longer to shut down because it wants to ask about running some updates. Think about the scene from Office Space. Nagging people while they're trying to do stuff obviously isn't ideal either. So as just about everyone has mentioned: Chrome's silent updates are a big win for convenience. Because should the average user really have to think about keeping their software up to date?
byoung2 17y ago
This explains why people don't upgrade FireFox but I want to know why people don't upgrade from Internet Explorer to a better browser.
mynameishere 17y ago
The awesome bar. Any non-deterministic address bar is infuriating to me. Chrome's is pretty bad. IE is the best out of the modern browsers. Best bet is to stay with an old version of firefox: 2.0 or earlier; you can spoof any naggy sites like youtube by updating the version in about:config's general.useragent.extra.firefox. The day you find any diminished functionality should be very novel.
- Qz 17y ago
  I think you're in the minority on that one.
  - mynameishere 17y ago
    As often happens, everyone is in the minority, http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/files/2010/04/Question-21.png http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/files/2010/04/Question-21.pn...
- goodmitton 17y ago
  You're facing an uphill battle of convincing the HN community when you say "IE is the best out of the modern browsers."
- tokenadult 17y ago
  I didn't like the latest change in how the awesome bar functions, at first, because it was a change, but I've learned by experience to make the awesome bar quite deterministic in what site it will show me first when I type just a few keystrokes. That's an amazing example of machine adaptation to human behavior.
- acg 17y ago
  I can't believe that you select you browser based on the address bar. What about page loading speed, rendering and security? Some of the awesome bar's functionality can be turned-off. For example: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults could be set to zero.
  - jackfoxy 17y ago
    Chrome is my current default @ home, IE8 my current default @work. I keep them both up to date. FF has been my default in the past. It's my business to keep up on our web sites' x-browser compatability, so it's important for me to switch browser from time to time. I got shot down about this on HN in the past, but I'll say it again. The only thing I don't like about Chrome is forcing me into the Omni Bar, and not giving me the CHOICE to have a secondary search gadget for secondary and tertiary search engines (like FF and IE do). The keyword/tab option does not work well for Wikipedia because it does not propery handle spaces in the search string, and even if it did I just like having the secondary search box.
padmanabhan01 17y ago
Main reason: Too frequent updates with little noticeable improvement is a hassle.
- robin_reala 17y ago
  The frequent updates are security patches. You want them to be frequent and not to change things beyond the security issue. There is a definite case for those to be a silent install though.
  - padmanabhan01 17y ago
    Security is overrated.
  - mattw 17y ago
    I was surprised to find disdain for Chrome's silent updates in the comments of the article. The fact that Chrome silently handles such security updates and never nags me about them was one of the (lesser) reasons I switched away from Firefox--even though Firefox's minor updates are fairly quick and relatively painless, I still found myself annoyed when it kept asking me to install them.
    - _delirium 17y ago
      As long as there's no user-visible changes and it just silently fixes some internal bug, I'm okay with that. I'd be annoyed if anything user-visible changed without Chrome telling me it was upgrading, though. (And the real push-back will probably come if a silent update accidentally breaks things, so I guess there's extra incentive to make sure that doesn't happen.)
    - FlorinAndrei 17y ago
      The disdain is from the nerds. Regular users will never complain about that.
    - lotharbot 17y ago
      I love the idea of automatic background updates, but I would prefer to know when they've happened. At least pop up a message the next time I restart the browser. (Steam's update model is fantastic.) The thing I hate about silent updates is that if they cause something to break, I have no indication that a browser update is a possible culprit. If I am informed of an update and then find that something has stopped working, I at least have a starting point for resolving the issue.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
mhb 17y ago
I'm surprised my reason isn't more common, but maybe it's included in some other category. I want to know which of my add-ons won't work before I install the update.
- moeffju 17y ago
  In my experience, Firefox has been checking add-on compatibility before updating for quite a while now. Have you tried it recently?
  - mhb 17y ago
    I don't understand how to benefit from their checking. Are you saying I should expect all my add-ons to work or that there is a place where they say which add-ons will work? Or does the installer give a warning before installing about which add-ons won't work?
    - moeffju 17y ago
      The updater checks whether your add-ons will be compatible with the version that is to be installed. You can then cancel the upgrade if you want.
j_baker 17y ago
The most important reason seems to just be a variation of the status quo bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias
tvon 17y ago
People are scared to touch their computers, that's why they don't upgrade anything.
FlorinAndrei 17y ago
That's a dangerous article for Mozilla to publish. You know, what with Chrome gaining ground and whatnot...
crististm 17y ago
Did anybody notice that Firefox 3.6 and later forgets address bar history?
jamesbritt 17y ago
For me, it's because upgrades are not simply "what you have now, but incrementally and linearly improved", but a mixture of "stuff you liked, now gone", "some things fixed", "some things now broken", "new cool features", and "crap you don't want but now have to live with". For example, in FF2 all the profile stuff was text. I could easily copy cookies form one machine to another, or tweak some settings file. Now I have some sqlite db files in there that are much less easy to hack on. I've had useful add-ons stop working in FF3 as well. And I haven't seen any real improvements in FF3 or FF2. Doesn't seem any better with memory, doesn't seem to crash less often. I've considered making Chrome my main browser, but until recently (as far as I know) it broke some essential command line behaviour: when I start an app from the CL I want it to always open a new instance. I do not want a new tab in an existing instance. Especially if that existing instance is on some other desktop. But Chrome is still lacking some of the add-ons I like for Firefox (though that's improving as well). Dear LazyWeb: Is there something like Ruby Version Manager, but for browsers?
johnl 17y ago
I know when I upgrade applications I want to hesitate since some previous upgrades have changed the user interface significantly enough that it does take a while to "relearn" the interface. Mozilla might try to query those who have upgraded to show that "down time" is at a minimum, if seen at all, and one can contribute to the growth of the browser by doing so.
shalmanese 17y ago
Here's what I think would be ideal from a User Experience perspective: Firefox silently prepares the update as soon as it's received but keeps the old files around. At either the start or end of the browsing session, it asks whether you would like it to update or not and, if you do, all it has to do is flip a bit switch and you're updated. The major pain in updating is that the point where I'm starting my browser, I'm usually in the middle of doing something. Interrupting that by 30 seconds is not my idea of fun.

28 points by mbrubeck 17y ago

po 17y ago

No time to upgrade but they time to fill out a survey? I don't get that. Maybe a prediction of how long an update will take. People might think they need to reboot their machine. I also wonder how many of the people who didn't upgrade and didn't fill out the survey would have said "no time".

alextgordon 17y ago
It would also help if they prompted for permission at the end of users' sessions, not at the start. No relaunch necessary and users don't have to wait for an update to install before they can start browsing.
- Kejistan 17y ago
  That doesn't seem feasible, most people (that I know) leave FF running all the time; or if they do close it the last thing they want is the application taking even longer to shut down because it wants to ask about running some updates. Think about the scene from Office Space. Nagging people while they're trying to do stuff obviously isn't ideal either. So as just about everyone has mentioned: Chrome's silent updates are a big win for convenience. Because should the average user really have to think about keeping their software up to date?

byoung2 17y ago

This explains why people don't upgrade FireFox but I want to know why people don't upgrade from Internet Explorer to a better browser.

mynameishere 17y ago

The awesome bar. Any non-deterministic address bar is infuriating to me. Chrome's is pretty bad. IE is the best out of the modern browsers. Best bet is to stay with an old version of firefox: 2.0 or earlier; you can spoof any naggy sites like youtube by updating the version in about:config's general.useragent.extra.firefox. The day you find any diminished functionality should be very novel.

Qz 17y ago
I think you're in the minority on that one.
- mynameishere 17y ago
  As often happens, everyone is in the minority, http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/files/2010/04/Question-21.png http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/files/2010/04/Question-21.pn...
goodmitton 17y ago
You're facing an uphill battle of convincing the HN community when you say "IE is the best out of the modern browsers."
tokenadult 17y ago
I didn't like the latest change in how the awesome bar functions, at first, because it was a change, but I've learned by experience to make the awesome bar quite deterministic in what site it will show me first when I type just a few keystrokes. That's an amazing example of machine adaptation to human behavior.
acg 17y ago
I can't believe that you select you browser based on the address bar. What about page loading speed, rendering and security? Some of the awesome bar's functionality can be turned-off. For example: browser.urlbar.maxRichResults could be set to zero.
- jackfoxy 17y ago
  Chrome is my current default @ home, IE8 my current default @work. I keep them both up to date. FF has been my default in the past. It's my business to keep up on our web sites' x-browser compatability, so it's important for me to switch browser from time to time. I got shot down about this on HN in the past, but I'll say it again. The only thing I don't like about Chrome is forcing me into the Omni Bar, and not giving me the CHOICE to have a secondary search gadget for secondary and tertiary search engines (like FF and IE do). The keyword/tab option does not work well for Wikipedia because it does not propery handle spaces in the search string, and even if it did I just like having the secondary search box.

padmanabhan01 17y ago

Main reason: Too frequent updates with little noticeable improvement is a hassle.

robin_reala 17y ago
The frequent updates are security patches. You want them to be frequent and not to change things beyond the security issue. There is a definite case for those to be a silent install though.
- padmanabhan01 17y ago
  Security is overrated.
- mattw 17y ago
  I was surprised to find disdain for Chrome's silent updates in the comments of the article. The fact that Chrome silently handles such security updates and never nags me about them was one of the (lesser) reasons I switched away from Firefox--even though Firefox's minor updates are fairly quick and relatively painless, I still found myself annoyed when it kept asking me to install them.
  - _delirium 17y ago
    As long as there's no user-visible changes and it just silently fixes some internal bug, I'm okay with that. I'd be annoyed if anything user-visible changed without Chrome telling me it was upgrading, though. (And the real push-back will probably come if a silent update accidentally breaks things, so I guess there's extra incentive to make sure that doesn't happen.)
  - FlorinAndrei 17y ago
    The disdain is from the nerds. Regular users will never complain about that.
  - lotharbot 17y ago
    I love the idea of automatic background updates, but I would prefer to know when they've happened. At least pop up a message the next time I restart the browser. (Steam's update model is fantastic.) The thing I hate about silent updates is that if they cause something to break, I have no indication that a browser update is a possible culprit. If I am informed of an update and then find that something has stopped working, I at least have a starting point for resolving the issue.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

mhb 17y ago

I'm surprised my reason isn't more common, but maybe it's included in some other category. I want to know which of my add-ons won't work before I install the update.

moeffju 17y ago
In my experience, Firefox has been checking add-on compatibility before updating for quite a while now. Have you tried it recently?
- mhb 17y ago
  I don't understand how to benefit from their checking. Are you saying I should expect all my add-ons to work or that there is a place where they say which add-ons will work? Or does the installer give a warning before installing about which add-ons won't work?
  - moeffju 17y ago
    The updater checks whether your add-ons will be compatible with the version that is to be installed. You can then cancel the upgrade if you want.

j_baker 17y ago

The most important reason seems to just be a variation of the status quo bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias

tvon 17y ago

People are scared to touch their computers, that's why they don't upgrade anything.

FlorinAndrei 17y ago

That's a dangerous article for Mozilla to publish. You know, what with Chrome gaining ground and whatnot...

crististm 17y ago

Did anybody notice that Firefox 3.6 and later forgets address bar history?

jamesbritt 17y ago

For me, it's because upgrades are not simply "what you have now, but incrementally and linearly improved", but a mixture of "stuff you liked, now gone", "some things fixed", "some things now broken", "new cool features", and "crap you don't want but now have to live with". For example, in FF2 all the profile stuff was text. I could easily copy cookies form one machine to another, or tweak some settings file. Now I have some sqlite db files in there that are much less easy to hack on. I've had useful add-ons stop working in FF3 as well. And I haven't seen any real improvements in FF3 or FF2. Doesn't seem any better with memory, doesn't seem to crash less often. I've considered making Chrome my main browser, but until recently (as far as I know) it broke some essential command line behaviour: when I start an app from the CL I want it to always open a new instance. I do not want a new tab in an existing instance. Especially if that existing instance is on some other desktop. But Chrome is still lacking some of the add-ons I like for Firefox (though that's improving as well). Dear LazyWeb: Is there something like Ruby Version Manager, but for browsers?

johnl 17y ago

I know when I upgrade applications I want to hesitate since some previous upgrades have changed the user interface significantly enough that it does take a while to "relearn" the interface. Mozilla might try to query those who have upgraded to show that "down time" is at a minimum, if seen at all, and one can contribute to the growth of the browser by doing so.

shalmanese 17y ago

Here's what I think would be ideal from a User Experience perspective: Firefox silently prepares the update as soon as it's received but keeps the old files around. At either the start or end of the browsing session, it asks whether you would like it to update or not and, if you do, all it has to do is flip a bit switch and you're updated. The major pain in updating is that the point where I'm starting my browser, I'm usually in the middle of doing something. Interrupting that by 30 seconds is not my idea of fun.