7 ms·

I find it irritating that Mozilla now herds its Firefox users toward the Stub installer, and not the full offline-install redistributable binary. The actual do

I find it irritating that Mozilla now herds its Firefox users toward the Stub installer, and not the full offline-install redistributable binary. The actual download itself is available on the "Systems & Languages" page: > https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ This kind of download is important, when you want to try out a new release, without committing yourself to it. For example, let's say you want to load it up in a VM, without contaminating your normal environment. Googling for things like "firefox standalone redistributable offline install" are a road to nowhere. You sort of just have to "know" that "Download Firefox in your language" means "Download the standalone installer, and not the stub installer". They don't explain this, or make it obvious that this is how you can get a copy of a static binary for predictable results.

kevingadd 13y ago
Large downloads dramatically decrease the number of users who get from a download page to actually running an application, even for web browsers. As a result, any steps you can take to make an install process faster or easier will have a tangible impact on the number of customers you have (and any revenue potential that results). Mozilla, like any other company, has salaries to pay, so they would be foolish to make things worse for the majority of users just to make them slightly easier for theoretical users who want to install in a networkless VM and can't figure out that the stub is a stub. It's a complication, but it eliminates the need for the user to come back after waiting for some dozens of megabytes to download and then interact. You can download a stub near-instantaneously, do things like pick your install directory, and then forget about the install process entirely as it completes without your supervision. That's a good thing, and it isn't possible with offline installers. Browsers like Firefox and Chrome already need network access after installation anyway. They update on a regular basis, and pull down optional packages like Chrome's software WebGL rasterizer, malware blacklists, and Firefox's GPU blacklist. So, in practice, it is already impossible to do a true offline install of either browser; you just may not be aware of the things that are left out of the installer.
- baddox 13y ago
  All your points are valid, but none of them explain why Mozilla couldn't or shouldn't just put an explicit link from the main download page to something like "offline install" or "redistributable install."
- DanBC 13y ago
  > So, in practice, it is already impossible to do a true offline install of either browser; you just may not be aware of the things that are left out of the installer Some people have lousy Internet connections. Those people use things like download managers to help. Download managers don't work with stub installers. A simple link to a true offline installer would help those people. (Torrent is fine too, I guess.)
- qwerty_asdf 13y ago
  > Large downloads dramatically decrease the number of > users who get from a download page to actually running > an application I think I almost entirely agree with you on that. > they would be foolish to make things worse for the > majority of users I'm arguing that this provision (clearly pointing the way toward an offline install) would not make things worse for anyone. > just to make them slightly easier for theoretical users I am not a "theoretical" user. I am an actual user. > ...do things like pick your install directory, and then > forget about the install process entirely as it > completes without your supervision. That's a good thing, > and it isn't possible with offline installers. What?! What are you even talking about? I can pick my install directory with the full installer. I double click the icon, it asks me for the directory, it runs, and then the end. Firefox's installer is dead simple, and believe me, I am HUGELY grateful for that. The only thing easier than the Windows installer is unzipping the Linux tarball into whatever path I choose. I hate Adobe's Flash and PDF installers, and I fucking DESPISE the Java installer, with its damnable bundling of that bloody Ask.com toolbar. Seeing Firefox add these additional layers of background updater services and stub installers deeply worries me, and fills me with concern that as a "salary paying organization" (albeit, ostensibly non-profit), they might veer down an ugly path, go the way of the Sith, and start engaging in questionable behavior that is inappropriate for an open source project. Consider the example of Ubuntu's desktop file search bundling Amazon ads in the results. What if one day, Mozilla decides that in order to pay the bills, it needs to negotiate a deal, whereby all those users with automatic updating enabled should get railroaded with some kind of optional-but-defaulted-to-enabled third party feature suggesting helpful reminders to buy more burritos from Jimbo's Refried Beans Emporium. Just sayin'... > Browsers like Firefox and Chrome already need network > access after installation anyway. Not to do things without my permission, they don't. This "need" business... I disagree. A browser only "needs" to to exactly what I ask it to do, and not much else. I tell the browser what to do, not the other way around. > They update on a regular basis, and pull down optional Optional. That's an important adjective in your sentence. > packages like Chrome's software WebGL rasterizer, > malware blacklists, and Firefox's GPU blacklist. Yeah, the very same blacklist that I'm frequently bypassing to check out all the cool Web GL experiments people post here on HN. I know all about that. Malware blacklists are another concept that I tend to reject as mostly ineffective in achieving their stated goal. We could go round and around with that argument for days. Let's not get started on THAT can of worms. > So, in practice, it is already impossible to do a true > offline install of either browser; you just may not be > aware of the things that are left out of the installer. When you use the word "impossible", I have to just flatly disagree with you. And in general, most of the things that you mentioned are things that I don't care about, and will never be interested in.
smickie 13y ago
If anything "Mozilla herds its Firefox users" into using the auto update system inside Firefox, which is very convenient and helpful. You're talking about a very small number of people who will update the way you described. Most Firefox users will update by having Firefox automatically update in the background and then be prompted to restart. I just downloaded the latest version (in my language) by going to 'About Firefox' and hitting the update button.
lxt 13y ago
The stub itself pulls down the full installer, and you can always get that from download/FTP if needed. The intention is to provide a better download experience: there was a gap between the number of people who begin downloading Firefox (counted via hits on download.m.o), and the ones who open it for the first time (counted via hits on the firstrun page). The stub installer is intended to address this. It also checksums the full file to make sure you're getting what you think you're getting. (Disclaimers: I work for Mozilla, and am responsible for download.mozilla.org among other behind the scenes web things. I don't work on the installers, but we had to change the download scripts to support the stub. I do not speak for Mozilla.)
comex 13y ago
Do you really want to test out a new release of a web browser on a VM without an Internet connection? It seems like you would be missing out on a lot...
lips 13y ago
As I've had to rollback, I just keep this page in my pinboard account: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
ck2 13y ago
You can get all the full installer files on the ftp.
forgottenpass 13y ago
I find it irritating that Mozilla now herds its Firefox users toward the Stub installer, and not the full offline-install redistributable binary. It makes sense though. The modern browser is epitome of "the user is always online, and should always receive and run the latest version of code on the fly" execution model. Why not apply those assumptions to the execution environment too?
null_ptr 13y ago
I think the stub is for an improved experience for the average user with slow internet access. You're likelier to download and run a 1MB file and then wait for the install to finish, than you are to wait for a 25MB file to finish downloading in the first place. (I wonder if they push the stub so as to collect more (system) information without having to say that it's Firefox itself that's collecting that information.)
- Yoric 13y ago
  > I wonder if they push the stub so as to collect more (system) information without having to say that it's Firefox itself that's collecting that information. That sounds rather unlikely.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    Should be not too hard to verify.
- kunai 13y ago
  Yeah, that is if you have dial-up. Even the slowest DSL is enough for 768KBps.
  - Yoric 13y ago
    That really depends on the country you live in.
- qwerty_asdf 13y ago
  I think it's mostly a tactic to mitigate, prevent, defend against denial of service, since the Mozilla user base is absolutely gigantic. My suspicion is that it's essentially a "security through obscurity" tactic, so that the majority of users are left with no choice but the "smart" installer, which offers greater control for load balancing heavy duty traffic during peak download periods. See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5613152 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5613152
  - 13y ago
untog 13y ago
For example, let's say you want to load it up in a VM You've just excluded >95% of Firefox users. Those that do use a VM will know how to get hold of the full installer. If they'd stop making full installs, I would be annoyed. But they're just optimising for the most common use cases.
- qwerty_asdf 13y ago
  I know. I know. Believe me, I know. That detail is not lost on me. My complaint is simply that it's hard to find, and for those who want it, there's no real road map or sign postings for where to get it.
  - pasbesoin 13y ago
    Preface: I wrote the following from a more general perspective. Perhaps Mozilla can and will speak to the specific changes under discussion in this thread (e.g. keeping the majority of "non-technical" users on the right/current release). A bit like the so-called "Chromification" of the UI: I don't want to see too much "power" obscured or sacrificed for the sake of usability. Keep things sane, also, for the "power users". ---- When I see patterns like this, too often as I look further, I become convinced they are deliberate. I suppose one can argue as to motive and intent. Nonetheless, they seem to be forcing all users toward a more dependent and opaque pattern. Therefore, I consider them "dark patterns". If you want to label that as my personal perspective ("you're weird"), then so be it. If say 5% of your users want a stand-alone installation package, is that too low to add the description and/or provide a link to "stand-alone installer"? Is it really going to destroy usability if you do so? And that's where, once again, I -- in my opinion -- start to bump up against today's "designers". Where pages and everything else have to be "streamlined" to the point of excluding any and all minority usage patterns. "The web" used to be about choice. TIMTOWTDI. Some of us have atypical patterns, sometimes for good reason. In my opinion, that diversity breeds robustness. Things get examined from different angles. And no single pattern becomes irreplaceable.
    - kevingadd 13y ago
Surio 13y ago
Super annoying, yes! I completely agree with you. It's not just Firefox being the culprit here though... .NET is the same, and so is Chrome, and the list can grow like a mayor's coat-tails! Also, here's a genuine usecase for a truly offline installer... What if you are the "resident software/pc maintainer" of your extended family.... In such a case, would it not make better sense to have one complete download, then copy it into a pen drive, and install it on every machine, without spending 30 mins to an hour on every machine, doing a download+install for every single one! The rationale of an online installer might be justified as some of the replies indeed seem to do, but, I think that there is something fundamentally flawed/wrong with having to first "download an installer", only to have it "download the application" again! I mean, what the hell!? EDIT: Also, the speed of these release cycles (not just Mozilla, but other software too!) are getting old and tired to keep up with, TBH...
- acdha 13y ago
  The automatic updater takes care of all of the use-cases you mentioned better – why waste time manually copying files around when your relatives could be running the update days before you make it over with that thumb drive? That said, they do make the full installers easily available (google “Firefox offline installer”) should you need to update a ton of computers behind a slow connection.
  - Surio 13y ago
    In case, you missed it, the moot point in the parent thread as well as my agreement is this: "an offline installer should be a de-facto proviso, rather than being buried somewhere else." In other words, The fundamental issue in this rant of course is, "Why the hell should I do all that? Make it available in the front page!" For sure, lycos/ddg/ask-jeeves/bing "Firefox offline installer" is an option that is not lost on us luddites :). But did you also notice the parent comment: "Googling for things like "firefox standalone redistributable offline install" are a road to nowhere"? ;)
    - acdha 13y ago
      > he fundamental issue in this rant of course is, "Why the hell should I do all that? Make it available in the front page!" They could make it more obvious but, really, the audience for that page doesn't really include people who are familiar with technical issues and have made the calculation that it would be faster to download the full thing & copy it around. > But did you also notice the parent comment: "Googling for things like "firefox standalone redistributable offline install" are a road to nowhere"? ;) I did – and part of the point is that that's an unnecessarily complex query. Removing any of the redundant words (e.g. "firefox standalone installer", "firefox offline install") produces the correct result as the first hit. ("redistributable" appears to be the problem as that term hits a bunch of spam download sites) In other words, that search query was itself an attempt to micro-optimize something which turned out to be unnecessary – rather like the entire post.
mverwijs 13y ago
Or: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
- kamjam 13y ago
  But that's so much hassle, I have to click on the link and then navigate a whole bunch of folders, and possibly know what version and language I need! </sarc> Users of VMs are more than likely power users at the very least, and if you want to test different versions then you should probably also be testing beta and even nightly. I don't think a full exe just to install in your VM really needs to be "homepage" visible.
josefresco 13y ago
Alternatively, you could wait for the folks over at PortableApps to update: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
- qwerty_asdf 13y ago
  Uh, no thanks. That site does not readily provide hashes for their binaries (MD5, SHA512, whatever), and the page is smeared with ads. There's no way to know if the site is trustworthy. And, anyway, where would I get the trustworthy hashes? They'd need to be communicated to me, directly from the horse's mouth. I'd need to visit ftp.firefox.com, to find out what the correct hashes are in the first place, and then check them against the binary download I receive from your site. The link you should have provided was: http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Ed./ http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%2... Version 25 isn't listed there yet. All of this is even less convenient than digging for and deciphering the meaning of Firefox's official downloads.
  - lelandbatey 13y ago
    Umm... Hm. I'm seeing just one ad on that page (a very conservatively placed Google AdSense ad): http://puu.sh/530fg.png http://puu.sh/530fg.png Also, I see the hash right there on the page: http://puu.sh/530kX.png http://puu.sh/530kX.png
  - Surio 13y ago
    I think you literally jumped the gun with your assessment of portableapps platform. :) Take a look again over the weekend. They are completely FOSS and all their bundling and bundled packages are transparent. The entire project is voluntary, and it usually takes a day or two from the official release dates, before the volunteers bundle, test, and release the portable application to the general users.
- Surio 13y ago
  This! I wanted to mention this, but since you already mentioned it, I will simply add my comments to yours.... The concept of PortableApps has been simply amazing! (FWIW, I donate to this project too, it's been really worthwhile having the platform). I have begun to adopt this mechanism for some of my software maintenance strategy. Nowadays, I test the latest version of the updated "PortableApp" on my local copy on my machine first, and if all works well post-update, I ask others to choose the update. Else I simply tell them to uncheck the update until I can confirm that existing functionality remains unbroken. :)
bearbin 13y ago
I'm getting the full version download. It might just be location (UK) or maybe random. I don't know. Edit: It's probably just that I'm using Linux.
- jryans 13y ago
  Yeah, the stub installer only applies to Windows. Mac and Linux users are always given a full binary.
sp332 13y ago
Defaulting to the stub is probably a security decision, so you don't end up installing the same old security holes every time you run an out-of-date installer. But they could probably make the full install easier to find for people who want it.

kevingadd 13y ago

Large downloads dramatically decrease the number of users who get from a download page to actually running an application, even for web browsers. As a result, any steps you can take to make an install process faster or easier will have a tangible impact on the number of customers you have (and any revenue potential that results). Mozilla, like any other company, has salaries to pay, so they would be foolish to make things worse for the majority of users just to make them slightly easier for theoretical users who want to install in a networkless VM and can't figure out that the stub is a stub. It's a complication, but it eliminates the need for the user to come back after waiting for some dozens of megabytes to download and then interact. You can download a stub near-instantaneously, do things like pick your install directory, and then forget about the install process entirely as it completes without your supervision. That's a good thing, and it isn't possible with offline installers. Browsers like Firefox and Chrome already need network access after installation anyway. They update on a regular basis, and pull down optional packages like Chrome's software WebGL rasterizer, malware blacklists, and Firefox's GPU blacklist. So, in practice, it is already impossible to do a true offline install of either browser; you just may not be aware of the things that are left out of the installer.

baddox 13y ago
All your points are valid, but none of them explain why Mozilla couldn't or shouldn't just put an explicit link from the main download page to something like "offline install" or "redistributable install."
DanBC 13y ago
> So, in practice, it is already impossible to do a true offline install of either browser; you just may not be aware of the things that are left out of the installer Some people have lousy Internet connections. Those people use things like download managers to help. Download managers don't work with stub installers. A simple link to a true offline installer would help those people. (Torrent is fine too, I guess.)
qwerty_asdf 13y ago
> Large downloads dramatically decrease the number of > users who get from a download page to actually running > an application I think I almost entirely agree with you on that. > they would be foolish to make things worse for the > majority of users I'm arguing that this provision (clearly pointing the way toward an offline install) would not make things worse for anyone. > just to make them slightly easier for theoretical users I am not a "theoretical" user. I am an actual user. > ...do things like pick your install directory, and then > forget about the install process entirely as it > completes without your supervision. That's a good thing, > and it isn't possible with offline installers. What?! What are you even talking about? I can pick my install directory with the full installer. I double click the icon, it asks me for the directory, it runs, and then the end. Firefox's installer is dead simple, and believe me, I am HUGELY grateful for that. The only thing easier than the Windows installer is unzipping the Linux tarball into whatever path I choose. I hate Adobe's Flash and PDF installers, and I fucking DESPISE the Java installer, with its damnable bundling of that bloody Ask.com toolbar. Seeing Firefox add these additional layers of background updater services and stub installers deeply worries me, and fills me with concern that as a "salary paying organization" (albeit, ostensibly non-profit), they might veer down an ugly path, go the way of the Sith, and start engaging in questionable behavior that is inappropriate for an open source project. Consider the example of Ubuntu's desktop file search bundling Amazon ads in the results. What if one day, Mozilla decides that in order to pay the bills, it needs to negotiate a deal, whereby all those users with automatic updating enabled should get railroaded with some kind of optional-but-defaulted-to-enabled third party feature suggesting helpful reminders to buy more burritos from Jimbo's Refried Beans Emporium. Just sayin'... > Browsers like Firefox and Chrome already need network > access after installation anyway. Not to do things without my permission, they don't. This "need" business... I disagree. A browser only "needs" to to exactly what I ask it to do, and not much else. I tell the browser what to do, not the other way around. > They update on a regular basis, and pull down optional Optional. That's an important adjective in your sentence. > packages like Chrome's software WebGL rasterizer, > malware blacklists, and Firefox's GPU blacklist. Yeah, the very same blacklist that I'm frequently bypassing to check out all the cool Web GL experiments people post here on HN. I know all about that. Malware blacklists are another concept that I tend to reject as mostly ineffective in achieving their stated goal. We could go round and around with that argument for days. Let's not get started on THAT can of worms. > So, in practice, it is already impossible to do a true > offline install of either browser; you just may not be > aware of the things that are left out of the installer. When you use the word "impossible", I have to just flatly disagree with you. And in general, most of the things that you mentioned are things that I don't care about, and will never be interested in.

smickie 13y ago

If anything "Mozilla herds its Firefox users" into using the auto update system inside Firefox, which is very convenient and helpful. You're talking about a very small number of people who will update the way you described. Most Firefox users will update by having Firefox automatically update in the background and then be prompted to restart. I just downloaded the latest version (in my language) by going to 'About Firefox' and hitting the update button.

lxt 13y ago

The stub itself pulls down the full installer, and you can always get that from download/FTP if needed. The intention is to provide a better download experience: there was a gap between the number of people who begin downloading Firefox (counted via hits on download.m.o), and the ones who open it for the first time (counted via hits on the firstrun page). The stub installer is intended to address this. It also checksums the full file to make sure you're getting what you think you're getting. (Disclaimers: I work for Mozilla, and am responsible for download.mozilla.org among other behind the scenes web things. I don't work on the installers, but we had to change the download scripts to support the stub. I do not speak for Mozilla.)

comex 13y ago

Do you really want to test out a new release of a web browser on a VM without an Internet connection? It seems like you would be missing out on a lot...

lips 13y ago

As I've had to rollback, I just keep this page in my pinboard account: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

ck2 13y ago

You can get all the full installer files on the ftp.

forgottenpass 13y ago

I find it irritating that Mozilla now herds its Firefox users toward the Stub installer, and not the full offline-install redistributable binary. It makes sense though. The modern browser is epitome of "the user is always online, and should always receive and run the latest version of code on the fly" execution model. Why not apply those assumptions to the execution environment too?

null_ptr 13y ago

I think the stub is for an improved experience for the average user with slow internet access. You're likelier to download and run a 1MB file and then wait for the install to finish, than you are to wait for a 25MB file to finish downloading in the first place. (I wonder if they push the stub so as to collect more (system) information without having to say that it's Firefox itself that's collecting that information.)

Yoric 13y ago
> I wonder if they push the stub so as to collect more (system) information without having to say that it's Firefox itself that's collecting that information. That sounds rather unlikely.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Should be not too hard to verify.
kunai 13y ago
Yeah, that is if you have dial-up. Even the slowest DSL is enough for 768KBps.
- Yoric 13y ago
  That really depends on the country you live in.
qwerty_asdf 13y ago
I think it's mostly a tactic to mitigate, prevent, defend against denial of service, since the Mozilla user base is absolutely gigantic. My suspicion is that it's essentially a "security through obscurity" tactic, so that the majority of users are left with no choice but the "smart" installer, which offers greater control for load balancing heavy duty traffic during peak download periods. See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5613152 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5613152
- 13y ago

untog 13y ago

For example, let's say you want to load it up in a VM You've just excluded >95% of Firefox users. Those that do use a VM will know how to get hold of the full installer. If they'd stop making full installs, I would be annoyed. But they're just optimising for the most common use cases.

qwerty_asdf 13y ago
I know. I know. Believe me, I know. That detail is not lost on me. My complaint is simply that it's hard to find, and for those who want it, there's no real road map or sign postings for where to get it.
- pasbesoin 13y ago
  Preface: I wrote the following from a more general perspective. Perhaps Mozilla can and will speak to the specific changes under discussion in this thread (e.g. keeping the majority of "non-technical" users on the right/current release). A bit like the so-called "Chromification" of the UI: I don't want to see too much "power" obscured or sacrificed for the sake of usability. Keep things sane, also, for the "power users". ---- When I see patterns like this, too often as I look further, I become convinced they are deliberate. I suppose one can argue as to motive and intent. Nonetheless, they seem to be forcing all users toward a more dependent and opaque pattern. Therefore, I consider them "dark patterns". If you want to label that as my personal perspective ("you're weird"), then so be it. If say 5% of your users want a stand-alone installation package, is that too low to add the description and/or provide a link to "stand-alone installer"? Is it really going to destroy usability if you do so? And that's where, once again, I -- in my opinion -- start to bump up against today's "designers". Where pages and everything else have to be "streamlined" to the point of excluding any and all minority usage patterns. "The web" used to be about choice. TIMTOWTDI. Some of us have atypical patterns, sometimes for good reason. In my opinion, that diversity breeds robustness. Things get examined from different angles. And no single pattern becomes irreplaceable.
  - kevingadd 13y ago

Surio 13y ago

Super annoying, yes! I completely agree with you. It's not just Firefox being the culprit here though... .NET is the same, and so is Chrome, and the list can grow like a mayor's coat-tails! Also, here's a genuine usecase for a truly offline installer... What if you are the "resident software/pc maintainer" of your extended family.... In such a case, would it not make better sense to have one complete download, then copy it into a pen drive, and install it on every machine, without spending 30 mins to an hour on every machine, doing a download+install for every single one! The rationale of an online installer might be justified as some of the replies indeed seem to do, but, I think that there is something fundamentally flawed/wrong with having to first "download an installer", only to have it "download the application" again! I mean, what the hell!? EDIT: Also, the speed of these release cycles (not just Mozilla, but other software too!) are getting old and tired to keep up with, TBH...

acdha 13y ago
The automatic updater takes care of all of the use-cases you mentioned better – why waste time manually copying files around when your relatives could be running the update days before you make it over with that thumb drive? That said, they do make the full installers easily available (google “Firefox offline installer”) should you need to update a ton of computers behind a slow connection.
- Surio 13y ago
  In case, you missed it, the moot point in the parent thread as well as my agreement is this: "an offline installer should be a de-facto proviso, rather than being buried somewhere else." In other words, The fundamental issue in this rant of course is, "Why the hell should I do all that? Make it available in the front page!" For sure, lycos/ddg/ask-jeeves/bing "Firefox offline installer" is an option that is not lost on us luddites :). But did you also notice the parent comment: "Googling for things like "firefox standalone redistributable offline install" are a road to nowhere"? ;)
  - acdha 13y ago
    > he fundamental issue in this rant of course is, "Why the hell should I do all that? Make it available in the front page!" They could make it more obvious but, really, the audience for that page doesn't really include people who are familiar with technical issues and have made the calculation that it would be faster to download the full thing & copy it around. > But did you also notice the parent comment: "Googling for things like "firefox standalone redistributable offline install" are a road to nowhere"? ;) I did – and part of the point is that that's an unnecessarily complex query. Removing any of the redundant words (e.g. "firefox standalone installer", "firefox offline install") produces the correct result as the first hit. ("redistributable" appears to be the problem as that term hits a bunch of spam download sites) In other words, that search query was itself an attempt to micro-optimize something which turned out to be unnecessary – rather like the entire post.

mverwijs 13y ago

Or: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

kamjam 13y ago
But that's so much hassle, I have to click on the link and then navigate a whole bunch of folders, and possibly know what version and language I need! </sarc> Users of VMs are more than likely power users at the very least, and if you want to test different versions then you should probably also be testing beta and even nightly. I don't think a full exe just to install in your VM really needs to be "homepage" visible.

josefresco 13y ago

Alternatively, you could wait for the folks over at PortableApps to update: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

qwerty_asdf 13y ago
Uh, no thanks. That site does not readily provide hashes for their binaries (MD5, SHA512, whatever), and the page is smeared with ads. There's no way to know if the site is trustworthy. And, anyway, where would I get the trustworthy hashes? They'd need to be communicated to me, directly from the horse's mouth. I'd need to visit ftp.firefox.com, to find out what the correct hashes are in the first place, and then check them against the binary download I receive from your site. The link you should have provided was: http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Ed./ http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%2... Version 25 isn't listed there yet. All of this is even less convenient than digging for and deciphering the meaning of Firefox's official downloads.
- lelandbatey 13y ago
  Umm... Hm. I'm seeing just one ad on that page (a very conservatively placed Google AdSense ad): http://puu.sh/530fg.png http://puu.sh/530fg.png Also, I see the hash right there on the page: http://puu.sh/530kX.png http://puu.sh/530kX.png
- Surio 13y ago
  I think you literally jumped the gun with your assessment of portableapps platform. :) Take a look again over the weekend. They are completely FOSS and all their bundling and bundled packages are transparent. The entire project is voluntary, and it usually takes a day or two from the official release dates, before the volunteers bundle, test, and release the portable application to the general users.
Surio 13y ago
This! I wanted to mention this, but since you already mentioned it, I will simply add my comments to yours.... The concept of PortableApps has been simply amazing! (FWIW, I donate to this project too, it's been really worthwhile having the platform). I have begun to adopt this mechanism for some of my software maintenance strategy. Nowadays, I test the latest version of the updated "PortableApp" on my local copy on my machine first, and if all works well post-update, I ask others to choose the update. Else I simply tell them to uncheck the update until I can confirm that existing functionality remains unbroken. :)

bearbin 13y ago

I'm getting the full version download. It might just be location (UK) or maybe random. I don't know. Edit: It's probably just that I'm using Linux.

jryans 13y ago
Yeah, the stub installer only applies to Windows. Mac and Linux users are always given a full binary.

sp332 13y ago

Defaulting to the stub is probably a security decision, so you don't end up installing the same old security holes every time you run an out-of-date installer. But they could probably make the full install easier to find for people who want it.