Firefox Updates Getting Annoying

Published: Jul 11, 2008
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
1 minute read
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Is it just The Station, or is Firefox getting to be as nasty as Windows when it comes to updates and patches? Well, okay, nobody is as patch-crazy as Microsoft, but the Mozilla folks who engineer the browser are coming in in an easy second place lately.

Only about 10 days ago, all of us Firefox users [hiss: Internet Explorer] updated to the final Firefox 3. Okay. We’ve now got it installed on all of our machines, desktops, laptops and flashtops. (Yes, that word was coined by yours truly.)

Only days after uploading and installing Firefox v3.0 Beta 5, we went through the drill of figuring out which plug-ins worked with the final version and which didn’t. We downloaded, installed v3.0, and then went on our way.

Now today, less than a fortnight after the last browser upheaval, Version 3.1 is forced upon us, and we have to go through the whole rigamarole all over again. Sheesh.

We understand security precautions, we really do. And Firefox is free of charge, so we have to realize the value of the tradeoff.

But why can’t we just leave something alone for six months? What’s your take on all of this? Agree or disagree?

BTW: I realize this isn’t exactly storage-related per se. But we all use browsers to get to stored material, right? (Heheheh. You can connect storage with just about everything in IT pretty easily. The data trail eventually leads to storage every time.)

Chris Preimesberger

Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor Emeritus of eWEEK. In his 16 years and more than 5,000 articles at eWEEK, he distinguished himself in reporting and analysis of the business use of new-gen IT in a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, data center systems, storage, edge systems, security and others. In February 2017 and September 2018, Chris was named among the 250 most influential business journalists in the world (https://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/top-250-business-journalists/) by Richtopia, a UK research firm that used analytics to compile the ranking. He has won several national and regional awards for his work, including a 2011 Folio Award for a profile (https://www.eweek.com/cloud/marc-benioff-trend-seer-and-business-socialist/) of Salesforce founder/CEO Marc Benioff--the only time he has entered the competition. Previously, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press since 1983 and resides in Silicon Valley.

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