Firefox: checking for updates?

I happened upon a computer today that hadn't been used in a couple years and was running Firefox version 1.0.6. That version still had a single X on the far right side for closing tabs. It wasn't until later that each tab got its own little X.

Clicking on "Help -> Check For Updates" told me that the latest version was 1.0.12. Nothing about version 1.5, 2, or the just-released 3. Likewise, when Firefox 2 users check for updates, they are only told about the latest go-round for version 2, nothing about version 3.

In general, the way Firefox self-updates is very well done. This is born out in the stats below, an excerpt from a website activity report showing, for this month, how many hits the site experienced from people using Firefox version 2.x. As you can see, the vast amount of Firefox 2 users are using the latest edition, 2.0.0.14.

Is the failure to look up the version ladder a bug or a conscious design decision? Either way, there are, no doubt, computer users that never got the memo, people still running Firefox version 1.0.12 or 1.5.x, thinking they have the latest and greatest.

Self-updating Firefox from version 2 to version 3 now, would be a mistake. While a new version is new, the decision to upgrade should not be automated. However, at some point Mozilla will stop maintaining version 2, a condition techies refer to as "end of life". Here's hoping that when version 2 hits EOL (the mandatory TLA) that the update checking is a bit more self-aware.

Update June 26, 2008: According an article today at arstechnica, "...Mozilla told us that they have not finalized the schedule for when Firefox 3 will be made available to Firefox 2 users through the update channel, but they suspect that it will happen within the next two or three months."

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

[john55440]

IMHO, FF2 "Check For Updates" should present FF3 as an Optional Update. Currently, it doesn't.

[asadotzler]

Michael, our update mechanism has two distinct types of updates, "minor" updates for security and stability fixes that are automatic and pretty aggressive, and "major updates" for new feature versions that are not as automatic or aggressive until the previous major version is EOLed.

Firefox 1.0 had some pretty serious issues with updating that were fixed by the time we shipped Firefox 1.5 so it wasn't until 1.5 that Firefox could make the "major" updates correctly. You just won't get it in Firefox 1.0.x, and fortunately, the number of people on Firefox 1.0.x is exceedingly tiny.

Firefox 1.5.x users were given minor automatic updates until Firefox 2 had been available for a bit more than 6 months (Mozilla supports older versions with security and stability updates for at least 6 months after the new major feature version ships.) During that time, Firefox 1.5.x users also received several major update notifications urging them to move to Firefox 2, but not until Firefox 2 had received a couple of "minor updates".

Firefox 2.0x users won't receive the major update push until some time after we've shipped our first minor update to Firefox 3 and Firefox 2.0.x users will continue to get stability and security minor updates regularly until about six months from now.

This is good for two things: One, it gives us a chance to fix any issues that we didn't discover with our two million beta testers (there are almost always one or two edge case bugs that you don't discover until you have tens of millions of users.) Two, it gives the add-ons community a couple of months to get all of their add-ons updated and well tested in Firefox 3 before we start "pushing" people into Firefox 3 via automatic updates.

In the mean time, if you want to update to Firefox 3, it's just a download away at http://www.mozilla.com

- A

[mhinnewyork]

Please contact me at michaelhorowitz at gmail so that I confirm your identity. Thanks. Michael Horowitz