Fri. Mar 04, 2005
Firefuxed
You’ve surely heard by now that Firefox is the best thing since sliced bread. It whups Internet Explorer’s butt on many levels. I’ve been a wholehearted endorser.
But…
I will never ever again update Firefox to the latest greatest version until it has been out at least two months.
I will never ever update an extension that I use regularly until it has been out, and used in the version of Firefox I have installed, for at least two months.
I will never ever add another extension that I do not absolutely need.
Because I will never ever again spend two and a half hours of my life uninstalling plug-ins trying to figure out which one makes the new Firefox barf and refuse to load.
This is the second time I’ve suffered through this. When I went from version 0.9 to 1.0, it was the same thing. Two hours of my life flushed. Tonight, version 1.0 kindly offered me this easy popup that said it would update me to Firefox 1.01. So easy. So simple. That was at 9:00. 2.5 hours later, I finally had Firefox 1.01 running, with about half the extensions I was using before.
I feel so … updated. So much so I won’t be doing this again for a long long time. Like, until someone convinces me that Mozilla has worked out the bugs in their update process. Because this experience has been positively Microsoftian.
Published 01:56AM, Fri, Mar 04 2005
Category: Software
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Peanut Gallery
It might be plugin related. Going from .9 to 1.0 was a disaster for me until I went with a stripped down version, extremely light on the plugins. I upgraded to 1.01 with no hassles.
Yes, I am most definitely old enough to know better. I’m usually quite good at sitting back and listening to people kvetch about what the new version has done to their setup. But … it gave a nice pretty pop-up that intimated “we’ve got it under control, just click here Good Firefox Buddy!”
Bastards.
And, yes, it is definitely plug-in related. Could be any one of the four or five I’d learned not to live without that I must now live without.
Double bastards.
I hate installers, and got bit earlier in the Firefox update cycle by using them, so I dug around and found they still post complete zips on their FTP server.
This time I hit that little red ‘critical update’ widget on the top right, realized it downloads the crappy installer again, and cancelled.
Long story short, Firefox was hosed by this one aborted action.
I downloaded the current zip, replaced my previous folder with the new, redirected my shortcut, and all is back to normal.
I heard horror stories about upgrading to Firefox 1.0, so I’m still running the 0.9. version I started with.
Quite happily, I might add…
I can’t wait to use “Microsoftian” in ordinary discourse. Good on you.
Did you try using the safe mode option to start Firefox? At least that way you can always disable all your extensions and at least figure out which ones are causing FF to barf.
I had no problems jumping from 1.0 to 1.01, but I don’t run a huge number of extensions either. (Usually just AdBlock, Web Developer, and the Abe Vigoda Status Checker…)
Oh, yes, I spent hours in safe mode. That was the only way it would run. Disabled extensions, uninstalled them, downloaded the updated versions of them, only to find it wouldn’t work anyway. A joyous good time. I can hardly wait to do it again.
I just had to Google the Abe Vigoda Status Checker. Are there similar extensions for other “celebrities” we ought not to care so much about unless we share DNA with them?
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Good gravy. You’re old enough to know better.