Last week, Mozilla released Firefox version 1.0.2 which includes some security fixes.
While Firefox is a great browser, and continues to be the one I use above any other, where the developers fall down with Firefox is with what happens when you install it.
If you’re using Firefox version 1.0 or 1.0.1, you’ll see a little red icon at the top right of your browser. Clicking on this displays a window that tells you that critical updates are available. This is a great feature in any software and I wish more developers would include something simple like this.
So with Firefox, you’d tell it to go and get an update which it does and installs it. The trouble is, if the update is a program update, what this doesn’t include is the advice that’s buried in the release notes on the Firefox website not to install an updated version on top of a current installation:
Prior to installing Firefox 1.0.2, please ensure that the directory you’ve chosen to install into is clean and doesn’t contain any previous Firefox installations.
Great to learn this after you’ve already installed the update on top of your existing installation!
A few days ago, I installed version 1.0.2 on my IBM ThinkPad T30, a machine that’s not my day-to-day PC, by clicking on the update icon within Firefox. In looking in Add/Remove Programs in Windows a few days after the installation, I noticed the multiple installations of different versions you can see in this little snapshot image.
So I have three Firefox installations on this PC. Apart from the disk space each one takes up, I wondered whether these multiple installations might be the reason why Firefox 1.0.2 was behaving a little oddly and crashing a little too frequently.
So what I did was uninstall version 1.0.2 using Add/Remove Programs. This removed remnants of the two other versions and, after the uninstall, no Firefox information showed in that listing. During the uninstall, I did not remove all the Firefox directories thus preserving my Firefox configuration info. I then downloaded the 1.0.2. setup file from the Firefox website and ran then. Now I have an installation of just version 1.0.2 complete with all my settings. And no more crashes.
The auto-updating feature of Firefox is great, but what I’d like to see is this:
- Auto-update tells you that you either a) need to uninstall the previous version before updating, or b) install the updated version into a different directory.
- If you choose to uninstall, the updating feature will do it for you and then install the update.
It does something sort of similar with themes and extensions that a particular Firefox version doesn’t support - it disables those themes and extensions so you can go and see if updated ones are available. At the very least, the Firefox updater should warn you re an existing installation before you install an update.
Simple, surely?
