Thank You for Making my Browser Unsecure!
Not sure if this forum is monitored by anyone from the development team, just wanted to "thank" them for not giving me an option to completely disable the update prompts and forcing me to use the policies.json file...
What you've managed to achieve with those annoying nags is instead of me updating the browser through Help->About every month or two when I get the need to restart it, is never updating it anymore until a site I need breaks... which probably won't happen anytime soon until StackOverflow decides to require a newer version than 69... It's way too much effort going to your site, downloading the full version and manually installing it every couple of months and then manually adding policies.json again when you've being accustomed to just going to Help->About for the same thing... so, thank you once again for managing to make my machine (and probably the ones of many other people too lazy to say anything) much more vulnerable!
I've been wasting my time searching for workarounds ever since version 63 came out and setting "app.update.doorhanger" to false in about:config was an acceptable solution but you had to break that as well...
I've been using Firefox ever since it came out all those years ago and will probably continue to use it but it will be only because I hate Chrome even more... guess I will be stuck with an old version from now on... hope you're happy with your "great" solution to keep people up-to date...
It's fine that you want inexperienced users to be protected but why does it have to be at the expense of people who know what they're doing and want to decide for themselves when to update? What was so wrong with the ability to hide update nags from about:config where casual users never touch, that you had to remove it completely?
由 I Hate Update NAGS! 於 修改
所有回覆 (5)
The pros and cons of allowing users to easily disable updates has been debated many times on this forum. The intention of keeping the ability to disable updates behind the policy is so that businesses who manually deploy updates can stop the automatic Firefox ones from appearing.
For optimal security and privacy, you should never run an outdated version of any software, let alone your gateway to the internet. Each update comes with tons of security fixes, many of which are urgent fixes.
The people who answer questions here, for the most part, are other Firefox users volunteering their time (like me), not Mozilla employees or Firefox developers.
If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. Your feedback gets collected by a team of people who read it and gather data about the most common issues.
Did you consider to switch to the Firefox 68 ESR release to get at least security updates ?
I Hate Update NAGS! said
It's fine that you want inexperienced users to be protected but why does it have to be at the expense of people who know what they're doing and want to decide for themselves when to update?
What are the circumstances causing you to delay updates long enough to become annoyed by daily nags?
What was so wrong with the ability to hide update nags from about:config where casual users never touch, that you had to remove it completely?
I'm skeptical about your view that casual users don't go into about:config. Any motivated user can easily find about:config directions on lots of sites. I give them out numerous times a day here and on Reddit. (Not for this preference, of course.)
But certainly the larger point remains. The Policy solution prevents even manual update checks, which makes it unsuitable for users who do not use other software to monitor for updates. It would be nice to be able to snooze the nag for a longer period of time such as 3 days instead of for 12-24 hours. Do I expect to see that change? Not really. It's just not that big a burden to click Not Now a few more times.
There is still this pref that check twice a day for updates.
- app.update.interval = 43200
@Wesley Branton - The problem is that I want to update the browser... but when I decide, without interrupting my work, instead of on someone else's schedule... And in my case removing the stupid reminder and working uninterrupted for weeks or months is more important than updating the browser ever again... if that was the developers' intention - congratulations on succeeding... Also posted my feedback on the link provided but considering what the overall response is in similar topics, I guess it will fall on deaf ears...
@cor-el - the ability to disable update messages through about:config has been disabled even before version 69, so it's pointless to install ESR if I'll disable the updates there as well through policies.json
And even if it wasn't - it will be added in the next ESR version so a month or two more doesn't make much of a difference...
As for app.update.interval - I've already set it to 999999999 but it doesn't help... also changed almost every option starting with app.update including app.update.url with no luck
@jscher2000 - I'm using the browser for weeks and sometimes months without restarting it... with a few hundred tabs open... some of which are sites utilizing the stupid endless scrolling technique and I need to go through all of their content... as you can imagine every restart means losing my progress (and my time), so yeah - those update messages are really annoying me almost every hour of every day...
Yes, I know it sounds like an edge case, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of other users out there with similar needs.
As for casual users - they're different from the motivated ones... if someone wants to tinker with their browser and make it work the way they want to, they should be let to do so in peace... Otherwise what's the point of about:config at all... they should just remove it completely so no one messes up anything anymore... they should also remove add-ons and everything else... should just leave the address bar and nothing else... and they can do even one better - remove the addres bar and leave just a homepage with their own search engine, working with pre-approved sites... so everyone can be "secure".... I don't really care that much about the "never update option" being removed from the general settings of the browser, but removing it from about:config is just insane... what's next - they won't let us disable the "Block dangerous and deceptive content" option or something similar, again in the name of "security"? I mean it's my PC after all - aren't I supposed to be the one telling it what to do, and not the other way around?
==============
In other words my case is such that I can either update through Help->About once in a few weeks (or months) when it's convenient for me or not update at all (and with the current state of the browser I'm forced to never update again). If I had enough money I would've just bought a Xeon with 512GB of RAM and switched to Chrome after the doorhanger flag stopped working. And as I mentioned before - I really hate Chrome (not just because of the RAM issues).
Since there are already a few different desktop versions of Firefox they should just make one more - a dumbed-down version for the masses that just want to browse facebook and youtube or whatever it is they do (in other words a copy of Chrome) and a normal one for people who want or need more...
由 I Hate Update NAGS! 於 修改