But chrome also updates automatically, without asking for user permission. Regardless of you think of that policy, it avoids platform fragmentation. Firefox seems to be headed to a big fragmentation. Can't say that's good news for web designer and frontend developers.
I can't really say I understand why "fragmentation" is a problem.
HTML5, CSS3, and ECMAScript are all standards that don't change very frequently. Not all browsers support them equally, but I thought we were trying to get away from caring about that. I haven't seen a "this site is designed for X" (X being some browser, usually IE or Netscape back when this practice was popular) badge in quite a few years. To me it seems that this strong competition amongst browser developers to compete for features and updates has been influencing web developers to bring back this bygone era. Is that really where web developers want to go again?
"Fragmentation" to me isn't an issue. A user shouldn't have to trust your code implicitly always and forever. If they don't want your shiny new features, they should be able to download an earlier version and stick with it.
Also, as mentioned elsewhere -- distro's might take issue with this sort of scheme.
To me it seems more like a competition with Chrome than a technical choice.
Almost all users of Firefox and Chrome are using the most up-to-date versions of those browsers. Firefox updates download in the background and update with a single click. Firefox 5.0 (which will be out not long after 4.0) will have completely transparent addon updating - not even a dialog box.
It's presumptuous to say that this is the case for Firefox users. The fact that Firefox requires manual agreement to update means there is fragmentation. Faster updates will only increase that unless it is accompanied by automatic, invisible updates.
From http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php, 87% of users are on Firefox 3.6 or newer, 95% 3.5 or newer and 99% on FF3 or newer. As fragmentation goes, that's not half bad.
From http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php, 87% of users are on Firefox 3.6 or newer, 95% 3.5 or newer and 99% on FF3 or newer. As fragmentation goes, that's not half bad.
For reference (according to that page), here are the numbers for each browser & version listed (as a percentage of that browser's share), along with the stable release date (from Wikipedia) for that version:
There are some numbers < 0.7% of the market that are not explicitly included on that page. Particularly Firefox 2, which still has about 0.25% of the overall market (0.8% of Firefox), and some older versions of Chrome.
I don't see where I said Firefox's existing fragmentation was bad. I responded to the claim that "Almost all users of Firefox and Chrome are using the most up-to-date versions of those browsers". The stats you posted show that this is not the case for Firefox. I don't think 87% can pass for "almost all users".
Firefox 3.6 has been out over one year and, according to those stats, there are still ~13% of users who are using earlier versions. If Firefox 4-7 are released in 2011, without automatic updates, it would stand to reason that fragmentation could increase.
how do firefox and chrome do that on unix systems where you've installed them initially by a precompiled package which put the binaries in /usr/local? you wouldn't have permission to update anything there, especially without a dialog box.
You will still update Firefox using your distro's upgrade mechanism and my guess is FX would gladly use a similar tool in Windows, should it get one in the future. @sp332 is referring to seamlessly updating the addons—extensions that you download as .xpi bundles and which are already kept inside your $HOME folder.
Chrome also only updates through the distro's upgrade mechanism on Linux; the automatic updates are only for Windows and Os X. As there noted above the update would need root privileges so Chrome would either have to have an updater with the suid bit set or use something like gksudo. The first of those options seems like a particularly bad idea but there are issues with the second as well. Most modern distros have awesome package management and having an application try to circumvent this by self-updating would probably be undesired behavior for the majority of Linux users anyway.
Once again the commenter referred to updating addons:
“Firefox 5.0 (which will be out not long after 4.0) will have completely transparent addon updating - not even a dialog box.”
Extensions you install using Firefox are kept locally, on Linux in your ~/.mozilla/firefox-{version}/{profile}/extensions/ folder. This is the only part that is intended to be self-updated and there is nothing preventing that.
Firefox has been release streaming for as long as I recall. The only exception was major releases (as in to new rendering models). I'm not even sure Chrome has been old enough to run into this?
Now the question of distros remains. What will ubuntu do? Since they want a distribution that is frozen in time, will they allow updates at all, or create ubuntu-volatile repos, or ...?
Also, what will happen with addons? How can developers track API changes and provide updates in time?
I hope they do change their general approach and not just the update mechanism. I have been using chrome for a couple of months now and just switched back to firefox to see what the evolution is during my time 'away'.
It's quite a mess, from my point of view... As a webdeveloper the browser is my toolbox and while I do find firebug superior to the chrome development tools, the other things that caught my attention where not so positive... It feels sluggisch, was using 1.3gig of memory with 6tabs open and crashes frequently. But I do admit it feels like coming home a bit so I'm sticking with it and hoping things will be better in the future. I just hope this will end well for firefox.
If not they can always start developing another lean and fast new browser that will rock our worlds and gain populairy fast and change names a few times... (anyone remember phoenix and firebird?)
