Why I’ve Already Uninstalled Firefox 3

I was looking forward to the release of Firefox 3. Though I hadn’t downloaded any of the betas or release-candidates, I was confident in the team, and pretty sure that it would be a seamless transition from 2.0.0.14 to 3.0.

And I even printed out my personalized .pdf \As covered elsewhere in the blogosphere, it was initially difficult to download, as all of the servers were getting slammed simultaneously, as the entire internet was waiting for 10:00 AM Pacific to hit Captain Feathersword’s magic [download] button.

I finally managed to connect around 1:30 after a conference call wrapped up. Installation was indeed seamless, but I wasn’t so wild about some of the features I initially encountered. I had already “starred” the Lifehacker article for Firefox power users, so I referred to that and made some adjustments. A few of my plugins weren’t compatible, but they were nothing that I use regularly. After using FF3 for a few minutes, I got a popup to check for Add-On updates (I should have done that in the first place), and most of my non-conforming plugins were updated.

Things started to get dicey about a half-hour later, when checking my Gmail account led to the browser suddenly closing all on it’s own, followed by a nifty “Mozilla Crash” alert, and options for sending the notification to Mozilla. Then it started going downhill from there.

My heavily-used web apps - namely Gmail and Google Reader, kept crashing. I would get the message to either restore the session or start fresh, and usually Crash alerts would come up again unless I started fresh.

I had been interested in trying out the new Feedly application in Firefox, but I wanted to view their guided tour video, which was Quicktime. FF3 was not able to play the video - never getting past the :26 second mark. I was able to play it on another machine with the same QT and FF2.x, so I’m blaming FF3 on that one.

Just tonight, there was a CrunchGear post regarding a newly-found (obviously) security vulnerability in FF3, and that was the proverbial last straw. [Update: Though now it's reported that it also affects FF2.x, so you can remove one straw from the camel's back]. Not that I’m worried about security so much, but I think the whole FF3 release is a bit half-baked. I’m not upset, nor disappointed, but that may teach me to be one of the 8.2 million lemmings trying to set a “download record”.

Sure, it might be a smaller footprint in system resources. Sure, FF2 is prone to freezing on occasion. Sure, I have to turn in my “early adopter” cape and boots, but consider this:

AND, I had to un-learn the simple act of typing in URLs.

I’m no dinosaur, but for someone that habitually types “http://www” as I have automatically from 12 years of experience, it’s disorienting to have the “Awesome Bar” pop up with every site I’ve visited - and be not even close to what I was going for. During the day job, we’ve been spec’ing out the auto-suggest feature in a “Find” portlet, and this type of behavior from the interface would fail a lot of usability labs. I was able to hack the about:config file down to two (the default is twelve), but it was still disorienting.

I left these comments on the FF3 Uninstall survey, and I am looking forward to a fast, stable incremental update around 3.0.0.3 or so, but for now I’m not believing (or at least participating in) the hype.

Posted by Andrew Flynn on June 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment 
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Lifehacker Posts My “Go Bag”

So a few months ago, Lifehacker was asking folks to submit photos of their “Go-Bag” - the bag that web professionals grab when they are on the go. Some posted a very minimal set - a PDA, keys, cell phone, and that’s it. My contribution was a little larger. Here’s my go-bag.

The problem is two-fold. Due to the changing nature of my projects, and general reductions in T&E by my company (which is a smart thing, with all of our collaborative technologies), I haven’t flown in over six months, and I’m starting to look for a smaller bag.

I acquired the Ogio Metro backpack at the company store, nicely embroidered with the company logo, for $64. It was great, as my previous bag, a Tumi T-Tech Laptop Brief was too small to hold travel items, such as a mouse and power supply brick. Now, eleven months later, the Ogio backpack has lost some of its luster. One of the zippers has lost a tooth and is sticky. The iPod media pocket keeps getting caught in the innards of the main pocket. And the entire form has collapsed, and is unable to hold its form unless the laptop is actually in the sleeve. And let’s face it, the laptop is usually docked, either at the office or at home.

Additionally, many of the “essential” items that I routinely carried have fallen by the wayside. The manicure kit, collapsing valet, sleep mask, travel neck pillow, and lint roller were all last used in another piece of luggage, where they remain. The ballcap has been relegated to the garage due to its function, dirt (and smell). The Leatherman tool, folding frisbee, and digital camera battery charger are all scattered on my home office credenza. And the breakfast bars were consumed long ago.

After analyzing it a bit, I’ve determined the essential list of what I need to carry:

So I guess I’m just looking for something to accommodate everything above, plus be expandable for travel. Too bad I’m down on the Ogio Metro, as that holds it all. But really, for commuting to and from the office, where the majority of the office/paper items are, and there’s no need for AC adapters or extra cables, we could reduce the list to this:

My coworker comes and goes with a simple laptop sleeve. Of course, she lives a six-minute walk from the office. Perhaps I could get some sort of sleeve with two pockets, and put that in the Ogio when traveling. Thus starts the quest. Suggestions welcome.

Posted by Andrew Flynn on February 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment 
Tags: , , , , , , ,