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Fast Dial Warning for FF

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TheQwerty:
What I find foolish is the folks blaming Mozilla. How are they supposed to check every little update that comes along? I think some of the responsibility lies with the users.-raybeere (January 16, 2009, 05:02 PM)
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Ultimately I'd say that all the blame lies on the users for being too trusting of the extension developers, but part of the problem is Mozilla encourages the users to trust these possibly nefarious developers.  Sure they warn you about the dangers, but I think the majority of people would agree that a big part of why they use and stick with Firefox is because of the extensions.  You hear this quite often from people evaluating Opera or Chrome.. "I like it - but until it has extensions...."


My criticism of Mozilla, is that the system (like so many others) is set up to alert you that there's a new version, but it doesn't really provide the means of showing/viewing a change log or release notes.  Their own dialog for upgrading Firefox is a little better with providing a link to such information, but it could still be improved.

J-Mac:
What I find foolish is the folks blaming Mozilla. How are they supposed to check every little update that comes along? I think some of the responsibility lies with the users. I mean, even when developers act in good faith, sometimes they make changes you aren't happy with. If you just blindly allow everything to be updated automatically, you're taking some risk you'll be unhappy with the result. In this case, the developer was also at fault, no question. But users need to pay attention to what is happening on their systems (unless they want to be one of those guys who just accepts whatever comes up on their screen - and then I think they'll be getting some nasty surprises pretty quickly).

-raybeere (January 16, 2009, 05:02 PM)
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Well, you are correct to a very fine point, but while I generally don’t throw blame at anyone for any bad stuff I end up foolishly downloading there is a bit of responsibility that lies with Mozilla. After all they push their browser based on its extensibility as well as its other advantages. They also shut down the Add-ons web site for a while so they could redesign it and setup a system that allows them to review all proposed extensions and requires the authors to submit their work to them for review prior to its being added to that site.

Now that still doesn’t absolve the user of any responsibility in being careful with their Firefox-related downloads. But it probably gave a lot of users a false sense of security - a feeling that if the Mozilla Add-ons group was monitoring all extensions and themes carefully that any posted at the Add-ons site would be safe. Here's the reviewing guidelines that the AMO editors use. Again, I am not suggesting that users are not ultimately responsible for their own browsing safety, but obviously none of the editors at AMO took a look at this extension's updates at all or they would never have allowed it to be posted at AMO.

Jim

Lashiec:
Now that still doesn’t absolve the user of any responsibility in being careful with their Firefox-related downloads. But it probably gave a lot of users a false sense of security - a feeling that if the Mozilla Add-ons group was monitoring all extensions and themes carefully that any posted at the Add-ons site would be safe. Here's the reviewing guidelines that the AMO editors use. Again, I am not suggesting that users are not ultimately responsible for their own browsing safety, but obviously none of the editors at AMO took a look at this extension's updates at all or they would never have allowed it to be posted at AMO.
-J-Mac (January 16, 2009, 11:04 PM)
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So, do AMO editors also check updated extensions or just new submissions? Because the thing changes depending on the approach.

J-Mac:
Supposed to - see the reviewing guidelines I linked to in my last post, Section 2.4.6. But I don't know if they're adequately staffed to do a very good job at it.

Jim 

Lashiec:
I see. So the whole issue is more of a slip on part of the reviewing team than simply a glaring hole in the system, which makes everything more forgivable. Anyone makes a mistake every now and then, so probably the guy who approved the update will be questioned and punished accordingly, and the reviewing guidelines revised. But nothing really serious, which still does not mean some client-side measures should be in place, like Martin proposes.

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