Yes you read it right.
Though I am a big fan and user of Mozilla, I am not a fanboy. Why do I say that? Well, because I went back to Firefox 2 today.
Though I use Thunderbird in an office full of Outlook, Entourage and Outlook Express users, though I was one of the millions who pledged and downloaded Firefox 3 on download day (and I have a certificate to show for it), it didn't work out for me. I had sort of grown fond of the improved address bar, and I simply love the improved zoom feature, but the basic reason I use Mozilla or GNU software was lacking in this release - it wasn't stable. FF3 crashed - everyday, some 10 times a day, on unfortunate moments. I tried searching online for the reason this would happen, and potential solutions. All I could gather was that there was a conflict between some Google software, and if this software is uninstalled and installed after FF3, the problem would go away. But surprise! I never used that Google software, so what would I uninstall in order to solve this problem?
Then came the second release of FF3, and I hoped that this would solve the issue, but nothing doing. FF3 kept crashing. And I could do nothing about it. To avoid using the "
inherently
evil" browser, I used Safari, and liked it. But I still kept missing FF - the plugins, greasemonkey, and zotero. So out goes FF3, and back it comes - FF2.
So what do I think went wrong? Mozilla, known for its superstable software and responsiveness to consumer feedback, released a piece of software that is unstable for quite a few users as I gather. Could it be because they gave in to hype-mania - of releasing a not-yet-stable software on a particular date and setting a record? Now where have I seen this before? Hint: it's a big company producing a software that is FF's biggest competition. Set deadline, create hype, rush to release without testing. And then release another version which still has the problem.
If I were a fanboy, I would have gone ahead and blamed myself, my computer for the problem and been heartbroken. But since I'm not one, I simply uninstall FF3 and start using FF2. And it's been working so far for me - I am writing this on FF2 (without the fear of it crashing midway :) ).
Till the time Mozilla comes up with a super stable release, which is its hallmark, I'm sticking with FF2 - only that I miss the zoom :(
Labels: firefox, mozilla, what went wrong?
