Estibot.com Blog

Firefox is a pretty good browser. So is Safari, although it’s far from being as stable as Firefox, especially when running Java applications. I have no experience with Chrome yet. There are some things however that irritate me greatly about these browsers. For us domainers, browsers are our most important tools. Our workflow depends on the stability, speed and security of web browsers and internet connection. I’m also a web developer and coder, and having a streamlined internet set-up is crucial for me.

My biggest gripe about Firefox is the incessant updates. I know I could turn those off, but on the other hand I need to keep my browser up-to-date, and if I switched the updates to manual, knowing myself I’d probably manually update it once every two years or so.

The updates are irritating because they occur when you start up the browser. It’s a nuisance when you’re you fire up your browser to do something real quick. And it happens often.

This irritation could be easily dealt with by having the updates occur only when you close the browser. This would be unlikely to bother you. It would just happen in the background and you wouldn’t be bothered by it. Alternatively, if you keep your browser on 24/7, you could set the updates to occur at a certain time of day, when you’re least likely to be actively using your browser. System administrators everywhere set up cron jobs to do server maintenance during the night, so it won’t affect performance when people are working. Why not adapt that to the mainstream?

I know, I know, it’s a relatively minor nuisance, but enough to inspire a blog post. I do have some other gripes about these browsers, too, but enough complaining

It’s all about usability, oui? Non?