Fri, 18 Sep 2009

Firefox, Flash, FAIL!

(aside: I have a number of blog posts in draft – don't worry they won't spam the various planets – but this was timely so I pushed it out first)

The most recent version of Firefox 3.x will also prompt you to update your Flash plugin if it is out of date. According to Ken Kovash, the response has been phenomenal. Almost 10,000,000 click through.

That is 10,000,000 failures.

Like a lot of people, I provide technical support for my Windows using family (and some friends). So I get to see how badly Windows is in the 'update' space. It is pretty common to have: Windows, Anti-virus, Java and one / two other applications (e.g. Google apps, Skype, Yahoo IM, etc.) prompt you with little annoying notification bubbles.

Most of them have trained themselves to not look in the bottom right of the screen and to ignore requests to update.

Which means that whenever I see a big, important update, like the Firefox one — I end up having to remotely take over their machine and do it on their behalf.

The user experience was:

  1. Update Firefox.

    So far, so good.

  2. It prompts and say Flash is out of date.

    Excellent. Click on link.

  3. Adobe site says "click to upgrade".

    Great. It also includes, checked by default, a download of McCafe's anti-virus tool something or other.

  4. Realise that pointless download of McCafe is about to happen. Cancel. Uncheck. Download again.

    Why is Adobe offering me more than just an upgrade of the product I am after? Apparently this is very common in the Windows world (think Safari included with iTunes, etc.)

  5. Adobe figures out I am using Firefox and sends, instead of Flash, a 'Download manager' plugin.

    It includes instructions on how to enable things so that this plugin is updated by Adobe all the time. I, rather pointlessly, ponder why Flash does not do this itself.

  6. Once installed, you need to restart Firefox. I do so.
  7. This time the "Your Flash is out of date page" does not appear.

    At this point a normal person would think that they are now secure. Nothing could be further from the truth. Adobe has stupidly decided that first you need to have their update plugin. Then you need to actually do the update. FAIL.

  8. I manually go the the '3.5.3' release note page, where it detects, again, that Flash is out of date.

    I click through to Adobe's site (again), this time, it figures out that it needs to update Flash. It autoinvokes the autoupdate plugin and does the update.

  9. Prompted to restart Firefox, again. I do so.
  10. Everything is now perfectly fine.

That was a total user experience failure.

Not Mozilla's fault but Adobe's.

But Mozilla can make a difference in this area. And work around the stupidity of Adobe.

  1. All plugins MUST register a https URL where their version can be checked.
  2. Periodically Firefox does the version checky thing (like with Add-Ons) and ensures they are up to date

That implies that there is a, separate "Your plugins are out of date page" distinct from "You've installed an upgraded version of Firefox"

[ / software] Trackbacks (0) Comments (3) permanent link permanent link

About

ॐ (aum) - what was, what is and what will be, wildfire's musing

Anand Kumria
wildfire@progsoc.org

Calendar

Topics

Subscribe

Subscribe to a syndicated feed of my weblog, brought to you by the wonders of Atom.

Music

 

Blosxom

Rendered in only 0.0795 seconds.

Powered by blosxom

Web Standards

Valid XHTML 1.1! Valid CSS! Uses microformats!