Comments on: How metrics helped improve the install experience…

By: Computers by WEB » Blog Archive » Helping People Upgrade to the Latest Version of Firefox

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:09:50 +0000

[...] The Firefox team is making one small UI change (mentioned in Rob Strong’s blog post) [...]

By: Helping People Upgrade to the Latest Version of Firefox < Blog of Metrics

Helping People Upgrade to the Latest Version of Firefox < Blog of Metrics — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:04:46 +0000

[...] The Firefox team is making one small UI change (mentioned in Rob Strong’s blog post) [...]

By: How metrics helped improve the install experience… at Robert … « Improvers

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:28:10 +0000

[...] Continue reading here: How metrics helped improve the install experience… at Robert … [...]

By: rstrong

rstrong — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:36:33 +0000

For browsers and other apps that have entries under HKLM\Software\Clients things break for multi-user systems with this approach since they are system wide settings and the app is installed in the user’s profile. As of 3.5 our order of preference is 1. under Program Files, 2. in all users appdata, 3. under the current users appdata.

*edit* that should have been all users then current users local appdata

By: Jody

Jody — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:29:47 +0000

Windows 7 and Windows Installer 5.0 provide real per-user installation capabilities.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd408068%28VS.85%29.aspx

You can sort of fudge it in Vista and XP by using ~/AppData/Local or the equivalent like Chrome does. Microsoft themselves use this for the ClickOnce installers.

So at least on Windows 7 and beyond the solution is simple.

By: rstrong

rstrong — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:34:52 +0000

Yes though there are other conditions it would need to handle that I didn’t mention such as -no-remote, multiple instances, etc. and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other conditions it would need to handle as well. I am sure it is possible to figure out all of the conditions and write the NSIS code which would almost certainly require custom NSIS plugins to handle this but I am also sure it would take time away from other work that is considered higher value.

By: rstrong

rstrong — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:15:12 +0000

There are plans to simplify it in Bug 513414. As to why not just do that instead the major reasons are: we also want the changes in Bug 508684 to land on Firefox 3.5.x and that won't happen if there are string changes and Firefox 3.6 is a short release cycle so there might not be time to do it

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:29:16 +0000

Why not simplify the installer radically? Just one Step with all the options.
Google Chromes installer is much simpler, you cant even cancel it!

By: Nickolay Ponomarev

Nickolay Ponomarev — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:28:39 +0000

Re bug 496207: are you saying there’s no way to tell if a Firefox process is a ‘zombie’ (and can only be killed) or is actually active and may have unsaved user data?

(You only assert in the bug that the Firefox process can’t be unconditionally killed (may lose data) and that we can’t focus its existing window.)

If it’s so, it’s surely counter-intuitive…