Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

(Unverified)Jun 5th 2008 1:31PM

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Thanks for the awesome writeup, Drew!

@will: This isn't an issue on our end. Firefox does plenty of auto-updates as well. It's the responsibility of the extension developer to keep their extensions updated to work with the latest version of the platforms they work on. This isn't even something they have to do every time; they can set their extension to work up to Flock version 1.9 if they so choose.

I would recommend you contact these extension developers and tell them you would like consistent support for Flock. We're happy to work with them on this, and you can provide my email address.

In the meantime, there is an unofficial hack to make many extensions work even if they say they're incompatible at http://pascal.vanhecke.info/2007/10/22/firefox-extension-not-compatible-with-browser-flock-mozilla-seamonkey-version-what-to-do/

Flock'n'roll,

Evan Hamilton
Flock Community Ambassador
evan at flock dot com

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(Unverified)Jun 11th 2008 11:05PM

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Evan, to say, "This isn't an issue on our end" in response to things breaking, is not a good answer. When the product breaks for your end user/customer, he really doesn't care who is to blame, he'll just stop using the browser.

So you better believe it's an issue on your end. You ask the user to do more work. Software is supposed to make the end user's life easier. If it doesn't -- he's not stupid -- he'll stop using it. So blaming the developer is not in your own best interest. Figure out a way that things update properly, by default, without the end user having to do extra work. Cuz that ain't gonna happen, he'll leave.

Firefox used to do the same thing and I stopped using it for awhile, but now they have gotten better. Haven't had many problems with things updating lately. But there for awhile I would become dependent on an extension developed by a 15 yr old kid who then decides to stop updating it. Things were breaking all the time. Why in the world would I use a browser like that? Terrible user experience for me.

So think like a user, not like a developer. If you're going to ask users to go around and contact 10 different developers and lobby them to keep things up to date, that's doomed. Eventually, you won't have any complaints cuz you won't have any users.

Figure out a way to make things stay functional and up-to-date, by default.

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