Google Chrome Has the Most Effective Updater
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Software that tries to patch my system without telling me does not get installed on it. The only thing I agree with is that Opera needs to get a more light weight patch system than a full up installer. (O10.0 alpha has one, but who knows when it'll be final.)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
dan neely wrote:
O10.0 alpha has one, but who knows when it'll be final
It won't take them ages to get 10.0 out based on past form, unless 10 has major new features. But yes a patcher is long overdue.
Kevin
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Google Chrome Has the Most Effective Updater[^] OK, this will get many of you going... A paper published last week titled "Why Silent Updates Boost Security" showed that Google Chrome is the browser that has the most effective updating mechanism. Google Chrome's updater works automatically, it requires no user interaction and it can't be disabled from the interface.
Kevin
Absolutely. I tried Chromium for a while but couldn't be bothered updating it by myself and went back. Windows update can occasionally get out of your way but I get sick of the reboots, and especially reboot nag screens. I remember being told that MS was going to treat a reboot as a bug in Vista, obviously not a very high priority one. The last thing that wanted a reboot was an update for the compatibility view list for Internet Explorer. That just seems lazy.
Matt Dockerty
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Most users prefer to disable automatic updates where they can
mmm... Firefox, which does allow you to easily disable automatic updates, still has 85% of its userbase updated within 21 days. That's a sizable majority. Personally, the only browser I have automatic updates disabled for is IE, due WU's habit of requiring me to reboot after installing updates. Of course, IE stats aren't included in this study, so who knows how many users are doing the same...
Shog9 wrote:
so who knows how many users are doing the same...
I would guess more are doing the same than not. Like you, I hate that my computer can restart without my explicit permission. I leave my computer on 24/7 so that any attempts to contact me are waiting for me whenever I show up to unlock my computer. I was out of the office on Friday and when I came back in on Monday I found an instant message that had been sent just a little while after I'd left for the day on Thursday. It wasn't life-changing, but if it had been and if my computer had rebooted itself over the weekend it could have caused some trouble. Partially, I would say it's also a trust thing. With Chrome I know that it'll do its update without adversely affecting my system. With Microsoft, too many experiences say you can't be so sure.
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To be fair, you can, if you know what you're doing. The updater is fired up by a scheduled task - Windows provides a standard UI for modifying or removing those from the Control Panel. It's not like it's really hidden away somewhere. Heck, you could download the source and modify the updater to prompt you if you really want...
Shog9 wrote:
Heck, you could download the source and modify the updater to prompt you if you really want...
Last I knew, that wasn't quite true. Granted, it has been a while, but all you could get was the Chromium code which is where Chrome came from, but Chrome has had a lot of changes since then. Chrome's code could be fully available now though I guess.
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Absolutely. I tried Chromium for a while but couldn't be bothered updating it by myself and went back. Windows update can occasionally get out of your way but I get sick of the reboots, and especially reboot nag screens. I remember being told that MS was going to treat a reboot as a bug in Vista, obviously not a very high priority one. The last thing that wanted a reboot was an update for the compatibility view list for Internet Explorer. That just seems lazy.
Matt Dockerty
At one time we were promised that reboots had been greatly tamed in Windows (was that circa Windows 2000?) but it seems just as bad as ever with MS's apps. Though the worst I experienced was VS 6 on Win 95. Required 5 reboots! Two of those were for getting an up-to-date version of IE with SP and DCOM. Most of the time I just let Windows Update run on shutdown now (after first checking what it's downloaded - I set it to download but don't install). Quite often though the shutdown button indicates it's downloaded some stuff when there was no tray icon. In that case I use the hyperlink to shut down without installing and then wait for the tray icon to appear again next session. It's sneaky the way they do that though since if you're too fast you can press the button by mistake and do an install.
Kevin
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At one time we were promised that reboots had been greatly tamed in Windows (was that circa Windows 2000?) but it seems just as bad as ever with MS's apps. Though the worst I experienced was VS 6 on Win 95. Required 5 reboots! Two of those were for getting an up-to-date version of IE with SP and DCOM. Most of the time I just let Windows Update run on shutdown now (after first checking what it's downloaded - I set it to download but don't install). Quite often though the shutdown button indicates it's downloaded some stuff when there was no tray icon. In that case I use the hyperlink to shut down without installing and then wait for the tray icon to appear again next session. It's sneaky the way they do that though since if you're too fast you can press the button by mistake and do an install.
Kevin
Or worse you can be typing something in the middle of an update nagathon and accidentally give permission for the system to be shut down. They might just be trying to protect their non-technical users from urgent threats like Blaster but many of the updates that we get these days aren't for threats, but still nag you. I'm sure I read something about good UI design and avoiding superfluous user prompts (lol, don't get me started about UAC). My compatibility list did not need a system reboot, it probably didn't even need an IE reboot. I would have settled for 'please restart IE when possible to begin using a new compatibility list'. Better still just nothing, nobody really needed informing that this list would be updated, like Chrome does.
Matt Dockerty
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Or worse you can be typing something in the middle of an update nagathon and accidentally give permission for the system to be shut down. They might just be trying to protect their non-technical users from urgent threats like Blaster but many of the updates that we get these days aren't for threats, but still nag you. I'm sure I read something about good UI design and avoiding superfluous user prompts (lol, don't get me started about UAC). My compatibility list did not need a system reboot, it probably didn't even need an IE reboot. I would have settled for 'please restart IE when possible to begin using a new compatibility list'. Better still just nothing, nobody really needed informing that this list would be updated, like Chrome does.
Matt Dockerty
Yes, Windows still has some basic usability flaws. The most annoying is failing to honour the active application when another one is launching. So you're typing away and then find you're suddenly typing in the new app! :mad: This was supposed to have been fixed in XP but seems only to work about a quarter of a time. I don't know whether this has been fixed in Vista or Windows 7?
Kevin
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dan neely wrote:
O10.0 alpha has one, but who knows when it'll be final
It won't take them ages to get 10.0 out based on past form, unless 10 has major new features. But yes a patcher is long overdue.
Kevin
10.0's been in work for over a year (they were using it for the ACID3 race). They backported some enhancements (notably the new, faster JS engine back to make 9.5x) so I'm thinking they're having some sort of issues.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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Never used that since there is no linux version. Anyways from my gentoo linux background I much prefer the operating system to automatically handle the updates (like gentoo does with all installed applications) although this probably will never happen in windows. My second choice is an OS supported auto update mechanism instead of a lot of installed application having their own (buggy memory hogging) background process to check for and download updates.
John
John M. Drescher wrote:
My second choice is an OS supported auto update mechanism instead of a lot of installed application having their own (buggy memory hogging) background process to check for and download updates.
AIUI Weven offers that functionality. It remains to be seen how many apps will take advantage of it.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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10.0's been in work for over a year (they were using it for the ACID3 race). They backported some enhancements (notably the new, faster JS engine back to make 9.5x) so I'm thinking they're having some sort of issues.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Didn't realise that. Similar to Firefox 3.5 then which also ran into problems.
Kevin
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Didn't realise that. Similar to Firefox 3.5 then which also ran into problems.
Kevin
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presumably, but O's dev is closed, so who knows what is really happening.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
dan neely wrote:
who knows what is really happening
Maybe they're too busy getting the EC to go after Microsoft. :laugh:
Kevin
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Google Chrome Has the Most Effective Updater[^] OK, this will get many of you going... A paper published last week titled "Why Silent Updates Boost Security" showed that Google Chrome is the browser that has the most effective updating mechanism. Google Chrome's updater works automatically, it requires no user interaction and it can't be disabled from the interface.
Kevin
Silent updates can be good if two things happen: 1. The update does not force me to restart the program or my system immediately 2. The update does not adversely affect anything So far, Chrome hasn't caused any problems when it updates. That said, it would be really nice if it would at least tell me when it has updated... Ed
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I have nothing against setting it as the default. But we should be able to control it.
Kevin
You can. Go into Windows task scheduler, delete the Google Updater task. Frankly, I think some techies are too paranoid. I don't mind Google Chrome updating itself automatically, just as I have no problem with Gmail or Yahoo mail updating automatically.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
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Silent updates can be good if two things happen: 1. The update does not force me to restart the program or my system immediately 2. The update does not adversely affect anything So far, Chrome hasn't caused any problems when it updates. That said, it would be really nice if it would at least tell me when it has updated... Ed
I agree. But additionally I would like to be able to turn it off if I want to. Easy rollback to the previous version in case of problems would be nice too. I currently use Dev Express's Refactor! Pro. It doesn't have automatic updates but in their client center they do keep an easily accessible list of previous versions so I can roll back (which I did recently as a matter of fact). I also think silent updates should be confined to security and bug fixes, not new features. But Google include the latter (though so far the stable version of Chrome has been just bug fixes if I'm not mistaken). Having said that I've not gone so far as to remove Chrome because of its non-configurable silent updates like others in this thread have. That's mainly because 1. Chrome isn't my default browser and 2. updates seem to have been harmless so far. Were they to create "collateral damage" my policy would change. :) A long time ago Microsoft said that their service packs were going to be changed so that they were pure bug fixes. Sometimes they are but in general they've not stuck to that.
Kevin
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Yes, Windows still has some basic usability flaws. The most annoying is failing to honour the active application when another one is launching. So you're typing away and then find you're suddenly typing in the new app! :mad: This was supposed to have been fixed in XP but seems only to work about a quarter of a time. I don't know whether this has been fixed in Vista or Windows 7?
Kevin
Arghhh! I hate that. You'd think they could detect when you're in a text box, and if so, don't let another window take focus. Very painful. Now that you bring it up, I can't remember this happening on Vista, so maybe they did fix it.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
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You can. Go into Windows task scheduler, delete the Google Updater task. Frankly, I think some techies are too paranoid. I don't mind Google Chrome updating itself automatically, just as I have no problem with Gmail or Yahoo mail updating automatically.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
delete the Google Updater task
Configurability should be in the app. itself like in Firefox. I don't mind Chrome's auto-updating as it happens, but I'd still prefer to have configurability. Web apps. are different in that they don't run on your PC so they're unlikely to cause collateral damage on your PC. However, I don't operate a blanket policy of "it auto-updates so I'll uninstall it," as some here do. I look at each case on its merits.
Kevin
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Judah Himango wrote:
delete the Google Updater task
Configurability should be in the app. itself like in Firefox. I don't mind Chrome's auto-updating as it happens, but I'd still prefer to have configurability. Web apps. are different in that they don't run on your PC so they're unlikely to cause collateral damage on your PC. However, I don't operate a blanket policy of "it auto-updates so I'll uninstall it," as some here do. I look at each case on its merits.
Kevin
There should be a way to do it from inside the app, yes. But let's not call it non-configurable.
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
Web apps. are different in that they don't run on your PC so they're unlikely to cause collateral damage on your PC.
Given that Chrome installs into a non-protected directory and doesn't require any admin rights to update, I no longer buy this argument.
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
However, I don't operate a blanket policy of "it auto-updates so I'll uninstall it," as some here do. I look at each case on its merits.
That's a good way to do it.
Religiously blogging on the intarwebs since the early 21st century: Kineti L'Tziyon Judah Himango