Google Chrome Has the Most Effective Updater
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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