Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

>> Asa, is this something that is GOING to happen regardless 
>> of what anyone says, or is there real debate to be had 
>> about it?  To me, the answer to that question would
>> say considerably more about the future of Firefox than 
>> whether this single change is implemented or not.

Bravo, Frank, you've hit the nail on the head of why this thread is so disturbing. 

Over the last hour, I've already gotten used to looking in Help > Troubleshooting Information for my Firefox version info. It's not hard to get used to, and removing the version from Help > About, while non-standard, is understandable.

What is disturbing is Asa's attitude, which can be summarized as follows:
 
    You will do it this way, and you will like it. We know better.

EVERY MAJOR FIREFOX UPGRADE has broken at least one extension I use, a different extension for each upgrade since 1.5. From this loyal user's point of view, each Firefox upgrade has meant that I LOSE functionality, at least temporarily:

 -- Familiar features disappear.
 -- Extensions and plugins break, at least until their developers can catch up.

But at least I can schedule the inconvenience and postpone it until I have time to deal with it. If Firefox moves to an automated upgrade facility, then the future I can expect is to be automatically inconvenienced every few months. I'm just not seeing the improvement in that.

Right now, I CANNOT let Thunderbird upgrade itself to 5.0 because my antivirus vendor's plugin has not yet caught up. If T'bird goes to an automatic upgrade, I will have to find a new email client if I want to run with AV checking built-in.

To reiterate Frank's point, a hypothetical web-hosted browser of the future (where only a bare framework is installed locally) can update itself all it wants. But as long as we're in this world, Firefox is a LOCAL application that I installed on MY computer. Do NOT auto-upgrade anything on MY computer without my permission.

On the other hand, Chrome does manage to automatically update itself without breaking any extensions. Perhaps that is Firefox's goal, but they sure aren't anywhere near there yet.