Re: My usability experience - Asa Dotzler should be fired

On Aug 16, 6:28 pm, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> If you think that Mozilla should make decisions about how it develops
> software based on ...  people who know how to participate in online discussion forums ...


Wow. "People who know how to participate in online discussion forums"
includes
the users of the SpongeBob forums at http://www.unitedspongebob.com/forums/
. Six year olds.
Six year olds are too smart for Firefox. Wow.

I'm sorry, but I have to agree that there does seem to a sudden change
to ignoring the needs
of the users in favor of doggedly defending a new idea someone had no
matter how bad
the idea is proven to be.

Let's take the About dialog as the current example.
What's mystifying to me is that the proponents of the change basically
keep saying "it's OK
because everyone will be updated automatically", yet that's been
thoroughly and absolutely
shown to be completely false. I haven't seen any response from Asa or
anyone on the "pro" side
other than to keep repeating that when clearly that's impossible.  I
would love to hear a response,
any response, to that fact. I also haven't seen a single reason posted
that when it's out of date
the version number should not be shown.

Asa has contrived an example of where it could make Linux user's
"feel" neglected.
What REALLY makes people feel neglected, I think, is when they
actually ARE neglected,
such as with this. Linux users, Mac users, FreeBSD users, Android
users, and pretty much
everyone other than Windows Home users will NOT be automatically
updated. These systems
and others do not give the browser the ability to alter system
software. You don't want XSS
bugs to be able install software on the system, so the browser can not
have access to change
system software, including itself. That's being completely ignored so
far as I can tell.

Also, at this very moment I have an "updating" window sitting there
hung trying to access
the update server.  For these any many other reasons, about 40% of the
Firefox user base is
not up to date. So simply repeating that everyone is up to date is, in
my opinion, ignoring
reality and neglecting a lot of users. So clearly the statement that
"everyone will always be up
to date" is false. We can agree on that, right?  It seems clear to me
that any reasonable person
has to agree with that's false. It could be true that "most Windows 7
Home Basic users will be
kept up to date automatically and we don't care about anyone else",
but that's a very different
statement.

If we agree that many users will not have constant automatic updates,
meaning that many
users will have older versions, I think it's agreed that it's helpful
to be able to easily determine
WHICH version they are using.  The Firefox bugzilla form itself asks
for the version number,
because it's important information.

Given these facts, reasonable people might construe that one of the
following must be true.
Either:
a) Some Firefox leaders have decided that only Windows Home Basic
users matter, (and now only ones too dumb to be part of a SpongeBob
forum)    or
b) Some Firefox leaders are simply ignoring all user and community
input, so they are unaware of the problems      or
c) Some Firefox leaders are so defensive or ego driven that they are
unable to admit their idea could use any improvement, despite
overwhelming evidence.

I'm very much hoping d) Asa gives us another explanation. An
explanation other than "everybody is always up to date" because that's
not true and never will be.  If any of a through c were true, a call
to replace such leaders would be reasonable.