Firefox Upgrades and Other Problems

On or about 6/8/06 2:29 PM, thus spake "John Massengale"
<johnmassengale.com>:

> I've recently found "Opera preferences" on my desktop, even
> though I don't have Opera

Do you have Photoshop Elements? m.

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On Jun 8, 2006, at 5:29 PM, John Massengale wrote:

> I'm using a new cable internet provider and for now have no router
> or hard
> firewall between me an the internet. Thanks to MenuMeters
> <http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/>, I can see that
> Cablevision is constantly transmitting to me, so even though I have
> all the
> OSX firewalls turned on as well as Internet Cleanup I'm at least
> temporarily
> a bit paranoid. I've recently found "Opera preferences" on my
> desktop, even
> though I don't have Opera, and one day found Terminal open, even
> though I
> never use Terminal and wouldn't know how to if I wanted to.
>
> So I really don't like Firefox's new automatic method of updating,
> or their
> support / complaint process.

Are you sure the auto upgrading isn't a preference? Although I
upgraded to 1.5, I uninstalled it because the Web Developers' Toolbar
extension, which I use, wouldn't work with it. I dumped 1.5,
reinstalled 1.4, and it's still there.

Marilyn

John Massengale wrote:
> I'm using a new cable internet provider and for now have no router or hard
> firewall between me an the internet. Thanks to MenuMeters
> <http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/>, I can see that
> Cablevision is constantly transmitting to me, so even though I have all the
> OSX firewalls turned on as well as Internet Cleanup I'm at least temporarily
> a bit paranoid.

Running without a router on broadband is a bad idea even given all the
issues you seem to be having. I tell folks to "just say no".

... big snip ...

> I went to Mozilla to complain on the forums and found I couldn't get on.
> Commenting requires registration, and I never receive a required e-mail from
> Mozilla. Mozilla says some IPs have blocked mail from Mozilla, and to
> contact the provider. Right. Without registration, there is no contact: no
> e-mail address is given or unregistered comments allowed.

The mozilla foundation has setup a series of private newsgroups. They
are private in that they are not a part of the global shared update.
What is posted on them is never sent any where else. There's a firefox
group called mozilla.support.firefox that you should be able to
subscribe to without any registration.

[John Massengale]

[Problems with Opera and Terminal]
> So I really don't like Firefox's new automatic method of updating,
> or their
> support / complaint process.

It's really not clear to me how these are related. As far as I know,
Firefox doesn't ever open a Terminal window, and I highly doubt that
it would automatically download files belonging to Opera.

> This morning, a window popped up in Firefox, telling me that my
> upgrade had
> been downloaded, and that I needed to restart Firefox. I canceled.
> I had not
> been asked if I wanted to upgrade or look for upgrades. I now know
> that
> Firefox does that, but how was I supposed to know when it happened
> that it
> was legitimate?

You can configure how updates are managed in the "Update" tab of the
"Advanced" panel of the Preferences dialog. You can decide if
Firefox should look for updates automatically, and also whether it
should ask before installing them or not (including an option to warn
if extensions will be disabled).

Considering that most updates contain security fixes, it really is a
good idea to have automatic updating enabled by default. If users
don't like it, then it's simple to turn it off (users that are really
concerned about things like this would typically go through the
preferences when installing an application). If this was 'opt-in',
rather than 'opt-out', then I expect that the majority of Firefox
installations would not get updated. The update process is very
painless, too, so it really doesn't impact negatively on the user.

> The next time I started Firefox, it automatically upgraded.

Yes - the dialog offers you the choice of restarting the application
(presumably to replace in-use files and as a simple method of
reloading in-memory data) and using the update immediately, or
continuing with what you are doing and using the update the next time
Firefox starts. This is a good method for updating.

(What would make it better is adding a 'session save' to the restart,
so that I could restart immediately, and have Firefox re-open all the
open pages. Something like this would be good for OS X, too, so that
I could restart for an update and have all applications & documents
automatically re-opened).

> During that time it wanted some internet access, but I had
> disconnected and moved to a place
> where I had no access. I assume that's okay, but perhaps this is
> the reason
> why the Firefox dock icon does not have the symbol showing it's open.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that it's OS X that puts the
little triangle on the dock (I presume this is the symbol you are
referring to), and not applications themselves. Once Firefox told
you the update was installed (needing only a restart), no further
network access should be required for the update itself.

[...]
> I went to Mozilla to complain on the forums

A tip: it is always better to avoid complaining about free software.
By all means, offer constructive criticism, suggestions, and outline
problems that occurred - these help the developers fix the problems.
Remember that you can always uninstall the software in exchange for
your money back ;)

> Commenting requires registration, and I never receive a required e-
> mail from
> Mozilla. Mozilla says some IPs have blocked mail from Mozilla, and to
> contact the provider.

This is unlikely to be Mozilla's fault.

[...]
> In this and previous versions, Firefox can not find my Windows
> Media Player,
> no matter how many times I download it. Some pages have the same
> problem
> with QuickTime, and other applets are also a problem. I have
> reinstalled
> both applets and Firefox in the past.

I rarely use any applets, and don't use Windows Media Player, so
can't help there. However, it does seem odd that you are using a
browser that you have had so many problems with. There are many
excellent, freely available, browsers available for OS X. Why not
try Safari, Opera, or Camino, for example?

> When I download a photo, I get the spinning pizza wheel and no use of
> Firefox while it waits ten to fifteen seconds for the download
> window to
> open. In previous versions, simply opening the download window
> would produce
> the same delay. In the new version, that option has disappeared.

What option? If you mean displaying the Downloads window, that is
still there, under the "Tools" menu ("Downloads", or Command-J).

> Do other people have these problems?

I have never experienced any of these problems, for what it is worth.

=Tony.Meyer

I...have no router or hard firewall between me an the internet.

Is Remote Log-in switched on in System Preferences/Sharing? If so, you might check system.log to see whether somebody is logging in unbeknownst to you. Hammering with a dictionary can crack weak passwords and once, after a system update, I found that the passwordless user "guest", who had been forbidden to log in remotely, was then permitted to. (I have since used SSH Helper to limit access to specific users.) Users root, admin and guest are most frequently hammered but I have also noticed systematic hammering of the alphabet and two-letter combinations, and of lists of common names.

This is what a successful entry looks like:

Jun 10 15:49:57 c_imac com.apple.SecurityServer: authinternal authenticated user charlie (uid 501).

Unsuccessful hammering looks like this:

Jun 9 21:33:39 c_imac DirectoryService[80]: Failed Authentication return is being delayed due to over five recent auth failures for username: root.

John Massengale wrote: I've recently found "Opera preferences" on my desktop, even though I don't have Opera.

I noticed the same thing, a file called Opera 7 Preferences.new hanging around at the top level in my Home folder. I also found out that it has the same modification date and time as Macromedia Flash Player, which I installed recently. So would Macromedia have added/changed the Opera 7 Preferences and put them in a weird spot? The Opera 6 Preferences were also changed on that occasion, they're were they should be: in the Preferences folder.

Renate

On 6/9/06 1:18 AM, "Matt Neuburg" <matttidbits.com> wrote:

> On or about 6/8/06 2:29 PM, thus spake "John Massengale"
> <johnmassengale.com>:
>
>> I've recently found "Opera preferences" on my desktop, even
>> though I don't have Opera
>
> Do you have Photoshop Elements? m.

Yes, and I use it regularly.

On 6/9/06 4:41 AM, "Tony Meyer" <ta-meyerihug.co.nz> wrote:

>> So I really don't like Firefox's new automatic method of updating, or their
>> support / complaint process.
>
> It's really not clear to me how these are related. As far as I know,
> Firefox doesn't ever open a Terminal window, and I highly doubt that
> it would automatically download files belonging to Opera.

The way they're related is that I was especially wary of access from the
internet because of my temporary lack of a router. But we should always be
wary, so I do wish the Firefox preference setting was an opt-in rather than
an opt-out default. Thanks to those who pointed out the preferences opt-out.

Now can anyone suggest how to fix the problem of neither Firefox nor Safari
recognizing my Windows Media Player, no matter how many times I remove and
download them again?

Or why I have a 10+ second delay in Firefox before my downloads start?

I use Firefox because I love the way the Find function works, and I use it
constantly.

Thanks,

John

On Jun 13, 2006, at 9:42 AM, John Massengale wrote:

> Or why I have a 10+ second delay in Firefox before my downloads start?

Perhaps the servers you usually try to download from still attempt
ident, despite all the reasons why it is a thing of the past.

Do you see the same download start delay when using Safari (or
Finder) from the same machine?

For what a quick skim suggests is a good discussion of the ident
protocol, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ident>

   --John

On 13 Jun 2006, at 10:42 , John Massengale wrote:
> On 6/9/06 4:41 AM, "Tony Meyer" <ta-meyerihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>>> So I really don't like Firefox's new automatic method of
>>> updating, or their
>>> support / complaint process.
>>
>> It's really not clear to me how these are related. As far as I know,
>> Firefox doesn't ever open a Terminal window, and I highly doubt that
>> it would automatically download files belonging to Opera.
>
> The way they're related is that I was especially wary of access
> from the
> internet because of my temporary lack of a router. But we should
> always be
> wary, so I do wish the Firefox preference setting was an opt-in
> rather than
> an opt-out default. Thanks to those who pointed out the preferences
> opt-out.

Opt-in would be bad. The vast majority of people never look at the
prefs at all, and since many Firefox updates are security related, it
is much better to get most people upgrading rather than most people not.

You do not want people running old versions of the browser and
getting exploited by bugs that have been fixed months or even years
before.

I was recently troubleshooting a customer's Mac. Running Mac OS 10.2
and Internet Explorer. They didn't even know the IE had been
abandoned by MSFT years before and figured all the problems they had
on the WWW was just because they were a Mac user.