Today I was made painfully aware of the opportunity cost in using Thunderbird (or Mozilla) junk-mail classification. Had it not been for the great folks over at The Register, I'd have missed out completely on this work of art. Damn you spam filters! What other wonders are you keeping from me!
Posted by asa at April 16, 2004 04:13 PMFlash plugin for my Firefox is gone for no reason. IE still works. Instead of focusing on Thunderbird, which doesn't have much chance, why don't you guys focus on Firefox and get it fixed first. You are good at bashing IE, but Firefox is still not there.
Posted by: Firefox on April 16, 2004 09:16 PMWell, anonymous troll, my flash works just fine :P
I'm hard pressed to find an interpretation of your post that's worthy of much of a reply. Either you've found a bug, in which case Bugzilla is the appropriate place to report it, it's user error, in which case you'd do yourself a favor by reading up on how to install plugins for Firefox, or this is just blatant trolling, in which case piss off.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on April 17, 2004 05:41 PMI second that Asa, I have Flash working in Firefox 0.8 on both Windows and Linux. So the troller can go back to IE and be happy in with his miserable surfing experiences.
Posted by: yacoubean on April 17, 2004 08:54 PMTroll, I am not a troll. I stated a problem I had. When you complain to Microsoft, they don't treat you as a troll. They take you seriously. Don't worry I am going back to IE and I will tell my friend who just switched to Firefox to delete it. He switched because I recommended it. Now it seems that you guys don't care about the problems the users are experiencing. Firefox is also crashing too often, I will tell him to switch back to IE because Firefox may delete important files in his XP box. I am now sure that neither Firefox nor Mozilla will never ever be better than Internet Explorer. Arrogant behavior will make it the choice to only those who hate Microsoft.
Posted by: Firefox on April 17, 2004 11:33 PMI'm heartbroken. How can I not worry?! You and your friend were the only reason I'm even working on Mozilla. My whole life will fall apart without you and your friend as Firefox users. How can I go on? Boo-hoo.
What. Ever.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on April 17, 2004 11:53 PMAsa, I hope you do realize one day that arrogance is not the way you can make mozilla the widespread browser. I don't care whether you care or not, but you seriously just lost 2 users and possibly more. That may not count too much now, but one day people will demand more from you and you just can't repeat this. Currently people can afford not to support Mozilla in other words they can ditch mozilla, but nobody can ditch IE in anyway. Neither users nor web site owners. For that reason, users, your consumers should be like gold to you. Yet as you demonstrate, another nice open source project is doomed because of developer ignorance. Good luck.
Posted by: Firefox on April 18, 2004 03:19 AMWell, "Firefox", this is no help forum and no bug reports page, so it's ok to state your opinion, but not to expect user support.
I guess most people here (including Asa) still had tried to help you - if only you had described your problem more precisely than "it does not work".
But most important, when criticising other's behavior, why don't you look at your own behavior?
1) Get your facts straight before complaining:
Nobody is focusing on Thunderbird. It is the creation of one person without lots of help from other people. Ok, designers now do concentrate on it, but only after having finished Firefox design work.
(so your first posting was just wrong)
2) Recognize you are not the only person in the world:
Your Flash may be broken, but Asa's, yacoubean's and mine isn't.
(so your first posting was not only wrong, but also too demanding - how can a problem be fixed when nobody knows about it?)
3) "I will tell him [...] Firefox may delete important files"
Ah ok. So "arrogance" is bad, lying and defamation are ok? Why do you wonder when nobody considers you being serious after this?
Seconded, this is Asa's blog, if you want help with Firefox, ask in the help forum, that's what it's for.
Posted by: Gids on April 18, 2004 10:21 AMUm, anonymous poster, Asa only works on Firefox. He doesn't work on Thunderbird, so whether or not you think Firefox is "broken," it has nothing to do with Thunderbird. Oh, and regarding your clain that Firefox is broken: Mine works fine. If there are any bugs, try the latest nightlies, and if that is what's buggy, then wait for the next milestone.
About the flash plugin thing, file a report on bugzilla, with the relevant info. Asa's personal blog is not the place to post bug reports.
- h.
Posted by: Hunter on April 18, 2004 02:19 PMJeez, and I thought I was going to read some witty comments about the Nigerian trapped in space for 14 years. That's just classic. How do they come up with this stuff, and do people actually fall for that crap?
BTW, Asa, Ben and his merry men are doing a fine job on the Fox. I think some people forget that it is still at 0.8. It's beta software, "technology preview" as the site says, and is far from perfect. People are asked to use it to help find bugs so they can be solved, not bash it because it HAS bugs. Either use it and be a helpful part of the process, or delete it and go away, because that kind of attitude, Mr. Firefox, really does this community no good.
FWIW, Flash works fine, and always has on my Mac version, currently the April 9 nightly. It's all about installing those plugins properly, but remembering that occasionally, a nightly may be broke, but rather than bitch and moan, contribute positively with relavent feedback, so the devs can fix the problem. Now Shockwave OTOH... LOL, but there is a current bug filed.
Asa, you are the best when it comes to keeping the Mozilla community informed on all things animal related (Lizard, Fox, Bird, even your backyard birds are cool!) And the Mars stuff has been interesting as well, and what better way to view those awesome pics than via the ability to resize images in Mozilla. Anyway, keep up the great work, and don't let one a**hole spoil your weekend.
Posted by: Joel on April 18, 2004 05:12 PM"3) "I will tell him [...] Firefox may delete important files"
Ah ok. So "arrogance" is bad, lying and defamation are ok? Why do you wonder when nobody considers you being serious after this?"
No, it is not defamation, because as I stated it deleted Flash somehow. Isn't Flash an important file? I didn't have this problem before and Flash was working fine. Also Firefox crashes quite often. I stated my problems and all I got in response is that an accusation of being a troll. I wish I was a troll, so at least I would think that you are treating users seriously, but no I am not a troll. I suggested to focus on Firefox, because I think once people use Firefox more often, they would consider Thunderbird later on. That's my 2 cents. As I said, good luck with arrogance, arrogance brings nothing but failure to the projects. Mozilla has a chance of becoming a mainstream browser, but with this attitude you can't do much. You got to be more professional, like Microsoft employees. The minute a Microsoft employee makes such a comment to a user, I have no shred of doubt that he will be kicked out. You just can't assume that every user who complains about something is a troll. Treat us with respect and you will be respected as well. However, now all I am seeing is that I am not allowed to say anything.
Not to start a war or anything, and I'm sure Asa can fight his own battles, but the problem here is that you picked the wrong forum to express your concerns. That's what the Mozillazine forums and Bugzilla is for, not a man's personal blog, and not in response to a totally unrelated subject. Asa's not even a developer, and I don't blame him for firing off on you in his own personal space. You have a right to your opinions, recommendations, and observations, you just need to express them in the proper place, and this is NOT it.
Posted by: Joel on April 18, 2004 07:27 PMFirefox:
> No, it is not defamation, because as I
> stated it deleted Flash somehow.
And how can it still work in IE, then?
You mean it deleted its own Flash plugin only, the one you specifically installed for it?
Search your hard disk for NPSWF32.dll, this is the Flash plugin (version 7.0 at least).
If it's there, it is clearly not deleted. So do you consider everything not working correctly to be deleted?
> Isn't Flash an important file?
Ummm... why should it? You could always re-download it (as opposed to documents you created).
> professional, like Microsoft employees
Are those company's employees somehow more professional than those of others, like IBM or whatever?
> However, now all I am seeing is that I
> am not allowed to say anything.
Don't we talk to each other?
Your point about Microsoft support being likely to act more polite might be true, but then again, Microsoft is paid by customers and they have nearly infinite monetary resources for hiring user support staff.
You know the support stories when users complain their computer is out of order and it turns out they did not plug the power connector in. Microsoft might have the resources to tell them exactly how to plug it in, Mozilla.org does not.
Trust me (after doing years of bugzilla work), unfortunately about 95% of all problems are not caused by software, but by those using it.
You know that 126,000 bug reports entered in Bugzilla (that's the majority) are just invalid or otherwise useless? (with thousands of others waiting for being recognized as such)
Most people working to improve Mozilla do so in their spare time, as volunteers. You cannot expect them to spend hours to patiently listen to a user to eventually get him to describing the problem in a manner that actually makes solving it possible. If they did, they had no time to improve Mozilla.
Even after being asked several times, you did not provide any information about your problem exceeding "it's gone". Not even your operating system (ok, I can assume you are using Windows, but only because you mentioned going back to IE). Why do you expect others to be cooperative (and help you) when you are not?
We do not have the problem you have, so we have no way of testing it. What are we supposed to do? Remote-diagnosis without real information? Prophecies? Voodoo problem solving magic?
Add to that your (factually wrong!) accusations of wrong priorities in your very first posting and you will understand why the reactions were not exactly happy.
Posted by: aku on April 19, 2004 05:42 PM