Manual update can use more steps and clarification.

At least for windows version i would add something like following.
(do not have experience with other OSs)

* uninstall 1.0
- when it asks do you want to remove all
components say, yes.
- when it asks delete all the files in
following directory say, NO. (this will keep your
plugins and searchplugins)

(note you will NOT loose your bookmarks,
extensions, history etc.)

Yeah.

I once had a problem with a nightly and the rendering engine not getting overwritten properly... So I went through the steps of taking that out and attempting to do a full uninstall.

I made the list and then posted it to my friend's message board. If you care to look at it go here: http://strangetalk.net/viewtopic.php?t=72233

Its a bit complicated for a non computer geek, but its what I have done when I download a new version.

While Chloe has the reputation of being a complete MS shill and all-American wacko over on IEBlog, her last comment did strike the spot.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/28/382054.aspx#384728

Please handle updates better in future. You failed this time round with update UI.

Why is the "remove Firefox Setup 1.0.1.exe" step necessary for automatic updates?

It's a shame Firefox goofed up so bad with the update. I still think it's a great browser but this was shocking. 3 out of the 7 people I've converted to Firefox had problems for the first time in their FF experience :-(

Jesse, because we don't automatically delete it. It's sort of a feature/bug/workaround. We figured it was best to copy the installer to the Desktop in case anything went wrong with the update. That way a user could just run through the install.

--Asa

I really hope that the firefox team learns from the royal screw up that this 1.01 update has been ....

just did the automatic update from the update site ... it work once I told it what directory the correct version of firefox 1.0 was located in .... for some reason, it wanted to install the update in a directory that no longer existed ...
I also, don't understand why it took so much user input from me ....

I really hope that with 1.1 the window installer FINALLY works like a installer should .. look for old version, if found, as to remove it then either remove it or create a new directory and installs the new version ...

IN other words ... get automatic update version out first (and working) BEFORE releasing a firefox 1.1 exe file that still requires you to uninstall the old version before installing the new version ... and having to reinstall your search engine and spellbound libaries ...

if M$ update site patches can do it ... I don't understand why firefox/thunderbird can not do it ...

later, Richard

Richard and Poynting (are you guys both new here? I haven't seen you post before). I'm sorry you're having difficulty with the updates. A few people are. The majority of people are having fairly good experience with the update. If you don't want to use the update, you can simply uninstall 1.0 and install 1.0.1. It's only about 4.5 MB which is pretty darned small.

--Asa

"It's only about 4.5 MB which is pretty darned small."

Are you implying you download less data than that when using auto update? Surely not.

Also I think it's really strange/odd that the listing in Windows' add/remove programs isn't removed when running the installer - this worked between 0.9 and 1.0, didn't it?

David, I'm not suggesting anything about the auto-update. I'm saying that a 4.5 MB download isn't so bad, even when you have to do it all manually.

--Asa

Asa, I have no problem with an uninstall and reinstall, but then I'm a 'power user'.

My friends aren't. One of the reasons Firefox is so popular is because its UI is so great - its simple for people to use.

Unfortunately for 3 of my friends, autoupdate just didn't work. One of them uses a Mac. The other two of them use non en-us localizations. Whatever the reason, telling them on the update page 'we recommend you uninstall and reinstall manually' won't work. Not because they're stupid, but because it's just not important enough for them to read the instructions, and they are used to not having to. Careful design means that they won't have to.

I suspect that the reason for this is that the nightly and pre-release testers weren't exposed to the update mechanism, so it wasn't nearly as widely tested as other parts of the system.

I can't think of a practical way to fix this, unless you change your server side behavior to push the autoupdate prematurely to a fixed number of IP addresses with a known range of configurations?

You guys put an enormous amount of thought into the browser UI. Your update UI does need work though.

Poynting, sounds like none of your friends ran into bugs here. Mac doesn't have or use application update. You just download the new app package and trash the old one. The non en-US localizations probably weren't complete yet when those other friends tried to get them. All locales should be available now (minus Japan). Not all of the updates were made available at the exact same time. It took us a few extra days to get the various localizations checked and updates posted.

--Asa