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March 06, 2005

upgrading from firefox 1.0 to firefox 1.0.1

Steps for upgrading from Firefox 1.0 to Firefox 1.0.1

Automatic Update (Windows only)

Windows users

  1. Before beginning the update, be sure to complete any work you're doing in Firefox 1.0 and close any extra tabs or windows you may have open.
  2. If you see a small red icon update icon on the right end of your menubar, click that. If you don't see the icon, then follow these steps:
    1. Go to the Tools menu on the menubar and select the Options... menu item.
    2. In the Options window, select the Advanced icon.
    3. Scroll down to the Software Update section and press the Check Now button.
  3. You should see a Critical Updates (1) item and a checkbox with the label Firefox 1.0.1(en-US) Software Update. If you do not see this, skip to the Manual Installation steps below.
  4. Press the Install Now button.
  5. Wait for the installing updates progress meter to finish
  6. Follow the instructions in the Firefox setup wizard.
  7. You will get one or possibly two Attention dialogs informing you that you must first close Firefox before proceeding with the install. This is normal. Select OK when prompted.
  8. When the install completes, you may wish to uncheck the Use Firefox Start as my Home Page checkbox. If you leave this checked, your home page will be set to the default Firefox Start page.
  9. Press the Finish button to complete the install.
  10. To launch Firefox, double-click on the Firefox desktop icon or any other shortcuts you may have.
  11. To verify that you have successfully updated Firefox to the 1.0.1 version, launch Firefox and select About Mozilla Firefox on the Help menu. Confirm that it says Firefox version 1.0.1.
  12. At this point, you may wish to delete the Firefox Setup 1.0.1.exe file from your desktop. Should you have problems at any time during the automatic update, you can use this file to run the manual install. See the Manual Installation steps below.

Note: there are a few issues with automatic update which we hope to have corrected by the next release.

Manual Update (All Platforms)

Windows users

  1. Visit www.mozilla.org and click on the Free Download link and select Save to Disk in the resulting dialog.
  2. When the download is complete, exit Firefox 1.0 by selecting the Exit item on the File menu.
  3. Go to the Control Panel, double-click on Add or Remove Programs, and uninstall Firefox 1.0. This will not remove your Firefox bookmarks or other settings.
  4. Locate the file Firefox Setup 1.0.1.exe which is either on your Windows Desktop or the folder you set as your default downloads location.
  5. Double-click on the Firefox Setup 1.0.1.exe icon and follow the instructions in the install wizard.
  6. When the install completes, you may wish to uncheck the Use Firefox Start as my Home Page checkbox. If you leave this checked, your home page will be set to the default Firefox Start page.
  7. To launch Firefox, double-click on the Firefox desktop icon or any other shortcuts you may have.
  8. Verify that you have the new version by selecting About Mozilla Firefox from the Firefox menu. You should see Firefox version 1.0.1.
  9. At this point, you may wish to delete the Firefox Setup 1.0.1.exe file from your desktop.

Mac users

  1. Visit www.mozilla.org and click on the Free Download link and select Save to Disk in the resulting dialog.
  2. When the download is complete, quit Firefox by selecting the Quit Firefox item on the Firefox menu.
  3. Double-click on the Firefox 1.0.1.dmg file.
  4. When the disk image has been opened and mounted, drag Firefox into your Applications folder.
  5. When prompted to overwrite the existing Firefox, press OK.
  6. Launch Firefox and verify that you have the new version by selecting About Mozilla Firefox from the Firefox menu. You should see Firefox version 1.0.1.
  7. At this point, you may wish to drag the Firefox 1.0.1.dmg file and Firefox disk image to the trash.

Linux users

  1. First check with your distribution to see if they are offering the Firefox 1.0.1 update.
  2. Ensure that you have sufficient permissions to install to the same location as your Firefox version.
  3. To install from Mozilla, visit www.mozilla.org, click on the Free Download link and select Save to Disk in the resulting dialog.
  4. Find and extract the firefox-1.0.1.installer.tar.gz file, (probably located on your desktop or your default downloads directory.) This will extract the files to a folder called firefox-installer.
  5. Open the firefox-installer folder and double-click on the firefox-installer script to run the installer.
  6. Follow the instructions in the Firefox install wizard, selecting your previous Firefox install directory when prompted for the install location.
  7. Launch Firefox and verify that you have the new version. Select the About Mozilla Firefox item on the Help menu and confirm that it says Firefox version 1.0.1.
  8. When the install is finished, you may wish to delete the firefox-1.0.1.installer.tar.gz file from your desktop or home directory.

Note: Not all localized versions of Firefox 1.0 have updates available yet. You can determine if your version has been updated by visiting the Download Firefox page. You will not be prompted to update to 1.0.1 until an update for your language is available.

update: A number of people have been commenting on how this isn't very "automatic". Well, no, it's not. But, it's also not as complex as I've made it sound. I figured it was better to spell it out in the best possible detail than to leave anything up to chance. I could have just said "click the update icon and follow the instructions" and not opened the system up to the criticism I'm seeing here, but some people were having problems so I figured I'd better give very specific steps. Any process can be broken down into an infinite number of steps if you want to, and I figured more was better for those having difficulty. That being said, we can and will do a lot to improve this for 1.1. This was our first try at this kind of thing and we're learning how to improve. Thanks for all the constructive feedback. Posted by asa at March 6, 2005 09:50 AM

Comments

36 steps for 3 different platforms with 2 different install modes and a number of notes/precautions.

Yikes!

I'm a huge Firefox fan, but instructions like these are going to look daunting for a normal user. (And this is for a minor update!) Seems to me there should be some usability work done for the next version/update... Anything much more complex than "download and double-click" is too much. Not to mention the irony of an "automatic" update needing more instructions than a "manual" update! ;-)

I've helped a lot of people try out Firefox, and one of the hurdles is that they feel like it's going to be too much of an effort to install and switch. Explaining that it's simple to install *and* can run alongside IE has often made the difference.

Posted by: Guest on March 6, 2005 01:09 PM

Not exactly 'Automatic' is it?

Posted by: MrG on March 6, 2005 04:50 PM

Great. MoFo pays you to write this? OMG.

Posted by: z on March 6, 2005 06:23 PM

Actually, I think it's very simple. It was for me, anyway.

1. Download Firefox 1.0.1
2. Uninstall Firefox 1.0
3. Install Firefox 1.0.1

The end.

The step-by-step stuff is for computer newbies. I used to do email tech support, and Asa's laid this out in by-the-book "I'll hold your hand for you" style. Some people need it.

Posted by: AC on March 6, 2005 09:03 PM

Hi Asa! I tried to update my dad's Firefox last night (WinXP DE-de), and the auto-update did not work. I simply downloaded the full Firefox 1.0.1, uninstalled to old 'fox and installed the new version. It worked, but not as it should have.

Still, Firefox 1.0.1 is good on Windows and Mac. Congrats all around!

Posted by: Adaxl on March 7, 2005 12:10 AM

> Great. MoFo pays you to write this? OMG.

Probably by the word :)

Posted by: Somebody on March 7, 2005 06:41 AM

when will the search plugins be stored in the profile? it's a pain that every new version of ff in install i have to re-add the ones i want and delete the default plugins.

Posted by: James on March 7, 2005 11:18 AM

A shame that there's no "official" RPMs for Linux Firefox, because the Linux upgrade instructions could then be:

1. Download the 1.0.1 RPM.
2. rpm -Uvh firefox-1.0.1.i386.rpm (or whatever it would be called)

Rolling out Firefox to a large number of Linux desktops isn't possible without a non-interactive installer (e.g. RPM or something similar). This is exactly why Firefox is to be shipped as a .msi on Windows soon (bug 231062), but why isn't there a similar effort going on for Linux?

The standard response from the Mozilla team is "too many distros, get the distros to do it themselves". Yes, those RPMs tend to be very version-specific (e.g. I can't get the Fedora Core 3 Firefox or Thunderbird RPMs to install and run correctly on Fedora Core 2 and even if I build binary RPMs for FC2 from the FC3 .src.rpms, they still don't work ! And, no, no-one's built the latest Firefox/Thunderbird on FC2 before you ask...), which is why I think the mozilla source tree should contain the RPM .spec file for each Linux distro (with input from the distro maintainers if further tweaking is needed).

We can then hand-build our own binary RPMs if the distro is being sluggish about it (yes, FC2 should have a Firefox 1.0.1 for it in the official Fedora Core binary RPM repositories, but it doesn't !).

Posted by: Richard Lloyd on March 7, 2005 03:46 PM

Why is the auto upgrade stuff hidden away in advanced options? It should be a completely-obvious menu-tiem, upgrading is about as UN-advanced as it gets.

Posted by: Ben Hines on March 7, 2005 04:10 PM

How "periodically" is Fx supposed to periodically check for updates to itself? So far as I can tell, Fx 1.0 en-US has yet to notify of the 1.0.1 update on any of the Win 98 and XP machines where I've installed it for folks (nor on my own Mac, but prior comments suggest update was not turned on for Macs)....

Posted by: Smokey Ardisson on March 7, 2005 09:17 PM

I did the following on Windows XP SP2 and had absolutely no problems:
1) Download 1.0.1 manually using 1.0
2) Install 1.0.1

My extensions even kept working--I feared they would not, as was the case when I upgraded to 1.0. The only problem was that I had two entries in my Add/Remove Programs list, but I know better than to choose to Uninstall 1.0 since that would remove all or parts of 1.0.1 (installed in the same folder).

I thought that by giving two versions of a product the same GUID in the installer package this could be avoided. Can't the installer remove the previous entry or force an uninstall of previous versions?

Are there any problems with the way I've upgraded that will creep up in the future? (I've already manually removed the entry for 1.0 from my Add/Remove programs list)

Actually, I don't care for an answer. If I have any problems (frequent crashes) the first thing I will do is a fresh install. That fixed a problem back in 0.9 or so. Still, I'd kind of hoped that Firefox would have told me when a new version was released.

Posted by: Matthew W. Jackson on March 9, 2005 11:50 PM

Hi, I just installed Fedora Core 3. It comes with Firefox 1.0 PR. I need to update it to Firefox 1.0.1. I just can't seem to find the original installation location. Disappointingly the Firefox 1.0.1 Installer doesn't choose the previous installed location. It points to where the installer is currently located i.e. /home/shared/downloads/firefox-installer in my case. Could somebody please give a clue where Firefox 1.0 PR is installed in Fedora Core 3? Cheers, McoreD.

Posted by: McoreD on March 13, 2005 03:51 PM
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