Speaking of Windows installer builds... when in the world will the issue of multiple Add/Remove Programs entries on Windows be cleared up?

Official RPMs aren't so useful for Debian users...

Gosh, what's the difference in the filelist for installer vs. zip? I sorta figured they were built from the same fileset.

What I'm wondering is why there are (if I'm understanding correctly) so many people downloading zip builds who apparently don't fall into one of the categories of people that have a good reason for prefering them and can look after themselves.

I guess preventing millions more falling into the same trap is a good thing, but it increases the pain for those that got a zip build last time but don't understand the situation they're in.

On the official RPMs thing - I don't know much about Linux, but I understand from people that do that it would be pretty hard to avoid needing several sets of RPMs (or alternative package formats) to cover the different distros. Replacing one or two zips with multiple packages for different distros doesn't sound like it would help the test matrix and/or app update work.

It might be good to point out archive.m.o:
http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/

If your intent is to continue the support of zip builds once the differences are resolved, at the very least wouldn't it need someone such as yourself or Chase to file appropriate bugs?

Cusser, at the very least, wouldn't you need to query Bugzilla to find that it's already reported before suggesting I file bugs?

- A

Don't take my suggestion personally, I'm very appreciative of your efforts and your blogging on the topic. Not trying to get at you or anything. I will go through and take a look anyway.

"Zipped builds is preferred on Linux." indeed it is right now. We should work to remedy that by making official RPMs.

Please do not. Many of us do not use RPM-based distros.

michaell, people are smart enough to poke around FTP or follow links that their pall or Mozillazine gave them. Unfortunately, it looks to me like that's a very high number (as much as 10% on Windows).

People who used a zip build will be fine upgrading with an installer. We fixed the particularly bad bug that broke so many users upgrading to 1.0.1.

As far as RPMs go, we should create one or two popular variations and use those in our update mechanism. Others can get our source RPMs and compile for themselves or get the udate from their distro. Fedora Core 3 had the 1.0.2 update today less than one hour after our update notification was turned on. Trust in your distro, and if they're no meeting your needs, demand more from them or get a new distro ;-)

- A

Collin, why aren't you getting Firefox from your distro?

- A

Cusser, sorry 'bout that. I read your post wrong and responded overly-defensively. The bug is 283676.

- A

No probs, I probably could have worded it better.

SuSE Linux Personal Edition 9.1 doesn't have Firefox, but this was before its final release. If I weren't on dial-up, I might upgrade...but Linux is mostly for fun for me, and I have to "confess" that Windows is really my primary environment.

Asa, I think the main issue was that no one has ever communicated (until your post) the dangers of updating zip builds and what workarounds can be used to make a zip build for ourselves. So for those people who had used zip builds for their own special reasons, they felt that there was no alternatives.

Combine this with the fact that no one said a word about this change to the community until Chase covered it in his blog days after the change (only after nightly build users discovered this) and a one sentence comment by you on one of your posts after someone posted a comment asking where the zip builds are.

Instead of explaining why this change has been made in more detail and instead of notifying the community as a whole from Mozilla.org or at the very least, MozillaZine, NOTHING was communicated to anyone outside of a bug report in Bugzilla. Does it make sense why there is such an uproar over this? This is a significant change for many people as you have found out.

Personally I use the installer currently in all of my installations of Firefox. However I can clearly see why those who used the builds are upset.

Generally Mozilla.org is pretty good about announcing major changes to Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird. This was a time though that they were not good at all.

Thanks for your post and time Asa. I hope it helps everyone who depended on the zip builds so a smooth transition can be made to using the installers. In the future, Mozilla.org must commuicate these types of changes much better.

I strongly advise you don't drop tarballs for *nix. You must remember, nothing standard on linux. RPMs arn't used everywhere. Source builds arn't an option, because they're not official. Im on slackware 9.1, I personally never use the package manager outside of the initial install. Everything is either compiled or it's provied as a binary in a tarball (like Firefox).

I do this because i've had nasty experences with package systems, mainly because of package mixing. Pat doesn't support everything (like GNOME), and he shouldn't have to. He does what he can on what's popular. If I want to run different packages than what's provided, then i get 3rd party packages which cause trouble. So I stick to using the official packages for the core, and compiling/unzipping everything else.

Removing tarballs of firefox would suck on my end. If it happens, ill stay on the current version as long as I can, and switch browsers when i need to upgrade.

Not to mention people who roll their own linux (like Linux From Scratch).

/firefox/nightly/latest-aviary1.0.1/ contains a ZIP build that is dated "14-Mar".
The gecko date on Firefox 1.0.2 is 20050317.
/firefox/nightly/2005-03-17-12-aviary1.0.1/ does not contain a ZIP build.
Is the ZIP build dated "14-Mar" the same code as Firefox 1.0.2?

Discontinuing Win32 ZIP builds? What a *bad* idea!

What happens with people like we the network administrators who use the ZIP to create our own installer and deploy Firefox and Thunderbird to hundreds of users at once?

Neither the Firefox or the Thunderbird Win32 installer provide an unattended installation method, and that is a *big* fault for Firefox to spread. We simply cannot afford to go to every and each computer to install Firefox.

Please, do not stop Win32 ZIP builds until you provide a proper unattended installer. The current one does not work unattended, and discontinuing Win32 ZIP builds means the Mozilla Foundation is shooting itself in the foot.

VI, it sounds like you can compile, so what's the problem?

- A

Pau Garcia i Quiles, I'm quite concerned that there are sysadmins out there that think it's fine to deploy a broken build to large numbers of users. If you're creating your own installers, do it from the working build, our official installer, rather than from the zip builds which will certainly cause major headaches for users when they get that upgrade notification (acutally, you should probably be disabling that and managing their upgrades rather than relying on our infrastructure which assumes a standard install).

What are your steps for building a custom rollout installer? Can't you just add this step to the front of that process?

Step pre-1. Download the installer, run it, uncheck start Firefox at the end of the install, zip up the Firefox install directory.

How is that solution which saves all of your users the risk of a totally busted upgrade, so terrible? What piece of this puzzle am I missing?

update Please don't publish this widely or I'll just have to take it down (I got like 100 MB of bandwidth left this month, so it's gone as soon as the first 15 or so people download it) but here's a zip build I packaged up from an installer build to test my theory that it's really not that painful. Let me know if this works as expected.

- A

For people who don't like RPMs, the files inside an RPM can be extracted with a command such as:

rpm2cpio filename.rpm | cpio -di

Asa:
Having to install Firefox in one computer to make a ZIP from that is painful.

Why is it painful? Because I am not going to update/install Firefox in my computer, then deploy that copy. It's simply wrong: I have my themes, extensions, search plugins, etc and I do not want my users to have them. So now I have to start a fresh new VMWare each time a new Firefox version is released, then package that and deploy. Well done! More work to come to already overburnt sysadmins!

The other way is unpackaging Mozilla Firefox, replacing Firefox's setup.exe with Mozilla Seamonkey's setup.exe, then use Seamonkey's unattended parameters. It worked reasonably well, but what will happen now that the Mozilla Foundation is no longer relasing Seamonkey? How long can we trust this "patch" we did?

IMHO, Mozilla is making sysadmin's work harder. Installing IE+Google Toolbar is simply too easy (no work!) and most sysadmins won't care about anything more, so Firefox could be losing ground in a near future.

If my memory doesn't fail, the unattended installer for Firefox and Thunderbird has been asked since (at leas) 2003, long before the 1.0 official releases!

Please, provide us with those versions and we will keep spreading Firefox & Thunderbird. For the Mozilla Foundation to save this little work, thousands of sysadmins will have to do it theirselves.

Even better: replace the .exe installer with a MSI package, and it will fit everyones needs. It's not that hard: http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/

Help please, how do I get the .zip for the win32 1.0.2 build from the nightlies? The 1.0.2 about page shows Gecko 20050317, but the latest nightly directory in http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/ is 07-Mar-2005. What gives? Am I looking in the wrong place? Oh, and what branch is the 1.0.2 build from? Aviary-1.0.1? Trunk? Some info, please! Thank you.

-Chris R

I am using ZIP version because I hate setups. How is that for a reason? Aparently there are many others like me. Availability of no-setup version is a major factor in choosing programs for me.

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/2005-03-14-17-aviary1.0.1/firefox-1.0.2.en-US.win32.zip

Here is a ZIP which I THINK corresponds to Firefox 1.0.2 release. I can not be sure because of the mess on mozilla's nightly ftp. God only knows what all those millions of people will install trying to find correct ZIP for a particular release. Nice work, Asa.

Asa, I can and do. Just not Firefox, the build isn't official. Worst case I do, but it's rather annoying. Especially with this rate of development.

I am a Konqueror user and I prefer Mozilla to Firefox, but I wonder whether you are going to discontinue tar.gz files too, which I many times like more than RPMs. Will you continue shipping tar.gz's even after you start offering official RPMs?

I use(d) the ZIPs because the T-Bird & Firefox installers simply do not work on my W98 machines.

Thanks, Roy, for that URL. Can anyone confirm that this is indeed the equivalent .zip file for the official build and release?

Thanks.
-Chris R

Chris, I did some more digging, and I am now sure the link I provided does NOT correspond to release. And I can not find one that does.

I am really shocked by this change. Kind of thing I come to expect from Microsoft: we provide you with software which tries to do everything automatically, and when it fails you are out of luck, because no way we are giving YOU control of the software on your computer.

It seems to me that since portable firefox is still around, and working great, that they already have the infrastructure to deploy the zip builds for everyone that needs them. I've been using their zipped builds on my accounts at school for sometime, they work great, stay updated, etc. There doesn't apear to be a great need for the redundancy in these two departments.

Anders

I for one always use the ZIP builds. It is easy for me to unzip into a folder, and go back and forth in the event that I need to switch back to a previous version (which I did from time to time back in the days of phoenix).

It makes me sad that I can no longer get the latest release as a ZIP and have this flexability, but I will deal.

I too believe it is an unnecesary move to kill off the zip builds. I don't see installing the setup build and then zipping the program file folder as a very good alternative, you have already installed it at that point. If it is so trivial to do then why not just zip it up and place on ftp.mozilla.org so those that want it can grab it quickly? It isn't like the masses bother navigating the ftp server, most will get the installer off the mozilla web site so only those who know what they are doing will go looking for the zip build anyways. An even worse decision would be abandoning the linux tarballs. No way am I installing an rpm on my debian machine and frankly I would rather have an official build then the debianized version. I could roll my own, but that wouldn't be an "official" build either. If I recall only official builds can use the mozilla firefox artwork. If tarballs are abandoned is the mozilla foundation going to allow unoffical builds to include the official artwork? Since the official stance seems to be roll your own if you don't like our packaging decisions then I think there should be some leeway in use of the official artwork.

Back in the early Moz days I had a script that downloaded the nightly of Seamonkey, and extracted it out. Occasionally had profiles that needed trashing, but other than that it wasn't a problem.

The zip builds were (are?) good for those for whom the installer just doesn't do the trick. Maybe don't offer them for download from the homepage download thingy, but don't kill them.

Attended installers will not get you huge installs across corps - sure you can install on your image and get it out that way, but on a network with ~3,000+ machines reimaging isn't an option just for one app. (Ok, so that's not a huge network, so I'm sure you can imagine bigger organisations having even more of a problem.)

Go vote for this bug if you want ZIP releases restored:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=287499

So from what is being said here, it looks like a zip installer is indeed possible, but zip installers are being discontinued because they weren't working.

Why not simply fix the installers instead of discontinuing them?

Pau Garcia i Quiles said:
> Neither the Firefox or the Thunderbird Win32 installer provide an unattended
> installation method,

Firefoxinstall.exe -dd -ms -ira

Or if you want users to see things happening you can use -ma (mode: auto) instead of -ms (mode: silent).

The blog ate my post, the "-dd" option is followed by the destination directory. It's optional, the default is to install over the most recently installed version.

5 out of 5 on the Fiascometer. I understand what your problem is but you bit the styleswitcher/viewsource Big One on this again. Every single minor release lately has a crisis attached to it.

> We're no longer shipping windows zipped builds because they were too problematic.

The installer builds caused many bugs and were generally more problematic than the .zip builds (remember those many Installer Only bugs and those few .zip only bugs?), so will you stop shipping these also?

> "I don't have permission on this system to use installers" - there are a couple of workarounds here. First, you could just get the zipped nightly build that corresponds to the final release (look at the build ID in the final release
How to look at the build ID if you can't use the installer? My home system isn't Windows.

> Just install the installer and don't run it, then zip up the Firefox directory and carry that around.
My home system isn't Windows.

> "I like the zip because it doesn't touch my registry like the installer." - wrong, the app itself does a fine job of molesting the registry. You don't have to use the installer to leave Firefox registry footprints.
Eh, you know that the installer modifies more registry entries? And most (if not all) of the remaining entries are caused by the Set as Default Browser.

I've used zipped install to build highly customized MSI installer package for our organization. Now I have to install Firefox/Thunderbird to a dummy machine to get the files out of the installer. This means hideous extra work.

Bring back the official zipped installs. Please. Name them like "no-installer-administrative-zipped-version-not-for-home-users.zip" if that helps.

>What are your steps for building a custom rollout installer? Can't you just add >this step to the front of that process?
>
>Step pre-1. Download the installer, run it, uncheck start Firefox at the end of >the install, zip up the Firefox install directory.
>
>How is that solution which saves all of your users the risk of a totally busted >upgrade, so terrible? What piece of this puzzle am I missing?

If a site rolls out this installation that is a zipped version of the dir the installer makes, will it work fine with updates in the future? On a machine where that file is unzipped, do they have a "zipped install" that may fail with updates? If not, and it will work fine, then why not officially zip up the directory the installer makes and release it?

"First, you could just get the zipped nightly build that corresponds to the final release..."

Is it so difficult to put a symlink in the release directory on ftp.mozilla.org that point to the correct nightbuild?

(Download a setup release and start installing it just to view a parameter and then re-download the n.b., or worse installing the setup one in order to zip it back... dude, get real please ^_^)

"First, you could just get the zipped nightly build that corresponds to the final release (look at the build ID in the final release, and get the same nightly build from the same branch and you're set)."

This a Catch 22 situation isn't it? I.e. you need to install Firefox to find the build ID.

As it seems it's been decided that there isn't going to be any zipfile, can there be a symlink in the Firefox release directory? Or if that isn't obscure enough something in a readme file?

"Get a nightly build that corresponds to the release". Maybe this works for en-US builds, but localized nightlies aren't kept too long on ftp.mozilla.org. At the moment they're still available at http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/aviary1.0.1-l10n-candidates/
but I suppose it won't take long until they're deleted. :(

So, if in a week from today I want to install a Polish (German/French/Czech/Arabic/whatever) Firefox on a computer where I can't use the installer, I will not be able to do it, because there will be no such build.

Polish users are already writing e-mails to me and posting comments in my blog asking why we, the Polish L10n team, don't offer ZIP builds anymore. They don't seem to like the idea of dropping the ZIP builds...

Thus, I had to mirror the pl-PL ZIP file at http://beta.firefox.pl/not-supported/firefox/1.0.2/win32/

Am extremly dissapointed by this decision for various reasons. All I can say is I *really* hope this is a temporary thing.

There is one thing i dont understand: why is there a difference between zip and installer?

i mean the installer should de-Zip the file, create shortcuts, add uninstall info and set the default browser.

Apparently, there was a problem in Firefox/Thunderbird release procedure which caused slightly different files to be packaged in ZIP and EXE releases. Instead of fixing obviously a simple problem, the geniuses behind this decision, in a manner Microsoft bosses would be proud of, decided to discontinue ZIP builds despite the fact that millions of users routinely went into trouble of going to mozilla ftp to download ZIP releases manually.

> Asa:
> What piece of this puzzle am I missing?

You are missing the building where this puzzle is located.

You may have forgotten, but for many of us Mozilla is about freedom. One of the reasons we switched from IE was to be able to specify "disallow script to open new windows" and "disallow script to disable context menus". I want to be free to control software which runs on my computer any way I choose. Unpacking ZIP releases anywhere I choose, storing multiple releases to switch them easily, is part of that freedom.

I am truly shocked as I know many others are because this decision is a very major inconvenience for me and millions of others, but I am even more shocked at the mentality of people behind this decision. You ought to apply for job at Microsoft if you don't see what the problem is. You'll be more at home there.

no more zip-builds?
are you kidding me? that sucks hard!

nice, now i have to use a exe-unpacker...

i just had a quick look at the installation routine.
what a mess! way to complicated if you ask me...
no wonder that you have problems with the update-process.
the problem must be laying somewhere in the automatic update itself or the way the files are organized...fix what is broken!
and if you can't provide the zip-build there must be something to fix!

Now I will refuse to upgrade my Firefox installation because there are no zip files, my browser will be less secure and I will have problems, and the next thing you know IE is winning again! One thing I hated about IE is that I really didn't trust all the patches and upgrades to stay clean. Unzipping the whole release somewhere makes me more confident it will work cleanly.

"Now I will refuse to upgrade my Firefox installation because there are no zip files, my browser will be less secure and I will have problems, and the next thing you know IE is winning again!"

Exactly.

I had been a very vocal advocate of Firefox/Thunderbird. Not any more.

Rather than steer people towards FF/TB, I'll suggest they use tools such as SpywareBlaster to protect their systems.

You boys just shot yourselves in the foot.

> I had been a very vocal advocate of Firefox/Thunderbird.
> Not any more.

Same here.

For all those massively frustrated with the way things are at the moment. Here is a great tip http://mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=6281#36 which should help alleviate the pain slightly. It won't help everyone, but it does mean you can create the zip from the installer without having to do the install first.

So, which nightly branch are we supposed to be matching up against the release version? How are we supposed to know which nightly is the same as the released "20050317"?

Is that the way Firefox goes?

What's wrong with a zip/tarball - a concept even computer illiterate
people can understand (sooner or later ;-) How cute, we rather force
them to execute an installer, where there's no easy way of finding
out what baffling mess it will create the next second.

I always hoped Firefox was not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Sane settings, unzip & go, files stored in a single folder, single
config-file (and by that I don't mean the biggest mistake ever, aka
windows registry), full user control, security over convenience.
Wishful thinking of the early Phoenix days.

Reality consists of changing default settings to something
intelligent, getting rid of all the auto-magic, plugins, talkback,
auto-update and other fancy. The mess of a documentation doesn't make
that any easier. Apparently you're expected to study the source code,
to find well hidden settings and the meaning of their values. How I'm
supposed to explain that to the average user?

Personally I can live with searching ftp.mozilla.org for hours
(although I doubt anyone will ever find the mystic ZIP matching the
official release), install to a virtual/dummy box and repackage the
files recovered, unpack the installer/XPI to copy the files manually
where I want them, living with a broken nightly just to get a non-
installer release ... unfortunately all that is not the issue.

If it was decided to create yet another software people no longer
understand except by means of a magic install process - let it be
known - loud an clear.

For the users I parent, I'd rather teach them how to use Lynx, before
one day a paper-clip pops up and lectures them not to delete plugins
or change default settings, because it will break the (un)installer.
Wrong way. Go back.

A big 'Thanks' to all who have contributed to Firefox in the past.
Unfortunately, as I try to educate people how stuff works, Fx is no
longer an alternativ. The arrogance (see bug 287499 for details) and
general direction does the rest. Good luck for the future.

Quote "Rant"
"If it was decided to create yet another software people no longer
understand except by means of a magic install process - let it be
known - loud an clear."
Well, It has never been 'Loud and clear' but the thrust of developement seems to be saying exactly that.
The attempt to remove 'view page source' a few months back, is saying that. No further Seamonkey releases, is saying that.
And please remember that Firefox would not be possible without core Gecko code,and at least some core developers are now spending their limited resources on a 1.8 release. While they are doing that, they are not working on core gecko which Firefox depends on.
I am very close to switching to Seamonkey from Firefox/Thunderbird.

Manually extracting files from XPIs doesn't work, it looks like some additional files are created by setup scripts. Generally, all proposed so called "workarounds" sound like a joke. Or an insult. Yes, definitely an insult.

FYI, I've had several times where using the mozilla app suite installer failed, and only the zipped builds let me recover.

For some reason, several diff updates had this problem. The installer would not complete, but no error message. Then mozilla wouldn't start.

No, I haven't searched bugzilla or done any significant debugging to find out the cause. It was enough hassle to recover from it at the time.

(gee, you sure got a lot of positive feedback on this idea... ;-)

"We should work to remedy that by making official RPMs. In the mean time, we're still shipping the linux tarballs."

*SCREAMS*

You'd better never switch to RPM only on Linux. RPM is not Linux's installer format! It's a very specific, very finicky installation method which about half of Linux users passionately loathe and which is not compatible with several popular distros such as Debian and Gentoo, and even when it works right on Fedora it might well make Mandrake cry.

(gee, you sure got a lot of positive feedback on this idea... ;-)

Jeff, yeah, though I suspect that if I had a comment here for every 1.0 user who got hosed by the zipped builds during their 1.0.1 updates, it'd dwarf anything you see now.

- A

It will not matter to you: Count minus 1 on your list of german advocats of firefox.....after the german ebay tracker desaster the second decision which reduces rapidly my motivation to spread firefox.....

Asa, stop embarrassing yourself. How difficult could it be to insure the same files go into ZIP and EXE packages? Inability to do that is the reason for dropping ZIP releases?

I pushed Firefox to hundreds of users, but this attitude really discussed me, and I just can not do it after that. It would feel like pushing Microsoft products. I feel like people with the same attitude are behind them.

Asa quote:
"Jeff, yeah, though I suspect that if I had a comment here for every 1.0 user who got hosed by the zipped builds during their 1.0.1 updates, it'd dwarf anything you see now."

That's about what I figured.

I've read comments on various boards from people who aren't able to use installers, for a variety of reasons.

I, for instance, tried using the FF & TB installers on a few older machines running W98, and discovered it simply did not work.

Of course, with ZIPs, that wasn't an issue.

I had hoped there might be a bit of sympathy for people who, for whatever reason, can not use the FF/TB installers, and that the myopic decision to drop ZIPs would be changed. I also suspected my hope was in vain. That's for confirming my suspicion.

Good bye.

"if I had a comment here for every 1.0 user who got hosed by the zipped builds during their 1.0.1 updates, it'd dwarf anything you see now."

I think that statement would be more accurate if it were phrased "if I had a comment here for every 1.0 zipped build user who got hosed by the 1.0.1 auto update"

The 1.0.1 auto update was rushed out and blew up on Mac and Linux (as well as Windows zipped builds).

Applying the same logic to platforms as has been applied to builds, will mozilla.org be retiring the Mac and Linux builds or would that be a bit too silly?

> Jeff, yeah, though I suspect that if I had a comment here for every 1.0 user
> who got hosed by the zipped builds during their 1.0.1 updates,
> it'd dwarf anything you see now.

That was a technical problem, this one is an attitude induced intentional screw-up. How many zip users with 1.0.1 update problems told you they would not promote Firefox anymore?

Just say as soon as technical problem is solved ZIP releases will be back. Do us all and yourself a big favor.

Asa,

I can understand why you want to have the installer as the main way of installing Firefox, and it does make it easier to update and reduces the work on the team.

But, and there always is one :) , the Firefox team should have informed everyone that the zip and installer builds were different last year, and that the zip files were for testing only, before the browser entered the mainstream.

The bugs that keep the two builds incompatible should have been filed by the people who make the installer, as they were the ones who made the installed Firefox different to the unzipped version.

I appreciate your concern with those who were affected by installing 1.0.1 after using the zipped 1.0, but a lot more will have no way of upgrading at all, which is worse, because they are the ones who are helping others to add Firefox to their computers.

If the two builds are incompatible, and is complicated to keep them both, I can understand. Just make sure that this is what you want, and not what you think they need.

If the problem's that the filelists are different in the ZIPs and EXEs, why not make the ZIP from an EXE the way you're telling everyone else to do and release THAT as the ZIP build.

Not exactly rocket science...

(gee, you sure got a lot of positive feedback on this idea... ;-)

[Jeff, yeah, though I suspect that if I had a comment here for every 1.0 user who got hosed by the zipped builds during their 1.0.1 updates, it'd dwarf anything you see now.

- A]
ya think? I am not so sure about that.
Those that had 1.0 and updated with a zip build are not the ones that would come and complain.
They will just go back to an earlier version, or more likely, back to their other browser. IE.

And I assume you have seen all the 1.0.2 problems after 'updating' to it in the Mozillazine forums.
IT appears there are factors other than the zips causing problems.

I'll say it again. Make them available somewhere for us zip users, and let the AOL'rs and the IE'rs use the installers and updaters.
Give us that know our business the version WE LIKE! instead of FORCING us to use a version you need for those that don't.

mozilla foundation were bought by Microsoft ?

they are not manners of forcing the use of a setup program, thanks to keep the user choosing. I am French and I did not find any french nightly build zipped format. You gonna lose a lot of user with this kind in manners

"mozilla foundation were bought by Microsoft?"

Ever see "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"?

Mozilla has been taken over by pod-people.

The only diffrence is, this time the pods came from Redmond, instead of outer space.

"mozilla foundation were bought by Microsoft?"

The more I think about it the less funny it sounds.
If Microsoft quietly sent people a year ago ready to donate their full time administrating Mozilla projects, right now those people would be making important decisions like discontinuing ZIP releases which alienates exactly the people who promote Mozilla the most. I know, sounds paranoid, but think about it, how likely it is that the likes of Asa are indeed stupid enough to not understand what they are doing?

Just look what happened at bug 287499 (Restore ZIP install packages for Firefox/Thunderbird)(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=287499), they all were trying to shut it up as fast as they can, any way they can.

angelo,
You have two different ZIP builds "fr-FR" here...
http://mozilla.isc.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-aviary1.0.1-l10n/firefox-1.0.2.fr-FR.win32.zip
and here...
http://mozilla.isc.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/aviary1.0.1-l10n-candidates/firefox-1.0.2.fr-FR.win32.zip

I'm using "es-AR" ZIP nightly build from "aviary1.0.1-l10n-candidates" directory, and it works fine.
Hope it helps.

Just like that? Why not fix the actual problem with the official zip builds, rather than just dropping them and alienating so many people? I'm completely floored.

Unfortunately, the .exe installers for Firefox do not work for Windows 95 OSR 2 (and I do know that it's an unsupported OS platform). But, the .zip packages did work.

Please exercise whatever influence you may have to encourage the Firefox development team to return to the practice of providing .zip packages.

Thank you,
LF

While I don't personally use the zip builds, I don't like the philosophy behind this change. The popularity of Firefox was built thanks to the "geeks" who used the product since very early releases despite bugs and problems. Now that Firefox is popular, they're being kicked aside. It's probably hopeless since not enough people will complain to get this change reverted, but the people that are complaining are the core group that's been with you from the start. Disappointing to see you turn your back on them.

Chris, that's just the kind of mindset that isn't going to get anything changed. There are technology and resources issues and complaining as you're advocating here does nothing to improve either of issues.

- A

Well, perhaps that did read mostly like complaining but I think that, from reading the comments around various boards and blogs, the attitude (or perceived attitude) is bothering people as much as the actual discontinuation itself.

From the standpoint of the users, it doesn't look like there was any attempt to fix the installer problem -- not even a statement like "when we get the updater working better we can put the zips back", just "they're gone, deal with it".

As someone pointed out above, the updater also had problems on Mac and Linux systems. Will those platforms be discontinued? Of course not -- the key idea here seems to be that users who use zip builds are simply not in large enough force to "count" when considering this issue.

A lot of people were attracted to Firefox because they like choice -- they don't want to be forced to use IE. One of the choices many people (apparently) liked was to use a zipped build rather than the installer. Taking away that choice is bound to make some people upset. Especially since from appearances, the reason is mostly based on "some inexperienced users were confused and messed things up" -- whether or not this is the full picture, the idea a lot of people seem to be getting is that what was once a product that catered to their needs is now catering to a different userbase. This may be a mistaken idea, but it seems to be fueling a lot of the complaints.

I think I am one of the users you seem to be trying to help, by stopping the zipped versions. You aren't helping us. I am a grandma, who has used computers for word processing since dos 2 and 3 and multi-mate. But I am not a programmer. Let me explain for one minute why I went to Linux over three years ago...it was Microsoft's and other software companies darn activation stuff. I no longer use those products because of activation...There are more folks out there, like me, who use opensource when they can, then I think you realize. We do know how to zip and unzip.

Gong to RPM, bad idea, it does not allow for you to install as a user...you have to install as root...I install as much as possible into my home folder...so do many others.

By getting rid of the zip files, for windows, you are losing some early users and backers of firefox, you will lose more if you go to rpm...I use Suse so I do use rpm...but trying to load the new openoffice beta, which only comes in rpm, is a nightmare...even using a command to install the rpms into my homefolder...I have to go into root...

I will continue to suggest folks use Mozilla suite, but I don't know if I will be able to suggest they use firefox or thunderbird, you folks are making me nervous...you keep changing things, without any notice to your users...you drop the suite after having the beta for 1.8 up...okay...you even said you were sorry for not telling folks earlier...you said you all were going to start communicating with the users better...this doesn't cut it...this was just plain rude...no notice...nothing...it does not impress. I understand the limits of your time and money, but maybe, if you had put a notice up, there would have been folks willing to help out with time and money. The thing that has impressed me most about opensource and Linux, is the willingness of folks to help...but the users weren't even given the chance to offer. You are making some very strange decisions lately, they may be based on sound reasoning, but companies have gone under, for no other reason then poor communication with their users and customers...I hope this does not happen to Mozilla.

By the way, I do appreciate the time and effort, of all the programmers and testers, that have donated so much to Mozilla, to opensource programs, and to linux programs and their communities. I try to give back something to the community with my website, to help new users of linux...like myself...so maybe they can learn from my mistakes...

Please restore the zip file access. I got thrown into a nice loop I couldn't get out of for a while. I had the 1.0.1 zipped version of Firefox installed here at work. I stupidly clicked on the red arrow to upgrade Firefox through the installer and was met with a no admin rights message. Fine, I said no but then couldn't restart FF. I had to reinstall 1.0.1 in a different location...

At this point, I'd be happy if the installer(s) would work under Win98.

Both Firefox and Thunderbird run great under 98. (Reportedly, they also run under Win95 OSR2.) Their respective installers do not.

The installers get as far as "Verifying Archive Integrity" (or something to that effect), and then simply terminate.

If I could just get FF/TB installed, on even one system, I'd ZIP the stinking directories/folders myself, and host the ZIP files anywhere and everywhere I could - GeoCities sites, Yahoo! Groups, you name it.

What comes to the installer itself, it should be replaced with a decent .msi install package (or such should be provided as an extra possibility). And I'm not talking about .msi wrapper for installer exe, but a real .msi install package with all and even more options than the current installer has.

Msi is a standard method to install programs into Windows, exe-installers are not nor are zip's. The lack of .msi install package for Mozilla products is hindering big organizations to move on to Firefox and Thinderbird.

It's not trivial to integrate the needed .msi building mechanisms into the building procedure and someone has to do that, but Windows Installer XML Toolset (WiX) would be worth trying.

On Linux, please please keep the tar.gz builds. At the moment, I track all the alpha and beta releases of mozilla by installing in my home directory. The major problems with rpm are:

a)The rpm knows where it wants to go, and this isn't (easily) changeable.

b)rpm/urpmi will remove an old version when installing a new one, even if the locations of the binaries are different.

c)Mandrake don't make the most recent rpms available on their mirrors. This means that, if I only use Mandrake's packages, I will usually be 2-6 months behind. This is no good for you, since it would make my bug reports worthless.

It seems you are looking through the eyes of an individual user. So you feel right with you decision.

You are absolutly not right, if you are looking through the eyes of an admin, who tries to setup an actual environment on many computers. (Windows XP)

Living with the ZIP build was such easy. Delete the old directory, copy the unzipped Files at their position. Ready. With a script, this goes automagically on my whole network. I am sure, a lot of admins have the same problem.

The installer is not a solution. An installer wich allows unattended installation, maybe a solution.

You say, that you got more complaints from people, who got a broken installation after installing 1.01 with the installer over a zipped 1.0. Well, this is surely right. But don´t forget, the people who are writing a comment to you, are mostly admins, responsible for more than a couple of machines. With no warning, you dropped the importants way to upgrade a lot of machines. You are making our live much harder!

Just promote the zipped version not on the frontpage of mozilla.org. And we are again in love with YOU :-) .

All this complainings... . Hmm. So there is need of a few nice words:

With the Software itself you all on mozilla.org did great work.

THANK YOU

Andreas

P.S.: Just rename one version of the nightly zip-files to firefox_1.02.zip, should be so easy for you. :-)