In case you haven't already read about it over at Chase's blog, I'm posting the news here as well.
We're no longer shipping windows zipped builds because they were too problematic. Our update mechanism serves installer builds and serves tens of millions of people. Many zipped build users (several million of them already exist, by my rough estimates) got hosed by the 1.0.1 update which installed Firefox over their zipped install and left them with a completely broken browser.
Discontinuing the zipped builds (which were created for testing, not for end users) will prevent that kind of problem from spreading to millions more users. It will also simplify our test matrix for the app and for the update system, something that desperately needs to happen if we're going to move forward in improving both.
There are a lot of people who prefer the zipped builds. I've tried to address a few of those below:
"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, and get the same nightly build from the same branch and you're set). There is nothing magical about the release build. It is the exact same nightly build bits that we QA'd with a new file name and location on FTP. The second answer is to make a "zipped" build of your own. Just install the installer and don't run it, then zip up the Firefox directory and carry that around.
"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.
"I keep the release zip builds around for regression testing." great! so do I. In the future I'll be keeping the final nightly build or making a zip myself from the installer.
"Zipped builds is preferred on Linux." indeed it is right now. We should work to remedy that by making official RPMs. In the mean time, we're still shipping the linux tarballs.
"I'm using the zip build to install it for lots of other people at my work/school/home." Well, then you're setting those people up for a pretty awful situation unless you're also disabling the app update feature. If you're disabling the app update feature for them, then you're supporting their installation and upgrade process and you're probably capable of making your own zipped build.
There are scores of additional reasons that people want the zipped builds, but right now there are too many differences between the zipped and installer builds and we cannot afford to let millions more get zipped builds that may break them when they try to get a security update.
Also, perhaps some of you who care so deeply about the zipped builds could fix them so that their filelists match the installer builds' and stayed in sync. That would go a long way to improving their prospects for a return.
