Why update firefox/seamonkey?

Do you need to always update firefox/seamonkey?
The beta versions keep on rolling out, you can even get the most latest
development versions at nightly ftp.

Every time I see that it is almost the same between different versions.

Practically it does not make any difference for browsing the internet.

 

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I don't bother with every new one myself, as it looks like a bunch of the 'improvements' are cell phone/pad stuff that I won't use.

 

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Security and bug-fixes are usually the only motivation. Since increased speed in terms of microseconds is a ridiculously overrated warfare between the browsers (try decreasing the start-up time instead!) With Chrome you may actually have new features added slightly more often (like built-in Flash, PDF reader, sandbox, a Flash blocker of sorts option, mhtml as of the next update, etc.).

What I dislike about Chrome is that it carries its "minimalism" philosophy too far, to even the superficial appearances. Google has made its icons, buttons and bars more ugly or threadbare than they were at the beginning of Chrome. Worse is that other browsers, like Opera, have started to imitate that bleak look. Firefox, OTOH, still has some aesthetics with its appearance, especially when changes to an OS's color (like olive green) can help render the illusion of that dreary gray being tuned to a faint yellow.

 

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How about IE?

 

Updates are a must for Internet Explorer, as it's the primary target of malware and being a MS product probably allows an easier route to taking over a Windows computer once it is successfully breached. And security updates for IE will come as part of the regular automatic updates package for the Windows OS, although there may still be an option buried somewhere in preferences for separating the two.

Plus, it's not like there are any significant extensions provided for IE that one has to worry about being disabled. Which would be somewhat irrelevant, anyway, since the version of IE that one is using doesn't get changed by those routine updates as it does with the other browsers. Receive the conventional security tweak to IE8 or IE9, and you're still stuck on IE8 or IE9 afterwards (as opposed to Chrome getting wholly upgraded to version 12 or 13 or 14, etc., every six weeks -- instead of every three years or whatever for IE).

As for appearances, one may not realize that IE is not the most boring-looking major browser, after all, till downloading Google's Chrome. I mean, at least the buttons and icons have some detail to them.

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IE9 not bad.
But w are too used to firefox etc.
Now I use Maxthon browser.

 

You don't hear too many people touting Maxthon, when I had a windows install on my netbook I loved it. Apps are surprisingly Asia-centric...but it was a really enjoyable browsing experience.

 

maxthon is nice, you login with an account ID, you can preserve all your bookmarks wherever u go.

 

Never had heard of Maxthon, but it's an interesting idea, flipping between two major engines. I can't see how it's using the same engine as Chrome but claims to be faster though. But at least it's a browser built on web standards, something that IE finally got pretty close with IE 8. It looks like 9 is going to go back downhill.

There's a variety out there now, and that's always good for consumers. Myself I've always liked Firefox and all the options, and since switching to Linux it's quite fast.

On the OP, as long as security stuff is maintained, you can stick with older versions that work well for you. But there will come a time that you need to move on for fundtionality's sake, the net doesn't stay still. I doubt anyone still uses Netscape 1.0 or Mosiac, even though they were good for their time.

 

Maxthon 2 had more built-in extensions than any other browser, except maybe SlimBrowser. But like the latter and Avant, it has a parasitic relationship with the Trident engine of Internet Explorer, though that's been reduced to a half-dependency with the newer version. I expect it to be completely freed from IE next time around, making it a fully self-contained browser like the Big Four (FF, IE, Chrome, Opera).

 

It's known that not all software developers use the same method of recording changes, so the entire notion of a Version number can be different per project.

With Microsoft they use a decimalised number for a version, this breaks any major or minor alterations to the version of the software. I believe the Microsoft team only has a version number change when there is a complete re-write of the fundamentals of the project. (Namely a separate branch)

The Update to different version of Firefox has again seemingly move a different route with their version. I'm pretty sure they had a number of different branches running at the same time and these branches are the reason for the version number differences, I would also gather (without looking at the project in depth) that it's likely they all started with the same core but just had various differences in how the code functions.

There is also a potentially that if a long winded patch is applied to "work around" some exploit or buffer overflow, and then later a better cleaner coded version achieves the same task, moving to a different version is easier than trying to remove the work around code and then apply the new method on top.

Also using versions tends to push the third-party plug-in developers to also update their products, after all some exploits come through third-party plug-in's. So ideally forcing a version number change forces them to deal with changing their software for compatibility, otherwise by default it will not be loaded as a plug-in.

 

I agree with your post. But just going by personal experience, that those "companies" which provide a pathetic handful of add-ons and parasitic browsers for IE rarely, if ever, seemed concerned about updating themselves specifically in response to an IE update -- until a new full version of IE came out (...6, 7, 8, 9) -- those lesser adjustments didn't seem to disable anything as they often do with the independent-developer provided extensions of FF, Chrome, and Opera.

 

I like Seamonkey also.

 

I am very tired of updating firefox/google chrome/chromium. almost every week there is a new beta version coming out, and when I read the What's New, it always show Fix this and Fix that, what are these Fixes?
I don't see anything different between using the old and new versions????

Really tired of it.

 

IE is better, never need to always update patches. Once for very long time. IE 9 works very fine for me.