Posted on 07/22/2015 8:30:07 PM PDT by dayglored
Mozilla plans a campaign to stop or slow desertions from Firefox to Windows 10's new Edge browser because the OS's express setup changes previous defaults to Edge during an upgrade, according to published documents.
Edge, introduced in Windows 10, will be the default browser out of the box. In fact, according to Mozilla -- supported by a video that showed what happened when Windows 7 was upgraded to Windows 10's build 10162 of July 2 -- those who upgrade by selecting "Express Settings," as most do, will find Edge the default even if they had previously specified a competitor like Firefox or Google's Chrome.The open-source developer has also revealed its design for the Windows 10 version of Firefox, and has targeted an August or perhaps September release for the browser.
Earlier this month, Mozilla said it would deliver Firefox for Microsoft's new OS "soon" as it revealed it had resumed work on a touch-centric browser that it abandoned in early 2014.
Microsoft will launch Windows 10 in just over a week, with preview testers getting the final build on July 29. Others, including those running Windows 7 or 8.1 who have "reserved" a copy of the free upgrade, will be able to migrate to Windows 10 later, as Microsoft will notify users in waves on a not-yet-specified timetable.
"We don't know exactly what the [Windows 10] update trajectory will look like," Mozilla said in one document. "Our goal is that when Windows 10 releases start to go out, Firefox will work well on Windows 10."
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
This has bugged me to now end for a few years now.
Many extension authors gave up on updates a long time ago. Newer Firefox releases broke extensions.
And this is too bad. I've had a few extensions that stopped working several versions ago and they all gave up updating their extensions. I miss them.
I might try out Edge to see what all the hype is about. I’ve heard good things about it, but I want to take it for a spin myself. I don’t like the idea that it will change user settings and make it a default browser. For those less savvy that might be frustrating, but at least there will be the ability to return the default browser to a user choice after the in place upgrade. OSX has always retained user settings, including default browsers during in place upgrades. I’ve done in place upgrades on my Macbook Pro since Snow Leopard and currently use Yosemite.
I think it's a valid way to get people to try Edge
I agree. Firefox is a bloated memory hog.
Depends on what’s built in.
I tried Palemoon as an FF replacement, as I stopped updating FF at ver 15. Pm was okay until ver 24 to 25 when some extensions quit working.
I have since found a Mozilla based browser called Cyberfox. I use the 32-bit version. Most of my preferred extensions will work with it. I keep my fingers crossed at each new update.
https://cyberfox.8pecxstudios.com/
And I for one am overjoyed by this.
One of the most annoying things I've run into in the corporate world are poorly written websites that will only work with IE. Not only that, they tend to work with only specific versions of IE. I can't tell you how many headaches this has given me.
This is going to force some of those things that is going to finally force them to fix these broken apps. Thankfully, they are getting to be fewer and fewer as time goes on. However, for some corporations, they are going to have issues upgrading until those apps can be fixed, because as far as I know, there is no way to install a standalone copy of IE on an upgraded system.
Serves them right IMO.
I'll be interested in seeing if MS has managed to finally build a browser that isn't swiss cheese as far as vulnerabilities are concerned. From what I understand, they've finally abandoned active-x (which is where a hell of a lot of those vulnerabilities were coming from) That's a really good thing, because it's also the active-x stuff that was what was making websites IE-only.
Cool. I’ll check that out! Thanks!
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