1322652 - Firefox show misleading/wrong message after update has finished

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Ed]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20151216175450

Steps to reproduce:

Start Firefox.


Actual results:

FF shows a non-empty page with donation requests and with the message on the top of the page: "Your Firefox is out of date. Update now for better performance and security"


Expected results:

1. FF, if asked to show empty page on start, should show empty page
2. Is the the message about update is legally binding? Or this is Ad-like blah-blah ****? It was already demonstrated in one of my posts that new version makes everything slower. At least on my old laptop. Why FF (and its developers) continues to lie? 

The truth is that after update there is no way back and therefore every update is VERY dangerous operation, which can make web-browsing so slow that it is not practical. One needs then to buy a new PC ($500EUR). Is FF team ready to legally guaranty that new version will be at least not slower and, if this is not the case, pay 500EUR to make it indeed faster? If not, do not write this blah-blah on top.

P.S. And no, i do not want to donate, because I am frustrated with the product -- too fat, too slow, too many unneeded & buggy features, bug fixing takes ages (but development of new buggy features is fast, so is free software model as far as I understand), etc...

Comment 1

[YF (Yang)]

https://support.mozilla.org/kb/install-older-version-of-firefox

https://support.mozilla.org/kb/firefox-slow-how-make-it-faster

Comment 2

[Ed]

Dear YF,

Thanks for the links, BUT...out of many reasons of slow FF the real and the only one is high memory consumption leading to permanent swapping and hanging and crashing. And if the user wants to solve this, you see stupid suggestions like:
- update FF (this is nonsense, see above)
- stop using plugins. Hello? I am already using the most necessary. AdBlock is the most fat, but I cannot imagine browsing the web without it as there are many very Ad-aggressive web sites around.
- restart. Good, this actually helps, but to restart every 15 or 30 min is a nonsense...may be something should be done inside FF instead to remove memory leakage or fragmentation?
- using fewer tabs. I am already using only 3. In fact, the problem is not in the number of tabs, but in complexity of some web-sites (e.g. Facebook). At the moment one can write a site, which just kills FF by DOS attack, because FF allocates as much memory per web-page as page wants. By some reason FF developers reject to set any limit of MB per page to stop this.
- other applications? haha! FF is a champion here....with typically 500MB in RAM. Only TB is approaching with 200MB. All others are at modest 10-20MB.
- Add RAM....Good. What else? Do you prefer to send me money for new RAM or new PC or to improve your programming style? At the moment your programming style literally costs money.

As for the old version, remind me which one was without this modern interface (with totally useless megabytes of new-interface-code)? Why new interface is not in addon? Then I would be happy to delete it. Now, we have uninstallable new interface code PLUS addon to restore classical interface. This is a good example how the memory is wasted.

Sorry for this deviation into FF performance issues, but the question above remains. Is the message legally binding or just blah-blah?

Comment 3

[YF (Yang)]

Thank you for complete those steps and reply. Please note that I am a volunteer, and I understand and sympathize with use Firefox on an older computer.

If your computer's memory is less, using fewer extensions or even older firefox version may be unavoidable. The same applies to increasingly complex sites, Firefox will be faster, but may use more memory, which is also due to the users's average memory upgrade and demand, which is the natural law.


For "with typically 500MB in RAM. Only TB is approaching with 200MB. All others are at modest 10-20MB.", sounds like it is not a very serious memory leaks, but is serious for older computer. As a reference, I run a Firefox 50.0.2 with clean profile (and "Minimize memory usage" on about:memory) in Win10, that uses 120MB (Dedicated memory)/180MB (Committed memory) RAM. So you should be able to optimize your profile to reduce the memory usage and leaks, or any other ways (software, or hardware) to improve your experience, which may be the responsibility of the development or not, but you can alleviate it at least.

Comment 4

[YF (Yang)]

correct: sympathize to empathy. I once use an slow PC with firefox (1~2min wait for launch and even operation), and there is still a serious memory leaks profile still in use, RAM 500MB when started, and gradually increased to xGB and restart.


Due to this is more like a support request or text adjustment request, I modify this priority.

Comment 5

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

This bug was triaged incorrectly. This message is displayed by Firefox *after* an update and is not under app update's control. Moving over to Firefox.