Daily Archives: July 18, 2016

Firefox, Patches and updates

Mozilla getting sneakier about updates to Firefox

Leave a comment

According to the release notes, Firefox 47.0.1 was released on June 28. I only found out about it yesterday (half a month later), when I happened to run the FileHippo Update Checker.

After seeing the new Firefox version reported by FileHippo, I looked at Firefox’s ‘About Firefox’ dialog, and it offered to upgrade to version 47.0.1. I went ahead, and I’m now running 47.0.1.

Why is Mozilla no longer announcing new versions of Firefox? If their goal is to make updates invisible to users, why didn’t my version of Firefox update to the new version automatically?

For what it’s worth, Firefox 47.0.1 appears to fix one obscure crashing problem.

Microsoft, Patches and updates, Windows 10

More Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds

Leave a comment

The rapid pace of Windows 10 Preview builds being delivered to my test PC continues. I guess that’s what Microsoft meant when it described this release channel as ‘Fast’.

In the last week or so, my test PC has been updated four times, to Windows 10 preview builds 14383, 14385, 14388, and 14390.

Given that each of these new builds is effectively a new install of Windows 10, they are surprisingly non-intrusive. The downloads are of course large, so there’s a bandwidth consideration. But the downloads happen in the background, and the installs and subsequent restarts happen during off hours (at night). Often I don’t notice the change until I start copying files and notice that Explorer’s copy dialog has once again reverted to its default, simple view.

Note: the Windows 10 version number is no longer visible on the desktop. Microsoft says “the desktop watermark is now gone. This is because we’re beginning to check in final code in preparation for releasing the Windows 10 Anniversary Update”. I’m not sure I follow the logic there, but at least it’s somewhat consistent. The watermark stops appearing when a release is imminent.

Build 14383

Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Build 14385

Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Build 14388

Bug fixes; reliability and performance improvements.

Build 14390

Bug fixes.