Category Archives: Patches and updates

Adobe, Patches and updates, Shockwave

Adobe Shockwave 12.2.5.195

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At some point in the last couple of months, Adobe produced a new version of Shockwave: 12.2.5.195. There may have been an announcement, but I didn’t see it.

There’s no mention of the new version on the Shockwave 12 release notes page, so it’s difficult to know what changed. It would be handy to know whether Shockwave 12.2.5.195 includes any security fixes.

Meanwhile, the main Shockwave download page serves up version 12.2.5.195, and the Shockwave checker definitely detects earlier versions and recommends installing version 12.2.5.195.

So Adobe is just being lazy with version announcements, release notes, and other web-based resources. Thanks for nothing, Adobe.

Patches and updates, Vivaldi

Another poorly-documented update for Vivaldi

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Another new release of Vivaldi appeared earlier this week, with no announcement or anything resembling release notes on the Vivaldi web site. The announcement blog is full of details on developer snapshots, which are of no interest to regular folks.

As with the previous release, I only became aware of the new version when I ran Vivaldi and an update dialog appeared. According to that dialog, the only change in Vivaldi 1.4.589.38 is a new version of the Chromium engine.

Microsoft, Patches and updates, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8.x

Windows 10 upgrade nagging removed from Windows 7 & 8.x

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Now that Microsoft’s offer of free Windows 10 upgrades for Windows 7 and 8.x users is over, it makes sense that we should stop seeing those annoying reminders everywhere. Sure enough, an update for Windows 7 and 8.x became available last Patch Tuesday (September 13) that removes the ‘Get Windows 10’ feature. The update is identified as KB3184143, and has the (surprisingly meaningful) title “Remove software related to the Windows 10 free upgrade offer”.

If you’ve been using the third-party software GWX Control Panel to keep those annoying Windows 10 upgrade messages away, and you’ve installed KB3184143 on your Windows 7/8.x system, you might be tempted to remove GWX Control Panel. Unfortunately, there’s no reason to assume that Microsoft won’t re-enable the ‘Get Windows 10’ feature again in the future. I plan to leave it running on my Windows 7 and 8.x computers.

Of course, knowing Microsoft, if they decide to start pushing Windows 10 on us again, they’ll probably develop something completely new, in which case GWX Control Panel probably won’t help.

Ars Technica has more.

In related news, at least one consumer group is calling for Microsoft to offer compensation to users and organizations that were harmed by unwanted Windows 10 upgrades.

Patches and updates, Vivaldi

Vivaldi 1.4.589.29

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This morning when I fired up Vivaldi (I still use it for social media), it popped up an update message. Luckily, I actually read the change notes in the message, so I can tell you that Vivaldi 1.4.589.29 consists of an engine (Chromium) update, plus a few bugfixes.

I say ‘luckily’, because as I’m writing this, there’s no announcement of the new version on the Vivaldi blog, and no release notes of any kind. Sheesh.

Firefox, Patches and updates

Firefox 49

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I’m getting better at parsing Mozilla blog posts. I only had to read a few paragraphs of the latest post (“Latest Firefox Expands Multi-Process Support and Delivers New Features for Desktop and Android”) to be fairly certain that it’s talking about a new, just-released version of Firefox. The new version number (49) isn’t mentioned, and neither is there any definite indication of when the new version was released. But there is a link to the version 49 release notes, way down at the bottom of the post.

Why is that bad? Because the Mozilla blog also routinely includes posts that are not related to new versions of Firefox, and those posts are almost indistinguishable from posts about new Firefox versions. Of course, if your goal is to confuse and obfuscate, well, nice work, Mozilla.

According to the release notes, Firefox 49 enables multi-process tabs for even more users. After installing, you can determine whether your Firefox is using multi-process tabs by entering ‘about:support‘ in Firefox’s address bar and looking for the ‘Multiprocess Windows’ entry. In my case, that entry shows as 0/1 (Disabled by add-ons). I’m using add-ons that Mozilla hasn’t tested, I guess.

Also in Firefox 49, Reader Mode has been improved, and offline page viewing has been enabled for Android users.

Opera, Patches and updates, Privacy

Opera 40

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Version 40 of alternative web browser Opera includes several major enhancements. Most notable among the changes are:

  • free, unlimited, no-log browser VPN service: when turned on, the browser VPN creates a secure connection to one of Opera’s five server locations around the world;
  • automatic battery saving features for mobile device users;
  • Chromecast support via the Chrome extension;
  • improvements to the video pop-out feature;
  • the newsreader feature now supports RSS feeds;
  • updated browser engine (Blink, aka WebKit).

Sadly, the folks behind Opera seem to be taking a (rather dysfunctional) page from Mozilla – at least in the way changes are reported. Release announcements for Opera are still in the same place on the Opera Desktop blog. But whereas changes in previous versions were reported in changelog posts on the desktop blog (such as this one for version 39), on a page on the Opera documentation site (which stops at version 37), and on the Opera history page (which also stops at version 37), there doesn’t seem to be anything like a change log for Opera 40. Hopefully this is a temporary issue, and something better is on the way. But I’m not holding my breath. This trend toward a general reduction in (and dumbing-down of) information provided to users is not helpful, in my opinion.