Anyone who has a keen interest in things computer related might have heard about the new flame war going on regarding the proposal to drop the version number from Firefox. This is part of a bigger goal to do away with the traditional release cycle where a major version is released every couple of years, including major changes. Instead, Firefox took merely 2 months to jump from the first 5.0 release to the 6.0 release, which has been officially released today.

There are several issues that I have with this. Firstly, you need to understand that dropping the version number is a very bad idea. I understand why they want to do it - with the change in release schedule the version number does not indicate significant releases anymore. There are more changes I believe between 3.6 and 3.6.19, than between 5.0 and 6.0 IMO. That being said, version numbers are still paramount.

From a usability perspective it might make sense - just state whether you are on the latest release or not, and show when last the browser checked for updates. In a modern world this might be a reasonable approach. But it breaks down completely.

On Windows XP… in the default configuration when you try and FTP to a site and upload/download something, the data connection that is made causes this Windows Firewall dialog box to pop up. My issue with this? The wording implies that the data connection (or at least some part of it) has been blocked - and you have a choice to keep blocking it or to unblock it. My initial thoughts was that the download in this case would FAIL, because Windows Firewall blocked the transfer attempt. If I were to click on Unblock and then retry my attempt, it would work.

But alas - as shown here, while the dialog box is waiting for your decision, the download is in progress… Nothing is being blocked like the misleading dialog box is suggesting.

This is a horribly false sense of security. A very good example where ease of use has been placed above security. And what exactly does the "Ask me later" button do? Since it is not blocking it now, it just seems even more misleading.

I recently had some users encounter this error whilst trying to load QuickBooks 2007 on a Windows 2008 Terminal Server:

To resolve this, I took the following approach:

Imagine you have this piece of text:

I am stupid\

And what to change it to

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