I updated my Firefox browser a few weeks ago and have been pestered daily by reminders to update to the newest version of “Growl.” I don’t recall ever downloading an older version of it, and it doesn’t show up in my app folder. What’s going on? Must I switch over to Safari to stop this badgering? At least they stopped trying to get me to download Rhapsody…
One assumes it is harassing you by popping up a window in the top right corner of the screen. Ironically, it is Growl that is doing the harassing. Growl is the utility that does the popup notifications. Just update it.
Like most things, keeping up to date is one of your protections against exploits. Safari has improved, but its lack of proper script blocking makes it a non starter for me and many others. Growl is used by many other utilities to provide easy pop up notifications as well. It is a reasonably neat utility.
Forget Firefox. It’s a slow, bloated dinosaur well past its prime and now dying a slow death.
Give Chrome a try and never worry about updates again – for it or its extensions. It all just happens automatically in the background. It also opens like 5x faster than Firefox.
If you have Growl installed, it’ll be in your System Preferences, not Applications.
Firefox autoupdates as well. The only real difference is that Firefox won’t do big updates without asking you first, unlike Chrome which will steal your bandwidth to do its updates even when not running. Even Microsoft lets you switch it to just notifications. But, with Chrome, the only notification I get is my security software telling me that an update program is trying to run.
Oh, and Growl is not a part of Firefox. Firefox will use it if it’s already installed, but it will not install it itself without asking you (and only asking you exactly once). However, some other programs might. Read here for more information, including how to uninstall Growl if you don’t want it.
Which essentially means a bunch of old updates sitting in the system tray / dock that go ignored for weeks if not months.
I’ve seen enough computers this way to believe that anything less than fully automatic updates is worthless when dealing when the average user.
Bandwidth is cheap and invisible when smartly allocated. Constant in-your-face update reminders just make people click cancel.
And Firefox extensions don’t autoupdate worth a damn and they require annoying restarts all the god damned time. Oftentimes there’s nothing wrong with the extensions at all and they work just fine if the manifest is manually updated to a newer version.
IMO, Firefox is fine. Chrome is just much better.
Well, we’ve gone off topic with deciding the best browser, but I did a Google search, and learned a bit about Growl. It’s an updating program ( as was mentioned), and more than a few people are ticked off that programs install it without asking the user. Here’s one such webpage, Wikipedia has similar info. Apparently, Dropbox, Zumo, and Adobe are the major culprits.
Yeah, Growl is a freeware notification service that runs in the background and pops up little floater windows when something happens in an application that knows how to talk to Growl. I find it particularly useful for Mail (a notification pops up whenever a new e-mail comes in, with sender, subject & the first few lines of the message) and with IM clients (Adium notifies me whenever a contact signs on or off.) I love it to pieces, personally, but I’ll acknowledge that your perspective might be different if you don’t know how it got there in the first place.
Thanks, folks. I’ve disabled it. If I start to miss those little pop-ups, I’ll go right back and re-enable it.
Does Chrome have all these extensions?
adblock
download helper(or something like it)
mouse gestures
forecastfox(or something like it)
IE Tab
NoSquint(let’s me increase size of images and font easily)
I use those extensions on Firefox all the time and would miss them.
Does Chrome have something like NoScript?
:dubious:
Yeah, if Chrome had most of those extensions plus (especially) NoScript, I might use it - but it doesn’t, so I don’t. FireFox’s extension updates work flawlessly enough for me.
With Chrome, I just get a general feeling of lack of control over things.
Yes it does. There’s like 2 extensions I’ve run into that chrome doesn’t have an equivalent for and honestly, it takes 30 seconds to search the extension gallery to see what chrome has. I’ll even give you a link: Chrome Web Store
Next time, be honest and say that you’re not interested in a different browser rather than trying to make it the browser’s fault.
Auto-updates without notification are one of the biggest problems/annoyances I have with Chrome… however that said it really probably is for the best since so many people NEVER update if they have the option to do it manually and that causes problems for everyone. I can live with it if it means less compromised computers being added to botnets because joe sixpack can’t be bothered to wait 30 seconds to update before downloading his porn.
Nosquint, I assume, makes the text larger - that’s built in, just hold control and press +/- or use the mousewheel to zoom in and out on the page.
Download helper, this is to download youtube (etc) videos right? go here to see how to set it up automatically without downloading anything (easy instructions at the bottom)
I’ll stick with Firefox with ABP and NoScript for now. Nothing ever pops up on my screen on any website. In fact, the only thing that ever pops up on this computer is the notification from Avast! that it has updated itself. Oh, and ‘Updates are ready for this computer’ thingy from Microsoft.
Umm, not quite. Next time, don’t make false assumptions of other people’s motivations. I am not a fanboy, and if I thought Chrome was better, I would certainly use it.
NoScript being the most essential extension for me to use Chrome, I’ll use that as the example. I see there is now something called “NotScript” for Chrome - this did not exist last time I evaluated the feasibility of using Chrome. Nice, let’s check it out.
From the description, we have this:
Ok, already it doesn’t sound quite as simple and effective as FireFox with NoScript, and there is an inkling there that the whole way Chrome implements extensions is sub-par to FireFox. (Also, a quick glimpse at the user reviews further down the page does not exactly engender confidence.)
So what are these limitations that NotScript has due to the inferior implementation of extensions in Chrome? They’ve got a “Limitations” page for that on the NotScript website, let’s have a look:
So yeah, not quite ready for prime-time in my book. I use FireFox with NoScript for the added security it provides, along with the ease-of-use and convenience. I applaud the developer of NotScript on his noble efforts, but I’m not about to downgrade on any of those features - particularly the security.
Firefox works just fine – and it was my top choice before Chrome – but Chrome now does most of what Firefox did, just much faster.
I’m not sure about all the extensions. I know I miss FF’s Tab Mix Plus and a few other extensions, but not enough to make me switch back. Even FF 4 is slow as a molasses compared to Chrome (unless you like having a lot of tabs open, in which case FF might be faster… I forget).
Anyway, I don’t want to take this thread much more OT than I already have. Sorry.
This post is inaccurate in its accusations. I’m sorry notscript doesn’t meet your criteria but you clearly did not do your research when you wrote this.
Was this aimed at me? Cause, dude, I was just asking about add-ons.
A little bit but mostly it’s voltaire. I am just confused as to why it’s important that other people look up what extensions chrome has. If anything, just because you’ll get a faster result doing it yourself rather than posting here and hoping someone else googles for you.