Minimal

To prove that upgrading from Firebird to Firefox is more hassle than it’s worth, I’ve decided to upgrade. I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised by a hassle-free upgrade process, but I’m not banking on it. Anyway, here goes with part one: installation and first use.

Installation

• Good that it’s an EXE distribution (rather than the old ZIP one) and that it’s a fairly pleasant wizard.
• Bad that it didn’t seem to notice an old version of the browser already on the system. I’m guessing the upgrade is not so much an upgrade as installation of new, different software. In other words, I’m going to have to figure out how to manually copy my settings across to the new browser. Bugger.

First use

• Good that it asked if it should be the default browser.
• Bad that it didn’t tell me how I could revert the default browser setting in the future. This would put many people off (incl. me), but for this review, I’m going with the flow.
• Bad that it’s not picked up my Firebird homepage setting.
• Bad that it’s not picked up my Firebird theme.
• Bad that it’s not picked up my Firebird bookmarks toolbar.
• Bad that it’s not picked up my Firebird extensions.
• Bad that it’s not picked up my Firebird toolbar configurations (e.g. History, Print, Go button, etc.).
• Bad that it hasn’t prompted me to import settings from anywhere.
• Bad that it hasn’t shown me anything other than the product page from which I downloaded the software. In the absence of keeping my old homepage, I’d expect to be shown a help page for first time users. Oh well, at least I can probably find it somewhere on Firefox product page, but that can wait.

To be honest, having got this far and seen that I need to do stuff by hand, I’m already reconsidering the wisdom of upgrading. The switch from IE to Firebird was easy to justify, but I can’t think of a single feature in Firefox that would justify the upgrade pain from Firebird. Maybe if it can render the tables used in the mini2.com forums properly (Firebird frequently messes up), then it’ll be worth it. Otherwise, this looks like becoming the exercise in frustration I was expecting.