From the Brow of Zeus

If you're a Firefox user, you're used to seeing Add-on update notices when you load your fine, foxy browser. Keeping add-ons up to date has grown considerably easier over the years, simplified to a single helpful tool tip in the lower right hand corner, gently asking if you'd like to update while massaging your scalp and feet.

The process is completely painless, unless of course something goes wrong, horribly wrong, in which case the process is more akin to a Kathe Koja Cypher process, an ordeal which leaves you with nothing more than a puss-encrusted black hole in your palm and a deteriorating mind which is slowly and inexorably drawn to the darkest abyss.

Or, even worse, totally screws up your Firefox settings.

Fast Dial 2.15 is one such update.

Inspired by Opera's Speed Dial start page -- and by that I mean it totally rips off one of the last few features the Moz development team hasn't quite gotten around to ripping off yet -- Fast Dial offers a highly configurable grid of thumbnails that point to your favorite sites. It's a great "I'm Bored, What Now?" way to web browse, and damn sexy too.

I had mine all tricked out with custom screenshots of various updates that, for one reason or another, made me happy. Rock, Paper, Shotgun's front page article on a possible sequel to Syndicate, etc. The new update did away with all that, but what it takes with one hand, it gives with the other, shoving unwanted "features" down my throat.

The whole point of a Speed Dial start page is that it's highly personal, giving the user quick access to their favorite sites. So of course, they pushed down half of my favorites and replaced them with links to strange websites I'd never heard of. They also added a new search engine

Spyware? Nagware? Adware? Yeah, more like be-ware. This was done without warning.

Even worse, they added a half-dozen strange toolbars to the top of the browser, stealing away viewing space and replacing it with weird features that Web Developer can do better while wasting far less space. (I already had Web Developer installed, so I'm not sure whether the bars were created by the new Fast Dial, or just that it messed with Web Developer's settings and caused it to spawn ten new toolbars.)

The problem is there's no way to undo an update. You can't "roll back" to an earlier version when something goes terribly wrong. You can uninstall (but it won't be a clean uninstall, all the settings left intact) and reinstall, but you can't get back your settings prior to the pan-galactic gargle baster update.

So, there we have it, a longwinded and useless rant, courtesy of Blogger. The add-on's page is now flooded with angry one-star reviews, akin to Spore's DRM debacle.

It wouldn't have bothered me except my start page was basically an Xbox achievements page of cool updates for my favorite sites. I can redo all the colors and links, but the Pokemon Snap screenshots of memorable updates from my favorite sites are history.

I've since switched to Speed Dial, an even less imaginatively named Firefox add-on that also rips off Opera's Speed Dial feature. I hate the widecreen thumbnails and not being able to give it an orange-on-black theme like Fast Dial, but at least it doesn't take a huge sputtering crap all over my browser, forget to flush and call it an "update".

Labels: software