FarmVille Forces Firefox Fix

[Andy Chalk]

FarmVille Forces Firefox Fix

FarmVille [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/] for making it happen.

Farmville pulls in almost 64 million active users per month. Per month. It's the most popular application on Facebook [http://www.facebook.com], which is of course the most popular thing in the universe. So it shouldn't be too surprising that when something goes wonky, there's some hustle in the effort to get it fixed.

That's how an issue with the bug report [http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/], version 3.6.4 of Firefox was timing out on certain Flash applications, which doesn't sound all that terribly interesting until it's translated to mean that people can't play FarmVille anymore.

"There's a massive regression in user experience for a meaningful number of users of an extremely popular property," Mozilla's Mike Shaver wrote in the bug report comments, describing the problem as only a tech guy can. "We can and should investigate better event look behavior, perhaps even before the next non-chemspill release, but for now we need to get out of a bad hole before it gets any worse."

Apparently there are people out there who care about your stupid farm after all.

via: Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29171/FarmVille_Bug_Helps_Prompt_Firefox_Update.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader]


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[VincentX3]

Hopefully that will give people some time to do something eles in their life other than.......
farm a virtual crop?

 

[Shaegor]

Hmm, try saying the topic title really fast a few times.
Honestly, I just don't understand how people can find Farmville interesting.
Then again, maybe they don't, maybe they just need something to kill time.

 

[sunami88]

I'm glad they fixed it. The thought of thousands (millions?) of people going back to the "Big Blue E" because they can't use the web the way they want to makes a chill go down my spine...

...Even if they are wrong for wanting to play Farmville.

Addendum:
I like the notion that the Beta testers didn't catch this. Seems people who run beta builds of a web browser don't spend a lot of time in Farmville haha.

 

[JEBWrench]

So there you go. If you want software updated, it better mess with Farmville.

 

[Keava]

Curses, foiled again. And it was such perfect first step to stop the madness. Today firefox, tomorrow rest of the web-browsers! *Goes to slap people at Adobe to make a new Flash version that blocks it totally, forever!

 

[JEBWrench]

The thought of thousands (millions?) of people going back to the "Big Blue E" because they can't use the web the way they want to makes a chill go down my spine...

...Even if they are wrong.

Well, that seems, in fact, like an extremely valid reason to go back to using the Big Blue E.

If something doesn't work the way it's supposed to, then don't use it.

 

[CakeDragon]

Hehehee, I like how the farm in the picture says 'POO' 'ASS' and 'FART'.

I think them people at Firefox shouldn't have fixed it, that'd piss a lot of people off.
Then again, I wouldn't hear the end of it in my news feed.
Lesser of two evils!

 

[Schlagwerk]

Really, Mozilla?

 

[tkioz]

So that stupid freaking farm game is why I got bugged all weekend while trying to study for my online course by firefox to freaking update.

Thanks.

Okay I like Firefox, but does anyone else get really sick of the constant updates?

 

[sunami88]

Well, that seems, in fact, like an extremely valid reason to go back to using the Big Blue E.

If something doesn't work the way it's supposed to, then don't use it.

I agree. I was joking that playing Farmville is what's "wrong". I'll make an edit and make it more clear.

 

[Delusibeta]

Basically, the "bug" was that Firefox was killing the Flash plug-in if it was left hanging for more than 10 seconds. However, some flash games (most notably FarmVille) left Flash hanging for longer, thus getting killed. While this is more of a case of crappy programming in FarmVille than crappy programming in Firefox, the 'fox guys decided to bump the kill timer up to 45 seconds. Whether this is the last we'll hear of it is another question entirely.

 

[Zepren]

My mum has it and it makes me shake my head in dismay. Why?!?!?! WHY?!?!?!?!?! Go buy an xbox

 

[RanD00M]

If I were the owner of Firefox,I would have told the people at Zynga to fuck off and fix it themselves.Which they couldn't.And then I would do me evil laugh.

 

[disorder340]

Failfox. The game is what needed to be fixed, not the browser.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Okay I like Firefox, but does anyone else get really sick of the constant updates?

Really? Not to sound like a Firefox fanboy but Firefox has one of the smoothest update mechanisms of all the browsers out there.

 

[Jared]

Thats showing they are getting alot of power...too much

 

[tkioz]

Okay I like Firefox, but does anyone else get really sick of the constant updates?

Really? Not to sound like a Firefox fanboy but Firefox has one of the smoothest update mechanisms of all the browsers out there.

It bugs you to restart your browser, that alone pisses me the hell off, I have many tabs open, all in order, all colour coded perfectly, and when I restart it I have to do it again. If the update doesn't matter (i.e not a huge security problem) it shouldn't bug me about it, it should be offered once a month.

Then there is the fact they still haven't fixed it's damn memory sucking. Hell I remember when Firefox was suppose to be the "lightweight" Mozilla, now it's just as bloated as a obese whale, as bad as any other browser out there.

 

[Zacharine]

Okay I like Firefox, but does anyone else get really sick of the constant updates?

Really? Not to sound like a Firefox fanboy but Firefox has one of the smoothest update mechanisms of all the browsers out there.

It bugs you to restart your browser, that alone pisses me the hell off, I have many tabs open, all in order, all colour coded perfectly, and when I restart it I have to do it again.

Not to sound like yet another fanboy, but no, you don't. There are options for saving the session, and reloading the previous one on startup. I use the Session Manager addon. I can save basically as many multi-tab multi-window sessions as I like, and reload any of them with a click of a button. Heck, it creates backups of known sessions, just in case of a power loss etc where firefox is unable to save the current session. I consistenly have 60+ tabs open, and closing + opening the browser is done in less than a minute.

I agree, the reminders to update can get annoying, but one click and in something like 5 seconds I'm up to date with not only the main browser, but addons as well.

Firefox may not be perfect, but it damn sure beats nearly everything else out there.