Hacker News Reader

Comment by zerocrates | Hacker News Reader

I've only ever seen this happen with the Linux package-manager-type process where the update might happen "underneath" the browser without its knowledge. Using their built-in upgrade system as far as I know it just happens only on browser restart... but I guess I haven't used it on Windows in a long time.

View on HN

I've seen something similar in Windows corporate environments where Firefox is updated while you are using it, and the only indication that it has happened is that Firefox insists on restarting before you can load any more pages, although no UAC prompts were involved. It is annoying, especially if you are in the middle of submitting a form. I don't know whether to blame it on how IT has chosen to implement centralized updates, or on Firefox for not being as easy to centrally manage as other software, or some combination.

I just got it on my Windows, but haven been postponing updates for ages before that with zero issue. Hence I was quite surprised. I'm almost certain what triggered it was some application trying to load a website.

Not sure which technique the application used, but after few seconds it loaded the error message, and after that I couldn't open new tabs or windows without getting that error.

I don't think I have ever run into it on Windows, but I have seen it pretty much every time I update it on Linux through the package manager.

I moved to just using Firefox's binary tarball sitting in my home directory, so it uses its own update process, which doesn't have this problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com