> The reason Firefox has to install a service is because
> it's not possible to install updates cleanly in any
> other fashion on UAC-enabled Windows.
Ah ha! Now you're speaking my language! That I understand perfectly!It makes sense that Windows UAC has forced bad decision making. Windows, in general, is just a hideous, mutated mess nowadays. Anyway, it's essentially a correct decision to never marry a browser to device drivers or hardware. The websites that count won't dare crash browsers due to hardware requirements. The browsers that count will fail gracefully, and tell the user that their settings are not compliant with the requirements of the page they are trying to view, before they ever crash. However one wishes to communicate the nature of highly specific user options, and then adapt to the long fragmented tail of hardware conditions, is beyond the scope of a "NORMAL" web browser (no-true-scotsman). When requirements become that unforgiving, you've entered the realm of the highly specialized plug-in, or custom client-server software. It's cool that Firefox is brave enough to wade into those territories, and still deliver awesomeness, but the core necessities of the web browser should never be sacrificed, for fluff and sugar-coated eye candy. I'm really not worried about the idea that "The Web" is changing. The sites that matter will always work with the bare minimum, with little more than HTTP GET and HTTP POST, even with JavaScript disabled. The rest is just cruft. |