What Caused So Many People to Stick to Firefox 2.x?

Whenever I see a new version of one of my commonly-used applications become available, I’ll download without putting too much thought into it. Sometimes, I don’t even look to see what’s new feature-wise. After all, there’s more than just features that come to new versions of applications, such as security fixes, and possibly also stability fixes. So when Firefox 3 came out, I didn’t put much thought into an upgrade. It appears that there are many who did, however.

As a last-ditch effort to have people upgrade their Firefox 2 to 3, Mozilla prompted people running 2 to fill out a quick survey to explain their reasons for not upgrading to the latest version. Can you even guess? Believe it or not, 25% of people said that the robust bookmarks feature was the main reason, because with it, you could easily get caught by family members if you’re using your PC for more than just business and gaming!

For those not familiar with how Firefox 3 handles bookmarks, you can see an example below. As soon as you type in a single letter, the address bar will bring up a drop-down menu with things it believes you might be looking for. So, if your family members wanted to come to our site, and they push the letter “T”, chances are fairly good that your “Top Teen Sex” bookmark would also pop up. No need to go into further detail than this.

I do find it interesting that of all things, this is what stops people from upgrading. But, on a shared PC, I guess the situation would be a little more complex than simply deleting your cookies/cache/history every time you’re done surfing. For those users who held off upgrading, Firefox 3.5 pretty much takes care of that issue, as it allows you to turn off the advanced address bar quite easily.

The number one reason for not upgrading was the new location bar, and the fact that it delved into people’s bookmark collections to suggest sites as they typed. No fewer than 25% of Firefox 3 refuseniks cited this as the reason they wouldn’t upgrade. In fact, almost all of the people who provided feedback had tried Firefox 3, didn’t like what they saw, and headed back to Firefox 2.