Last Firefox Update Was Because of Farmville

froggyboy604

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Mozilla rolls out Firefox update to remedy FarmVille issue.

Mozilla rolled a pretty big update for Firefox at the end of last week. However, the company rolled out another update right after. It was a teeny, tiny, update that fixed just one problem (adding an increase hang detector timeout) and it looks like the reason for the update was FarmVille.

Gamasutra reports that Mozilla rolled out v3.6.6 because the previous update was causing problems in the wildly popular social-networking game, FarmVille. Some FarmVille users were complaining that Firefox v3.6.4 "hangs the browser long enough for [a] timeout to trigger and kill it". It seems the issue stems from Firefox's new feature that terminates Flash if it is not responsive. However, because the likes of FarmVille and MafiaWars take longer to load, unnecessarily triggering this hang protection feature.

So, the latest version of Firefox has been updated to include an interim solution that increases the timeout, as developers look for a more ideal fix.

Mozilla's Justin Dolske posted the following on Bugzilla:

"… now that 3.6.4 has shipped, we are seeing an increasing number of reports that some users are unable to play Farmville, because Farmville hangs the browser long enough for out timeout to trigger and kill it. As an interm solution, we can increase the timeout and then look for a better solution. The SUMO article suggests that 30 seconds is a good value, so let's hit this with a big hammer and make it 45s."

Though FarmVille is mentioned specifically, a comment from Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox at Mozilla, revealed the problem wasn't isolated to FarmVille. That said, it appears the surge in complaints from FarmVille users is what finally pushed Mozilla to release a temporary solution.

Tom's Hardware

I'm glad Firefox fixed this since it probably affected other not so popular flash games sites.
 
That explains a lot, lol.

I'll tell my sister right away, because she loves playing this game, ;)

Thanks for the news, Froggyboy.
 
I enjoy Farmville as well since it is fun harvesting virtual fruits and vegetables to earn money to buy farm equiptment and buildings.

But, I find it too child friendly because you can't sell your animals to the meat market/slaughter house like real life to earn extra money for your farm.
 
good thing they don't charge for upgrades, otherwise I be upgrading for nothing.
 
This bug also fix flash problems with non-Farmville & Zynga sites with games, and flash content like NewGround, MiniClips, and Yahoo Games, so this is not an upgrade for nothing.

"Director of Firefox at Mozilla, revealed the problem wasn't isolated to FarmVille. That said, it appears the surge in complaints from FarmVille users is what finally pushed Mozilla to release a temporary solution."

The problem also occurs on other websites, but Farmville has the most people who complained about slow loading since Farmville is one of the most popular flash based MMORPG on the internet, so the Farmville community can also have a lot of influence on how popular web browser work and are designed if you like it or not.

Farmville has over over 11 million daily active users and has drawn in over a million new users per week since launching June 19, 2009 according to http://www.industrygamers.com/news/welcome-to-farmville-population-11-million/

Firefox earns money from Google Custom Search on the top right and the default Google Homepage for Fireox on their browser. Everytime you used it to search, Firefox gets a few cents to a dollar depending on what you search for, and if you click on the paid search results on the top and left of Google results. They make millions of dollars just from being a Google Partner.

http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/08/29/would-firefox-exist-without-google-funding/
 
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