Mozilla is rightly concerned that users upgrade promptly after new versions of Firefox are released, and a user survey has revealed why they don't.

Mozilla is rightly concerned that users upgrade promptly after new versions of Firefox are released, and a user survey has revealed why they don't.

The Mozilla Blog of Metrics has issued #4 in a series Why People Don't Upgrade Their Browser. The new versions of Firefox are invariably more secure than the older ones, and so Mozilla has begun to study user reactions and survey users for their reasoning.

A few weeks ago, Firefox 3 users received a warning that their browser was about to reach the end of it's support life:

Users who clicked "No thanks" on the warning were directed to a survey and Mozilla got 40,000 responses. The majority said they were not upgrading to 3.6 because they were happy with version 3. A significant number said they didn't have time to upgrade, which is a shame since it takes very little time. Mozilla will address this in the future by stressing in the upgrade notice that the process is "relatively quick and painless."

The second question asked for any thoughts the user had about why they weren't upgrading. More than a third were concerned about compatibility problems with web sites, plugins, etc., and this is a fair point as it has been with every new major version of Firefox. Fewer users complained about stability and performance than in previous versions of the survey.

The time issue and complaints of "too many updates" are definitely a problem, but one I think can be best addressed through education; updates are necessary and not a burdensome task.

Originally posted to the PCMag.com security blog, Security Watch.