Peculiar NoSquint Plus Failure Redux
This is amazing. An exact repeat of a previous failure.
On or about July 22 11:56 AM, the Firefox NoSquint Plus add-on failed to load and function. The time stamp is no mistake. On my office desktop I had launched Firefox about 9 AM. The add-on worked fine. At about 10:30 AM I launched Firefox on my laptop. NoSquint worked fine. About 1 PM I again launched Firefox on my office desktop. The add-on failed to load.
As Firefox was still running on the laptop, I closed Firefox and relaunched. The add-on failed to load.
Immediately remembering the previous failure, I changed the system time to 11:56 and launched Firefox. The add-on loaded.
The add-on developer released an update within 24-hours.
Some comments indicate there is a built-in 3-month time tomb in the bootstrap.js file that kills the add-on. Looking at the file I see a constant declared with the build date and a function called startup. This failure will again occur 3 months from now. Of course, modifying the bootstrap.js file with a long term future “build” date results in Firefox complaining because the extension signing is incorrect, although the add-on remains usable.
I do not know what to say about this kind of software quality. I dislike being ungrateful, but this is classic WTF. Do I presume incompetence or nefarious intent?
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: Firefox
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