Hot answers tagged updating
50
You want your users to use your service. Your users want to use the service but they need to invest first (i.e. time to upgrade their browser).
Ideas:
First of all be nice and show an empathic message, e.g. like Apple does if you run a browser that's not supported by iCloud
Tell them why it's worth investing the time (list benefits, preview what they can ...
44
Key point that hasn't been mentioned: Some people CAN'T upgrade.
At work, I'm forced to IE8 (Upgraded from IE6 late last year, early this year).
Do what Basecamp does. Push IE 6/7/8 into Chrome-Frame :
You can't "Force" everyone to upgrade. Some users don't have the option. Give them options to use within their restrictions (Work Restrictions, ...
35
You might want to briefly try explaining the value of upgrading, while promoting the action with positive language, and demoting the negative action with not exactly negative language, but just less positive.
You also need to provide information for those who are unable to upgrade (for example corporate restrictions may prevent use of anything except IE6), ...
19
You could do what this GIANT Austrailian company did and charge an extra "tax" for old browsers in compensation for having to support them
Kogan.com
'It appears you or your system administrator has been in a coma for over 5 years and you are still using IE7.' It begins, before going on to break the news about the costs. 'To help make the internet a ...
10
If you are willing to trust Adobe's self reporting, they have their own statistics on market penetration of Flash versions. A little math on these numbers would give you numbers on how often users upgrade. For example, they released 10.1 in June, and by December (6 months) they had 87% penetration in the US. In May they released 10.3, and they claim 40% ...
8
How are you warning your users before the point of sale?
Some text along the lines of "Your current browser is not fully compatible for use with this site. To get the maximum productivity/effectiveness, one of these browsers is recommended" is the easiest/most common tactic, sounds like what you're doing.
There are a number of javascript-based overlays that ...
8
Redirect them to the scaled-up mobile-version of the website and display a heading on top, saying they can use the full-version when they decide to upgrade their browser.
I think this is better than outright refusing to serve them as bounce-rate when met with a "brick-wall" (upgrade your browser to proceed) will be far higher.
Scaled-up, mobile web-sites ...
8
I definitely wouldn't phrase it as Versions are an artifact of development since in this age of having real source control, a version number that includes a source control ID is critically important for debugging any customer issue.
The importance of marketing a version number really depends on the revenue model of the product.
For products that are ...
8
Philosophical background
For the user, the system is the user interface. This is actually the programmers' definition of an interface. You can change every other part as you wish, as long as the interface stays the same the users won't notice. As soon, as you change the user interface however, you affect users' life.
DA01 is right on that for data-heavy ...
6
How does your site work with a text only browser? How does it appear to people using screen readers? If your response is that it doesn't work, you may be in contravention of disabilities legislation in your jurisdiction. When pushing the technological boundaries, you have a number of issues to deal with including this. Even for user who are capable of ...
6
Personally I like being in control of things and dislike more or less anything happening outside of my control, such as a page refresh or new item listings. At least I as a user needs to get the impression that I'm in control.
Talking to my team they are of the same opinion as me. So implementation of SE notification of new activity and Twitters new tweet ...
5
Chrome does this pretty well; it quietly shows a little up arrow icon over the "menu" icon (oddly I couldn't find an image of this). When you click the "update" icon it lets you know you should restart Chrome to let it update. If you naturally close Chrome at any point it will (very quietly and quickly) update.
Since updates generally aren't so important ...
5
There is another concept I've seen somewhere, I can't remember where but I'll try to dig up a reference. The concept is to define this length of time by their previous actions. i.e. if it is the first time they have dismissed the update tell them again the next time they boot up/log in, however if they have dismissed it multiple times you don't want to keep ...
4
Personally, I do the same as Matt Rockwell. I let it nag until i'm reminded and i have a free moment.
I would suggest placing some kind of banner or other notification suggesting users upgrade their flash player within your application.
We have upgraded our application. To experience all of the new functionality, we suggest you update your Flash player ...
4
Answering a question with a question: Will your site work at all (as in provide any sort of value) with browsers that don't have full support for the HTML5 features you use?
If so, show users placeholder panels for content they're missing. This is both "carrot" and "stick"; they know they're not getting the full experience and value of what they're paying ...
4
I would recommend the following steps to ensure a painless (or relatively painless) process of keeping your users informed about a site outage :
Determine the user base of your site and determine the time of minimum usage : I am hoping you have some sort of Analytics built in which shows what your users and where they are originating from and what time ...
4
Don't refresh without user interaction
Section 6.7. of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (published 5-May-1999 already, mind you) states:
Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes.
Ensure that moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating objects or pages may be paused or stopped.
Back in the day, that mostly meant ...
3
The Superior Efficiency of UNIX Apps
UNIX UIs have a tradition of favoring user efficiency over learnability. For example, UNIX’s designers ask, “Why type “rename” when you can more quickly type “mv” instead? Who cares if that’s harder to memorize?” I expect the UNIX versions of the apps do in fact allow users to do whip off the tasks with remarkably little ...
3
One thing to ask is if you can do any part of the process for them? BJ Frogg gave his family envelopes with his address already written on them and asked his family to write him while he was away at school. Just completing part of the process motivated them to start mailing him frequently.
Additionally, constrain your users from subscribing to the service ...
3
I'd have to answer: yes in theory, but in practice, no.
Due to corporate firewalls preventing automatic updates, old but still supported versions of Windows Server still used in enterprises and general user reluctance to accept updates the concept of version numbers is still very much with us.
It could be turned around too - what about the tech-savvy ...
3
From our company practice, it's best to do it at the time of least visitors. There has to be a block segment of time that you have the least number of users. And something under 25 visitors. And at a time that if your website is not running, you're not gonna get people who feel upset by it.
Examples would be 2am on Friday night (ie. early saturday morning) ...
2
When you provide an auto-updated product, you must be sure to keep 100% backwards compatibility. In this way your product behaves as a service and users do not need to be aware of versions.
However, if your product changes radically the way it is used, it is not convenient to push this change to the user without prior info
2
Assuming you don't require downtime...
If you want user feedback prior to the "busy hours" (so you can make amendments), perform update on lowest demand.
If the update doesn't require feedback and you want users to feel like they are getting the newest content, perform the update prior to the peek (e.g. at 50% of the expected peek on the way up to the ...
2
It has been requested, by the community, to have the option "Install and Restart" option on the Shutdown Event Tracker on Windows Server, however never implemented.
Technet@Microsoft says the following of the Shutdown Event Tracker:
Shutdown Event Tracker is a tool that prompts users to record a reason why they restart or shut down the computer. This ...
2
By having Installing Updates as an option you would be able to better track how often your servers are being rebooted for updates. From an IT point of view a server being restarted is usually not a good thing. So much so that one of the selling features of Linux (I assume Unix as well?) has always been that it requires less restarts.
This is likely one ...
2
Who can honestly say that whenever they update an app that they notice all the changes or expect to notice them?
Apps update all the time where people have no idea what changed in them, so updating so that you can have better analytic tools in the app is a good enough reason. Just don'l lie about what the update contains. Don't call it "bug fixes" if it ...
1
First I like the idea about making video, but it's not boring, you can make a video of 30 sec showing the new features if he make an upgrade or divide this 30 sec on features number so if you have 6 features make 6 sec for every one and if you don't have these features make new feature and make simple for you ;)
Or you can check the version of the ...
1
Perhaps a better implementation might be to offer the user a timeout period? After all, users are already familiar with this type of feature; "Don't show me again" or "Remind me later", for instance.
Above is a quick mock up of how this problem might be tackled. It allows the users to quickly remove the notification so as not to interrupt their workflow, ...
1
iOS implemented notification pretty well I think by placing a badge on the app store icon. It is not intrusive but is also easily visible. Showing users an update notification when the user actually opens an app is another reasonable option as long as there is "Don't show it again" option. In this case user's activities are not as interrupted because ...
1
It sounds like these are primarily data-entry heavy applications. As such, keyboards are likely the quickest and easiest way for the users to enter the data. I'd suggest keeping it that way. Make sure the app is fully keyboard navigable and include appropriate keyboard shortcuts (perhaps as an end-user option)
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