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Firefox 2.0.0.11 Released
BrianAU writes "Firefox 2.0.0.11 has been released, the Release Notes show the only major change as a correction of a compatibility issue with some websites and extensions as discovered in Firefox 2.0.0.10."
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Maybe it was different in the past when software didn't automatically tell its users to upgrade but now that Firefox reminds you automatically when a new release is out I don't see the reason why Slashdot would put this on the front page... Not only that but this release was pushed out yesterday (or the day before, I can't recall when I picked it up). In addition to even that aside, 2.*.10 was out just several days before that and was a bigger update. If anything, we should have heard about that instead and not this minor fix.
Until the "editors" stop pushing garbage through w/o letting the firehose "fix" stupid submissions, Slashdot will continue to lag other sites in the quality coming through. If you really want to keep it up let the firehose do its job -- if not, let it degrade to the steaming pile that is Digg and be done with it already.
Firefox is a terrific product which I use and wholeheartedly endorse, but I think they have lost sight of their original intentions a bit. I originally started using Phoenix way back when because of the fast, simple interface. People have been so enamored with lots of pretty icons, plug-ins and add-ons, that in many cases, IE is a faster, leaner browser. ::shudder:: I like many of the add-on features on more powerful systems, but I pine for a browser that I can run quickly and easily on low-end machines. I've ever once used a Firefox theme. The default one is just fine for me. I've heard rumors that FF3 is headed in that direction, and I just hope that they keep that focus. Maybe they could even have separate installations or installation options for low-end and high-end machines.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Ever since 2.0.0.8, Firefox is crashing regularly on both my Win2k and XP (both fully patched) boxes. New Firefox releases keep coming fast this year, but do they ever address these stability issues? Is anyone else getting regular (2-3 per week) crashes? Do I need to quit surfing for free porn in the .ru domain on my Win95 box with no firewall? (ok, that last part was actually bs).
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Yes, I use Firefox, happy user and all, but how is such a minor update news worth to make it on the title page?
Just as a comparison: when OpenSuse 10.2 was released (or was it 10.1) not a single of the many submitted articles was published on Slashdot.
So why is this worth its own article on Slashdot?
A simple bugfix release is definitely !news. If slashdot were to consistently post stories for simple bugfix releases for major software packages these would be 90% of the news! Imagine MS patch Tuesdays.
It is a sad day when the crapflooding is more interesting than TFA.
Even this is more interesting than the "news" of Firefox getting a minor update.
If only there was a way for Firefox users to be automatically notified of new patches.
This release did not address a "compatibility issue;" it was released solely to fix a bug in canvas.drawImage that was introduced in 2.0.0.10, the bug being that it no longer worked.
See more details at John Resig's blog.
Open source projects tend to have somewhat byzantine version numbering schemes, but Firefox really takes the cake. It has four different numbers, out of which only two are used. The second one was a "5" once, but that was completely arbitary, too.
I know the reason for this is supposedly the extension system, but that is not a valid excuse. An internal technical detail should not exposed to users like that, and even so, the reason is not the extension system, but that the version checking for extensions was designed wrong from the start.
Now, can we please have a sane two-part version number for 3.0 and up?
Mozilla Dev1: OMFG, we haven't been mentioned on the front page of slashdot in like 20 minutes or something!
Mozilla Dev2: No problem. We'll just release yet another pointless sub-sub-sub-sub-sub version.
Me: (looking at yet another firefox recompile from FreeBSD ports) Screw it, I'm going back to seamonkey.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
My system doesn't know what a "regedit" is. Maybe that's your problem?
How is this a news item? All 4 of my computers updated automatically. NAtural as breathing. Reporting this is like reporting "The sun rose today for the nth time this year...."
2.0.0.10 f*cked up a lot of AJAXy web apps, and, frankly, Mozilla's initial response was less than "customer oriented". The "shoot the messanger" attitude exhibited in some of those early Bugzilla posts - despite there being numerous random URLs provided to point out the flaw - is a bit troubling.
As is the fact that Firefox's release process seems to be either lacking basic tests for std. API's, or is choosing to skip those tests.
And of course, the lack of an easy 1-click "Revert" menu item/button to back down versions when an auto-updater introduces such a bug further compounds the impact of these sort of bugs.
Of course, the /. crowd are somehow spinning this serious failure of both
software and processes into proof of Firefox's superiority, due to
the quick turnaround time. However, those of us that were
actually bitten by this - and esp. had customers bitten by this (see the Bugzilla link above)
- are having to rethink the usual practice of recommending FF over IE/Opera/etc.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
Here's how to downgrade without it auto-(re)-updating on you:
1.) Get whatever files you need your 2.0.0.10 installation method of choice, then disconnect from the Internet (by whatever means you like).
2.) Once disconnected, install Firefox.
3.) In Firefox, go Tools > Options, go to the "Advanced" section, and click the "Update" tab. You should see an option saying "When updates to Firefox are found: ( ) Ask me what I want to do; (x) Automatically download and install the update". Change that setting to the "ask me" option, and it should prompt you whenever it finds an update.
4.) Reconnect to the intertubes and surf away.
Alternatively, on the same screen, there are checkboxes to determine what features to *look* for updates to.
Sig? What's that? Oh, 'signature'...and it's supposed to be witty? Right...
Well, the thing with this issue apparently is .11 only fixes a bug introduced by a botched patch in .10 which was only released 4 days ago. Odds are, people who don't have auto updates enabled and don't update often probably wouldn't have been running .10 anyway. The story is completely pointless. (though, in my case, Firefox never told me there was an update, and I only noticed last night when I started it up and it installed something, but still.......)
Here is more information from their knowledge base. According to that article it's caused by Adblock+ (0.7.5.2 and lower) and the Google toolbar. It lists two ways to fix it, first by using the File Types dialog and by editing the registry.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
I just upgraded a few hours ago and have had a single problem yet! it works great. please do not scare off those who are about to upgrade just because yours doesn't work
We were actually one of the companies that found the bug shortly after the release of 2.0.0.10 and if you can't see why this is news then I'm really glad you don't work on my dev team.
Just so we're clear on what the bug ACTUALLY was, the bug specifically effected the canvas drawing capability in the browser. It's not something they test for and frankly, given our experience developing for IE, it's not one they test for either (if IE's random and aberrant behavior is any indication, hell MS can't even make a browser that displays content in a compliant manner given the HTML spec).
A number of sites and web applications use this functionality specifically for navigation, and when Firefox was updated to 2.0.0.10 on many client machines automatically, some business critical web applications were seriously effected. Because of this it was a pretty serious issue.
The reason this IS news is because after confirming the bug and determining the extent of the effect on the user base, the Mozilla folks had nightly builds in our hands just hours after a fix was checked in. This got most of the immediately effected back to work within hours.
A number of us then independently verified the fix against our code and then provided rapid feedback to the team so they could issue a release.
This resulted in an astonishingly fast turnaround. I think the Mozilla folks are to be commended for both not resisting requests for a new release, and the speed with which they were able to respond to a bug effecting business critical web applications. If this had been MS we would have spent 2 weeks navigating mindless support bureaucracy and then fought with management excuses as to why a fix just "can't be turned around overnight." We would have then been forced to contact all of our customers and go into long, boring explanations most of them would never have understood... it's all down hill from there.
Why this IS big news: It is a really bright and shining example of why this type of development is succeeding even in a situation where recursion testing fails (and if you think recursion testing can't fail then you just haven't been developing long enough).
The other good thing that came out of this is we now have a mechanism where developers can subscribe to a mailing list alerting then to pending releases.
Not only did Mozilla respond with a technical fix to the bug AND promptly issue a release which addressed the issue, but they were humble enough to recognize there was a process related problem that needed addressing as well; they fixed that too.
ER
Do not use revision numbers on your software that look like IP addresses. ESPECIALLY please don't use them in the user agent string so that these numbers appear in web log files. Such numbers muck up many things.
By the time you wrote your rant, you could've fixed your regex to not look for IP addresses in the *user agent*.
You don't sound like you really care that much about it being fixed.
If you've been using Perl since 1998 you'll probably remember that a number of programmers used to display years by using the "half-assed" method of concatenating '19' with the year value from localtime.
When a counterexample appeared that broke this behaviour (the year 2000), did programmers kick up a fuss and call for a change to the function? Or did they just start using the correct method to achieve their goal?