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For Firefox 4, You'll Need To Wait Until 2011
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla said that it will not be releasing Firefox 4 RC, or the final version, before early 2011. Apparently, the bugfixes in the current beta take up much more time than anticipated. Mozilla is working on the feature freeze release Beta 7, which has 14 bugs left. The beta 7 is about six weeks behind schedule and will be released 'when it is ready,' according to Mozilla. It seems as if the original schedule, which estimated that Firefox 4 RC would be released in the second half of October was a bit too optimistic. Microsoft, by the way, released a new IE9 platform preview (PP6) at PDC 20910 today."
Nothing wrong with releasing it when it's done.
And by that time Chrome will be at version 12 or 13
RGdot.com
So... Are you saying chrome is FireFox 4.0, or that chrome allows for time travel?
The problem with 64-bit browsers is that you need 64-bit plugins. Most people only install 32-bit plugins and some plugins may not have 64-bit plugins (chicken-or-egg problem... no-one pushes 64-bit browsers due to plugin compatibility, no-one makes 64-bit plugins due to browser compatibility). But now with Chrome and Firefox's plugin process model this could be easily worked around though by having both 32 and 64-bit plugin host binaries and launching whichever one you need, then the browser could use both types.
I use IE6 exclusively and have for years. Nobody needs pesky add-ons, ad-blocking and tabbed browser functionality.
I'm one of the 4.5% of the users out there who STILL use it and say sorry, but IE6 is browser for me!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
You could have predicted this lateness because the Firefox folks seem to think "beta" means "Let's add new features every couple of days". I've been using Minefield on and off for several months and it got a lot less stable once it hit the "beta" stage, about the same time that they started changing a bunch of things and adding a bunch of features. Before it went to "beta" it had been fine for a long time, but several times since the beta stage I've had to revert to 3.6.
Yes, I realize I'm using nightlies and should expect bugs, etc, but the traditional definition (not that it is relevant any more) of "beta test" is that the software is basically complete and is being tested for stability and regression, _not_ that it is in a mode where new features are being added on a weekly basis.
I'm looking forward to Firefox 4 and am sure it will be good overall when it's finally done, but the progress in this period of development has not filled me with a lot of confidence that this will be any time soon.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
What are you talking about? I've been using 64-bit browsers in Linux for years!
a couple of thousand of us have been watching you surf since one of the many bored hackers decided to install the streaming remote desktop on your pc about 5 months ago just for fun. how do you get any work done with all those pop ups?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, actually.
I've wanted a way to draw in a browser - I mean really draw, not just use divs as pixels - for a long time now. Finally it's here! WebGL is really smooth now, I've been watching it in the latest minefield builds. Some guy in IRC posted a demo city drawing that had 24k faces and still rendered smooth as silk. 2d drawing on a canvas is also very nice - very easy to use.
This is the dawn of a new era of killer web content. My guess - within two years, WebGL will be the highest paying job in web dev.
A few more months is nothing, I've been waiting years for this ;-)
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Be bold: release the final version before the release candidate. You can release the final version on schedule in 2010, and then slip the RC to 2011. That's the kind of innovative software development methodology we should expect from Mozilla.
How else will Firefox address more than 4GB of memory? What, your Firefox doesn't use that much memory?
Flash 10.2 is 64 bit. Preview 2 is already out. :)
I have most of my addons working on Minefield 64-bit 4.0b7pre (released 08-24-2010)
I disabled "Add-on compatibility checking"
Even though a few of them show as incompatible, they seem to work normally.
The exceptions are Xmarks & Web Developer which don't seem to behave.
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I encourage everyone using beta 6 to use the nightly version (http://nightly.mozilla.org/) as their main FF experience. The JS is 10 times faster on most public benchmarks and the boomarks and profile data are not affected even when switching back and forth between 4.0 and 3.6.
I have both installed: 3.6 that comes with my Linux distro and 4.0 unzipped in my home folder and being updated every morning automatically.
Why would you need a 64-bit native browser?
So I don't need to have 32-bit libraries on disk wasting space? Not to mention the performance improvements to be had with a proper 64-bit jit'ing JS engine (don't underestimate the power of a larger register set).
This. I would hate to see a distant future where we still use i386 binary browsers with compatibility layers on top of compatibility layers on top of compatibility layers, just because no browser needs more than 4GB.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Very true. The really ironic thing is that the browser/mail-news-client they now call "seamonkey" was the original Mozilla browser and they actually spun off Phoenix (changed to Firebird, and now Firefox) to create a slimmer, faster browser!
Caveat Utilitor
Currently there are 17 bugs open. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=blocking2.0%3Abeta7 The good thing: 6 hours ago there were 18 bugs ;-)