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Mozilla Aims To Release Four Firefox Versions In 2011
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla is planning to release four new versions of its open source browser by the end of this year. That means Firefox 4, Firefox 5, Firefox 6, and Firefox 7 are all slated to ship in 2011. Mozilla was originally planning on having Firefox 4 out by the end of last year, but it had to delay the release. The last release was Beta 10 but there are still probably two more betas, at least one release candidate, and of course a final build. It's clear the company no longer thinks this model is a good one, and wants to accelerate its release cycle, much like Google did with Chrome."
More detailed information on the accelerated development cycle and the major features intended for each new version are available on Mozilla's Firefox 2011 Roadmap.
I always love when a browser company gives me more versions (and their individual idiosyncrasies) to test and support. At least Chrome back doors updates to their browser so anything out there should be the current version (like it or not).
Like accelerating the version number major releases suddenly makes the release cycle better. More bugs?
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It's clear the company no longer thinks this model is a good one, and wants to accelerate its release cycle
It sort of sounds more like they want to remove minor version numbers, and make every update a new major version.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Nice to see that Mozilla has adopted my software development philosophy: Remember, the sooner you get behind, the more time you have to catch up! I can't be the only person that doesn't believe these will all ship this year?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Releasing 4 major versions in one year is immature, and Mozilla should no better. What motivation do they have other than competing with the other browsers that have higher version numbers? Stupid.
Hariyfeet, if you read this, I want to remind you once again that Firefox deciding not to make use of Windows Integrity Controls is not equivalent to running the browser as a root process. Sigh.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Someone has caught the chromoenza!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
3.6 --> 4.0 --> 5.0 --> 6.0 --> 7.0 = 3.6 --> 4.0 --> 4.1 --> 4.2 --> 4.3
It's "big version number envy". Nothing more. The Mozilla folks have given in to the idea that "3.6 is less than 8.0 and is less than 12, therefore FireFox 3.6 is less than MSIE 8.0 and Chrome 12". Is this a sign that marketing people are now running Mozilla? Will the budget go to engineers or Superbowl ads?
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
This is a major reason why I use firefox, chrome may be open source but firefox extends that to open governance.
I would encourage everyone to read through the full roadmap: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap you shouldn't be disapointed.
Edit: Ugh, slashdot ol means ordered list, stop styling it like a ul.
Mozilla should move the other direction. They should follow the W3C lead and dispense with versions altogether and simply release "Firefox" that displays "HTML".
What could possibly go wrong?
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
When Internet Explorer was at version 5, Netscape released version 6 of their browser. There never was a Netscape version 5. They jumped from v4 to v6 because they wanted to be newer than Microsoft. Apparently, Mozilla now feels they are "behind" Chrome which is currently at version 9, so instead of Firefox 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, etc., they will call them Firefox 5, 6, 11 and 23 so that they can be newer than Chrome.
It is sad how far off the rails the Firefox development process has gone.
A version number increment is only as important as you want it to be. The difference between "3.6" and "4.0" is entirely subjective, as is the difference between "4.0" and "5.0".
By convention, a "major" release increment signals significant changes, but what constitutes "significant"? Is expanding Windows support to 32-bit AND 64-bit versions "major"? Could be. Is implementing a new feature to support "identity," as the roadmap suggests? Could be. So is adding Windows 64-bit support worthy of a major revision number? If it is, do they have to increment again when they release "identity" support? Is one "more major" than the other?
The answer is: who cares, really? The only thing that users really need to worry about:
1) What version am I using presently?
2) What is the latest stable version?
3) What's changed between #1 and #2, and is it worth upgrading?
Whether #1 and #2 are "3.6" and "3.9", respectively, or "4.0" and "7.0", it really doesn't matter. It's the delta, #3, that really matters - what's been added, removed, updated, fixed, and broken between the two?
I read TFA. It has some interesting ideas about promoting a semantic web of sorts, and pretty much showing an amount of hate for propriety stuff which bypasses the web. Why not have an interesting story on that? This is news for nerds.
Instead no lets go for a DUUUUUUUUUR THEY HAS QWIKER VERZION NOS NOW! DUUUR! Story.
Actually, the latest nightlies have a statusbar-esque thing in the bottom left when you hover links or load a page, now. It's a bit like how Chrome does it.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Quite honestly, the stubborn insistence upon sticking with Gecko - and really, the sort of management that leads to decisions like that being made - will be the death of Firefox. At this point, Mozilla aren't solving any problems with their browser. What's the motivation behind Firefox? Why is it so bloated, and why are any of its developers okay with that fact?
Pride is a vicious thing.
The only thing I don't like about chrome is it's lack of good RSS support
I like RSS Live Links for subscribing to RSS feeds in Chrom{e,ium}. I find it to be a fine replacement for Firefox's live bookmarks. I have no idea whether it'll be any use to you, but there it is.
(I'm not associated with RSS Live Links in any way other than as a happy user).
-Stephen
Why not just express version numbers in binary?
Thus version 4 would be released as version 100, and version 5 would be 101
That should be enough for this year , and jump way ahead of the opposition.
Your memory is going to waste if it is not being used. Come back when you have a complaint about it taking up memory that you need.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
What does sharing in the front end mean? Why the hell are you animating my user interface? Why is smart search being removed? What the hell is electrolysis?
"TBD"? Really?
Oh for the love of...! This isn't so much a roadmap as a scrawling in the sand. "Addons story that doesn't suck" gets us nowhere. A roadmap should be something more substantial than a brainstorm.
Why oh why is Firefox providing diffs? Should these things not be some sort of official plugins for those that need it, rather than baked-in features? and I can only assume the integration with GitHub is for the back-end, because otherwise that's not a feature my grandma needs. Someone sort this feature list out first before we can move on to sorting out whatever genius thinks moving major version numbers makes a difference.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
For a good while now it seems their development strategy has been "upset geek users".
At the top of my head:
Idea: The options dialog is not mac-like enough, let's put icons on top of the options!
Response: That's not even mac-like, its not a good idea on wide displays, laptops or old smaller displays.
Resolution: Implemented, throughly.
Idea: Change the address bar so that it also becomes a history search bar, and title based rather than URL based.
Response: Not too bad but maybe it should be an option.
Resolution: Implemented, not configurable, make your own extension.
Idea: Not everybody is installing the "Personas" extension, let's make them like it!
Response: Ok you want to promote it but it's going to bloat the binary, why not include it like a default add-on like dictionaries? It's actually easier than embedding it!
Resolution: Compiled into the core, load on mouse over always active, not configurable.
Idea: Firefox doesn't look enough like a rip-off, let's put the tabs on top!
Response: That's such a pathetic way to ape Google! Come on that's so non-standard it going to break a gazillion work flows and is not compatible with . There are already extensions for it. Why?
Tentative Resolution: Compiled into the core not configurable (probably)
Idea: People have too much extensions standardized on the status bar, let's pull the carpet of their feet!
Response: Do we have any recourse?
Resolution: Make your own extension, try to standardize on that, if you can.
Future Idea: People are not keen on jet-pack, let's remove add-ons (except for 3rd party not uninstallable add-ons like MS's .NET)
Response: Are you enjoying this?
Resolution: Not until you complain more!
But... the future refused to change.
"As long as I don't notice it and it's not malicious I don't care."
- Most End Users.
Ave Molech Setting
What worries me more about the strange shift in numbering, is that they are planning to axe a number of features to favor sync.
(Source: http://decafbad.com/blog/2011/02/06/pay-phones-and-firefox-features/comment-page-1#comment-467395 )
I can do without the microwhatever, but after all the time I spent tagging and getting the routine of tagging new bookmarks, I am not going to enjoy this. Fortunately there seems to be some vocal support for them.
Same with places queries, they are quite powerful and helped me organize my bookmarks a lot...
If there's anyone with a minimal of "influence" (AKA his/her opinion won't be disregarded as null), please step in and help preventing the browser from being directly wired to the cloud, as many mozilla people is suggesting. They can't axe tags because of sync. (I am not making this up unfortunately, check the bugzilla links in the article and how some suggest the whole bookmark system to rely on web services).
I most certainly don't want a browser with any kind of RT guarantee, but a "best effort" one.
In order for the browser to make any sort of guarantee like this in a multitasking system it must be running in an RTOS. Concordantly, your fears are very likely misplaced, because everything in normal OS'es is some flavor of "best effort" (again, unless you are actually running an RTOS).
Protip: process priority level "Realtime" in Windows NT kernels... isn't. Similarly, setting a -20 nice level doesn't magically turn your MacOS/*n?x processes into realtime either.
Firefox obviously won't install the addon if its specified "max version" is lower than the version you're using. So I have a couple of addons that I use in Firefox 4, where I've had to manually change the "max version" to FF4. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. More to the point, it's kind of annoying to deal with, and I don't expect your Average Joe user to go around editing XML files just to see if it's possible that their favorite addon works.
That is what this extension is for: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/