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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
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!
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?
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
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.
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/