Firefox 4 the Last Big Release From Mozilla

nk497 writes "Firefox 4 will be the last major browser release from Mozilla, as it looks to mimic Chrome's speedy release schedule — echoing previous statements that Firefox 7 would arrive this year. "What we want to do is get the power into users' hands more quickly," said vice president of products Jay Sullivan. "For example, the video tag was shippable in June — we should have shipped it." That new schedule is also why Firefox 4 has had 12 betas, he said. Mozilla also said future versions of Firefox would feature a stronger "do not follow tool", as the current one is a "non-technical solution"," Sullivan said. "All you're doing is raising your hand and saying 'I don't want to be tracked.' There's no technical teeth.""

Comments

Bad Title

[Shikaku]

Sounds like Firefox is dying (like BSD).

Re:Bad Title

[bunratty]

They're sure to go the way of Apple, just another one of those failed computer companies that couldn't keep up with the new competition.

Re:Bad Title

[Osgeld]

apple makes computers?

Re:Bad Title

[Shikaku]

No, they sell an "experience." A "walled-garden" if you will.

Re:Bad Title

[pandrijeczko]

With shards of broken glass embedded into the top of the wall...
and machine gun nests on the other side of the wall...
surrounded by a moat filled with sharks with FRICKIN' LASER BEAMS IN THEIR HEADS!!!

Re:Bad Title

[cdp0]

Sounds like Firefox is dying (like BSD).

I don't follow you. Could you please elaborate ? Why is Firefox dying ? And if so, why is it similar to BSD ? What's this "BSD is dying" thing anyway ?
I wish people would write more than just a simple sentence and expect everyone to extract the great depths of meaning from it.

Re:Bad Title

[nicedream]

The OP is saying that the way the headline is phrased makes it sound as though this is the end of the Firefox browser.
"BSD is dying" is a meme that has been floating around for years.

Re:Bad Title

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

you must be new here...

Re:Bad Title

[Sponge Bath]

The walled garden is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by an iGrue.

Re:Bad Title

[Mitchell314]

3. You see a troll post that is commonly posted on Slashdot about how BSD is dying on every BSD news article, and sometimes is posted outside of BSD.

How would the GP know now that there aren't many articles on BSD anymore since it's dying. :P

-BSD user (well, former BSD user (actually, I just downloaded, installed, and used it a few times (and by few times, I meant for like 15 minutes)))

Re:Bad Title

[bonch]

What do you think a smartphone is, exactly? A magic slab of plastic?

Re:Bad Title

[natehoy]

I know for a fact that mine has metal and glass, too.

Re:Bad Title

[VGPowerlord]

What do you think a smartphone is, exactly? A magic slab of plastic?

In the immortal words of Arthur C. Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Re:Bad Title

[obarthelemy]

not a walled garden: a walled playpen. In a garden, you can have sex et bring what you like.

Re:Bad Title

[kbolino]

This is why you have to read metadata. The OP is commenting on the title of the post, and his title explains his comment.

"Firefox 4 the Last Big Release From Mozilla" posted by CmdrTaco
--- "Bad Title" posted by Shikaku

Re:Bad Title

[PitaBred]

Yes?

Re:Bad Title

[cdp0]

OK, I have to face it: I completely missed the point made by the OP it seems. My bad.

Re:Bad Title

[Shikaku]

We're never going to let it down, like Ted Steven's series of tubes, Taco's "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." about the iPod, Apple's Itunes deal with Nokia, and many other things.

Also, have you seen television lately? They literally record everything, and play back things out of context against an opponent just to watch them squirm. It's not just the internet.

Re:Bad Title

[turbidostato]

"No, they sell an "experience." A "walled-garden" if you will."

What d'you mean? Won't it be an i-Walled i-Garden?

Re:Bad Title

[EnsilZah]

Unless you're Vin Diesel, of course.

Re:Bad Title

[PNutts]

What do you think a smartphone is, exactly? A magic slab of plastic?

Of course not. The plastic just keeps the magic smoke in.

Re:Bad Title

[hairyfeet]

Sadly I think you are right. Looking at the latest beta it looks so much like a Chrome ripoff they may as well just drop Gecko for Webkit. I could understand if they made a change because it gave the user a feature that had been requested, but this strikes me too much like Cargo Cult Usability where you just ape the other guy without really understanding the reasons behind the design and that just isn't a good sign.

I mean what are they gonna offer their users besides a "me too!" laundry list of appearance and features that will always be behind the one they are trying to ape? And as a FF users if I wanted the Chrome UI why would I just use Chrome or one of the million Chromium based browsers instead of FF?

That is why with the last couple of updates to the 3.6.x branch and after looking at FF 4 I've started testing Chromium based Comodo Dragon. I mean if they end up turning FF into a bad Chrome ripoff why wouldn't I just use a Chromium based browser, where with the looks I get increased security thanks to low rights mode on modern OSes?

I've always been a Mozilla user, since back in the days of the old suite. But I really don't like the way the browser seems to be headed of late. It is becoming seriously memory hogging, slow to react on netbooks/nettops, and the UI from the looks of FF 4 will just end up a bad Chrome ripoff. I'd hate to see FF die out, but it seems to me they are becoming the very thing they split off from the suite over, a bloated slow mess. Maybe one of the FOSS groups can fork it and maybe go back to the old days of just a slim browser that the user decided what extras it had via plugins?

Re:Bad Title

[daver00]

They make pretty nice cases for computers, and even assemble some hardware into them for you. But no, they don't really make computers. I compare Apple to companies like Alienware.

Re:Bad Title

[icebraining]

BSD is pining for the fjords.

I win with my 41 years old meme.

Re:Bad Title

[dryeo]

You could always go back to the suite. SeaMonkey is surprisingly good, less bloated and faster then Firefox. Plus most extensions work fine with SeaMonkey 2.1pre.

Re:Bad Title

[mrdoogee]

The machine guns are pointed in.... not much use against barbarians.

Re:Bad Title

[gmhowell]

What do you think a smartphone is, exactly? A magic slab of plastic?

Of course not. The plastic just keeps the magic smoke in.

That's why the iPhone four does not come in white: everyone knows magic smoke is black.

Re:Bad Title

[Weedhopper]

Sadly I think you are right. Looking at the latest beta it looks so much like a Chrome ripoff they may as well just drop Gecko for Webkit. I could understand if they made a change because it gave the user a feature that had been requested, but this strikes me too much like Cargo Cult Usability where you just ape the other guy without really understanding the reasons behind the design and that just isn't a good sign.

Can you be more specific? On what are you basing your accusation of FF devs not knowing the reasoning behind UI decisions? What features does FF4 ape?

It's been a while since I've used FF but if FF4 does achieve feature parity with Chrome, I might consider going back. I would count emulation of good UI and features to be a Good Thing. Definitely not a Bad Thing and a reason to abandon a browser.

Re:Bad Title

[smash]

Pretty sure they are dying already. Most people I know have given it up for Chrome or other webkit variants. I recently installed one of the betas, went "Meh" and then back to IE9 / Safari (i'm addicted to coverflow bookmarks/history).

Until they get per-tab process isolation, they're going to continue to be miles behind chrome in bother UI responsiveness and stability.

Re:Bad Title

[hairyfeet]

For example the classic file>edit>view menu being removed and replaced with a little icon on the side ala Chrome. In Chrome frankly you are supposed to take the defaults and the "fiddly bits" are kept far away from the user, but with FF you could get to everything simply using the classic file>edit>view KB commands. This is irritating and feels like change for change sake, as it is simply making the users drill deeper to get to the same place that could have been reached with just two clicks before.

Second there has been serious talk of doing away with the FF search box completely to replace it with in the address bar search, again ala Chrome. This works in Chrome because it is Google's browser and they expect you to go to Google and that's it. Sure you can change it but again that functionality is hidden away from the user. One of the nice features of FF to me is how quickly and easily I can switch search engines on the fly, going from Yahoo to Wikipedia to amazon in seconds. Again this feels more like change for change sake since Chrome did it FF has to do it too.

Frankly I could probably go on all day, like with the new icons losing definition and becoming more Chrome like (which works in Chrome because nobody changes themes in Chrome, but FF has an excellent persona community but the new icons look like shit if you don't stick to defaults.

But if you read TFL that is the problem with cargo cult usability, in that on the surface it looks correct but when you try to drill down deeper it fails. Just as GNOME trying to ape OSX fails because Linux is a windows based OS whereas the OSX design is based on applications.

With FF it seems like ever since Google started pushing Chrome instead of simply focusing on what works for FF they have instead been obsessed with Chrome, such as all their focus on JavaScript performance while the memory bloats out of control. It has gotten to the point that I've had to switch to Dragon on my nettop simply because the bloat in FF has gotten out of control and a half a day of multiple tab opening and closing would have FF eating nearly the entire 1.5Gb of RAM. Now even though I have the exact same extensions in Dragon it just doesn't go "runaway RAM" on me like FF has of late.

It just seems to me Mozilla is worried about the superficial things like scoring the highest on some benchmark against Chrome while not dealing with the fundamentals like memory usage and responsiveness. Sadly even with all their talk about performance gains even though Dragon (Chromium based) is running in the more secure low rights mode, it is actually more responsive for me that FF even with FF having higher permissions. But like I said if I wanted Chrome I'd be running it 24/7 so I hope FF changes their course, I'm just not holding my breath.

Re:Bad Title

[Weedhopper]

The first issue you bring up seems to be Windows specific behavior so I can't comment on FF's new direction there. On OSX, I get a regular menubar up top. Menus don't seem to be gone from the Linux Beta, either. So..... maybe it's your choice of OS that's the real issue? Bazinga! JFWY. :) Have you tried hitting ALT in the beta? If they're aping Chrome, this will bring up a menu bar. BTW, this is a good thing. The menu doesn't really do anything except take up space. The average non technical user doesn't need most menu items and technical users are the ones who are more likely to just hit alt and navigate by arrow. And if you're a real efficiency nut, you use keyboard shortcuts and don't really navigate menus.

The second issue - the location bar/search field combo is not a bad decision for the general user. For you, seems to me that the separate search field is a clunky solution anyway. Set up custom smart keyword searches. This a much more efficient way to hit both specific search engines AND do web site searches. The last time I used FF as my primary browser, I almost never used the search field.

Regarding this cargo cult usability, you haven't given a specific example of where the imitation is only skin deep - where does it fall apart?

FF's chronic stability, memory and CPU leakage - definitely got a point there. These are the reasons I switched primary browsers. Some day, if these issues are resolved, might switch back.

Rage quitting anything is a bad thing and isn't very productive. Switch for good reason. You'll carry less useless emotional baggage about software.

Re:Bad Title

[hairyfeet]

If again you read TFL it gives some excellent examples of why cargo cult usability is a bad idea using Gnome. In OSX the entire design of the OS is applications based, so having a single menu works since everything is treated as an application and thus under the control of the top menu bar. In Linux applications are window based and that means you will often have TWO menu bars instead of one, the Gnome bar PLUS the bar for the application itself.

Now if one were to simply look at the Gnome desktop it looks correct, yet all it takes is using it for any length of time to see they've aped the look, NOT the behavior of the OS they are trying to copy and it all fails.

Now to bring it back to FF look at their recent focus on benchmarks. Lately they seem obsessed with "beating" Chrome in the benchmarks, which frankly I don't doubt they will since so much effort is being focused on it but the browser is suffering as a result. Their "me too!" of putting plugins in a separate container has seriously cranked the bloat and made the browser sluggish (Chrome was built with this in mind and doesn't have this problem) and as I said with the last two builds more than a half a day's usage with multiple tabs can see FF RAM usage jump like mad, consuming nearly all of a nettop's 1.5Gb of RAM, while Chrome simply doesn't have this problem. They've focused on specific tasks in order to match the bullet points of Chrome without making sure they integrate well or cause problems with the underlying design.

So I'd say they are becoming a classic example of cargo cult usability by focusing on the bullet points and benchmarks instead of making sure the tech behind those bullet points will work well with the Gecko engine without a major rewrite. And if it works differently in Linux I'm happy for you, but since Window owns more than 90% of the desktops having something work well in Linux but fall apart in Windows sounds like corporate suicide to me. unless you are gonna argue there is enough money from Linux searches to justify Google paying Mozilla all those millions?

I kinda doubt that Mozilla will be able to stay afloat if they run off all their Windows users, and if they don't do something about the bloat and sluggishness they surely will, as more and more I'm seeing Chrome showing up on the desktops and laptops being brought into the shop. Most of these people were either put on FF by me or a relative and then heard about Chrome through word of mouth. Talking to them about why they switched I hear the same things over and over 'FF is sluggish" "FF is slow" "FF drug the system down". And I would argue if the current path of aping Chrome and trying to match their bullet points were working I wouldn't be hearing that now. The fact that I am just reinforces my contention that FF is headed down the wrong path.

Re:Bad Title

[Lord Kestrel]

malda had it right about the ipod. It was lame, but he didn't count on the marketing machine at Apple, or the incredible loyalty Apple fans had. Remember, that first version of it only worked with OSX, so the only people buying it already were sucking at Job's teat. Take a rabid fanbase that will buy anything and everything a company puts out (and then proselytize about it incessantly), and a marketing department that could sell sand in the Sahara, and you have an instant success. Once the hype built up to a critical mass (and Apple added Windows support), it quickly became the market leader, and the rest is history.

It was still lame however, especially compared to the competition.

Re:Bad Title

[Weedhopper]

Okay, now I'm getting frustrated with your obstinacy. You've fallen into the same trap that you're accusing the FF devs of having failed into. You're making superficial arguments without understanding why things are changing and the process behind them.

I read your link and aside from the cute metaphor, doesn't say much of anything new, whether it be specifically to UI modes or human/organizational processes in general. Even it did contribute something new, it doesn't say much that is relevant to THIS discussion, which is about FF4b UI changes. Not Gnome. And FYI, the app centric versus window centric modes isn't something OS X does completely correctly, either. I suggest you site Google Daring Fireball for app centricity flaws of OS X going years back.

You have yet to bring up a single instance of a UI change that, to use your metaphor, indicative of cargo cult usability. The most immediate changes that make it similar to Chrome are changes FF should have made a long time ago and there have been workarounds for some time.

Since yesterday, I've been running a W7 VM to try out FF4b. It's good stuff. They're taking usability issues seriously and it is obvious, right from the get go. I don't enjoy coding anymore, nor do I like participating in dev lists. There was a time when I had the time but now I don't and even if I did, it don't float my boat anymore. The test pilot surveying is maybe a little overly cute, but the user interaction data they are gathering looks to be both good and relevant. I am looking at a fairly well organized series of studies that seem to be gathering a lot of relevant data, point by point. I'm going to let it record my actions for the next 7 days. I may switch back to FF4 for a week on other platforms as well.

For some reason, you've become frustrated with FF and have some type of hard-on against whatever it they're doing. People often get to this point in any relationship, where an action, any action is always annoying and indicative of a character flaw when the same action in a third party wouldn't be seen in the same light. You can return to rationality. We've all done it with other people, friends, wives, girlfriends, brothers, mothers, operating systems, desktop environments, computer games, and flippin' web browsers. Step back. Take a deep breath. Put some effort into being rational. You bring up some good points but you're also tilting at some windmills.

Re:Bad Title

[hairyfeet]

I'm sorry but when a BROWSER, you know that thing you surf the web with, that is supposed to render HTML? Yeah that thing, when it sucks up more than 1.5Gb of RAM even AFTER closing the tabs, and with only 6 or 7 hours of usage? I'm sorry but I don't see how you can label that anything but suckage.

And the WHOLE POINT of Firefox was to be a light nimble browser instead of the bloat that was the suite, remember that? So what happened? At the start of the 3.x branch memory usage was going down, the leaks were getting fixed, it was running better than ever, so what happened?

I'll tell you what happened Chrome happened with a capital C. Look up the Mozdev blogs see if you find ANY mention of JavaScript benchmarking or plugin containers pre Chrome, you won't. These ideas weren't even on the radar until Chrome showed up and used them as bullet points and then Mozilla pulled a MSFT and went "Me too!" only they didn't test the underlying arch to see if it could handle it first, which it couldn't.

Look, if you want to go back to the bad old days of 2.x with memory hogging all over the place because you've got more RAM than God, that's cool. Most people however DO NOT. As I said more and more machines are coming into my shop with Chrome installed and NOT Firefox. I didn't switch these people, they actively sought out an alternative because "Firefox is slow" "Firefox is sluggish" "Firefox was dragging the machine down" unquote.

Time will tell which one of us is right, but I'm betting its me. I'd love to know what percentage of Chrome users are former Firefox users because I bet that number would be pretty damned high. Most people will never notice that 2% speed gain in some benchmark, just as they will most likely never notice the plugins are in a container. What they WILL notice is that surfing video sites for any length of time will cause Firefox to suck memory like a drunk sucking booze and it does NOT give it back, even with the trim_on_minimize enabled.

And I still say when all you care about is matching bullet points instead of worrying about the underlying tech and if it is capable of performing the task you have a case of cargo cult usability. Gecko simply wasn't made for warp speed JavaScript and sandboxing and the memory usage and responsiveness bears this out. The sad part is thinking they need these bullet points to keep up with Chrome will simply drive more people away, because Chrome does these things without bloating or UI breakdown.

Plugin Support

[MightyYar]

I guess I'll have to write a plugin that disables auto-update until all installed plugins are updated to support the newest version of Firefox.

Re:Plugin Support

[bunratty]

You should use the new JetPack API so you don't need to update your plugin every time a new version of Firefox is released. Better yet, release a plugin that tells all the other plugin developers to use JetPack.

Re:Plugin Support

[commodore6502]

>>>I'll have to write a plugin that disables auto-update

That option already exists in the Firefox menu. For example I'm sitting at 3.5 now because some of my plugins didn't work with 3.6

Re:Plugin Support

[BZ]

Out of curiousity, what do you plan to do once 3.5 stops getting security updates?

(This is a serious question; I'm trying to understand how users respond to that situation so we can take it into account when we decide how long to keep up security updates.)

Re:Plugin Support

[Lucky75]

Geez, I've been on the FF4 beta for like 5 months now almost. IMO it's much better and stable. Almost all of my extensions work in it too.

If your extension doesn't work with 3.6, edit your install.rdf file and change the MaxVersion to 3.6 (or wildcard)

Re:Plugin Support

[MightyYar]

That option already exists in the Firefox menu.

Yeah, kinda... it will warn you constantly and force you to make a decision on every start up. I'd kind of like something a little less obtrusive - maybe a little icon with an exclamation point or something.

Re:Plugin Support

[characterZer0]

Really? Making an extension work in the new version is just a matter of changing MaxVersion? Wow!

Re:Plugin Support

[GNious]

Geez, I've been on the FF4 beta for like 5 months now almost.

I've tried to use FF4 beta for like 5 months now almost - instable piece of CPU-abusing, RAM-consuming shite.

Yeah - off topic, but FF4s performance issues really annoys me.

Re:Plugin Support

[Verunks]

Geez, I've been on the FF4 beta for like 5 months now almost. IMO it's much better and stable. Almost all of my extensions work in it too. If your extension doesn't work with 3.6, edit your install.rdf file and change the MaxVersion to 3.6 (or wildcard)

I've been using it since last march, and aside from some issue with non working extension when they did some big changes it worked fine and it's much faster than ff3

Re:Plugin Support

[mallydobb]

I've tried FF4 twice, both times letting it go in less than a week. It has been faster than 3.6.x but it has this horrible tendency to cause my plugins to stop working. I had a scenario in which I couldn't use Google Chat (in Gmail) to make calls out. It worked under Safari and FF3.6 but it kept telling me to download the plugins. Flash also stopped working and sites like YouTube wouldn't load. When I looked the plugins up via about:plugins nearly all my plugins had failed to be recognized by FF4, where all them were recognized by FF3 and Safari. When 4.0b12 was released I was excited as it seemed to solve the plugin issue, but after a couple of days use it too started to fail at recognizing the plugins. Nothing I could do would get them to work. Until this issue is resolved I can't use FF4, which is a shame as it is a general improvement over FF3.

Re:Plugin Support

[Mike McTernan]

If your extension doesn't work with 3.6, edit your install.rdf file and change the MaxVersion to 3.6 (or wildcard)

Nah. Just install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter plugin and help the beta effort. This add-on lets others run irrespective of the version, but then you can also rate the compatibility of all plugins and indicate if they work or not.

Re:Plugin Support

[roju]

I tried making a simple addon with JetPack (a keyboard shortcut to go back to the most recent tab), and it turns out there's no way to set a keyboard shortcut with it. I'd wager that most addons use keyboard shortcuts, so that's a pretty major feature to be missing. The JetPack API seems to be in that state - it was developed because it's a good idea (and it is!), but nobody at Moz actually uses it, so it's missing basic features needed by real-world addons.

Re:Plugin Support

[Compuser]

No. I run 20+ extensions (about half for privacy and about half to have the user interface just the way I like it). Some (like verttabbar) are broken right now in FF4 even if you edit the rdf file. Small extensions do only need the MaxVersion adjusted but anything big is likely to have trouble.

As an aside, I am always very vocal about hating Opera because I have found it impossible to configure the interface just the way I like it (in some cases I want it adjusted with pixel precision and have just the right shade of gray and the right curvature on the tabs and so on). So Firefox and a sidebar full of extensions plus custom hacks to config files is the only game in town for me.

Re:Plugin Support

[shadowbearer]

  Ditto here - made the switch after Thanksgiving and have had very few problems - certainly nothing I couldn't deal with with a little googling or forum digging. All my extensions (with the exception of Fox Lingo) work fine - I hacked all the rdf files months ago.

  This last release is fantastic, pages are rendered noticeably faster. I switched over my other computers (Ubuntu, Mint, Win XP and Win 7) around beta 9 and have had even fewer minor issues on them, probably because they don't have the plugin/extension load this computer (Mint) does.

  I suspect that the issues that others are reporting have more to do with plugin/extension problems.

SB

 

Re:Plugin Support

[bunratty]

Did you file an enhancement request in Bugzilla asking for an addition to the JetPack API that allows plugins to add a new keyboard shortcut?

Re:Plugin Support

[roju]

Nope. It was just on a whim because it was something I needed that moment. I brought it up in the IRC channel, the suggested solutions were well beyond the mental effort I'd earmarked for the task, and I moved on to other things. You're right though, I should file a bug.

Re:Plugin Support

[roju]

Someone's beat me to it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=584064

Re:Plugin Support

[hedwards]

Are you sure it's FF4 and not your extensions? I had to use FF3.6 for a bit a while back and couldn't believe how slow it was compared with FF4, and I think FF4 actually had a few extensions where the 3.6 install had just the default ones.

Re:Plugin Support

[Tubal-Cain]

What plugins do you need that update so slowly? Adblock Plus and NoScript usually stay compatible with the most recent beta.

Re:Plugin Support

[neoform]

>Out of curiousity, what do you plan to do once 3.5 stops getting security updates?

They'll just become the bane of the internet, a title currently held by anyone using IE6.

Re:Plugin Support

[BZ]

Nah, there aren't enough of them for that. Firefox 3.5, even while being supported, is under 3% overall usage (for comparison the unsupported Firefox 3.0 that no one cares about anymore is about 1.5%; all figures according to statcounter; I bet other sources will have different numbers).

Then again, IE6 is 5% according to the same source.... but was 13% just a year ago (when Firefox 3.5 was 27%, by the way; this was before 3.6 was released).

Re:Plugin Support

[commodore6502]

>>>edit your install.rdf file and change the MaxVersion to 3.6 (or wildcard)

(blank look) How do I open my hood again? Pull which lever??? And which one of these buttons lets me check my email? - Oh forget it. I've not a clue what you're talking about. (walks off)

Actually I think you just proved my point about How I have better things to do than fix the Breaks caused by software updates. Those 30 minutes per day (or whatever) spent editing my Firefox Version Number would be better used watching the latest Dr. House episode. Seeya!

Re:Plugin Support

[Spad]

Sadly, it doesn't run on the current Seamonkey nightlies, so I can't use it.

Re:Plugin Support

[Reid]

Just as an example, I've been running the Aging Tabs extension with FF4 under linux and windows. It seems fine on windows, but on linux, it was slowing everything down to a crawl. Disabling that extension fixed it. There may be an interaction with another extension that I don't have on the windows system, but it is an example of extensions causing issues.

Another linux-specific issue is that FF4 crashes on me fairly frequently (daily). Once it does, it often crashes again upon restart. That's frustrating. I should probably put in the effort to determine which extension might be causing the crashes.

Re:Plugin Support

[Fred Or Alive]

I kinda have the opposite issue with Opera, I really don't like it that to set another browser's UI to my idiosyncratic setup inherited from using early versions of Opera would mean having to install a load of third party extensions. It's just a bit annoying that even simple stuff like having tabs on bottom (as in between the status bar and page) seems to be beyond the default options of other browsers, let alone stuff like the ability to minimise tabs[1], mouse gestures etc. when they're just standard features / general (GUI accessible) settings tweaks in Opera.

Of course we don't seem to be approaching this from quite the same direction, I don't really case about the exact curves on tabs and so on, so whilst Opera's skinning tools don't seem to be what you want I don't mind Opera's default skin[2] (although I suppose I should get around to tweaking the icons so they aren't as monochrome).

I do wish the content blocking / privacy stuff in Opera was better, as what's there often has a clunky UI (it's the main thing that would draw me something like Firefox + extensions I guess), but it's got a fair better now that there are extensions (and an ability to disable plugins), but it could be better.

[1] Although Opera broke the tab order when minimising with 10.5. (Is a slightly broken feature better than a non-existent one?).
[2] However the "Windows Native" one is a disaster area.

Re:Plugin Support

[pla]

Out of curiousity, what do you plan to do once 3.5 stops getting security updates?

Wait... So I should update from v2.0.0.20 sometime in the next few years?

More seriously, browsers (and not just FireFox) - Hell, all software in general - need to stop focusing on Change For Its Own Sake, and stick with implementing support for new technologies in the least intrusive manner possible. I get so sick of having to relearn entirely well-known programs every few years just because "ribbons" look fashionable this year.

Yes, some changes certainly count as good (tabbed browsing FTW), but it seems like the vast majority exist solely to justify rolling the major version number.

Re:Plugin Support

[BZ]

> So I should update from v2.0.0.20 sometime in the
> next few years?

Unless you _like_ random websites being able to run arbitrary code on your computer, yes. You should.

I mostly agree with you about random UI changes for the sake of UI changes. But browsing with an out-of-date rendering engine, no matter what the UI, is just daft.

Re:Plugin Support

[smash]

And if the attack vector is in image handling code or HTML/css layout code, then what?

Re:Plugin Support

[GNious]

I have the exact same plugins/extensions in FF4 as in FF3.6, simply because I only use those, and they are all showing as compatible with both version.
Due to this, the slowdows experienced should(!) be related to FF4 and not to plugins/extensions.

I also note that I every-so-often get messages in FF4 about Java-scripts becoming unresponsive. Some of these are given with an URL that starts with CHROME://, which I assume means it is internal to FF, while the rest seems to largely come from Google-owned domains. The messages also occur in FF3.6, but a lot less frequent.

Finally, I notice that some sites require that I restart the browser in 32-bit mode due to something called silverlight - seems to be a plugin for watching video, but I have the latest Flash 10.2 installed.

Re:Plugin Support

[slash.duncan]

Something I discovered quite by accident, while troubleshooting extension issues here (still on 3.6), is that if I start in safe mode, just long enough to popup the safe mode dialog then cancel it out (or kill it) so not even starting the browser proper, then things "magically" work the next session. But the session after that, back to crashing.

So I rigged up a bash script that starts firefox in safe mode, sleeps a couple seconds, kills it, then starts firefox normally, with the URL I intended to go to. I put the script first in my path so it gets run before the normal firefox binary, and everything works fine beyond a couple seconds additional delay and a short blip of the safe-mode dialog before it gets killed. (That would be seriously irritating if FF was my main browser, but I use kde and thus konqueror for that. Mainly, I generally end up starting up FF on sites not yet setup properly for scripting in konqueror, since konqueror has similar site-level scripting permissions to noscript, but no way to see what domains the page is trying to pull scripts from without diving directly into page sources! =:^( So konqueror gets used on my normal sites including /., while firefox gets used on a reasonable amount of the opportunistic visit sites.)

Re:Plugin Support

[Reid]

Weird but believable. I hope whatever necessitates that ugly workaround gets fixed soon!

Re:Plugin Support

[Lord Kestrel]

I tried it for about 9 days before giving up in disgust because they broke the most commonly used shortcuts I use, and there is no way to fix it. Well, I could fix it by patching and re-compiling it myself, but I stopped building Firefox from source ~6 years ago and have no desire to restart.

I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[Mr_eX9]

I thought it meant that Mozilla wouldn't have more releases, period. I'm sure I'm not the only one who read it that way--a much better headline would have been "Mozilla to have faster release schedule following Firefox 4" or somesuch.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[oGMo]

But that's boring and informative (and correct) and certainly doesn't get you to go "wtf?" and click the story. Or comment on it and generate more traffic. It certainly doesn't lead immediately to insightful discussion by developers on release schedules, development cycles, and that sort of thing. You know, news for nerds. Stuff that matters.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[commodore6502]

>>>"Mozilla to have faster release schedule"

Even AFTER I understood the headline the thought, 'Mozilla is imploding like Netscape did, with stupid browser decisions,' was still running through my head. - BTW this article is a dupe. I read about Mozilla doing rapid FF5, FF6, FF7 updates around three weeks ago.

I don't want my browser going through a bunch of revisions so that I'm always fucking with my computer software/updates, instead of doing actual work (or play). I can't help thinking this is just Mozilla panicking because Chrome is challenging their #2 position, and it will end up being a major PITA for the user.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[Bardez]

There is also that the summary started to lead in the direction of bowing to Chrome at first. I was caught off guard for a while there.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[mdielmann]

I can live with not R'ing TFA, but not even reading the summary? Is it really that complicated? Mozilla will no longer have big releases for Firefox. They will be smaller, and more frequent. Therefore, the difference between 3 and 4 will presumably be bigger than the difference between 4 and 5. Can you think of a more clear way to describe this, other than prefacing with "Firefox Not Dead But"?

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[commodore6502]

>>>Then you can quit whining about browser innovation

Strawman argument. I've never felt any need to whine. Nor do I feel a need to go round like a bible-pounding Jimmy Swaggart asshole denigrating people who use Windows. "And verily I saw to you that you shall BURN IN HELL for using windows you filthy dirt-wearing heathen!"
See? I can create strawman arguments too.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[commodore6502]

>>>This has to be one of the more ridiculous statements...you don't want them to do bugfixes, improvements and overall making it even better, because you dislike keeping your OS up to date?

I guess I have a life
that doesn't revolve around beating my
disco stick to "you have new updates and will waste 20 minutes downloading/installing them" popups.

I'd rather spend that time beating off to playboy.com. And bugfixes don't require jumping from 4 to 5 to 6 to 7. All it requires is moving from 4.0 to 4.01 to 4.02 et cetera.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[shadowbearer]

  Windows Update syndrome? ;-)

And bugfixes don't require jumping from 4 to 5 to 6 to 7. All it requires is moving from 4.0 to 4.01 to 4.02 et cetera.

  Whatever. As at least one other poster said, who the hell cares what version numbers they use, as long as it works? Personally, I find it rather interesting to be living during the time when computer software is undergoing an evolutionary explosion...

  Playboy.com sucks. Now maybe it's just "get off my lawn" syndrome, but I remember when Playboy had a really good magazine...

SB

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[commodore6502]

>>>find it rather interesting to be living when computer software is undergoing an evolutionary explosion...

Hardly.

The explosion was the 70s and 80s. Today's software is really just the same 70s/80s inventions (word processors, spreadsheets, hyperlinks) going through minor changes in an attempt to convince people they MUST upgrade (and hopefully spend money).

Me - I still use Office 95 without any problems and see no reason to update (or spend money). And in the world of games, most of the genres were invented 30-40 years ago.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[shadowbearer]

The explosion was the 70s and 80s. Today's software is really just the same 70s/80s inventions (word processors, spreadsheets, hyperlinks) going through minor changes in an attempt to convince people they MUST upgrade (and hopefully spend money).

  Really? Where would you place linux in this world of yours, then?

  (My first "non-hobby" computer was an Atari 400)

SB

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[erice]

The explosion was the 70s and 80s. Today's software is really just the same 70s/80s inventions (word processors, spreadsheets, hyperlinks) going through minor changes in an attempt to convince people they MUST upgrade (and hopefully spend money).

  Really? Where would you place linux in this world of yours, then?

  (My first "non-hobby" computer was an Atari 400)

SB

Linux isn't merely of a type that was available in the 70's, it is an actual reimplementation of Unix, an OS with it's roots firmly in the 70's.

Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way

[shadowbearer]

It is far, far more than just a "reimplementation".

  Sorry, I don't buy for a second the idea that code innovation somehow stopped after the 80s ;-)

SB

At least for Firefox...it's functional

[bogaboga]

"Firefox 4 will be the last major browser release from Mozilla, as it looks to mimic Chrome's speedy release schedule â" echoing previous statements that Firefox 7 would arrive this year. "What we want to do is get the power into users' hands more quickly,"

I welcome all efforts put into Firefox. What I would not want Firefox to copy from Google's Chrome browser is the 'removal' of basic functionality from the application.

Here's why: -
Even after all these betas, Chrome does not have a functional print preview to date! Wait...Google Docs lack this function too!

Re:At least for Firefox...it's functional

[The MAZZTer]

Why would Docs have it? Every browser is going to print a little differently, there's no way for Docs to know what exactly to display.

As for Google, I agree that it is taking annoyingly long (there is a feature hidden behind a flag but last I checked it didn't do anything) but they may be trying to get it to work properly with Google Cloud Print, which would add a nice layer of complexity onto it.

Re:At least for Firefox...it's functional

[bunratty]

The last time I used Google Docs, it generated a PDF when I printed the document. Why wouldn't every browser display and print the PDF the same way?

Re:At least for Firefox...it's functional

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't print preview a feature that lets you preview the print out without wasting paper in case it's wrong?

If Google Docs just generates a PDF then that would also be the preview and therefore Google Docs doesn't need a print preview so the original poster is a pooface.

Re:At least for Firefox...it's functional

[Anonymous Coward]

Even after all these betas, Chrome does not have a functional print preview to date! Wait...Google Docs lack this function too!

Google docs does have a print preview (File -> Print preview). It uses the Google PDF viewer.

Re:At least for Firefox...it's functional

[tompaulco]

Does this mean I am not the only one who prints stuff out of firefox and ends up with a document that prints in mini-me mode?

Re:At least for Firefox...it's functional

[bunratty]

Why not ask the person I replied to? He's the one that complained that Google Docs doesn't have print preview. I'm as confused by his post as you are.

Re: Releases

[TaoPhoenix]

All they would have to do is call some of their betas number releases.

This is a trench op on the marketing side, to make pointy heads happy that Firefox can be in version 7 this year and version 10 next year. Apparently something pending about betas exhausted them.

So now each version will only have some three features and a few bug fixes. That's about the same as the jump from version 3 to 4 which all told, tackled a whole lot.

Mozilla finance

[oldhack]

How are these guys paying their bills? Still on Google teats?

Ridiculous.

[Seumas]

So they can't release certain functions unless they call the browser FireFox 14 or 82 or 198? Does it really matter what "version" it is, as long as you've given the functionality you're adding or the tweaks you're making considerable thought and testing? This sounds an awful lot like "they're on version 13, so we have to catch up in version numbers so people won't think we're a much older out of date product!".

As it stands, we've been getting a new major point version every 12-24 months. What's wrong with that?

I've seen no reason to go with Chrome, but it sounds like Firefox might be trying to find ways to convince me that there's nothing special to stick around for.

Re:Ridiculous.

[BZ]

> What's wrong with that?

It makes the lag to shipping new web-facing features and performance improvements too long. As a result you end up with situations like the current one, where Firefox 3.6 is significantly worse than the already-shipping competition (except IE8) in various performance and standards-compliance metrics... while the builds as of June of 2010, say, were much better than 3.6.

This isn't about version numbers; it's about getting new features into the hands of users faster and not gating feature A, which is completely done, on feature B, which might get done sometime.

Re:Ridiculous.

[muindaur]

I think that it might not be a problem so long as they do slight incrments.

I.E.

Add a minor feature go from 4.0 to 4.0.5
Add a major feature go from 4.0.5 to 4.1.5

This would be the same for minor or major updates for bug fixes. It would keep the version number in control, while making the change to version 5.0 just a matter of releaseing a feature or set of bug fixes.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Dogtanian]

IE6, the bane of web developers everywhere, turns out to be one of the most reliable development targets

Yeah, it can be relied on to fuck up a standards *and* even IE7+ compliant page in several different ways, requiring irritating, tedious and untidy workarounds. :-/

Re:Ridiculous.

[bunratty]

Why would you need different branches of code for different versions of Firefox? If you need to, you have bigger problems that worrying about how often Mozilla releases browsers.

Re:Ridiculous.

[nadaou]

It makes the lag to shipping new web-facing features and performance improvements too long.

If it means the resulting product is bug-free (read: well tested) and of higher quality--- so be it. That is what I want, not the latest white wall tires.

As a result you end up with situations like the current one, where Firefox 3.6 is significantly worse than the already-shipping competition (except IE8)

I DON'T CARE if FF beats IE[0-9] or Chrome by 3.2ms on some arbitrary and isolated metric or has some new gee whiz but unused feature. Don't be suckered into a rat race by obsessive blogger types. As long as the experience is good and snappy, and the performance (dis)advantage isn't too lopsided I'll go with the well tested version every time. Screw the competition. Quality sells itself. In a similar way, I don't care if KDE/Gnome# tracks the latest Windows7 ideas. In a way I wish they wouldn't if it's just for the sake of it. Do your own thing, make it better, learn from others when you can, and they will come.

I don't want bleeding edge. I want something I can trust my https connection to my bank, gets out of my way and is reasonably snappy, and does not leak memory or privacy left and right due to a quickly grafted new feature. That's it.

thanks for reading,
a humble user.

Re:Ridiculous.

[BZ]

> If it means the resulting product is bug-free
> (read: well tested) and of higher quality--- so be it

Most people aren't like you, honestly. But more importantly, faster release schedule need not mean less testing. There are plenty of things that got fixed in Gecko in October 2009 and had lots of testing by May 2010 that are only going to ship now, in March 2011.

Now faster releases _could_ be done in a crappy way. We'll see whether Firefox manages to avoid that, but I think they will.

> I DON'T CARE if FF beats IE[0-9] or Chrome
> by 3.2ms

Neither does anyone else. People do care about situations where one browser is 2x faster (or even worse, 200x faster) than another on some pages.

They also care if their favorite sites can't be accessed in their browser, or are just much slower in it due to it missing some feature that the sites work around in a crappy way.

The problem is, at this point, the experience of a 1-year-old browser is not good and snappy in many cases and the performance difference often _is_ too lopsided. I'm talking performance on things that matter to users, not crap like Sunspider or the V8 benchmark.

I agree that your concerns are legitimate ones; I don't think the Gecko and Firefox developers plan to compromise on leaks, privacy, or other important things to get the faster schedule. They _do_ plan to change how new features are added, though: features will no longer be able to land on the main development tree in a half-baked state with the assumption that the remaining problems can be sorted out before the scheduled beta or whatnot. If they land and there are major problems, they will get turned off or backed out until they're up to snuff. I suspect this will actually make things more like you want them, rather than less.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Malc]

If it was that good eight months ago, then why didn't they release it? That sounds like a management problem.

OTOH, I don't want a constant stream of updates. That's just annoying, especially if they haven't been through sufficient QA. In fact the SQLite plug-in for FF is a prime example. They constantly update the plug-in with minor bug fixes that I don't care about. Gather them all up and make bigger less frequent releases, unless they're critical. If there are so many critical issues, then fix your QA process. I only install it so that I can edit my form history, which is infrequently and so the constant interruption of my browser loading on multiple computers is unwarranted. I've started uninstalling this plug-in. It remains to be seen what the new FF experience will be like. I hope they don't use this release philosophy to hide problems with their QA process.

Re:Ridiculous.

[BZ]

> If it was that good eight months ago, then why didn't they release it?

Because one of the goals of having a new release was to have the new JS engine, and that part was NOT ready eight months ago.

Hence the change in goal-setting. No more "must have for this release" features. Just releases, and features that are ready get released, while the rest keep getting worked on.

You're right that more frequent updates only work if they're less obtrusive. I think everyone involved realizes that.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Dogtanian]

Still, you can browse the web with IE6 from 2001, but not with a Mozilla browser from 2009.... The web as we know it works on a 10 year old browser

You can't browse the web with a Mozilla browser from 2009? Bullshit.

And yes, of course you can still browse the majority of the web on IE6. That's because most websites made in the past decade have had to be explicitly designed to support it and its idiosyncracies!- often (though less so nowadays) to the detriment of other, more standard browsers.

Let's see what we can do with IE and implement that. If the same implementation works on other browsers too, nobody looks for ways to complicate things by making an alternative code path. If more "standards compliant" browsers want it done differently, then the solution with the least amount of differences is chosen.

It's generally accepted that it's a lot easier to code something relatively standards-compliant *then* figure out what needs to be done to get it to work with IE. To be fair, that advice dates back to the IE6 era- newer versions of IE are more standard and need less work- but as your argument is essentially "IE6 may be old and creaky, but it's still more 'standard' than Mozilla et all"... that's rubbish.

If I code a site so that it already works in Mozilla, it generally works pretty well in (e.g.) Safari without having been tuned beforehand. In fact, it often works quite decently with IE7+.

Mozilla might not support everything, but it's more a question of what it does and doesn't have at any given point, rather than the use of gratuitously proprietary and nonstandard crap that MS got away with because they had a huge market share.

Re:Ridiculous.

[Dogtanian]

When you say "IE", can you please clarify whether you mean IE in general, or IE6? Because IE6 is the primary problem- later versions aren't perfect, but they're vastly improved in terms of standards support.

Anyway, IE6 is declining in use, fortunately. I will not let one dying browser dictate the core structure of my website.

When I design a site, IE6 is still important enough that I try to ensure it looks both workable and presentable with IE6. However, I will not compromise the design and future maintainability of my site for a browser whose market share will soon be insignificant now that some of the big players are abandoning it.

This means that (e.g.) I will happily design using PNG alpha-transparency for the benefit of IE7+/Firefox/everything-else-except-Lynx users, then replace the subtlely graduated background with a slightly less-pretty but still functional white one for IE6. And this will be done using separate inclusions, exceptions etc., for IE6.

Ultimately, designing with IE6 in mind means everyone gets the mediocre experiences, instead of just the IE6 users.

The problem with all browsers other than IE is that they're fragmenting the "feature-space" too much.

Essentially, you're arguing in favour of both a browser monopoly and of stagnation. Monopolies do have some advantages, but they also have massive disadvantages- the most obvious example here being that IE6 was barely developed for years until Mozilla started to give it some serious competition. I can guarantee you that MS would not have started developing it again to the same extent if they'd continued to have the near-monopoly they enjoyed in the early-2000s.

Do try to browse the web with a 2 year old Mozilla browser. You'll be surprised how many web sites don't work right.

That's not the same as not being able to surf the web as you claimed.

Of course this is the result of web developers caring more about making sites compatible with IE6 than with slightly outdated Mozilla browsers. That it is this way for a reason is the point I'm trying to make!

They developed for it because every man and his dog was using IE6 until a few years back, and some still are. Part of that is due to corporate reliance on IE6- companies with systems that don't even work on later versions of IE(!!!) are still using it. By designing around a particular "standard" browser, they're now stuck on it because it wasn't standard!

And yes, the reason that the should-have-been-pensioned-off-years-ago IE6 still works is because people put the effort into developing for it. Ultimately the argument that IE6 should be continued to be supported for such self-perpetuating reasons would lead to a 2001-era browser being used and forcing sites to the lowest-common-denominator for eternity.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[The MAZZTer]

Are you sure you're seeing leaks? Firefox will use a certain % of free memory for cache. Just because memory goes up and doesn't come back down immediately doesn't mean the application is leaking. Mozilla's position would seem to be, and I entirely agree, that as long as you have the memory you might as well put it to good use instead of letting it waste away as free memory.

What about stability and known-working releases?

[dougsyo]

Rapid-update philosophy sounds good for early adopters and hobbyist users (does Chrome have much traction in the corporate environment?)

But what about corporate environments that require software to stay stable and on fixed known-working versions? For example, Firefox 3.6 broke compatibility with a plugin that we have widely distributed at our site, and the solution to this issue requires another mass deployment. We've had similar issues with Java's auto-updater breaking compatibility with some applications (and no, we're not an IE6 shop).

Doug

Sigh..

[SuperCharlie]

As if having to support 3 major browsers wasnt a web design nightmare enough..now to support multiple versions of each..yay. I can hear it now.. well.. it looks ok to me, but I got a support email that it looked like (random crap) for this person, looked like (wierd problem) to my other friend and this (random thing) didnt work for one of my friends at work.. see about that will you? Oh.. they all said they used FireFox if that helps.

Re:Sigh..

[LoudNoiseElitist]

If you develop with standards in mind, this shouldn't be an issue. Most of the updates to the browsers will be feature updates, not major rewrites of the rendering engines. If those change at all, it'll be to better support standards, not to drastically change the way things currently work.

Re:Sigh..

[SuperCharlie]

I know.. and agree.. it is still a support nightmare when there are multiple flavors of the same browser running around.. Im just whining I guess.. I am just so tired of designing and developing for multiple browsers.. the web dev nightmare since Netscape/IE.. I was there...and I wasnt amused then..and Im still not.

Re:Sigh..

[Crudely_Indecent]

It only gets worse when you consider that HTML will become a 'living standard', so you'll be shooting for a moving target (HTML spec) through a moving foreground (rapidly evolving browser)

I'll gladly develop for standards, but which standards should I shoot for? Yesterdays standard, last weeks standard, last months standard? Should I shoot for a specific browser implementation of a particular standard?

This is going to suck.

Re:Sigh..

[maxume]

I doubt it will be that bad. The history is one of divergent platforms, but html5 goes to some length to eliminate lots of those problems, so the problems where IE6 supports completely different stuff than Firefox and Chrome will be much reduced, and pages that look good in browser version X should look about the same in browser version X+3.

So it goes from a nightmare of supporting multiple browsers to a problem of deciding when such and such a feature has wide enough support.

Re:Sigh..

[MemoryDragon]

It is Not so bad unless you have to support ie as well. Firefox 4 and Chrome and opera behave pretty equal if you dont go for the latest whiz bang stuff which is not yet finally specified.
It used to be way worse.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[milbournosphere]

I wish I could find a better link to the story but just the other day, they released a fix for one of their memory leak problems: http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2011/02/mozilla-firefox-4-beta-12-fixe.html I've always had problems with FF's memory management in windows. I agree that if you have ram, you might as well use it, but I've found that FF has problems giving that memory up to more important tasks.

Its just fashion

[Chrisq]

Major release numbers are the new minor release numbers. Its just fashion, and will probably go back the other way when we are on firefox 72 and chrome 84

Re:Its just fashion

[Anonymous Coward]

Either that or they have found new ways of fucking up the UI which are so bad, each one deserves its own major release number?
Turning it into a Chrome-lookalike and requiring an addon for the status bar while useless animated bling is included by default is certainly a successful start in that direction

Re:Its just fashion

[hedwards]

The bigger issue is that it makes for more confusion for the users. If you're creating a major version with only changes warranting a minor revision increment, you're making it a lot harder for end users to know when to worry about an update and when not to. If it's just a minor revision then there should be little if anything to worry about, but if it's a major revision those are supposed to be limited to more substantial changes. Jackasses like Google opting to eliminate minor revisions completely in terms of numbering are just making it more confusing for end users, who might not know much to begin with.

I'm paranoid about privacy, but...

[GodfatherofSoul]

It's damned Orwellian to visit a site and do a search for something (last time it was tents), then have ads for camping gear following me around every site I visit.

Re:I'm paranoid about privacy, but...

[iknowcss]

It's hardly Orwellian if a private company is tracking you rather than the government. If you really do believe what you just said, you completely missed the point of 1984

Re:I'm paranoid about privacy, but...

[gbeagle2112]

But what if the politicans are owned by private companies that are tracking you?

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[bunratty]

Certainly every browser has memory leaks, and browser releases fix memory leaks all the time. The question is -- do the memory leaks leak enough memory to cause problems? In Firefox's case, the answer seems to be "no", because Firefox uses less memory than other browsers when performing common tasks. If you think you have found a bad memory leak in Firefox, you're welcome to write up a benchmark that will demonstrate Firefox using more memory than other browsers.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditching Firefox for Opera has saved me hundreds of dollars.

My old laptop is a P3 1 GHz with the memory maxed out at 512 MB. Firefox made that laptop unusable. Switching to Opera makes that laptop run the way it did when new, and I am not buying a new laptop for a while.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[lennier1]

^^ Join the club.
In my case it's usually memory leaks related to having previously handled large amounts of images and also some addons.
Once Firefox has reached a critical mass between 1 and 1.5 GB it always finds ways to crash. Granted, it's a way of freeing up memory, but I'd prefer ones that don't include possible loss of data in open tabs.

Re:What about stability and known-working releases

[maxwell demon]

(and no, we're not an IE6 shop).

Of course not. IE6 shops tend to have no problems with Firefox breaking plugin compatibility. :-)

Everyone just move to Year.Month model

[Anonymous Coward]

That way we can avoid this "you have a higher number than me" syndrome. Ubuntu 10.10, Office 2010, Windows 98, etc.

End this nonsense.

Re:Everyone just move to Year.Month model

[Lennie]

Like Windows 7 ?

Re:Everyone just move to Year.Month model

[grep -v '.*' *]

No no, just recode the app to show a version number of: ..

That way you're always current and "updating things" even while doing absolutely nothing. Works great on PHBs.

And then if you *do* want to be one better, easy enough: <year>.<month>+1.

Re:Everyone just move to Year.Month model

[David Nabbit]

This post is awesome. If only I had mod points...

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[Shikaku]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1974946&cid=35066742

https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/configuration-mania-4420/ [mozilla.org]

Install this addon.

Click Edit for Mac/Linux or Tools for Windows, Configuration Mania, which should be under preferences.

Make sure Browser is highlighted on the top row, if not click it. Click Browser Cache on the Left Column. Press Disabled under Max Number of Pages Stored in Memory.

It keeps closed pages all in RAM, and decides based on your total RAM how much it will save. There are almost no leaks, just dumb decisions (developers) and judgments (users).

I'll just copy and paste this here. This was discussed on a previous Firefox 4 topic, and is quite relevant even if it's sycophantic.

(But they did fix memory leaks from the last build. Which, for a beta product, memory leaks can be randomly added.)

Re:What about stability and known-working releases

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome doesn't have much corporate traction because until very recently it didn't have any good way to centrally manage the application setup. Chrome wasn't even worth CONSIDERING in the enterprise until a couple months ago, when it got a special "enterprise" MSI-based installer that installs for all users on a machine. I don't think the rapid-update philosophy has anything to do with it--if an enterprise wants to stay with an old stable Chrome release, they don't push out the updates, just like those staying with IE6.

It gets worse than that.

[SimonTS]

Try searching online for a very special necklace for your wife's 40th birthday and then have THAT still following you around when she is around a few hours later. Cue some very fast bull-shitting excuses and a very quick close-down and cache/cookie clear as soon as she left again.

Re:It gets worse than that.

[jack2000]

You guys get ads? With Firefox? In what age do you live? Get ad-block!

Re:It gets worse than that.

[bunratty]

Try Tools | Start Private Browsing, and AdBlock Plus.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[maxwell demon]

Certainly every browser has memory leaks

Certainly?
Web pages have a nice tree structure. Even if you take into account that e.g. the same image may be used twice, you still get a DAG. It should be trivial to get memory management right.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[MiniMax333]

Erm, forgive me but I think it's time you bite the bullet and get a new lappy if that's your main. Your saying that after 10 years, you still haven't been able to scrape together enough cash for a relatively modern second-hand computer? I don't believe it's "saved you hundreds of dollars" but actually cost you in everything else, including time.

Release early, release often

[c0d3g33k]

ESR described the most efficient way to release/produce free/libre/open_source software long ago.

Mozilla seems to be late to the game in realizing that the cathedral approach is not the best way to manage software releases when you are actually participants in the bazaar.

Quite ironic, actually, since Netscape was the first publicly visible software product to embrace to "open source" philosophy back in the day. The release of the Netscape source code was quite shocking and simultaneously gratifying at the time. I was quite gratified personally to be able to compile a Netscape browser from source and surf the web back then. Thank you, ESR.

Re:Memory Leak

[TaoPhoenix]

Beta 12 was supposed to be the one that fixed a bunch of memory leak problems. Are you still having them on Beta 12?

Good for them

[Ant P.]

Of course they promised a less stagnant release schedule when they were pushing 3.0 out, so I'm not holding my breath for Firefox 5.

More numbers

[xs650]

But this one goes to 11.

Re:Memory Leak

[milbournosphere]

So far it's been a little better...it seems to have found harmony at around 350MB with six tabs open and AdBlock and NoScript enabled. It has locked up a few times this morning though...

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[rev0lt]

When you run a 32-bit browser on a 64-bit operating system, and the browser hits the 2GB wall (usually my Firefox crashes around 1.5GB), you have some pretty massive memory leaks. Either launch a fully supported 64 bit browser with the same leaks and some wrappers for the 32bit plugins (flash), or do it like chrome - for every 10 FF crashes, I have 1 from chrome.

CPU leaks

[Omnifarious]

My Firefox has a CPU leak. I have to kill it and start over every couple of weeks because the CPU usage slowly rises until it hits 100%. This, of course, may be an extension or plugin that's doing it.

I would like the various browsers to have some way of controlling the CPU usage of plugins and web pages running Javascript.

Re:CPU leaks

[Hotsphink]

You're still using the original CPU that came with your computer? There's probably not much left of it by now. Lots of programs have CPU leaks. Sure, you can deal with it by restarting stuff over and over again, but you'll just have to keep doing it. It's a lot more convenient to just buy a bunch of extra CPUs and swap them in when the older ones get used up.

I've been buying them by the 6-pack at Fry's. It's much easier now that popular OSes support hot-swappable CPUs, though I'm never sure how long I'm supposed to put them in the toaster first.

(Btw, please file a bug. Or switch to a FF4 beta first to see if it still happens there. That may also may make it much easier to figure out whether it's a plugin, since they can run in another process in FF4.)

Re:CPU leaks

[hansamurai]

I know this is Slashdot but you're complaining about restarting a web browser (that saves your session) every couple of weeks?

And you're complaining about it and then mention it might be an extension, but haven't bothered to test it yourself? This is Slashdot.

Re:CPU leaks

[Omnifarious]

I feel like the problem is too nebulous to file a bug about, and I haven't had the time or energy to pin it down. I've taken to doing a kill -STOP on the browser after iconifying all the windows until I'm ready to use it again. That seems to cause the problem to take longer to express itself. :-)

What I actually suspect it is is the badly written IM system of a particular website I visit. I wish they would throw up an XMPP server and have done with it.

Re:CPU leaks

[Omnifarious]

Well, my session typically is very expensive to bring back up. I normally have about 40-50 tabs open. I feel bad for the websites I visit when I bring my browser back up because they get a mini-DOS from my computer suddenly requesting 10 or 15 pages at the same time from them.

And, you know, I like Firefox. That's why I'm using it. Getting all hostile at me over this is a little ridiculous. But, you know, I guess this is Slashdot.

Re:CPU leaks

[Derek Pomery]

Out of process plugins are also in FF3.6.

But, yes, FF4 is in general better behaved, resource-wise.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[lexman098]

I'm not sure if this is indicative of a leak or not, but when firefox runs for days on my computer and the memory usage climbs (around 500 MB or so) I end up seeing significant lag in the browser. I almost always have at least 1.5 GB of free memory as well. This leads me to believe that using more RAM isn't always benign, even with a good amount still free. I've switched to chrome recently anyway. I got sick of waiting for the FF4 RC after all of the delays and decided to try the beta. I really don't like where they're heading. The tabs are on top, technically, but not in the title bar like in chrome. They decided to go with the huge bright menu button in the top corner like office 2010 which I find extremely distracting. The new tab management system (panorama) seems like pointless bloat. After switching to chrome I realized that I should have done it much sooner.

Re:What about stability and known-working releases

[QuoteMstr]

First of all, kudos to Google for finally going with MSI. It's like providing an RPM and makes everyone's life easier.

Now, that said, the situation with respect to delayed updates is fundamentally different because Chrome hasn't provide security updates for older versions. You're essentially running snapshots all the time. Any IT department would have be bonkers to follow that model.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[pandrijeczko]

Why not make yourself a few dollars even - sell your laptop on eBay and go use a free computer at the local library!

They don't do Opera on Macs, do they? Jeez, imagine one of *THOSE* as a fanboi!

What does Jetpack get you...

[rsilvergun]

that I don't already have? Just curious. I've looked at it a little, and it looks like building Plugins with javascript & HTML/CSS instead of pure XUL, but I'm already doing that with the next release of my plugin. It's easy enough to use the DOM to load custom HTML and insert it where you want. I've seen lots of these frameworks build up super complex stuff that'd be great if I was writing a complete application, but in the end it's just a plugin...

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[bunratty]

From the page I linked to:

The SDK is designed to produce add-ons that will be forwards-compatible with future versions of Firefox, so you won't need to update your add-on every time a new version of Firefox is released. And SDK-based add-ons benefit from a security model that limits the harm that can be caused by a vulnerability in add-on code.

and

Users can install and remove SDK-based add-ons instantly, without a browser restart, making it easier to try add-ons and personalize their browsing experience. They also won't have to worry about add-on compatibility with new versions of Firefox. And SDK-based add-ons will soon load in separate processes, so slow-running add-ons won't slow down Firefox itself.

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[bill_mcgonigle]

the next release of my plugin

Will it then work on non-Windows platforms? I could use this, but don't have any Windows computers.

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[rsilvergun]

Not yet :(. I was thinking of a MacOSX port next, than Maybe x86 linux. What are you running?

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[rsilvergun]

Now I get it. I completely missed that. Twice. I need more caffeine. Thanks!

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Mostly Fedora Linux machines. On the bright side, it's feasible to do this with a script for the linux users.

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[icebraining]

DownloadHelper lets you download and convert almost any online video (not only YT) to MP3 with two clicks, as long as you have ffmpeg with MP3 support installed.

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[dryeo]

You should learn the difference between plugins and extensions. Plugin, separate binary that displays in the browsers window, eg flash. Extension, an extension to the browser that use XUL or as you noticed, JavaScript & HTML/CSS.
Extensions are usually cross-platform and as long as the rendering engine is the same, often cross-browser. Eg SeaMonkey and Firefox.

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[rsilvergun]

Yeah, I was doing it with a python script at first, but it was too much of a pain to cut off the introductions on my podcast downloads. I'm working on tagging and support for more sites (dailymotion and whatnot) right now. The next step from here is the ability to string together multiple videos into single podcasts. I'm tinkering with the youtube API for some of that. I may do the multi platform stuff first so I don't complicate things. I haven't had too much call for a Linux port, but than again I plan to port it to android (once I can afford one :) ). It's one of those things that you can do so much cool stuff with I hardly know where to begin :D.

Release early, release often.

[RichiH]

Who would'a thought?!

Also, misleading semi-troll topic to garner attention is misleading semi-troll topic to garner attention.

#2 position-- mulit-core scaling

[electrosoccertux]

all they have to do is make firefox scale to multiple cores. There's no reason the UI from the current webpage I'm browsing should grind to a halt because I loaded 5 slashdot discussions in the background using middle-click. Both Chrome and Opera 11 have no problem handling this.

And before someone chimes in and posts this saying that they're working on it, take a look again, that page hasn't been updated since May 2010.

At the moment I couldn't care any less about javascript benchmark speed. I just want multicore scaling from Firefox and then I'll be happy.

Re:#2 position-- mulit-core scaling

[VGPowerlord]

You have to be kidding. Firefox is faster and kicks the other browsers asses. This whole speed thing must have something to do with non-GNU/Linux platforms cause I'm just not seeing it go slow. A browser shouldn't need additional cores to run fast. This sounds like "me too" thinking. While it might improve certain things I'm extremely sceptical. Video is already being accelerated and having 10 tabs open is not something that slows Firefox down. Maybe you are on MS Windows and that has something to do with it.

No, not really.

It's a well-known fact that current versions of Mozilla only run plugins on a separate process, and that was new in Mozilla 3.6.4... Mozilla claims that it's still working on this for web content and graphics.

In other words Firefox is a single-process, single-threaded application on all platforms, except when launching plugins.

Re:#2 position-- mulit-core scaling

[AbRASiON]

I could moderate you up but that's only one point.
Telling everyone else to damn well listen to you is more important.

I love FireFox 3, it does EVERYTHING I want - just make it bloody faster, absoloutely as fast as possible, it's all I want!

Re:#2 position-- mulit-core scaling

[dryeo]

I currently see 24 threads (highest numbered one being #31) running in one Firefox process, seems far from single threaded.

Re:#2 position-- mulit-core scaling

[kripkenstein]

And before someone chimes in and posts this saying that they're working on it, take a look again, that page hasn't been updated since May 2010.

I am afraid that page is out of date, I edited the 'Status' section of it now - thanks for pointing it out!

The status of multiprocess Firefox is that we have been working very hard at it, and made lots of progress. In fact Firefox Mobile is multiprocess already, you can run it right now and see that the UI remains responsive even if you load lots of tabs, JS heavy sites, etc. So that shows that rendering, networking, etc. etc. are ready for multiprocess.

But getting desktop Firefox to be multiprocess will take more time, since there is a lot more stuff to support there, in particular addons, developer tools, etc. The plan is to finish that stuff later this year.

Re: Releases

[natehoy]

All they would have to do is call some of their betas number releases.

No. A beta release is (in general) bug fixes and improvements to existing code. They generally don't introduce swaths of new features, that's what the FIRST beta did, the rest are fixing problems with those features. The fact that they have had more than 11 betas of Firefox 4 is proof that what they are trying to do is necessary. They made 4.0 too big.

This is a trench op on the marketing side, to make pointy heads happy that Firefox can be in version 7 this year and version 10 next year. Apparently something pending about betas exhausted them.

They are going for more releases BECAUSE the betas exhausted them, and that's a good decision. What they are trying to do is go to a smaller, more focused release on a smaller number of changes at a given time, and get that version out as the regular version more regularly. It allows them to keep their release and development codebases closer together, meaning less effort for security backfixes into the release version. It allows them to manage the complexity of their changes so a new version of Firefox doesn't feel like a new version of Windows - something that comes out maybe twice in a decade and is so different from what you had before that it's basically unrecognizable.

They've been trying to bite off too much at each new major release, and as a result they've fallen victim to BPS (Perpetual Beta Syndrome) because the scope of changes they are trying to do simultaneously exceeds their development capacity. It's a nasty, unrewarding cycle to get into, and it makes support hard and expensive, and it makes the project stagnate and stagger under its own weight.

In order to dig yourself out of that cycle you need to pick smaller targets and set out to accomplish them, rather than taking on the world with insufficient resources and ending up with a version so buggy and unwieldy that you need a dozen or more betas to get to something you're comfortable won't actually find a way to kill your users, much less work correctly every time. So you'll see a pattern of smaller releases focused on smaller sets of new functionality.

Having said that, I've been using 4.0beta(latest) for a few months, and I find it pretty solid. But the point remains - if they had focused on one task at a time and released that feature, we'd probably be about where we are today, without the vast chasm between "production" and "beta" releases being so huge that a lot of people are going to resist moving to 4.0 for a long time (and keeping the development teams working on two very different codebases for bug fixes).

The bigger you make your changes, and the less often you release, the harder it is for your users to upgrade. And the harder it is for you to maintain two stable and increasingly-different codebases (one development, one stable).

Firefox should have taken 1/3 of the changes they wanted for 4.0, called them 3.7 or 4.0, and released them for beta quickly. Then taken the next 1/3 and made them 3.8 or 5.0. Then the final third and 3.9 or 6.0 (which numbering depends on whether you're in development or marketing, pretty much, but it really doesn't matter).

Instead, we're stuck with two Firefoxes - one that's a year old and is showing its age, and one that's so vastly utterly different in terms of UI and underlying infrastructure that you'll have people resisting the upgrade for at least six months.

Speed is great, but not a fair comparison

[mcmire]

I think releasing earlier, faster is great -- execution is everything. I don't know if Mozilla needs to be afraid that Google is somehow getting ahead of them, though. I mean, yes, in terms of speed and simplicity, Chrome wins hands down. Considering how fast JagerMonkey is getting better, it doesn't seem that's as much of an issue to me (or at least, they're on the right track). But in terms of how much each company is churning out, I think Mozilla is keeping up just fine. Think about what they've talking about for the past year: Panorama, maybe a new privacy UI, Jetpack, application tabs, "HTML5" features -- this shows that they're actually thinking about the future of the browser. What has Google produced in the past year? Chrome jumped from v4 to v8 (and now v9, and soon v10). Extensions, HTML5 stuff, WebM, GPU-accelerated compositing, page prerendering. How much of this work was put toward Webkit, though? And why do you think they added all of this? To catch up with IE and Firefox. I just don't think it's a fair comparison.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[camperdave]

How about letting ME decide what I want to use the memory for. There's no reason why, with 3G of RAM, that I should have to shut down Firefox to launch mplayer full screen.

Re:Duke Nukem Forever

[Lennie]

This will happen in March.

This mean the memory issues will get fixed?

[OverlordQ]

Before you say that since it happens to you it must be my addons, it[1] happens with 1 tab open to about:memory in Safe Mode. The only thing left to do is try a clean profile, but if a dirty profile can make an idle Firefox eat all your ram that's still a bad bug.

1 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=636791

Re:This mean the memory issues will get fixed?

[basotl]

I notice your bug report is for Beta 11. In the earlier Slashdot post for Beta 12: http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/02/26/0031254/Firefox-4-Beta-12-Released-Fixes-Over-650-Bugs I noticed several memory issue bugs listed as fixed. Was yours related to one of them?

Re:This mean the memory issues will get fixed?

[OverlordQ]

If you'll read the bug, the last comment was from somebody who reproduced it with b13.

Re:This mean the memory issues will get fixed?

[bunratty]

Not just somebody. The original reporter. The only person who seems to have ever been able to reproduce the bug. Try a new profile. (This doesn't mean that bugs that happen only with a certain kind of profile aren't important, but it depends on a certain kind of profile to reproduce that bug, so the next step is to find what about that profile causes the bug, so why that difference causes the bug can be examined so the bug can be fixed.)

Re:This mean the memory issues will get fixed?

[Lawrence_Bird]

On Win I've been running beta 12 for a while (it was out well before the /. story) Speaking generally, Firefox is still a pig when it comes to memory and still has usability issues after a few hours of opening and closing tabs. I think all the browsers to one extent or another - and maybe this is just the way software is now - are pigs. I laugh when I think back to one of the big reasons for firefox in the first place - mozilla/netscrape feature bloat. And yet, here we are again but with out the mail and new readers and page editor.

As to Chrome - never will be my regular browser until they cave on password security. Nothing like giving customers what you want instead of what theywant.

Re:This mean the memory issues will get fixed?

[OverlordQ]

No, different people. Comment 1 (OP) and Comment 6-7 (b13) are differnet people. Reading comprehension fail.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[VGPowerlord]

They don't do Opera on Macs, do they? Jeez, imagine one of *THOSE* as a fanboi!

Yes, yes they do.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[nedlohs]

Except that javascript can hold references too right? And hence you lose the A in DAG - javascript on one tree could hold a reference to another tree, which in turns hold a reference back to the first tree.

Javascript itself is a non-trivial runtime engine, and likely a source of a lot of leaks.

Sure it's possible to have browser without any memory leaks, just like it's possible to have one without any bugs. Not very likely, however.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[jack2000]

Here's a simple idea for you. When i close a tab everything associated with it memory wise should be freed. You can tag stuff when its alocated that it belongs to so-and-so tab. When the tab is closed everything, EVERYTHING, even plugins and JS get killed/freed. There. Memory leaks fixed.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[bunratty]

It's a nice idea, but it's not going to fix every memory leak. Even garbage collected systems have memory leaks. A web browser is far, far more complicated than you're thinking. One reason your idea won't work is that many objects are not owned by a single tab.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[jack2000]

Get rid of those. There's no legit reason two tabs should be allowed to share information.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[nedlohs]

Yes if you ignore all the specs and standards and cripple the browser it is reasonably simple to avoid memory leaks.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[bunratty]

How about to save memory? Most of the memory use in a browser is information that is not specific to one tab. If you don't share it, memory use would climb sky high as you opened more tabs. Not to mention that your idea would mean re-writing the entire browser, and would not even remove all memory leaks, which was the reason you suggested the idea in the first place. I don't want a browser that implements your idea. I like Chrome's idea of each tab and plugin being a separate process, with some memory sharing, but it still takes lots more memory than Firefox's approach -- it doesn't conserve memory as you're trying to imply.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[jack2000]

Oh that's an entirely different type of sharing than what I had in mind. I can see how this can be a problem with duplicate content.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[Spad]

If you're having to do that then you've got bigger issues than Firefox.

"top", "kill", "renice" needed for the browser OS

[erice]

My Firefox has a CPU leak. I have to kill it and start over every couple of weeks because the CPU usage slowly rises until it hits 100%. This, of course, may be an extension or plugin that's doing it.

I would like the various browsers to have some way of controlling the CPU usage of plugins and web pages running Javascript.

I see this problem too only it happens much faster. I boot my machine every day and I still often run into cases where the browser is using too much cpu or memory without identifiable cause. The problem is that the browser has become an operating system within an operating system but without the administrative and monitoring tools we expect.

If a stand alone process goes amok and starts gobbling up cpu and/or memory, I can identify the culprit using "top". I can then either kill it or, if the process is doing something important, I can renice it so that the rest of the system can still be responsive.

But if the rogue agent is a script, plugin, or extension hidden among 20 odd browser tabs, what do I do? I can't see the source of the problem. At best, I can take a guess and close a tab. Often, I just have to restart Firefox. That's like rebooting every time your machine gets slow. That's worse than Windows!

There is desperate need for performance monitoring and control within the browser OS. If such things exist in the development toolkit, then by all means they should be brought out and their existence publicized so that end users can regain control of their machines.

Re:"top", "kill", "renice" needed for the browser

[Omnifarious]

Or, better yet, be like Google Chrome and start using a separate OS process for each website or thing you want to manage. I think that's the better solution. It requires a significant re-architecting of how the browser works though.

OSes also need to start having features to allow processes to run in an OS enforced sandbox.

Re: Download Helper not free as in freedom

[slash.duncan]

Unfortunately, Download Helper wasn't freedomware the last time I looked. It was off my system within days of realizing that, as if I wanted to run servantware, I'd have not dumped a decade of MS experience to switch to Linux, now nearing a decade ago (when it became apparent what MS was doing with eXPrivacy; I spent some time preparing and then started my final switch to Linux the weekend eXPrivacy was released).

If I want to bother, often, one of the other available tools does the job. If not, well, watching that video wasn't that important after all.

Firefox dying....No Way

[mangusman]

I use Firefox, Chrome and IE daily, I still can't see what all the hoopla is around Chrome. Yeah, it's a nice browser, but until they support all the extensions that Firefox does, it won't be my go-to browser any time soon. On the other hand, even the latest Firefox beta is still consuming way too much memory for my taste, and now with multiple Firefox plugin containers running (why?), it's somewhat of a sore spot.

Re: Releases

[TaoPhoenix]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

Maybe we can frame the question this way - I thought first-numbers were supposed to be big Oh-Wow changes, with the point releases being the little boosts. Now I am roughly aware they did some sort of deep Gecko improvement that started the whole 4.0 branch, but would some of that other stuff have been fine with 4.1 and 4.2?

On the other hand, where does this put us with "shoot for the moon" technologies? If it's so hard that it takes a year to finish a big new piece of tech, is that more of a Minefield Alpha series thing rather than "perpetual betas"? Can't stuff parked in Dev hang out in Alpha / Minefield? Maybe then make "Beta" the point where you think it really is vetted enough to kick into Beta, then a point relese.

Re: Releases

[natehoy]

Well, which side of the decimal you're on is really a matter of opinion. As far as I know, there are no hard-and-fast standards that "X% of your functionality or codebase has to change to qualify for an increase to the left of the decimal". So let's not get too stuck on a distinction that's really more for marketing weenies and the very anal to worry about. If number > previous number OR number prepresents new numbering system, version has changed, see changelog for how big the change is.

Mozilla would be well-advised to go with a year/month version scheme a'la Canonical (10.10 = October 2010).

On the other hand, where does this put us with "shoot for the moon" technologies? If it's so hard that it takes a year to finish a big new piece of tech, is that more of a Minefield Alpha series thing rather than "perpetual betas"?

I think that's the point, 4.0 was treated as if there were several "shoot for the moon" changes, when there really weren't. 4.0 was a very "waterfall" project. "We can't release it all yet because we're only 95% complete on this last feature that can't be pulled out because of dependencies!"

Don't get me wrong, it's good stuff, but this could easily have been released as several smaller more interim releases. Tell the team working on feature X that they cannot commit their changes to the official dev version until feature Y is out of beta. Don't allow a dozen teams to be working on new features all at once and build a massive, snarling dependency interlock that requires everything must go or nothing can go.

Will it slow the pace of overall development? Yes, it probably will. However, you'll make it up at test time, because you won't spend 6 months in development and 3 months rolling out beta after beta after beta. You'll have actual features in the hands of your users more quickly, so people don't have to choose between "last year's browser" and "the new buggy beta" when they want a helping of Firefox.

Re:What the hell is a CPU leak???

[Omnifarious]

#1- What the hell is a CPU leak?? There is no such thing.

A CPU leak is when some process consumes increasingly large amounts of CPU over time. There is some task that it performs that it begins performing more and more often, or some other thing changes to cause it to start using more CPU. I invented the term to describe the behavior. It's like a memory leak in that it consumes more and more resources over time, but it consumes CPU instead of memory. Most people seemed to have no difficulty in understanding what I was getting at, so I think I did well in coining the term.

#2- For what in the world are you leaving a browser open for weeks??

Why does it matter? I am. Why should I have to use my browser in a particular way in order for it to work?