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Firefox 4 the Last Big Release From Mozilla

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the release-early-release-often dept.

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.""

6 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. I interpreted the headline the wrong way by Mr_eX9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I interpreted the headline the wrong way by commodore6502 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >>>"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.

      --
      Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
  2. Re:Plugin Support by bunratty · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  3. Everyone just move to Year.Month model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Plugin Support by Lucky75 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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)

    --
    DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
  5. Re:Ridiculous. by BZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    > 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.