The Enterprise Is Wrong, Not Mozilla

There's been a lot of noise about Mozilla's new rapid release leading to conflict with Enterprise users. Kethinov found an Ars article that points out that "Now that Mozilla has released Firefox 5, version 4, just three months old, is no longer supported. Enterprise customers aren't very pleased with this decision, and are claiming it makes their testing burden impossible. We're not convinced: we think Mozilla's decision is the right one for the Web itself.'"

Comments

Think of it as 4.0.2

[jonescb]

If the version number were 4.0.2 instead of 5.0 Enterprises wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch over this.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Lunix Nutcase]

Except it's not just enterprises. Tons of average users are getting headaches over this as well when suddenly an unjustified version jump is making it so their plugins get disabled.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[ifrag]

Pretty much. And without looking at release notes, I can't even really tell what changed from 4.x. Doesn't feel like anything more than a minor release. And at least my tree-tabs are still working.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[jonescb]

True about the plugins. Mozilla should do something else with their version numbers so that fast, minor updates don't bump the major version and break plugins.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

What plugins?

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Lennie]

I think it is more like Firefox 3.6.0 after Firefox 3.5.x and no security fixes for Firefox 3.5.x.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[rubycodez]

you actually don't use NoScript and AdBlock Plus? sucks to be you.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on 5 and my Adblock Plus is working perfectly fine.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[phantomfive]

Right, as the article points out, the changelist for Firefox 5 is not much more expansive than the changelist for Firefox 3.6.

Some enterprise users have internal apps that they need to test, and some of them are upset about such a 'big' change. In reality they shouldn't be looking at version numbers, they should be looking at a list of potential impacts, to make their testing easier.

If Mozilla wants to handle this PR challenge well, it might help announce that from now on they are going to support they enterprise better (everyone likes to know they are being thought of), then from now on point people to the changelist, or add a 'potential impacts' section to the list. Simple enough, and lets people know they are considered.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Beelzebud]

I use AdBlock Plus, and it worked with Firefox 5 just fine, from the moment I upgraded. So again, what plugins don't work? The only one I have not working is one that is a beta version, and it will have a v5 release in days. It's certainly not the end of the world.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Volante3192]

Funny, none of my addons broke going from 4.x to 5.x, and none of them updated automatically either. Same version as before.

Saying addons break going from 4 to 5 is going to require some citations as one aspect of this update was a change in how addon compatibility is handled.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[HaZardman27]

Unless there was actually some major functionality changes from 4 to 5 which would break plugins, and it's just the version number of the browser which disables the plugin, you could easily just go into the configuration files for the plugin and change the supported version numbers.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Tridus]

Yeah, because doing that every 6 weeks to meet Mozilla's delusional goal of catching up to Chrome on version numbers is certainly something I feel like doing with my time.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Altus]

Why not just use a more traditional numbering convention and then you don't have to worry about it. Only introduce major architectural changes in major releases and only break compatibility then. Do a major release approximately once a year.

I know, its crazy and radical, but I think it just might work.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Normal Dan]

I say, to really mess with people, they should swap around their version numbers. So the first number is for minor update and the middle number is for major updates (but this number should go down instead of us). So, if you're at 1.4.0 and a small bug fix comes in, it'll be 2.4.0. Then a major release you're at 2.3.0.

Surely this is a great way to avoid any confusion.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[tepples]

Any add-on that uses a binary module needs to be recompiled for each ABI, and Firefox changes its ABI on every major version.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[DrXym]

It changes its ABI on every version. Perhaps not on purpose but it changes. About the only things you can rely on not changing are the NPAPI and other @frozen interfaces / classes.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[HaZardman27]

I'm not saying it's an ideal solution, but until Mozilla gets their act together or publishes an easier way to keep your extensions working, at least you can keep your browser working close to the way you want it. Also note: I may have confused plugins with extensions in my previous post. I'm not actually sure if you can change your plugins to work on newer browser versions.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[creat3d]

you actually don't use NoScript and AdBlock Plus? sucks to be you.

Both worked for me just fine as soon as I upgraded to version 5.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Dunega]

It's not about the version number, it's the "not-supported" part that's the issue.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

you actually don't use NoScript and AdBlock Plus? sucks to be you.

Pssh. n00b. Everyone knows you also need to use HideImages, RemoveText, NixContent, ZapProtocols, BlockExtensions (and its accomplice BlockPlugins), CSSWiper, BrowserUninstaller, and ShutdownSystem before you can start pretending you're safe.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Runaway1956]

Yuk. Apparently you're giving tacit approval to the practice of writing applications meant to run in a web browser. Why? It just makes no sense. We've already seen what happens when the browser, the email app, and office apps all have hooks deep into the system. It opens the doors to multiple mega exploits!

No thanks, I'll pass. And any corporate IT people with a lick of sense will take a pass as well. Write your app in a real language, not as a half assed addon to a web browser.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[McNihil]

So why doesn't the cheapass and lazy corporations support it themselves. The code is there for them to continue to use it as they want.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[NevarMore]

Some enterprise users have internal apps that they need to test, and some of them are upset about such a 'big' change. In reality they shouldn't be looking at version numbers, they should be looking at a list of potential impacts, to make their testing easier.

But that would require thought and effort. They could also use a testing tool like Selenium, set up tests for their applications once, and then just change the browser type as new versions are released/supported. Again that would require some thought and effort from the devs/sysops and backing from management.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[tlhIngan]

The problem was the crap that is Firefox development.

Going from 3.5 to 3.6 broke a number of plugins - sure there are replacements, but damn it was a pain for a supposed update.

Going from 3.6 to 4 introduced a bunch of crappy UI mods (no status bar, really? Must Firefox emulate Chrome?), requiring more plugins to get a browser that at least resembles what I had before.

Going from 4 to 5 broke what now? Oh, it broke the tab bar behavior to emulate Chrome again (great if you read tabs left-to-right, but if you go right-to-left, it's an annoying pain, and this time I can't find the option to disable it).

Oh yeah, it also means Google Apps lose support very quickly. Google said they're supported the last 3 major versions. Until 5 came out, that was 3.5, 3.6 and 4. Now with 5, it'll be 3.6, 4 and 5, despite 4 being dead.

Notice that 3.6 still receivs updates from Mozilla. Hell, even Ubuntu still keeps an LTS release every couple of years, good for 3 years since release.

Perhaps it wouldn't be such a pain if Mozilla quits screwing around with the UI so much. 3.5 to 3.6? Well, 3.6 should be 4, really since it broke a bunch of stuff (a number of plugins broke and I had to find new ones that did equivalent). Then 4 could be called 5 and we'd be at 5.0.2 or something because of the new UI.

Some of us like reasonable expectations of when plugins and such might break - going from 2 to 3 is obvious, as owuld 3 to 4 and the like. 3.5 to 3.6? I'd have expected all my plugins to work.

Hell, it's enough to drive me to IE 9 with all the UI messing around. Saving an extra 16 pixels just means I see an extra half a line of text.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Culture20]

If the version number were 4.0.2 instead of 5.0 Enterprises wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch over this.

True. The big problem is with he way that this will work in the future. There weren't any big changes in 5, so 4 going EOL immediately isn't a huge deal, but when 6 or 7 rolls down the pike, and there is a major change, then everyone, enterprise and home user alike, is left with a poor choice between potentially broken new features (or reduced features) and security vulnerabilities (because n-1 is EOL). Even just leaving some slack of EOLing version n-2 would help prepare for change.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[kimvette]

Why not just use a more traditional numbering convention and then you don't have to worry about it. Only introduce major architectural changes in major releases and only break compatibility then. Do a major release approximately once a year.

But then Firefox won't be competitive with Opera 11.5, MSIE 9.0, and Safari 5.0, and needs to stay well ahead of Chrome 3.4. After all version numbers are everything! ;)

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[CastrTroy]

You only have to change it once if you set the version number high enough. Set it to 100, and the it'll probably never complain about version numbers again. The plugins might eventually stop working, but worry about that when it happens. Mozilla knows which APIs the plugins are calling, and it knowns which APIs have changed in the upgrade. They really should be able to figure this out for themselves.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Tharsman]

It's not just version number. They changed enough in this version to break some Add-ons compatibility. An entity can't keep up if if it had a business setup around the use of specific Add-ons, either open source, acquired through their repository or internally developed within the company.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I'm sure 30 seconds every 6 weeks will just kill your life.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[__aazsst3756]

If it was 4.02 instead of 5, I would have upgraded all of our computers at home already. As it is, I have no way of knowing if all our plugins work. I have tried looking on the homepages of some of the plugins, and they have not been updated recently, so I have no idea. The only reason I still run the slower firefox is for the great plugins available. Sooo... I'll wait a month or so. I will probably upgrade just in time for firefox 6. It is NOT just enterprise, this hurts home users too.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Missing.Matter]

Right, as the article points out, the changelist for Firefox 5 [mozilla.com] is not much more expansive than the changelist for Firefox 3.6 [mozilla.com].

So has the version number lost all meaning? Why don't they just skip all this BS, and call it Firefox ($Google_Chrome_Ver+1) and be done with it? Google releases Chrome 13, Mozilla releases Firefox 14. Changelog: Incremented version number.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[machxor]

I'm not an average number and admittedly hadn't been paying attention to the release schedule changes. So when version 5 all of a sudden popped up I hesitated to upgrade as version 4 was still working fine for my development needs and what not. Had this actually been 4.0.2 I probably wouldn't have hesitated as minor versions generally don't introduce breaking changes.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[phantomfive]

Uh, you didn't really give a good reason for not writing applications meant to run in a web browser. Apps written in a browser are no less secure than apps written in a 'real' language (I'm not talking about Active X). I mean, do you REALLY think that by writing something in C++, it somehow becomes secure?

Furthermore, and you may not like this, with the advent of competing mobile technologies (ie, Android is incompatible with iPhone), businesses are moving towards building their internal mobile apps in HTML 5 so they are cross-compatible. It may be ugly, but it saves money, so that's what will happen.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BitZtream]

Sure it will, be honest about what you're doing.

The next version of firefox released will be version 59.

Now, you've won the retard version war, and you can get back to being sain and useful.

Of course, this article title pretty accurately reflects the ignorance and stupidity that makes up the Mozilla Foundation. Its hard to believe they can be as ignorant and really, just so fucking arrogant ... you'd think after their first company failed miserably the idiots would have gotten a clue. Nope, they didn't Mozilla will follow Netscape into the dirty because the people running the company think they know whats better for their consumers than their consumers do.

There may be some company where thats true, but Netscape has never been that company, they are just a bunch of developers with no leadership, everyone does whatever they want and has no concept of a long term plan. Yes, I know they claim to 'have a long term plan' that this versioning change is part of ... the problem is, in 2 months, they'll have a whole new long term plan, JetPack2, or some new skinning system thats going to revolutionize browsing by making it even more obnoxious ... or something else so retarded I can't possibly come up with the idea myself.

This is an example of why using Firefox is a bad idea, its clear the developers don't actually know what they are doing. While there may be SOME developers with a clue (obviously, since firefox made it to where it is today) but you're taking a big risk with Mozilla than you are with Microsoft. Firefox may be open source, but with all the bitching about various Firefox changes, I've yet to see a fork that matter to anyone, so clearly the open source aspect is irrelevant.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[realityimpaired]

Yuk. Apparently you're giving tacit approval to the practice of writing applications meant to run in a web browser. Why? It just makes no sense. We've already seen what happens when the browser, the email app, and office apps all have hooks deep into the system. It opens the doors to multiple mega exploits!

No thanks, I'll pass. And any corporate IT people with a lick of sense will take a pass as well. Write your app in a real language, not as a half assed addon to a web browser.

Never worked in an environment where corporate security is paranoid, have you? Corporate security hasn't even approved FF 4 for use on our workstations yet. To have FF5 come out, effectively killing FF4, is bad mojo. And it's got nothing to do with apps being designed to run on specific browsers (we have a couple, which 99% of the company never needs to use, and which only run on IE6, but most of the company is basically browser independant), it's about them wanting to make sure that the browser in question won't cause something to break, or introduce some kind of security hole through a plugin or badly designed API. (and yes, I'm well aware of the irony in that statement immediately following a statement about having some apps that are stuck on IE6).

Corporates are right to gak at the prospect of FF changing its number so abruptly, especially when there's literally no major update included, and it is just an arbitrary version number change. It's kind of like when Slackware jumped 4 version numbers... there was no reason it had to, they just wanted to look like they're innovating and coming out with updates faster than everybody else.

Actually, it's worse than when Slackware did that.... Pat's reasons for doing the jump were well documented, and while somewhat asinine, at least it actually *was* a major revision, and he didn't follow it up by jumping 4 version numbers again 3 months later.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[ColdWetDog]

You're fired.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[DarkOx]

They should have just kept doing point release like normal and skipped some versions to get up to the industry numbers. IE do what Slackware did and just jump a few major versions next time they are ready to jump a major version.

When it comes to certain software packages like browsers, Linux Distributions. The major version is more a Technology Generation indicator

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Runaway1956]

Can't fire me, and I can't quit, either. I never accepted the job. But, if you're in the mood for firing someone, you can hit that sycophant IT puke who promised to make all that stupid shit work for you, just like you wanted it to work.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[NotBorg]

I use them both. I also had NO DOWN TIME when I upgraded from 4.x to 5. In fact, I didn't experience any breakages at all. I don't know why everyone's saying all their add-ons broke, but i suspect it's just bitter trolling.

I'd like to see some citations for the massive breakages that are supposedly is being experienced by "tons of average users." Before you post, omit articles about betas and articles that don't actually mention an actual add-on that got broken and still hasn't been updated. I want to see articles about the real world impact, not vague mentions of possible problems which some very small portion of the user base may experience.

I suspect jonescb's assertion is right and applies here too. If this update had been called 4.0.2 no one would be crying "oh no the add-on sky is falling!"

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I dunno', my favorite was probably NCC-1701, but NCC-1701-D holds a special place because I was kid then.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[zero0ne]

I am getting "13.0.782.32 beta-m" for Google Chrome.

Chrome clearly has the biggest junk on the block.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Americano]

Because the cheapass lazy corporations don't want to spend the money. So what they will do is look for other free browsers that offer a model they're after, or do business with the corporations who they're already spending a shitload of money on with support contracts: i.e., Microsoft, and perhaps Google.

If Firefox wants to remain competitive, they cannot simply say "Tough shit, you're on you're own." This move will drive enterprise away from FF and into the waiting, loving arms of IE and Chrome. I know plenty of people in my dev organization have already uninstalled FF and installed Chrome, alongside the corporate-standard IE8. IE is for internal IE-only sites (yeah, they do still exist), and Chrome is for everything else.

Firefox is eminently replaceable, and Mozilla ignores that fact at its own peril. Companies start rolling out IE8 & 9, or Chrome, and you can bet that folks at home will start saying, "Gee, maybe I should install that version on my home computer, keep things consistent."

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[phantomfive]

It did, many many years ago. Versions have traditionally only been good for knowing that one version is newer than another version (or at least different). Unless a group decides specifically on a meaning for the version numbers (like Linux, until recently, with odd version numbers being experimental; or OSX with minor-number upgrades being free and major-number upgrades being expensive; or LaTex approaching pi as it approaches perfection), then you can't assume anything. If you look at most software, the major.minor[.build[.revision]] has probably been the exception rather than the norm. If it is something that bothers you, then you are going to get bothered a lot.

In general, people change the version number when they want to. Wikipedia has a good article listing different version schemes people use.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[spinkham]

What version of Chrome are you running? Most people running Chrome have no idea that it's going through major version upgrades all the time.

The curse of Firefox is the extensibility. Chrome has had a more limited, but growing extension system, and it isn't brittle like the one in Firefox.

Jetpack is the project to bring a Chrome like plugin layer to Firefox, which will handle the needs of 95% of addons, and should greatly ease the upgrade pain when developers start switching over to it.

It was only released widely a week ago, so there's still some time before it's ubiquitous, but when it is the upgrade pain for users and developers goes away.

TL;DR:
Firefox is doing the right thing, but there will be a bit of pain before things get better.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Antimatter3009]

But the idea is to speed up the release cycle into what is almost a "rolling release" style. And, in fact, this is exactly what the Ars article is arguing is a good thing (which I agree with). I think if they're going to follow Chrome's release style, though, they need to get the rest of what makes it work for Chrome. By that I mean automatic, almost silent updates and an almost total disregard for the version number. Chrome still has versions, but they don't really mean anything significant. Firefox needs to stop calling this Firefox 5 and start calling it just Firefox. The version is no longer important. Similarly, extension support needs to stop being based on the version number and go to some other system. My initial thought would be to assume all extensions will work and allow the community of users to report broken extensions which can be automatically tallied and turned into a warning of some sort when you install. Think something like: "This extension has been reported to be incompatible with Firefox since dd/mm/yyyy."

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[icebike]

True about the plugins. Mozilla should do something else with their version numbers so that fast, minor updates don't bump the major version and break plugins.

Why should version numbers affect plugins?

If the plug in interface specifications (the actual methods that plugins use to accomplish their task) does not change, or changes in an upwardly compatible way, the existing plugins should continue to run just the same way that most firefox itself continues to run when Microsoft or Ubuntu or Apple changes their version numbers.

If the plug in interface does change at the programming level from release to release, that would indicate how badly designed firefox is, and companies should run away from it.

The lesson here is that no one in enterprise (what ever the hell that is) should build anything that is dependent on a single version number. Why tie your future to something so totally out of your control and then complain because the world does not wait for you to change.

Did we learn nothing in the IE6 debacle.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[gstoddart]

If the version number were 4.0.2 instead of 5.0 Enterprises wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch over this.

Not if 4.0.2 caused 4.0.0 to have support dropped for it three months after you installed it.

Corporations typically end up deploying this kind of software on a much longer cycle ... I'm working on a project now which will be deploying software to the users in several months. There's extensive testing which needs to happen before it can be deployed.

I've seen vendors who seem to release a new version of their software every week or two, and if you have an issue, and aren't running the latest and greatest, they won't listen to you until you upgrade. The problem is, we're talking about production servers with a fair bit of testing and paperwork to have an outage for ... it's just not practical to upgrade every week, every month, or often every three months. It takes us longer to promote it through the environments to verify it than it takes them to release a new build with generally pretty minor changes.

Software which is end-of-life after three months is pretty useless from a corporate perspective. It's unusable, and it's agile development gone horribly wrong. On my home machine, sure, I guess I'd be willing up do an upgrade of Firefox every couple of months. But, if I had thousands of desktop users running in a complex environment ... a three month cycle before what you just installed is EOL'd isn't nearly long enough.

If this is what Mozilla is doing with Firefox, then I think a lot of organizations will simply need to take a second look at this ... because I don't think they'd be able to keep up. In some places, the desktop image is expected to be stable for rather a long time. I think anybody just saying the enterprise is wrong and Mozilla is right likely hasn't worked in industry in a while. Because I can't see how we could keep up with this either.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and they can't say it's a minor bump for other reasons. For instance, I had an automated test setup fail when the system was setup to use Firefox 5 because they changed how command line arguments are handled and broke selenium. The selenium devs had a fix up very fast, but it was a nasty surprise.

This broke my ability to test apps for a brief period meaning our users could not upgrade because our software was untested. It takes time to QA software and users are at risk (no point releases on 4.x) until it's done! This is why people are pissed.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[LibRT]

The fix I use for this is to change the max_version number in each add-on's install.pdf file to 9.* - you can find these in /home/.mozilla/firefox/[profile]/extensions. This will stop the add-ons from being disabled automatically by a newer version of FF (at least until FF10). A particular add-on may still not work with a newer version of FF, but they usually do - I've done this with NoScript, Tab-mix Plus, Extended Status Bar, Web Developer, HTTPS Everywhere and Better Privacy and they all work perfectly on FF5. YMMV.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

But then customers think the product doesn't advance, which is why literally everyone else who is relevant is doing the opposite.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[kangsterizer]

Actually if it had been called 4.02 im pretty sure people would be all over saying "Mozilla does not upgrade Firefox fast enough"
"will be 1 or 2 years before Firefox 5 it sucks"

And so on.

The real issue is that like every product specially in the IT world if you have more competition that's also good quality, but you are not the newest kid on the block, users will report to you with bad PR. If you do make a mistake they'll also try to bury you with it as soon as possible.

Human thing I spose.

Imagine a new hype company came out with a browser as good as FF and Chrome and aggressive updates, some people would start trashing Chrome and FF about that too

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[wagnerrp]

Tons of people complain about X still being on version 11.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Fantom42]

If the version number were 4.0.2 instead of 5.0 Enterprises wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch over this.

You are right, they wouldn't. And for a good reason. The problem with the model Firefox is adopting is that they are no longer guaranteeing support for a browser that is a few months old. It might be fine in this particular instance where they've made "minor" changes from 4 to 5, but there is no guarantee of this going forward. The versioning numbers are used as a signal to management to indicate feature stability and adoption risk, and Firefox has gotten rid of that. Now the enterprise is left with an unsettling possibility that Firefox 6, or Firefox 9, will suddenly introduce a feature which breaks compatibility with their stuff, without little or no warning or support from Firefox.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[dave420]

I don't. I just don't visit sites with adverts that annoy me. That way sites don't have to pay for the bandwidth I use without being compensated. If I like a site's content, I'll gladly put up with annoying adverts, as that's how they get their money to pay for the content I like (hence me visiting their site).

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Volante3192]

Never worked in an environment where corporate security is paranoid, have you? Corporate security hasn't even approved FF 4 for use on our workstations yet.

What version of IE are you using? Do you even have updates from March installed yet?

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Volante3192]

http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/05/21/firefox-5-compatibility-bump/

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[waddgodd]

...or they could get rid of major/minor versioning altogether, and just go with build number or something

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, none of my addons broke going from 4.x to 5.x, and none of them updated automatically either. Same version as before.

Saying addons break going from 4 to 5 is going to require some citations as one aspect of this update was a change in how addon compatibility is handled.

Evernote broke for me and there doesn't seem to be an update.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Fantom42]

Right, as the article points out, the changelist for Firefox 5 is not much more expansive than the changelist for Firefox 3.6.

This may be true for this particular instance, but Firefox certainly isn't guaranteeing that going forward. What happens with Firefox 9 is released with a feature that breaks their enterprise, and Firefox 8 is suddenly no longer supported?

This whole attitude I hear parroted that "release numbers are irrelevant because they are just numbers" ignores a whole bunch of realities regarding how new features are introduced and developed to different classes of users. And in the case of Firefox, this new strategy sends a disturbing message to enterprise customers that new and potentially disruptive features will be introduced "when they are ready" and support for previous versions will be immediately dropped.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[gstoddart]

So why doesn't the cheapass and lazy corporations support it themselves. The code is there for them to continue to use it as they want.

Because the corporations aren't willing to exert the effort and resources to maintain a browser, because it's a complete waste of money for something which is now treated as infrastructure.

This is pretty much what happens when you hear about people asking Linux questions and being told "RTFM n00b". If the beauty of open source is that when it breaks you get to keep all of the pieces ... well, nobody wants a web browser in a kit.

Now, Mozilla might not actually care if corporations stop using their product ... which is fine. But, if you've been trying to grow your market share, not making it impossible for corporations to keep using your product is a good start.

A three month cycle before a release is marked as end-of-life and no longer supported is simply not going to work for corporations. This will work for end users on their own machines, but I can't see it working in a corporate IT environment. In all but a few places I've ever worked, this just couldn't be made to work.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Tor button
2. Linux flash for AMD64 is broken on FF5 (it works flawlessly with FF3.6, Opera or Chrome)

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Barefoot Monkey]

What plugins?

All-In-One Gestures and MeasureIt are the only extensions I have installed that aren't compatible. Unfortunately I'm a bit too fond of All-In-One to upgrade and be without it just yet.

Off-topic, but I have to ask: are you an evil slayer of monkeys or a slayer of evil monkeys?

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[phantomfive]

You have just made a strong argument for web standards, and for coding to them.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[badran]

The problem is that there is no check to see if your plugins will work with the updated version before an update.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Dunega]

Because the cheapass lazy corporations core business probably isn't web browser development.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[kimvette]

Oh you're right! I should have checked mine before posting based on a google search. Mine is at 12.0.742.100

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Joce640k]

Who exactly is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to upgrade?

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Bengie]

"corporate security is paranoid"

Sounds like a problem with your company, not with FF.

If they're so scared of version numbers changing, may be your should convince FF to never change their version numbers. So we'll be at 4.0.256 in 10 years, but at least it didn't change major.. right?

If your company doesn't like it, they can code their own browser and use their own versioning system. Really, I don't know why people are so up-in-arms about version numbers. I say just replace versions with the UTC build time.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[gstoddart]

Who exactly is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to upgrade?

Corporations generally don't want to run software that is past it's end-of-life and will not be receiving support. I'm just observing that if it comes down to running IE, or having Firefox become unsupported after 3 months (and creating extra work to upgrade), companies will run IE.

Nobody is forcing us to upgrade. But nobody is compelling us to keep running Firefox either. If it's just as easy to choose not to run Firefox .... well, that's a decision people might make, it's a two way street.

Mozilla is free to not give a damn about how companies are affected by this. And companies are free to decide that Mozilla isn't really ready for the enterprise. But, acting like companies should just suck it up and do it the way Mozilla thinks they should ... well, good luck with that.

I think Microsoft would love to hear that companies are leaving Firefox due to this. People can give a shit or not as they feel inclined.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

pentadactyl, for instance.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[bonch]

If the version number were 4.0.2 instead of 5.0 Enterprises wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch over this.

Yes, that's the whole point. By end-of-living 4.x so early, Mozilla is not catering to the needs of enterprise users who can't just install major new versions of software all the time.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[inglorion_on_the_net]

If the version number were 4.0.2 instead of 5.0 Enterprises wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch over this.

Perhaps. But it isn't 4.0.2, it's 5.0. And 4.x is no longer supported. And the upgrade to 5.0 breaks stuff. This does not paint a picture of a vendor that releases stable software that you can depend on well into the future. Is it any surprise that people aren't happy about this? Is it any surprise that the people who would have to support this software are expressing concern?

Even if there were no technical issues and it were just a matter of the version number getting bumped and the old major version being end-of-lifed, there would be an issue. Version numbers mean something. They are an interface, both to humans and to other software. When you break the semantics of that interface, people get upset, and software that uses the interface fails. Remember the shitstorm that happened when KDE 4 was released? It lasted for years. KDE should have known better than to call it 4.0 when it wasn't intended for end users. Now Mozilla is copying that success. I call that foolhardy.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[JorgTheElder]

Coding to spec is a wonderful option when it works.

The previous versions HTML and CSS were/are so ambiguous that browsers could follow the spec and still not render the same pixel-for-pixel. Today there are enough blessed test cases that those who write the browsers can usually get to the same destination, but that has not been the case for long.

Many people writing production pages are coding to HTML5 while yelling about standards. They are hypocrites. HTML5 is not yet a standard and will likely have breaking changes before it is. That means anyone doing HTML page for static media like CDROM, (yes, a lot of documentation lives on read-only media), or on short term contracts should not use it. It also means that anyone contracting out web work better damn well have a support contract so they can get all their content updated when the spec is blessed and the browsers catch up.

Versioning is incredibly important when it comes to archiving data and that includes HTML documents. Real software developers do not make breaking changes in what are labeled as minor revisions AND software developers that care about their users do not stop releasing security patches for 3 month old products. The FireFox team has proven many times that they are not real software developers and they do not care about their users. If you don't believe me, look at the dates and comments on the top rated bugs that have been reported to them..

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[KingMotley]

Firebug (Not auto updated - Manual for first day)
HTML Validator (Fixed Yesterday)
IE Tab Plus (Fixed Today)
FiddlerHook (Still broke)
AVG Safe Search (Still broke)
LogMeIn Remote Access Plugin (Still broke)
Skype extension for firefox (Still broke)
Logitech Device Detection (Still broke)

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[marnues]

Hate much?

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[jellomizer]

No the real problem is knowing when it is a major change and when it is a minor one. It is Mozilla who is wrong and the Enterprise is right.

For example Solaris, It use to have a version numbers like 2.5.1 after realizing that every time they update the tens spot customers had to do a lot of work to check for compatibility so they changed version numbers to Solaris 6,7,8,9,10... Because they need to notify their customer base if there is architectural upgrade vs. a fix or a patch.

Mozilla is not letting us know if there is an architectural upgrade (where plugins may fail, or the bit of code will no longer be supported) or just an update to prevent it from crashing or run 10% faster. Heck I also like the middle digit as it should say new features were added but these features didn't break anything old.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[wagnerrp]

Actually, the whole attitude you hear parroted that "release numbers are irrelevant because they are just numbers" understands the reality that in many cases, actual development milestones have given way to PR.

Traditionally, you would use something like a three-number system. The first number indicates major architectural change. The second indicates major new features. The third indicates bug fixes. Perhaps you merge the feature and bug fix numbers. Perhaps you add a fourth number like the Linux kernel to indicate a complete rewrite.

Say Mozilla slaps a new top bar onto Firefox. The browser behaves largely the same, and internally it is little different, but when you initially open it, it looks completely different. Using development-based release numbers, that would be added into a feature release. Using PR-based release numbers, that would be worth a major release, along with a bunch of press to get people to "Try out the new Firefox." You get a bunch of users that grab it and start using it just because its "cutting edge" and they don't know any better.

Now the Linux kernel is in a bit of a different position. Traditionally, the release branch gets new drivers and bug fixes, while architectural changes are done in a developmental branch. At some point, they clean it up, and dump those architectural changes into a new release branch. For the 2.6 kernel, that developmental branch never existed, and the architectural changes were made in the release branch. There was never any significant change from version to version, but 2.6.39 looks nothing like the original 2.6.1, and under the old design strategy, would justifiably be a 2.8 kernel. The 'PR bit', and the part that confuses most Linux users, is that Linus is tired of 2.x, and wants to instead jump straight to 3.0.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[nevermore94]

I am a die hard Mozilla/Firefox lover, but even I have been pissed off by broken Extensions. Some may say it is the fault of the authors for not keeping them up-to-date, but I think there should be some sort of feature checking going on, not just a simple number check.
I had 2 Extensions disabled going from 4 to 5:
Bookmark Duplicate Detector
IE Tab +
I also had at least 6 disabled when going from 3 to 4:
FEBE
FoxTab
Linkification
Locate in Bookmark Folders
PageStyle2Tab
Tab Effect 2

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[nevermore94]

As I just posted above with more detail:
I had 2 Extensions disabled going from 4 to 5:
Bookmark Duplicate Detector
IE Tab +

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Bacon Bits]

Some enterprise users have internal apps that they need to test, and some of them are upset about such a 'big' change. In reality they shouldn't be looking at version numbers, they should be looking at a list of potential impacts, to make their testing easier.

The point is that most every enterprise IT department treats incrementing the major version number more seriously than minor version numbers, and much more seriously than revision numbers. The de facto standard for version numbers is that major version increments mean major changes which require major testing. That's how everybody else -- short of Google Chrome -- operates. Corporate policies are built around these de facto standards. Abandoning them with no justifiable reason is obnoxious and frustrating.

As far as Google Chrome, they've always operated like this. So it's nothing new. They've always had rolling releases with the major version number representing the stable/beta/dev branches more than anything. Additionally, the software is already corporate-unfriendly due to the fact that it allows non-admins to install so nobody in enterprise IT supports it. It's essentially already carrying a sign that says "NOT FOR BUSINESS". It's getting much better (and appears to have better support than Firefox now) but there hasn't been much press around Chrome for the Enterprise. It's just not on anybody's radar like Firefox is (yet).

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Billly Gates]

Well if customers would start saying build this site for HTML 4.01 with CSS 2, instead of IE 6 or else I am not interested, then this would change.

No one demands standards. They demand a particular version of IE 95% of the time. So these intranet companies think IE only and make sure it emulates its quirks.

My hope is with IE 9/10 this will change greatly just like Chrome 4 renders HTML identically to Chrome 12. Only difference is additional tags, javascript, and api stuff. Microsoft is expressing an interest in constiency now but we will see. That is how it should run.

It is funny that these same IT executives who make these decisions then say ... what now I have 5 apps that only work with IE 6??? How did that happen? Sigh

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The lesson here is that no one in enterprise (what ever the hell that is) should build anything that is dependent on a single version number.... Did we learn nothing in the IE6 debacle.

Yeah, we learned to keep track of the major version of the browser we're coding for.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Culture20]

But then customers think the product doesn't advance

If they're twelve years old... For us old fogeys it wasn't that long ago that Mozilla was the new hotness. After a decade of improvements and an internal fork (to Phoenix;Firefox), some still use Seamonkey, others use Firefox or other newer browsers, but no one thinks Firefox has stagnated (especially since every update opens up a "you just updated to version N!" page).

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[nschubach]

They could change how the plugins interface, giving the plugin the ability to attempt to run but if something happens it could throw an error and disable the extension with a little warning about a required update for it to work again.

The plugin would have to be written to assume that it's attempt may not work, but that should just make the thing more robust. Personally, I think letting plugins use the version number is really a crutch. Sure, it's simple to compare to and determine compatibility but it relies on a rather arbitrary numbering scheme instead of actual capability.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Billly Gates]

Blame greedy vendors too.

Their app for IE 6 probably works for IE 8 and they know it. Company whines please support IE 8. Contractor thinks ... hmm free money. Sure ... $300,000!! All they do is recertify and keep the change. Or they change two css elements and milk it.

Corporate clients see this and say screw you and keep IE 6. It is a bad mess out there. In the end emulators running beefy servers and dumb terminal software to execute IE 6 bugs decades from now may become the norm ... shudder.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BitZtream]

Yes, the Frozen API ... which is stable ... until the next release where they depreciate the methods you're using because they've replaced them with new methods.

The whole @frozen API is a joke. The only things frozen are so old they've been forgotten. Everything you actually want to use isn't frozen because they can't design software, they just throw it together and see how it works, fucking with it until it works pretty good ... then they mark it as frozen .... 7 years later, when they've replaced it with a new API anyway.

I'm forced to maintain a firefox and thunderbird extension I created to integrate with our products, so I know just a little bit about how their API lives its life. I also was the poor sap who had to attempt to embed gecko into our applications for HTML previewing, so I learned far far more about the internals of Gecko than I ever wanted to know.

Their problems are systemic, and it shows in the code. No leadership and developer anarchy will be the Mozilla Foundations downfall, as we're already witnessing.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BitZtream]

One of the following must be true:

You don't have any 3rd party addons installed.

You do have 3rd party addons installed, but they were smart enough to lie in there extension manifest and say they supported versions of Firefox before those versions were actually created, basically working around the plugin check built into Firefox so it never thinks your plugins are incompatible regardless of what version you happen to be running. This is what I do for our software, its easiest to do and deals with the fact that the FF devs are morons who cut off their on face to spite their nose.

You didn't notice the updates as Firefox tries to take care of this itself on update. This is the most likely.

You are a liar, which I have no reason to see as the case.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Culture20]

Well if customers would start saying build this site for HTML 4.01 with CSS 2, instead of IE 6 or else I am not interested, then this would change. No one demands standards. They demand a particular version of IE 95% of the time.

Because they can test their pages in house versus a particular version of IE. There is no perfect standards test browser for web devs, just a ton of 99% compliant browsers.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[CyberDragon777]

A compatible version of All-In-One Gestures is available from the developer's site:
http://marc.boullet.pagesperso-orange.fr/ext/extensions-en.html

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BitZtream]

The fact that you're even suggesting it means you're missing the point.

The fact that Mozilla is being so utterly retarded and doing this, subjecting there users to known issues every couple of months, intentionally, while telling them they are wrong for wanting it any other way illustrates the problem perfectly.

The problem is not specifically that the plugins are disabled and its annoying, thats only a symptom of the problem.

The problem is that the management and leadership of the Mozilla Foundation don't give a flying fuck about their users and are unable to plan for the future and lead the project to a goal that you would want as and end user. Its like the president and congress saying 'we don't need highways, use off road vehicals and we're going to spend the tax money on our condo in the islands.', and your response being something like 'yea, but we can just use 4x4s to get around, its not really that big of a deal.'

Okay, so thats a bit of an exaggeration, but the instant you heard that from congress and the president you'd know they were barking mad and the first thing the entire country would do is have a revolution which resulted in congress and the president being buried and a freshly paved highway.

But instead, you're fawning over Mozilla and defending them when you should be jumping ship before it sinks.

You can work around this one symptom, but your still going to die a long slow horrible death if you follow Mozilla down the path its taking. Euthanasia is a far better idea here, unless you also happen to be one of those die hard netscape navigator users, in which case, you deserve what you get for again following them down the same path as before when the writing is very cleanly and neatly written on the wall.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BitZtream]

Right up until the release of 6, when Mozilla once again tells us, the users of their products, that we're doing it wrong, and makes Firefox disable any plugin that claims to support a version newer than itself, because we, the consumers of their product don't know if those plugins are really up to date ... or whatever stupid idiotic reason they spew out in response to the next uproar people have.

Mozilla doesn't know what APIs a plugin uses until it uses them, plugins are loaded using late linking and dynamic resolution, you can't know in advance without executing it to hit every single possible code path.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BZ]

> Firefox needs to stop calling this Firefox 5 and start
> calling it just Firefox.

That's the idea, yes. None of Mozilla's announcements here have referred to Firefox 5; they've all just called it Firefox.

The one vestige of the old setup is the "5.0" on the download button on mozilla.com, but that's going away with Firefox 6.

> My initial thought would be to assume all
> extensions will work and allow the community of
> users to report broken extensions

That is _exactly_ what's being done with extensions hosted on addons.mozilla.org.

The problems are happening with various custom extensions people install from third parties (Google Toolbar) or have foisted on them, in the case of things like McAfee and Skype. Mozilla doesn't control compatibility checks for those extensions at all; they're in the extensions' own hands.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Volante3192]

Or http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/05/21/firefox-5-compatibility-bump/ worked for what I have

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BitZtream]

Because for the same price there are several other browsers that actually do get supported and maintain sane, normal, expectable release cycles.

OSS is the only place you see version number ignorance for no actual reason.

Its also the only place where the developers continually tell the consumers what they want is wrong.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Goaway]

Or they could not expose the internals of the application to plugins, and therefore not force them to be upgraded for every browser upgrade.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[HaZardman27]

until Mozilla gets their act together or publishes an easier way to keep your extensions working, at least you can keep your browser working close to the way you want it

This is what I said. Did you even read my post? I am not

fawning over Mozilla and defending them

I was just trying to be helpful to those users who are trying to use their extensions in FF5. In relation to your analogy, that would be like helping someone find routes to where they need to go in a 4x4 since they're used to using the highway and don't know their way around. That does not make me a fool, blindly following what my precious Mozilla tells me is best. I'm fairly certain these events will cause a lot of FF extension developers to begin porting their work over to Chrome. Until that happens, many users would like to stick with FF and be able to use the same tools they use now.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Unordained]

Exactly. I wrote a custom plugin for intranet-only use, to be deployed in the enterprise; I set to it allow up to 4.x, thinking that was plenty, and I hadn't seen anything in 4 beta that would break it. And then 5 comes along, and the plugin won't run. Now I have to go to the effort of changing it, signing, deploying, waiting for that to update everywhere, etc. to fix the problem. Why? No good reason. None. It should work fine in 5.x, which is really 4.x with tiny goodies, we just assumed that another big version # change should also require thorough testing, whenever that happened, if ever. I'm pretty sure this one doesn't. Nor will 6.x, 7.x, or 19.x. I was thinking next time of setting the upper bound to 99.x, because that'll last me, what, a year? Yay!
Stupid.
If you want to call your browser "Firefox 23", go for it. But internally, please let plugins still see "4.3.21", so they can make good decisions about compatibility. Maybe even assign version numbers to various chunks of the code: chrome, DOM, utilities, etc. so a plugin can detect API changes to a given section? Don't up the major version unless you remove or seriously change existing API's in that section.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Greasemonkey.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked a number had zero bearing on whether or not I used a piece of software.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[daviee]

If only they started this versioning convention before FF gained popularity with people/companies coding based on it, this wouldn't have been a problem.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[NotBorg]

Firebug worked the first day... OH NO! The horror of being down a few hours!
HTML Validator falls into the "small niche" category
FiddlerHook is rocking the same boat as HTML Validator
You should update AVG. http://free.avg.com/us-en/faq.num-4275#num-4275 (Why would you let AVG go unupdated IDK but hey to each their own)
LogMeIn gee another small niche, fixed the day after with an update.
Skype is now own by Microsoft if it works in something other than IE, well... I'm sure they'll that in the name of innovation.
Logitech Device Detection? Ok I'm sure that pisses off some 3 users somewhere. Your input devices will work fine without it, you're really stretching it on this one.

Overall it's not the HUGE OMG BREAKAGES THAT KILL ALL PUPPIES AND KITTENS EVERYWHERE that the vocal minority is making it out to be. There's little evidence that it is really a wide spread sky is falling problem. Most users don't have a problem. Most users are going to be using add-ons from the top of this list:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/?browse=popular
All of which work fine.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Barefoot Monkey]

A compatible version of All-In-One Gestures is available from the developer's site: http://marc.boullet.pagesperso-orange.fr/ext/extensions-en.html

Thanks for sharing that :)

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[omnichad]

Saving an extra 16 pixels just means I see an extra half a line of text.

Or one more toolbar, which is probably why they're going so extreme. Every program you install wants to install a near-useless browser toolbar. Minimalism is fine, except for the sake of minimalism - and it really is too far.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[omnichad]

I suppose they need to go the Ubuntu route - what we need is Firefox 3.6 LTS

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

so you believe its a good idea that every corporation have their own firfox development team? Each one creating potentially different versions of firefox to maintain stability of their apps...

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have had something interesting to say there, but as soon as I read "you've won the retard version war" I stopped reading.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[icebike]

Wait, YOU were the one that locked it down to 4. How is this anyone else's fault?

Set it allow up to 127, and wait till it fails, just make sure your code is smart enough to fail soft.
You created a false dependency. Its your own fault.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Eponymous Hero]

i upgraded from 3.6 to 5 and only the one already-disabled plugin was still disabled. all my other plugins for 3.6 work fine in 5, and they include firebug, yslow, colorzilla, dummy lipsum, etc. if your plugins are breaking, the developer of those plugins probably sucks at mozilla development.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[AvitarX]

I actually think other alternative browsers with huge companies behind them will be their downfall.

I find it unlikely that IE would ever dip them below 20% useage at this point, and that would still be very profitable (they get 10 million/year for 30%-40% usage). They consistently keep good enough, and improving, just not as good as chrome, and maybe safari, and perhaps whatever the newest IE is, but many people just hate IE on principal, enough to keep things rolling for alternative browsers.

The browser market is worth around $35 million in search royalties, that leaves room for a few players.

Even if we take out IE, Safari, and Mobile browsers (assumption being those are the pre-installed ones), we're still left with $16 million to be split amongst the rest. If google can cut firefox usage down, they can save millions a year, and I doubt that's what it costs them. If they can pull people away from IE (which is what the long-term trend looks like in the end), they can make millions, as they are getting all the search profit, rather than just the difference of searches sold - royalties.

Even Opera is presumably making $1 million/year in royalties, that should be able to keep a few people employed full time in a small office (don't know how much they actually need to sustain themselves, but working on and improving an existing browser can't cost too much, I certainly imagine it could be done for that amount).

Giving away web browsers may not be big business, but there is definitely money to be made, which is in the end, what the real downfall will be for firefox, competition.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[smooth wombat]

its clear the developers don't actually know what they are doing.

This is precisely why one of my 3 inviolate rules for IT is:

Never let a programmer program your applications.

By that I mean, you need to be very specific in what you want done. You must not leave wiggle room for the programmer to interpret what you mean. Do not allow them to do "shiny" for the sake of "shiny". To do so invites what is happening to Firefox.

I know the programmers out there are going to be up in arms, ranting about how controlling my statements are, and I don't deny that, but having seen and been forced to work with the huge amount of bad software* out there, brutal tactics must be employed to counter the cruft being shoved out.

*Bad software meaning horrible install procedures, horrible interfaces, outright bugs in final releases, games with blatant cheating for the AI, software which does not do what you tell it to do, etc.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Elbereth]

I love the idea of rolling releases. There isn't even a "but" involved here.

However, when Firefox does this half-assed version, which ends up just inflating the version number (which remains quite prominent and significant), they are simply making life difficult. The way they should have done this is: Firefox 3, Firefox 4 (an interim release, where they retain the version number), and then just plain old Firefox. No version number. At the very least, they should have removed the significance of the version number, so that assigning random numbers to it didn't cause users' add-ons to stop working. What the hell is that about? Why should the users be so inconvenienced? If the version number truly doesn't matter, then stop making it matter!

Mozilla doesn't know what it wants and it's going about implementing things in a half-assed way that annoys people. This can only end in tears.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Galilee]

The problem is not that they changed the major version number. The problem is that they dropped support for Firefox 4 after only 3 months. It's hard for a large company to justify going through the whole testing process for a product which only has a 3 month shelf life.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[sirsnork]

Actually, they should just implement an addon API version that addon's can query, and they should make the bloody thing stable. Only bugfixes or additional calls to major API versions. If you change a call then the major version gets bumped. That way addons can query the version when they run and know if they will work.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[silanea]

[...] with all the bitching about various Firefox changes, I've yet to see a fork that matter to anyone, so clearly the open source aspect is irrelevant.

Or maybe, just maybe the vast majority of the bitching comes from a tiny minority of users and the rest is quite happy with Firefox? The version numbers game is beyond retarded, I give you that. But at least to me there simply is no other browser that offers the same features and, more importantly, extensions that Firefox gives me.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Darinbob]

I think they would. The issue is not the version numbers. It is the rapid release and rapid deprecation of older versions and the inability to create a stable version branch and treating Agile process as more important than the customer.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Darinbob]

Firefox need stop being Chrome. Chrome is doing it wrong too. Don't be a lemming Mozilla! Rolling releases are bad for enterprise and bad for home user and bad for anyone with a brain. They're good for developers though, as long as developers don't give a shit about keeping customers.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[VGPowerlord]

Wait, YOU were the one that locked it down to 4. How is this anyone else's fault?

Set it allow up to 127, and wait till it fails, just make sure your code is smart enough to fail soft.
You created a false dependency. Its your own fault.

Not GP, but I can think of a few reasons:

1. There may actually be a breaking change
2. According to the Building an Extension page, public extensions can only be listed as compatible with versions that Mozilla has announced, which as of this writing is version 7. Failure to do this will get your extension rejected from the Mozilla Addons site.

Keep in mind that version 7 is at most 6 months away by Mozilla's new schedule...

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but there's the catch. Firefox does not exactly have a "plug-in interface". A large portion of the browser is implemented in Javascript and extensions can more or less arbitrarily modify this Javascript. It is a very messy extension mechanism, but its power is what make Firefox such a popular browser for extensions. Mozilla is working on a more precisely specified (and therefore more limited) extension mechanism called Jetpack which will be more like Chrome's extensions, but I suspect that some features will still need the full extension mechanism, and, due to the messy way extensions are implemented, arbitrary changes to the browser can break an extension in weird ways.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Darinbob]

Because the cheapass and lazy Mozilla did not give any warning. It takes more than 6 weeks to set up a new open source fork and get developers and a distribution network and such. The whole controversy arose because of the "oh by the way, the version you just upgraded to is now obsolete" idiocy.

They will spend the money on this eventually I guess if Mozilla doesn't come to their senses before they lose all market share. My prediction is that Mozilla does fork and that 80% of the Mozilla devs will go with the new fork while 20% stay behind whining "at least we were Agile!"

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BZ]

The problem for non-Addon-SDK addons is that the "addons API" currently includes all details of the browser's user interface and all XPCOM objects. There is no separate API for addons; they have access to everything the browser itself has access to.

For addons built on the addon SDK, the API is in fact guaranteed to be stable; things are moving in that direction, but aren't there yet.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[CAIMLAS]

Yet most "Enterprise" uses Windows. You're not going to get a year-old not-yet-updated version to be supported.

(It's not like Firefox has support to begin with, being a free product. Eesh.)

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[toonces33]

I hear that Firefox 6 will be out next Tuesday..

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[jonadab]

Yeah, but see, the thing is, Firefox 2.0 is actually *better* than any of the more recent versions. Firefox is still the best browser out there, but the newer versions are actively getting worse. If they keep going the direction they're currently aimed, it won't *stay* the best for much longer. Opera or somebody will catch up.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[jonadab]

Version 13? Meh. The current Emacs version is 23.3. Anybody know of software with a higher major version number than 23? (There's gotta be one out there somewhere with like six digits or something...)

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BZ]

August 16, actually. https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar#Future_branch_dates

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[CCarrot]

> My initial thought would be to assume all
> extensions will work and allow the community of
> users to report broken extensions

That is _exactly_ what's being done with extensions hosted on addons.mozilla.org.

Actually, Mozilla's default behavior is to disable and prevent the user from re-enabling extensions that don't have an updated version number in the install.rdf file (which they now admit is a rather quick-moving target). It was a royal pain to manually update the install.rdf file just to be able to keep using an older plugin that worked fine with the latest version.

At least you can now fix this irritating default behavior in a couple of different ways, allowing the user to still see which of their installed add-ons aren't 'officially' supported, yet enable and try them anyways.

This should be the default. Okay, disable add-ons that don't report as compatible with the latest update, but allow the user to re-enable them if they want to try it anyways!

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Antimatter3009]

Again, think Chrome-like. Chrome has automatic silent updates without a problem. The only way you know is when the little up arrow appears on your toolbar to let you know an update will be installed on next restart. Firefox needs to be similar. And don't actually get rid of version numbers, just stop using them for anything besides bug reports and stop publicizing them. Instead, relegate them to the about dialog. Like Chrome.

This isn't to say that Chrome is perfect and every browser should follow its lead, but if Firefox is going to follow its lead it needs to not stop halfway.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[McNihil]

What is simpler?

1) Fix a security hole by back porting a security fix

2) Re evaluate a completely new release

This is not a problem. And it doesn't take much to do #1... sure you have to find the right person to do it but it is far from impossible and expensive.... so no I am completely oblivious to corporations that just want to use something for free and then come a complain and whine that something isn't supported anymore... now if they had payed money for it then that's a completely different thing... doesn't RHEL6 support FF3.6 in any case? So there are options for these corporations that are utterly cheapass lazy and incompetent... however having said that... these enterprises will not survive for long so they should in no shape way or form dictate how a browser should be. If Microsoft and IE are fine with that thats their own big big problem. Stale stagnancy as with IE6 and nothing but problems and issues with that kind of an approach. Ok gotta stop before I blow a fuse.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[CCarrot]

Add Delicious Bookmarks to the list.

Works fine with FF 5 as far as I can tell, but I had to 'fix' FF's 'we know better dear' default attitude before I could re-enable it.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Antimatter3009]

I agree. It doesn't appear that they thought this out very well, and they were probably a bit premature in moving to this release model. However, on the bright side, these problems can all be fixed relatively simply, and I have hope that they'll have the kinks worked out by FF6. Once we get past the transition issues I think the new release model will be excellent for Firefox, just as it has been for Chrome (IMO anyway).

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[jonadab]

> no one thinks Firefox has stagnated

I think the reverse: Firefox has gone off the deep end with constant stupid undesirable pointless wacky UI changes that needlessly introduce incompatibilities and bugs.

The only recent changes in Firefox that have actually been *improvements* have been in Gecko, mostly in the form of support for additional CSS features (@font-face, text-shadow, box-shadow, inline-block, etc.) or other under-the-hood components (e.g., the Javascript performance improvements in 3.x). The UI changes have all, absolutely without exception, been for the worse, at *least* since 2.0, if not since 1.5.

I say this as someone who uses Firefox as my primary browser, because no other browser is currently as good. Seamonkey is too crashy, and Chrome is even further off the stupid UI experimentation deep end than Firefox, and Opera and Chrome both (to say nothing of IE) can't seem to figure out how to put control of the user experience into the hands of the user. Konqueror is neither stable nor feature-complete and can't be upgraded independently of a huge tree of other applications and a full desktop environment. Links is alright if you only want to use linearly text-driven sites (mostly unscripted single-column-layout websites where the graphics don't matter) and don't need to be able to queue links in tabs for reading later when you finish the current page, so I guess it would work great for browsing the web in 1994, provided you and every server you visit have good bandwidth and low latency. Firefox is the best.

Firefox is the best, but it's been actively getting worse for the last half decade or so. I guess that's good for symmetry, because the one that was by far the worst five years ago (IE) has been getting better and better lately and, if this trend continues, may actually be usable soon.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[bloodhawk]

I can't understand how everyone here is completely missing the point, for the enterprise the version number change is minor. It really doesn't matter, it is the fact of the previous version becoming officially UNSUPPORTED. Firefox is effectively removing themselves from the list of enterprise products as with long testing and release cycles for many enteprises the concept of something being unsupported so fast is completely unacceptable for an enterprise piece of software.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[CCarrot]

Right up until the release of 6, when Mozilla once again tells us, the users of their products, that we're doing it wrong, and makes Firefox disable any plugin that claims to support a version newer than itself, because we, the consumers of their product don't know if those plugins are really up to date ...

At least they do seem to be getting the hint. Finally.

Now they'd better keep that plugin up to date...

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually windows versions are supported for 24 months AFTER a new service pack is released, then it becomes the latest service pack only, so yes you will be supported on a year old not yet updated version, in addition to that they offer custom support packages to support out of date unservice packed versions.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BZ]

> Actually, Mozilla's default behavior is to disable and
> prevent the user from re-enabling extensions

That's the old behavior. The behavior for Firefox 5 is different for extensions hosted on addons.mozilla.org.

There is also talk of shipping the add-on compatibility reporter by default.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[aix tom]

Amen to that Brother. And I *AM* a programmer.

But I can do pretty much NOTHING for YOU until you tell me what YOU want.

I might program something great for ME on my own, which might just by a freak coincidence be also great for YOU, but that's not working in the real world 99% of the time.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[CCarrot]

> Actually, Mozilla's default behavior is to disable and
> prevent the user from re-enabling extensions

That's the old behavior. The behavior for Firefox 5 is different for extensions hosted on addons.mozilla.org.

There is also talk of shipping the add-on compatibility reporter by default.

Excellent! It only took, what, 7 years of user and developer complaints? How very responsive to their userbase!

Seriously. Why did people choose Firefox, if not for the customization and flexibility provided (mostly) by plug-ins and add-ons? I know that's why I migrated...well, that and to prevent ActiveX headaches. It wasn't so bad when they were updating relatively infrequently, but with their new philosophy, they had better address some of these long-standing issues if they don't want to risk losing home users, much less Enterprise users...it's not like they're the *only* customizable browser on the market anymore...

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[BZ]

> It wasn't so bad when they were updating relatively
> infrequently

That's why it didn't happen before. It's a lot of work, and there just wasn't the manpower to do it.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[PoopCat]

I agree. I firmly believe we should put the pastry chefs in charge of programming the applications.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

YES THEY WOULD. The version numer doesn't mean shit. It is the statement that the current version becomes UNSUPPORTED. enterprises don't give a shit whether you give it numbers, letters or names of your favourite porn stars, they do however care that when you move on in versions that the current version is suported for a reasonable timeframe.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[KingMotley]

Sorry NotBorg, but some of these issues actually had real life impacts for both me and the guys at my office. So while it may not seem important to you, I can assure you that a browser impacting our ability to actually get stuff done DOES MATTER.

Firebug not working caused me to switch to another browser to do development work for the day. Many of the guys I work with similarly had to switch to using Chrome and Safari for the day, and I had to field questions on how to use those browser's dev tools instead of getting my own stuff done in the middle of a crunch time. So yeah, it was kind of a "big deal" to me.

HTML Validator - 160,000 users is a "small niche"?

IE Tab BTW is listed as the 19th most popular add-on for firefox, and yes, I use to log into a intranet site to do time reporting, and yes, I had to switch to IE since firefox 5 broke the add-on. Again, a PITA. With 5 million downloads, I wouldn't consider this a "small niche".

Yes, skype, that's obviously a niche too. Oh wait, let's blame it on Microsoft even though Microsoft hasn't made a single change/release to the code since they bought it, it's still obviously their fault. Oh, it's the same code that has been there for 2 years, and suddenly the same week Microsoft buys it, firefox decides to block the add-on, LOL! That's some interesting timing.

As for AVG, that's odd because it says that it is fully up to date. I am guessing that it does not auto-update the firefox plug in, and only does so if you reinstall. So I guess I'll uninstall AVG, go grab the latest one, reinstall it. Another 30 minutes of my life wasted on a firefox update. Can I send you my bill for time wasted if it's not that big of a deal?

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[ryanov]

Amusingly enough, Slashdotter.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about the version number, it's the "not-supported" part that's the issue.

I don't see how. Regardless of whether it's called Firefox 5 or Firefox 4.0.2, the result is the same:

Firefox 4.0.1 is totally unsupported.

It's got security holes. Nobody should use it.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[cynyr]

14.0.797.0 here :P

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[lennier]

so no I am completely oblivious to corporations that just want to use something for free and then come a complain and whine that something isn't supported anymore...

Heh.

We're not 'whining' about Firefox. We're simply advising you that from today we're deleting it from our systems, en masse, across all of Corporate Earth. You and the Mozilla Corporation have made it perfectly clear that in return for us not paying you a cent (but giving you a whole lot of page views) you not only don't care about us at all but actively want us to stop using your free product.

So, fine, that's the way you think the world works, we'll oblige. We are paying Microsoft for their web browser, since it ships with Windows which costs us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year - so we'll use that instead.

Oh, did you want someone to actually use your free product, anywhere on Earth in future? No, I'm sure that's the exact opposite of what you just said. Well, thanks for the ride, it's been fun, but you've just kicked us out so we'll take our hat and leave.

Have fun with your future 0% install base! But all those lazy, greedy corporate hangers-on who write websites that use standards that your free browser might have wanted to adopt - we won't be troubling you further.

Sincerely, The Enterprise.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[lennier]

Who exactly is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to upgrade?

LulzSec, for one.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[tftp]

I love the idea of rolling releases. There isn't even a "but" involved here.

How you can then assure your boss that Firefox will always be able to correctly operate your company's Intranet-based ordering system?

The problem is that in the enterprise world upgrades are not done willy-nilly. Upgrades are done when they are necessary; and before upgrading 10,000 clients the change is tested.

But rolling, automatic, background releases take that control out of your hands. Do you want to wake up every morning and wonder, on your way to work, if your company's ordering system crashed again today? With a known release this won't happen that easily. But when some other guys, somewhere, who never even heard about your system, decide to "fix a bug" - even if that is a right thing to do - they can cost your enterprise big bucks.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

They could, yes, and that's what JetPack is about. Unfortunately, while that's 1.0 the API is still rather inadequate, and they're way behind Chrome on it. Essentially, if you are okay with being limited an uninnovative, you're better off going for Chrome instead.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[NotBorg]

HTML Validator - 160,000 users is a "small niche"?

160,000 of the ~270,000,000 Firefox users? Um yeah, small niche. Ok. That was an estimate from 2009 that I found on top of a Google search without much effort. I don't know what the current estimate is but lets say half of those left Firefox for Chrome, IE, etc. It's still a big number next to your relatively small 160k.

Do you think 160k is the sum of all web developers? It's not only a subset of Firefox users but a subset of that group who also happen to be web developers. Of that group of developers only some of them use HTML Validator. Niche.

As for AVG, that's odd because it says that it is fully up to date. I am guessing that it does not auto-update the firefox plug in, and only does so if you reinstall. So I guess I'll uninstall AVG, go grab the latest one, reinstall it. Another 30 minutes of my life wasted on a firefox update. Can I send you my bill for time wasted if it's not that big of a deal?

No you should send that bill to AVG for not auto-updating their plug in. Also tell them their installer is slow. Besides, the money should go to your employer anyway, right? It's company time after all. Explain to your boss that sometimes technical difficulties come up and what ever tight schedule their running should be flexible enough to account for it. Instead of your project being over due by 37 days, it'll be 37days and 30 minutes because you really need your searches to be safe.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

skype plugin no longer works wiv ff....

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[phantomfive]

wow, they DID make it better :)

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[t2t10]

That's because version numbers matter. Major version number changes mean that something breaks compatibility. Minor version number changes mean that there are significant changes in functionality. And the third number is changed when there are only bug fixes.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[bwcbwc]

So couple the "rolling release" cycle with releases that have a long term support commitment. This is something like what Ubuntu does. The slow-moving, check everything twice, cover-your-ass enterprise customers use the LTS releases and the developers and hackers use the latest bleeding edge stuff.

Corporate processes can't be run on a 6 week software lifecycle where the product needs to be replaced every 6 weeks to comply with internal and governmental regulations. The cost/benefit just doesn't work. Give corporate a release that will be supported for a year or two and they'll be happy, regardless of what version number you call it.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[silanea]

Yeah, but see, the thing is, Firefox 2.0 is actually *better* than any of the more recent versions. [...]

In what regards? I find the current iterations (I have been running nightlies for years so I am never quite sure about the state of the released versions) very responsive and very stable even with Flash installed, with crashes and lock-ups down to the odd horrible JS hiccup, I like the AwesomeBar, I love Sync (have been using it back from the Weave times), I love the Web Console, and there is a whole slew of extensions that I could not do without that would not have been possible - or at least had not been around at the time - in FF 2. Add to that WebM support and significant improvements in SVG rendering.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[AmiMoJo]

Cookie Button and PageLinks are not marked as FF5 compatible, although if you disable the version check they work just fine.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[AmiMoJo]

I think it's more subtle than that. If you look at the public archives for the discussion around changes to the UI and the new version number inflation it is clear that there are two separate groups of programmers working on Firefox. You have the back-end guys who do all the worthwhile improvements to speed and memory usage, then you have the front-end guys who took a Human-Computer Interaction course and produce mock-ups in Photoshop.

At least on the back end you can make technical arguments. The UI is subjective and they never do any studies of what people actually want from it.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[AmiMoJo]

I agree except for the bit about using the community to spot incompatibilities. If you read the reviews and comments on AMO you will find quite a few of the more complex add-ons get complaints about not working when in fact the user simply doesn't understand them.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[hesaigo999ca]

so they have to uninstall then reinstall, they get to keep all the add ins and plug ins....there is a way to make sure of this, except there might be issues with certain ones not working anymore, i think that was mozilla's reason behind it, to gain control a la Apple over all the plug ins and addons running in the background on the browser....as I think their previous sandbox was broken....but I may be wrong...

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, as the article points out, the changelist for Firefox 5 is not much more expansive than the changelist for Firefox 3.6.

Some enterprise users have internal apps that they need to test, and some of them are upset about such a 'big' change. In reality they shouldn't be looking at version numbers, they should be looking at a list of potential impacts, to make their testing easier.

If Mozilla wants to handle this PR challenge well, it might help announce that from now on they are going to support they enterprise better (everyone likes to know they are being thought of), then from now on point people to the changelist, or add a 'potential impacts' section to the list. Simple enough, and lets people know they are considered.

I work in a company with over 10,000 deployed workstations. When 4 released it caused major headaches and we had to roll back to the 3.x series for technical reasons with some of our tools and add-on integration. It cost us a good bit of time and money to modify all of our dependent systems and tools, and we were actually just in the final testing round prior to a redeployment when version 5 and the end-of-life for 4 was announced. Management shit their pants, and next week we're pulling FF from our company entirely.
In the past FF was a great tool- it was low maintenance, upgraded smoothly with very few issues, and UI behavior didn't change drastically between versions which kept user support to a minimum. Not any more.

And before people start saying things about Addons and plugins supplying functionality which was changed or lost after version 3.x, that is not a solution. For example I had a series of scripts which automated data mining for agents working in our call center. In the past when a version update occurred I almost never had to modify it, and when I did it was always just minor changes. Moving from 3.x to 4 was just a nightmare, as the UI changes made this method difficult or impossible. Developing new tools that don't rely on the web client to get the data is not practical and does not have management support even if it was.

So good job, Mozilla. In your zeal to change things for no reason beyond making it looks more like someone else's browser, or to force users to interact with new UI elements which some developer has decided is "better" simply because HE likes them better, you've managed to piss off a very large segment of your user base. And while home users might be fickle enough, and the other options distasteful enough, for you to keep them around or bring them back... in the business world we're turning our backs on you like you just did to us. Fuck You and Good Night.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[smooth wombat]

Absolutely. That was something I had brought up in my Systems Analyst and Design II class to my instructor when he marked me down on a test. The question asked if one should get detailed information from a stakeholder when starting a project.

I answered yes, you should and was marked down. He explained that in the beginning, you get a general idea of what the stakeholder wants followed by more a detailed explanation. It was a subtle point, and I argued it for that extra point, but he didn't budge even though he understood where I was coming from. There was a bit more to the question so don't think he was an idiot. I learned a lot from him about project management (which I would like to move into from the desk jockey I am now).

So for me, you have no worry about what I want. I will tell you, ad nauseum, exactly what I want.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that I have a boss, and I am employed by someone else? I can see how living from your moms basement you would assume that.

37 days behind, lol. My last project I got at 2pm on Friday, due 8am Monday. Because of another project, I couldn't even start it until 6pm, and it took 33 hours to complete. Adding an few hours either trying to fix a half broken firefox rollout, or being inefficient in another browser meant if I got to sleep at all (or project isn't done on time).

Silly kids and your inability to see not everyones life is just like yours. Time is important to some of us, and I don't like wasting it on stupid things that can be avoided.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Elbereth]

Yeah, you make good points. Like anything else in life, it's a series of trade-offs. For some things, a rolling release system really doesn't work as well as traditional, monolithic release cycles. For a browser, which is supposed to be stable and dependable, I can totally see how you'd want to stick to a known good version, while holding off on the (possibly unstable) feature-rich versions. Arguably, browsers (and technology in general!) have been relentlessly moving forward, forcing new ways of doing things and new, confusing technologies on users. Browser plugins, for example, are widely considered a pain in the ass by users, despite the added functionality they bring.

OK, so how does that tie into browsers, Firefox, rolling releases, and enterprise support? Here's what I'd do, if I were Mozilla CEO:

1) Apologize for all the zany shit that's gone on since 4.0. Can't hurt. Might help. At least, in the short term, it would mollify those who've recently complained that the Mozilla devs are uncaring, egotistical bastards.
2) Set up a new project, called Firecheetah or something, where development happens at breakneck speed, UI is in flux, and new technologies are readily adopted. It would have a rolling release, possibly automatically updated. This would be recommended for power users, enthusiasts, and web developers. There would be two or three channels: alpha, beta, and standard. Alpha would be like nightlies, where new code is tested first. These might crash a lot. Since the whole project is beta quality work, I'm not convinced that a beta channel even makes all that much sense, but, hey, why not. If it turns out to be redundant, it can be removed. Beta code is supposed to work as intended, but will probably need some testing to validate this. And, finally, we have the standard channel, where users are constantly inundated with new code from the beta channel, once it seems stable. If it turns out to not be stable, then they'll deal with it, since this project is more about rapid development than stability... and the next bugfix will be delivered shortly, anyway. This project is for the people who hate stagnation. It might be codenamed "Ritalin". Heh.
3) Retain the Firefox project, but as a more enterprise-friendly, stable version. Major versions would be heavily beta-tested before release. This would be the version that "normal" users and enterprises are encouraged to use. This version would be supported for a long time, with promises that the API will not change between minor revisions. Major revisions would be kept to a minimal amount each year, preferably with a leisurely development rate. Features from Firecheetah (ugh, I hate that name, but I'm not very good at branding) would be backported, after they've been sufficiently tested. My vision is for Firefox to be very conservative about changing the UI, adding superfluous features, or having crazy API changes that exist merely because someone got bored. This would be the browser that you use when you want a Firefox 2.0 oe 3.0 style experience: lean, mean, and stable. Architectural changes would be readily accepted, as long as they don't cause bloat or change the API. This project is for the people who hate change for the sake of change.

Add-on compatibility between the two projects would have to be decided, but I don't think it would really be reasonable to expect that an add-on would be cross-project. A compatibility layer could be written into Firecheetah. One might be able to enable or disable this feature, so that it doesn't bloat the browser too much. Plug-ins, such as Flash or Java, would be compatible. The Javascript engine would also be compatible, though the Firecheetah engine might be a bit faster and streamlined, at the cost of decreased stability.

I'm sure there's stuff that I'm overlooking, and I might be overestimating the ability of computer users to handle having two browser projects coming from Mozilla, but I think this is actually pretty workable.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[DrXym]

Frozen interfaces are meant to be precisely that - frozen. It may be they extend the frozen interface with a v2 of the same which is not frozen with additional methods but it shouldn't stop you using v1 with relative confidence. If anyone is actually changing a frozen interfaces or class they should get a slap.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[phantomfive]

Amazing how all the anonymous cowards are IT managers over thousands of computers with problems that are so vague you don't understand them. It's almost like your example is made up.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Antimatter3009]

IIRC, the new release cycle also involves moving to Chrome's three channel system. Essentially an alpha, beta, and stable channel. New features are introduced to the alpha channel and move through beta and into stable as they reach the necessary maturity. Releases are essentially just snapshots of the stable channel at predetermined points. So instead of no testing you are in fact getting the opposite: continuous testing. And, even better, it's actual user testing, as each channel will have users who are not associated with Mozilla.

As for the auth and admin issues, those are simply not an issue for the vast majority of users. The opposite even. Most people will want the most up to date browser at all times and the easier it is to maintain that the better. Not having to actually go and download new versions will be a bonus for them, not a drawback.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[sjames]

I keep hearing that, but people don't ever say WHAT was lost (though I did manage to get modded flaimbait once just for asking!). So, at the risk of another downmod, I ask again, what plugin suddenly broke?

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[sjames]

Alert the security guards that when the Mozilla devs come to uninstall all their Firefox8, they shouldn't be allowed in the building?

We're talking about the sort of organizations that are still stuck on IE 6 in spite of it being packed with security problems and long ago EOLed.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[sjames]

How long has IE6 been UNSUPPORTED and even UNAVAILABLE and WON'T EVEN INSTALL ON A NEW MACHINE?

It doesn't matter how long you support an old version, enterprises won't believe it's long enough.

The solution now is the same as it has always been, code your apps to standards rather than browser quirks and you'll be fine.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[perryizgr8]

you nailed it.

No, they aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they aren't. EOLing something after 4 months and breaking tons of user plugins for no reason is not good for users or the Web itself. It's needlessly churn to rapidly inflate version numbers for no gain for anyone.

Re:No, they aren't.

[Volante3192]

What addons are broken?

Also: http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/05/21/firefox-5-compatibility-bump/

Re:No, they aren't.

[Tharsman]

According to that link, 256 add-ons broke.

And thats just add-ons in their repository, what about a shop that develops their own internal add-ons, or worse, commissioned the development of one? You may say this means the development team simply has to update the add-ons, but thats an unnecessary waste of resources, specially if they going to do this every 3 months. In the case of commissioned work, you really throw the ball since you are forced to spend extra money.

Re:No, they aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

The gwt developer plugin was broken, which is a vital plugin for anyone doing gwt development.

I don't know what I would have done without yum downgrade firefox.

 

Re:No, they aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

no one clicks on links:
link says FF 4 compatible extensions have been made FF 5 compatible by default during FF 5 betas.
this means anyone saying FF 4 to 5 broke extensions and caused havok is full of shit. Like AC for example, who probably posted as AC knowing he was spreading FUD.

Re:No, they aren't.

[NJRoadfan]

Adobe's Create PDF plug-in for one. They just finally updated it to work with FF4 with the 10.1 update... only for it to be broken by FF5 (for no good reason) a few weeks later.

Re:No, they aren't.

[darrylo]

All of the major addons appear to be functional in 5.0, but some very-useful but apparently little-used ones haven't been updated. "Find All" is one such addon (given how useful it is, I'm surprised that it has so few downloads).

Re:No, they aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they aren't. EOLing something after 4 months and breaking tons of user plugins for no reason is not good for users or the Web itself. It's needlessly churn to rapidly inflate version numbers for no gain for anyone.

No rational person cares about version numbers for anything other than bug reporting. As long as version numbers are a monotonically increasing, who cares about the rate?

Re:No, they aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote Linus Torvalds on a subject similar to this: "Please just fix it." This was followed by a rant on why it's a BAD idea to do version checking, etc. in the manner most people tend to do with things. Most of the plugins, extensions, etc. didn't get their API broken with this release- so WHY in the woit'rld should you be checking to see if you're on Version 4 versus Version 5? Same goes for the "Enterprise Applications"- like the TFA indicates, it's not really any different than it was before, it's just that they've simply changed the versioning system.

Re:No, they aren't.

[xouumalperxe]

It's needlessly churn to rapidly inflate version numbers for no gain for anyone.

Not really. Sure, there are problems with the scheme, but the reasoning behind it is good enough. The previous mentality was "Features for firefox 4 are x, y and z. We'll release when those features are ready". But then the team that was doing x moves on to work on feature k, because x is done and both y and z are outside their area of expertise. But, since k is almost finished by the time y and z are complete, might as well wait for that to be finished too. Also, are you sure x, y and z are finished? They could get a little more polish until they're just right. You've now delayed your release for a while longer than it needed. Also, x could've been available to the users months ago, and it was kept on hold because of k, y and z.

Instead, now they're saying "Firefox n+1 comes out 12 weeks after Firefox n" (or however long it is). Each team works on their own thing, features that are deemed complete get integrated, and a release comes out. Either they crunch to finish a feature in time, or say "no go, this waits until the next release", and you get updates on a reliable timeframe and frequent, if incremental, feature updates.

Re:No, they aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Roughly half my plugins broke, including:

A few enterprise-specific plugins
Poster
IE tab
Find and Replace for Firefox
All in one Gestures

I "hacked" around this by setting "extensions.checkCompatibility.5.0" to true, and everything works again, but that isn't the same thing as "not breaking" my plugins.

Re:No, they aren't.

[Toonol]

No rational person cares about version numbers for anything other than bug reporting. As long as version numbers are a monotonically increasing, who cares about the rate?

Not all versions of software change by the same amount. There is practically no difference between FF 4 and FF 5... (ignoring all the broken plugins). So, you say business should just treat it as a minor security update?

What happens when, going from FF6 to FF7, Mozilla does some major change to their browser... changing the memory models completely, or crippling some important functionality (you know Mozilla has crazy, debilitating features they are just waiting to implement). Should businesses treat that as a minor security update? How is a business to know what that breats? It used to be able to judge that based on minor/major version numbers. Now, there is no knowing until they do a detailed analysis of each version's changelog.

Re:No, they aren't.

[BitZtream]

Every single plugin that doesn't claim it supports firefox 5 in its extension manifest so that FF disables it automatically?

You do realize that not every plugin is on Mozilla's site right? Our company for instance would never publish our plugins on Mozilla's site, it'd be rather stupid to have to deal with support questions from people who don't realize no matter how big and bold you make the text that they have to already have a subscription to our service in order for the plugin to be useful to them.

Then of course there are internal extensions used by companies.

You, like the Mozilla Foundation live in a very short sighted bubble, not reality.

Re:No, they aren't.

[CyberDragon777]

And to the people who say "That is fine, but these are minor features, the first version number should be reserved for major changes! It should be called Firefox 4.1!":

There will be no major releases! Stuff gets released when it is done, that means there is never going to be a traditional "feature dump release".

That would mean Firefox is stuck at version 4 forever, despite Firefox 4.MAXINT being completely different feature- and compatibility-wise than Firefox 4.0

Re:No, they aren't.

[JumpDrive]

If they want a high version number they can just make the next release version 100.
The reason chrome is not being adopted significantly in the enterprise is that it has this continual spin of version numbers.
I don't know what google is thinking, but as far as enterprise goes it is going to be difficult to adopt them also for.
So it appears that we are now back to IE.

Re:No, they aren't.

[Darinbob]

Every 6 weeks, not every 3 months.

Re:No, they aren't.

[Darinbob]

They need branches, like all real software development. Bug fixes get back-ported to the stable branch, new features get added to the development or cutting edge branch. It's a simple solution that's worked for ages. It doesn't matter what you call or number the releases, as long as you have stable versus cutting-edge supported simultaneously.

I know that OSS hates branches but that's because the majority of OSS devs are doing this in their own time and don't want to deal with any hassle that take away from coding in the zone.

I think Mozilla hates this additionally because their mission is not to help customers but instead to create the web in their vision. To control the web they need the users to follow along with the latest features. They don't want a web that supports both FF67 and FF3 and IE6 simultaneously. This is forced evolution, follow along try to keep up, and let Mozilla do the thinking for you.

You may be convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any argument as to why though...

Re:You may be convinced

[flaming error]

"Because they're looking for the best of the best, Sir!"

I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[sconeu]

Plus, I know for a fact that many organizations have insanely long internal testing cycles, and 3 months ain't gonna cut it with them.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[Volante3192]

How do they handle Patch Tuesday then? Are they finally getting MS (read: IE) critical updates from March?

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[wolrahnaes]

The whole point was that if they have such a long cycle for a web browser, they're doing it wrong. I agree with that. The web is a fast-moving platform, old browsers are bad.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[dslbrian]

Meh, occasionally companies could use some shoving to get them to move their lethargic ass. As an example, our workstations migrated from HPUX to RHEL only when our main app vendor EOL'd their support on HPUX. On the face of it that doesn't sound too bad, but it was actually many years after pretty much everyone else had dropped support (at one point we were sourcing workstations off eBay, essentially everyone else's old useless computers). Had that vendor not dropped support I would probably still be using a C3700 to this day. Of course now we are perpetually stuck on RHEL4 presumably until the app vendor EOL's that (but at least the hardware is better).

Similarly one of our corporate websites just recently started rendering properly in Firefox. Why, because it was designed for some ancient version of IE which I'm guessing just recently became unavailable on whatever Windows version they provide to management's desktops, thereby necessitating a more standards compliant upgrade to the site (it was quite a surprise after 10 years of incorrect rendering to actually see it working).

Yeah, I have no sympathy for IT or their severely myopic BS testing cycles. I don't think FF5 vs FF4 even shows up on their radar.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[ColdWetDog]

How do they handle Patch Tuesday then? Are they finally getting MS (read: IE) critical updates from March?

We don't even bother. Once you get used to the little exclamation point in the system tray, you don't worry about it anymore....

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of them would run their own WSUS servers to control updates internally.

Many times security updates are allowed to install with minimal testing.
But feature updates and new releases go though more extensive testing.

Microsoft does allow for you to easily block the update of Internet Explorer, delay install of patches or anything else.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[Anonymous Coward]

They are incapable to move to a newer version of a *browser* in 5 years (FIVE YEARS!) and you're asking for 3 month turnaround? What are you, crazy? Those young whippersnappers, always in a hurry.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[dzfoo]

The web is a "fast-moving platform," really? I guess that explains why the protocols and technologies that implement and support it are constantly changing. Where are we now, HTTP/10, Javascript-17?

Oh, wait!

        -dZ.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[jimicus]

Yeah, I have no sympathy for IT or their severely myopic BS testing cycles. I don't think FF5 vs FF4 even shows up on their radar.

There's an extremely good reason for this - business drives IT, not the other way around.

What do I mean by this? I mean the IT department only really gets a say in how money and time is spent where it can explain a genuine business benefit. Otherwise it's very much at the beck and call of others within the business, who aren't going to change how something works because it inconveniences someone else.

"System N is getting on a bit" is not a genuine business benefit, and as such will never be taken seriously by any self-respecting manager.

"System N is getting on a bit and as a result is causing problems A, B and C." is not necessarily a business benefit. It may sound like one, but it's really an IT benefit.

"System N is getting on a bit and as a result is (costing more money than it needs to|impacting productivity|exposing the business to great risk) (delete as necessary)" - is substantially better, but I've yet to meet a senior manager who wants to do everything for himself - usually, s/he would much rather you come to him with a couple of possible solutions.

"System N is getting on a bit and as a result is (costing more money than it needs to|impacting productivity|exposing the business to great risk). We can resolve these issues by upgrading to System P, it's going to cost us £X in the first year, £Y in subsequent years and will (save|improve productivity by|reduce risk by) £Z over its expected lifespan. The risks involved in such an upgrade are A, B and C." is perfect.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[wolrahnaes]

HTML 5, CSS 3, massively improved Javascript engines...

Many of the standards in use today are either not fully supported or supported with quirks. Where the development resources are focused depends on how those technologies are used. This is demonstrated by Javascript in that to my knowledge the actual language has not changed in any significant way, but every major browser has completely reworked how they handle it to improve performance.

Go find a copy of IE 7, Firefox 3.0.x, or some old version of Chrome and see how it compares to their modern equivalents. It won't be as bad as IE 6, but it still will be a major step backwards. It's not like browser developers are changing things willy-nilly, they're doing it because it's an evolving market where the priorities can change.

Again I agree with the article. If you need a stable, unchanging platform the web is not for you.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[BitZtream]

Depends on the organization.

Some consider MS patches safe and just roll them out, it generally works, we're small enough that its not likely to be a problem for instance. They rarely break things without stating what things they are going to break in advance, for the most part, MS does a massive amount of testing before release. Even though its Microsoft, most people have very little worry about applying MS patches if they read the documentation on the patches.

Many don't follow patch tuesday as in a sane network its not really that needed to keep up. With proper network segmentation and firewalling, the chances of a remote exploit getting into the network are slim, and if it does, it'll be contained to a segment that can be dealt with in a manageable way. So you don't really have to keep up with patch tuesday because your network parameter keeps the bad stuff outside the walls, allowing you more leeway to bunch up several patches and release them to your network after they've ran the gambit of tests.

The last large organization I worked at did 3 month cycles for Windows updates, meaning all installed patches were generally +4 months old, and it wasn't a problem. This however would result in Firefox being removed from PCs, its not worth the headache. They can just use IE and a filtering proxy and not worry about security problems and following some idiotic schedule that Mozilla comes up with.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[BitZtream]

Citation needed.

Why is it 'bad'. Security? Which can be patched easy enough.

Why is an old browser bad? What new features does firefox 5 have that I can't live without? For that matter, what new features did 4 or 3 have that I MUST HAVE to browse the web.

Let me answer it for you: None.

Were there new features? Yep. Do I need them? Nope. Do I want them? Nope, can't even come up with a reason most of these new features exist in the first place other than the fact that someone somewhere needed to do something in order to keep their job.

The web really isn't all that fast moving, the technology doesn't really change, just the skin on the websites. I realize you can't tell the difference between the two, but some of us can, and we know your statement is just silly and ignorant.

The web moves far slower than you think it does, you've just been caught up in the 'ohohooh SHINY!@$!@$' race so long you can't tell the difference between a new feature and some crafty javascript.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[Darinbob]

MS has security patches versus fluff. Thus you accept the security patches or put them through an accelerated acceptance test.

Mozilla has wrapped up security and fluff together with everything in between. If you want a security patch you are forced to accept the fluff as well.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[Darinbob]

I guess those HTML 1.0 pages that I can view are just imaginary too. The web may be fast moving but that doesn't mean you have to keep up.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[Darinbob]

What? FF 3 is a major step forward from FF 4, except for the speed/memory bugs.

Browser devs ARE changing the browsers willy nilly. Do not let them fool you into thinking it's for your own good.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[dzfoo]

Are you replying to my comment? If so, forgive me but I do not understand your point. My comment as a snarky remark alluding to the fact that the web, as a platform, has traditionally been slow, specifically because standards that are agreeable to most and stable enough to be useful for more than just playing around with technology, take time to mature and require long-term commitments.

          -dZ.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[dzfoo]

That should have been,
My comment was a snarky remark

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[WrongSizeGlass]

HTML 5, CSS 3, massively improved Javascript engines...

Are the specifications for HTML 5 or CSS 3 finalized yet? If not then they aren't standards yet and are therefore moving targets. The implementation of faster JavaScript engines is fine as long as they comply with the current standards or the current implementation of JavaScript for the specific browser. IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, et al all seem to have their own flavor of JavaScript so changing it just for the sake of changing it isn't a good thing either.

Re:I think it's the "No Security Updates for 4"

[jawtheshark]

Yes! Thank you for saying it... I completely agree. Been doing this for years (Staying with what works, and upgrade on my terms) and it's never bitten me. To the contrary, it's kept a stable computing experience.

I wonder...

[AngryDeuce]

Have they addressed the fact that Firefox eats memory like Amy Winehouse smokes crack?

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how many people seem to complain of this, yet I have NEVER had a problem with Firefox using excessive amounts of memory. What are you guys doing to the poor thing?

Re:I wonder...

[edremy]

Using it. Right now I'm running pretty light- I only have 6 tabs open, but when I'm doing serious debugging it can easily be 20+. Some of them have video in them, others have google docs, etc. Right now it's "only" using 900MB, but it's not at all uncommon for FF to take up 2+ GB.

Re:I wonder...

[Lumpy]

using plugins that cause this and blaming the browser...

It's like the guys that whine that oil additive XYZ broke their car engine...

Re:I wonder...

[AndrewNeo]

I haven't either. Chrome usually reports that it's using MORE memory than Firefox, for the exact same tabs.

Re:I wonder...

[jdgeorge]

I experience the memory footprint problem also. It may be the sites I'm using are very heavyweight and remain in the cache, but it would be great to see some kind of graph that shows what memory is being used by which tabs, or is unreasonably persisting in the cache.

Re:I wonder...

[Bryan3000000]

Firefox can easily eat close to 1GB with a couple of windows and a few tabs in each, after a little while. That's with all scripts blocked, plugins disallowed, etc. I'm left to wonder if the vast majority of websites themselves have become too bloated to keep in memory. Either way, Firefox does not score well on memory usage or idle cpu usage (whether scripts are allowed or not) compared with other browsers.

Re:I wonder...

[CapnStank]

The better part is how they complain about firefox hogging memory by looking at their Task Manager. Its like they'd prefer 40% of their memory to sit idle instead of caching useful data. "Firefox is taking up xMB! That's horrible!" but as soon as the memory is required elsewhere its released and available. I don't want 4GB of memory wasted on my computer sitting idle.

Re:I wonder...

[Pentium100]

Interesting. I sometimes have a lot of tabs open, but FF only uses about 1.2GB, right now it's at ~800MB with more then 40 tabs open. Maybe it limits itself because it's on a 32 bit system where each process can only get 2GB without resorting to AWE or similar stuff.

This is Firefox 3.6.x btw, maybe they changed it in 4 to make it use more memory...

Re:I wonder...

[Pentium100]

but as soon as the memory is required elsewhere its released and available.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought that memory that was used by a process (for example Firefox) needs to be swapped to make more free memory that now can be used by another process (for example a game). Windows can free its disk read cache quickly, but how can it "know" which regions of memory that is marked as in use by Firefox (whether caching or something else) can be freed up without swapping safely and that it will not break FF? Or does Firefox detect that another process wants to use the memory and release it?

Re:I wonder...

[Americano]

I can second this. By way of comparison, quick benchmark I just ran right now on my laptop:

-- Opened chrome - no extensions but adblock/flashblock, opened 8 tabs - one to each of my bookmark bar sites, and 1 to youtube, where I played a random video from the front page. Memory usage: 162MB.

-- Opened firefox - no extensions but adblock/flashblock, opened the same 8 tabs and started the same video playing. Firefox.exe usage is 140 MB; plugin-container.exe takes up an additional 143MB to handle the video playback. Total usage: 283 MB.

That's a HUGE difference in memory utilization, and that's fairly "light" usage. Firefox is a bit of a pig when it comes to memory usage, and frankly its performance pales in comparison to Chrome, as well. I didn't like Chrome at first, I hated the way they handled tabs, and I thought I'd miss not having the file/edit/etc. menu visible... but the performance and stability have absolutely converted me... still get a little turned around with menu operations, but it's forced me to learn more of the keyboard shortcuts, and that's also a time saver in the long run.

Re:I wonder...

[BitZtream]

Yea, its using far less memory ...

Still using more memory than every other app (including Xcode and the iOS simulator) combined ...

Yea, they're clearly fixing the memory problems ... it went from 'holy shit how fucking much memory can you leak with that shitty code' to ... 'holy shit your code sucks so bad that you cut it its usage by more than 50% and its STILL bigger than all other apps on my system combined, many apps that actually do something more than the skinning engine that is gecko ... including Safari with most of the same pages open.

Firefox regularly has these 'omg we've MADE MASSIVE MEMORY USAGE IMPROVEMENTS@#!@#%@#$^@#$^' and its still worse than everyone else by miles ... and it immediately starts ramping back up until the next cycle where everyone points out how shitty they are at wasting ram. Rinse, repeat cycle.

Re:I wonder...

[BitZtream]

Except that XYZ additive worked just fine ... until you took it into the dealer for a minor tuneup ... and now, because they intentionally changed the way your engine works which means the additive now is a problem rather than a benefit. The only reason the change happened was because Ford (Google) was doing it too and they want to be like Ford, who is rapidly taking their user base away from them.

The only reason the plugins broke is because they changed the version number. Change one line of text in a text file and they mysteriously work. So mysteriously in fact that someone at Mozilla got the bright idea ... well after the fact ... to actually bump the version numbers of existing addons and see if they still work. The fact that it was an afterthought should show you that they are unable to manage their product, and that should be the indication of why you want to get away from them.

Excuses are like assholes, every body has one and no one wants to see or hear yours or Mozillas.

When you make a change to your software, and every tech site on the Internet worth its salt that mentions the change has 50% or MORE of their user base calling it a stupid idea ... you should probably take the fucking hint. When you think EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD is doing it wrong, chances are ... its actually you thats the fuck up.

Re:I wonder...

[edremy]

Possible. I'm running on a Mac in 64 bit mode so >2GB is no issue, but I seem to remember my work PC holding memory usage down below that, although that was also 3.6. (I'm on 4.0 on the Mac right now) I'm not running a huge number of extensions either- AdBlock, GreaseMonkey, Webdeveloper, Treetab and Mouse Gestures.

Re:I wonder...

[DavidRawling]

Pre-emptive paging. First, realise that swapping / paging just slows down access. Unless the page file / swap area corrupts the page somehow (bad RAID controllers and disks often did this in the NT3.51 and NT4 timeframes - KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR is the BSoD you're looking for) the app/OS won't be hurt. Technically they won't even notice. Windows treats memory as transient, and backs pages into the pagefile even if memory is not under pressure. There are advantages and disadvantages, and a good system designer understands the differences between Linux and Windows and exploits the advantages of both where possible.

Re:I wonder...

[Pentium100]

First, realise that swapping / paging just slows down access.

I know that. So, Firefox using a lot of memory will slow down other software (or at least the startting of other software) because the memory that is being used by FF will need to be paged (which is slow), unless Windows somehow finds out which part of the memory used by Firefox can be released without paging (effectively deleting the data) or Firefox detects the other process and releases the memory itself.

This is in contrast with Windows disk cache which can be released without paging.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I'm sold, I'm downloading NobodyGivesAShit 5.0 now.

Mozillacide

[denis-The-menace]

We are witnessing "Mozillacide"

Damn "ordinary users", they don't need plugins that work.
Damn the enterprise, they are not the target market.

The version number is now Mozilla's priority.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

Feature bloat has long had priority with Firefox/mozilla over things such as reduced memory and cpu usage, stability (of the browser), stability of the interface with 3rd party extensions/plugins, etc. It would be great if some people (who know what they are doing unlike me) could fork it and actually work on those points. I'm sure current developers will cry fowl and say they are working on that stuff but clearly the results dont show or I wouldn't be using 200+MB for 3 tabs w/ no flash or over 10% of my memory. The above can easily sky rocket to 600+MB. They don't call it Firepig for nothing.

Re:Mozillacide

[ifrag]

The version number is now Mozilla's priority.

Firefox should have just jumped to 11 and been done with it! That would be 2 louder than IE at least.

Re:Mozillacide

[Sylak]

Kind of like how they killed of Seamonkey with FireFox, only this time they're killing FireFox with FireFox?

Re:Mozillacide

[rubycodez]

Seems to be a problem with many big successful projects becoming disconnected from the user. We have Ubuntucide in progress (or is it Canonicalcide?), OpenOfficecide, and it might be worth noting slashdot's godawful web-2.0 UI is attempted slashdot-a-cide.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, who the fuck bases their entire god damned business on a plug-in?

A.) Plug-ins provide OPTIONAL convenience functions.
B.) It is known that plug-ns are usually free software developed by a volunteer community. (without warantee, I might add)
C.) What plug-in is so important that it will prompt this media campaign?

Is this another Microsoft FUD psyop? What?

P.S. Plug-ins actually aren't that important, and if your paycheck is tied to them, BOO HOO.

Re:Mozillacide

[rwiggers]

Indeed. Since FF4 I can't use online banking with FF. Now with FF5 Acrobat Reader locks and fails every now and then. Befor you put the fault at adobe, it doesn't on FF3 or IE. Basically FF is becoming useless for me very, very fast. And I'm the ordinary user. On the enterprise level here it's already forbidden.

Re:Mozillacide

[kangsterizer]

FF4 add ons are compatible with FF5 by default. Almost no plugin or addon could have been broken.
They are compatible because Mozilla marked them all compatible by default (except a very few that they knew would need update)

Consequently anyone arguing that Mozilla broke addons/plugins has no clue what he's talking about.

Damn trolls, they don't do their homework.

Re:Mozillacide

[kangsterizer]

I think what this means is not that projects get necessarily disconnected. It means that users don't like change.
If you wanna change a project its often better to rename it and relaunch it - this can be the difference between success and failure. Unfortunate work-around for humans lack of proper perception.

Disclaimer: it doesn't mean all new stuff is always good, but it certainly isn't ALL bad and made to alienate everyone.

Re:Mozillacide

[Thud457]

For $2000 more, I could make you one that went to twelve.

Re:Mozillacide

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Well, the version number and slavish adoration of everything Chrome, followed by desperate attempts to mimic every last feature of it, no matter how idiotic, cumbersome or buggy.

Bonus points for their belligerent defense of their deeply emotional Chrome fetish which they then attempt to dress up as "innovation" and "serving ordinary users" (as if "ordinary users" clamored to have everything change on them every two weeks).

What they missed, apparently, is that Google, with its few billion bucks to spare, can afford to fool around with minor experiments like Chrome and even alienate its users while doing so because in the end if Chrome turns out to be a total dud abandoned by everyone, Google will just release Titanium or Aluminum or some such, or just cancel the whole thing in favour of some other experiment.

Mozilla on the other hand cannot afford pissing off its user base because its user base is all it has.

Re:Mozillacide

[flibby]

Don't forget about IO9icide! http://io9.com/

Re:Mozillacide

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Translation: "Stupid users want to keep their stupid plugins! Ha! What do these idiots know?! We the developers, not some moron users, just know better what users really want! Didn't we tell them that all of their stuff is optional (to us)?! Well, we will just shove our choices down their throats and they will like it! Or else! ... Wait, what happened?! They all left! What's going on?!"

Re:Mozillacide

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Except there are still piles of addons that did not make it from 3.6 to 4, never you mind 5. More so if you are on OS X.

As to 4 to 5, there are about 256 or so addons that broke, according to Mozilla team themselves.

Damn trolls, they don't do their homework.

You just outed yourself as a homework-avoiding troll. Well done, Sir.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot On.

If Mozilla leaves ordinary users and enterprise users biting the dust with this rapid release cicle, who is their target userbase?

Good thing we have other options.

Re:Mozillacide

[Millennium]

How about plugin developers actually maintain their plugins properly? If they tested with new versions like they should, then marking the plugin as compatible with the versions that pass would take essentially no extra effort.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply not true. I only use a handful of addons but 2 of them were disabled because they were not compatible with FF5. Now I would bet they actually *would* work with FF5, but FF5 won't allow me to use them.

Re:Mozillacide

[GreatBunzinni]

Here I sit with firefox 5.0 chugging along, which I upgraded from firefox 4, and once I look at the Add-ons manager I get a notice that Clear Fields 4.0.3 has been disabled for being incompatible with Firefox 5, and that it isn't available for Firefox 5.0. And besides this plugin I only happen to use Adblock and noscript.

So, contrary to what you imply, if there are plugins which were in fact broken then it becomes clear that you are the one who don't have a clue about what you are talking about.

Damn fanbois, they don't acknowledge reality.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

Many plugins are not published as compatible with FF5, thus won''t work.
They juste refuse to work since it is not the right version...

So everything is broken.

Re:Mozillacide

[gQuigs]

Out of almost 4,000 add-ons. That's about 6% of add-ons that were not automatically detected to be compatible.

I'm glad you brought up 3.6 -> 4.0. It almost seems like the new way of doing Add-on compatibility is better for users and add-on authors alike. Mozilla figures out what changes affect add-ons and then scan for the ones who use it. As an extension developer I certainly appreciated it.

Re:Mozillacide

[asavage]

About 6% were marked as incompatible 1 month before firefox 5 came out. All affected addon developers were contacted so many were fixed before firefox 5 came out. I can't speak for anyone else but this was the most seamless firefox version update ever with 100% of my addons working with the new version.

Re:Mozillacide

[antdude]

Same for SeaMonkey from v2.0 to v2.1. :(

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I fought to defend Firefox against anything, as long as it had its killer feature: Awesome plugin support.

But even think, that this is definitely the point where Mozilla jumped the shark.

Next, please. (But not from a evil company [MS, Apple, Google], and not without all my plug-ins. [So in essence, only a Mozilla fork could qualify. :/ Although I'm very open for other solutions.])

Re:Mozillacide

[kangsterizer]

(except a very few that they knew would need update)

care to read much?

pretty obviously if its just a few in the vast majority there's no issue

Re:Mozillacide

[kangsterizer]

(except a very few that they knew would need update)

seem u become blind when whats written doesnt please you. i wouldnt be surprised if you searched for any addon from the list that were in the few that didnt work just to link it here, heh.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

We are witnessing "Mozillacide"

Actually, this is Mozillacide-2.

We already saw Mozilla/Netscape self-destruct when they went down the "communicator" path (the "everyone wants their browser to have an HTML editor and email application built-in, even if they only have 16MB of ram" browser) then they got bought by AOL.

Re:Mozillacide

[mbrinkm]

I had 4 plugins out of 14 that were not compatible with ff5 and have 3 others that have not been updated to be compatible with 4 yet; must be my fault that I installed the wrong plugins right?

Re:Mozillacide

[praxis]

How about plugin developers actually [do stuff they should]? If they [did that stuff] with new versions like they should, then marking the plugin as compatible with the versions that pass would take essentially no extra effort.

Fix that for you. Unless I suppose you think testing takes no effort.

Re:Mozillacide

[IgnoramusMaximus]

This doesn't look so good when you realize that 3000+ are themes and the like. It is the most complex (and useful) addons that break and of those it is far more then 6%. More like 40%.

Re:Mozillacide

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Personally, I still have not regained many addons that I had in 3.6 so your mileage may vary. The aggravating circumstance is that addons on OS X are nowhere near as well supported as on other OSes.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

FF4 add ons are compatible with FF5 by default. Almost no plugin or addon could have been broken.
They are compatible because Mozilla marked them all compatible by default (except a very few that they knew would need update)

Consequently anyone arguing that Mozilla broke addons/plugins has no clue what he's talking about.

My Adobe Contribute plugin (which admittedly I never use, it just came with CS5.5) broke when I upgraded from FF4 to FF5. Firebug (the only plugin I really care about) continues to work just fine.

Re:Mozillacide

[IgnoramusMaximus]

pretty obviously if its just a few in the vast majority there's no issue

Particularly if you are using one of those "minority" choices. Hell, if 3000+ sports and celebrity-related themes work (all counted amongst the "addons"), who cares about the "minority" complicated stuff that is likely to break with wanton changes?! Everyone knows that "regular users" just want pretty and shiny things and cool version numbers! In fact they apparently all want Chrome too, so Mozilla is adoringly porting all the features of Chrome, irrespective of their quality, into Firefox! Oh and every "regular user" wants the UI to change every two weeks. Sooner and more completely if possible! Not to mention that all changes must involve "minimalism", i.e. removing something useful! Otherwise it doesn't count.

As long as the Lady Gaga Fantasy Football Theme and the Facebook integration does not break its a new major version two days after new Chrome release, at the latest, from now on!

No?

Re:Mozillacide

[Risen888]

Maybe testing FooBarPlugin against a new version of Firefox every other fucking week isn't what Joe Plugin Developer thought he was signing up for.

Re:Mozillacide

[rubycodez]

nothing wrong with changing gradually and getting feedback. But this failing or failed projects I mention are from running off and working in a vacuum, ignoring users.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate plugins loaded from internal servers broke.
Easy enough to fix (update em:maxVersion), but one I use was definitely broken.

Consequently anyone arguing that Mozilla didn't break addons/plugins has no clue what he's talking about.

Damned trolls, they don't do their homework.

Re:Mozillacide

[ShakaUVM]

Translation: "Stupid users want to keep their stupid plugins! Ha! What do these idiots know?! We the developers, not some moron users, just know better what users really want! Didn't we tell them that all of their stuff is optional (to us)?! Well, we will just shove our choices down their throats and they will like it! Or else! ... Wait, what happened?! They all left! What's going on?!"

From the Firefox feed: "At its core, Firefox is about people and is powered by a global community of individuals working together for the public good."

Yes, the FF dev team is obviously doing everything for the public good by making 10 minor changes a major revision increment. :p

Re:Mozillacide

[IgnoramusMaximus]

I think the Mozilla team, like many other major successful OSS project teams, has become a victim of their own success. Once the project became famous and large enough, it started to attract ever more flamboyant and opinionated "management", "high level design", "idea men", "customer relations" and similar types whose programming skills are not very impressive (to be charitable) and whose main objective is in fact stroking their own egos and whose efforts revolve around using the project as a catapult to boost their personal publicity.

Subsequently ever more questionable but very, very visible and radical changes are made, the purpose of which is mainly to attract attention, because attention and publicity has become the main goal in itself.

By the same token the "regular" developers are thrown into ever increasing chaos and conflict because creating conflict (otherwise known as the "divide-and-conquer" strategy) is a standard procedure for the social ladder climbers who have targeted the project for takeover and control to further their own parasitic needs.

The only consolation (of sorts) being that this fate befalls successful non-OSS projects even more frequently, including whole companies.

Re:Mozillacide

[lennier]

I think what this means is not that projects get necessarily disconnected. It means that users don't like change.

Right, because change means breakage and users like getting their work done without breakage.

If project developers think that their desire for ooh!shiny!breakage is more important to the user than the user's desire for it Already Just Works Quit Breaking It, then "disconnected" is exactly what those project developers are. They've stopped caring about the user. They've even stopped caring about the fact that they're no longer caring, and actively think (and now say out loud) that not caring about the user is a positive trait, because those awful boring users are holding the creative genius of developers back, and the users need to just shut up and let the developers break all their stuff.

The Internet's users treat change, sensibly, as the damage it is and attempt to route around it, and they should be celebrated for doing so, not ridiculed. The problem the Internet's developers have is that they've accepted the false idea that change in itself is a positive good to be forced upon people whether they like it or not.

Consider this: would a bridge need to be destroyed and rebuilt every six weeks unless it was catastrophically mis-designed every single time it was built? Then why should any critical piece of data-bearing infrastructure need to be replaced on such a rapid cycle?

Build things to be extended, not changed. Build them once, build them right, and stop messing with them once they're built right.

If the software industry has no actual way to tell whether something is ever "built right" -- then it's got catastrophic failure prebaked into everything that ships, and that can't be a good thing, can it?

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

Moonlight broke. Elasticfox broke. Perhaps the majority didn't, but these two very important extensions did.

Re:Mozillacide

[Anonymous Coward]

You brought up something. OS X. There is software that is stuck on a version number 10. How long has it been OS X? Other software the versions change every four months? With Ubuntu to have version 10 LTS but also have other releases. It has gotten to where the version numbers mean nothing and are just a marketing tool instead of as a versioning control.

What happened to the idea I learned many years ago the the numbering system went like 4.0.1. Four being the major version change the zero being a major bug fix and the one being minor bug fixes.

Marketing its all about marketing not code.

Re:Mozillacide

[bjb]

Apologies or whatever, the point is that everyone is getting nagged to upgrade to FF5 now. Personally, I see that it says "oh, TACO and some other plugin isn't going to work until they upgrade".

That same message has been appearing for over a week now. As such, I'm not touching FF5.

If FF doesn't learn from this and realize that they need to be a bit better about this, I'll probably just switch to Chrome full time.

AAT is golden

[bobcat7677]

If the business uses automated acceptance testing, this would is not a big deal. Just run your test suite on the new version and you will know in short order if there is a problem. I think this is really what Mozilla is trying to say: use better development practices and you won't have an issue.

Re:AAT is golden

[Lunix Nutcase]

How about they use better development practices such as not breaking plugins for people by bumping a version number for no reason?

Re:AAT is golden

[flaming error]

Mozilla may be on some kind of moral high ground, but in the end, what-we-would-like is trumped by reality. It's a bitch.

Re:AAT is golden

[lostmongoose]

How about they use better development practices such as not breaking plugins for people by bumping a version number for no reason?

Or how about plugin authors using the Beta or, better yet, the Aurora release to get their shit updated for the final release? God forbid the extension/plugin authors actually do anything to alleviate a problem with a simple solution. No, they'd rather bitch about having to update it instead.

Re:AAT is golden

[CastrTroy]

How about they fix their plugin system so that determining whether or not plugin will work is not dependent on version numbers. This is equivalent to checking user agent strings to determine if your javascript will run. We discovered a long time ago that that was a bad practice. What we really need is a way for the browser to check which functionality the plugins are trying to use to determine whether or not it will run correctly And then just give the option to the user to run the plugin anyway. It's not like the plugins are compiled against specific version of Firefox anyway. They are just interpreted javascript code. The worst that should happen is that a warning should be displayed, letting the user know that the plugin hasn't been tested against the specific version. If the user decides it isn't working, they can disable the plugin if they want.

Re:AAT is golden

[Tharsman]

So, FireFox Add-On development and maintenance should become a full time job?

What about some one developing something "useful" and dropping it there for the community and not feeling forced to update it every 3 months?

What about FireFox developers actually treat their Add-On environment as a platform and ensure backwards compatibility? Or would you feel fine if every Linux/Windows/Mac/Androdi/iOS piece of software had high chances of breaking up every 3 months due to patches?

Re:AAT is golden

[kangsterizer]

they did not break them actually. how about you get informed before you post aggressively then?
FF 4 addons (plugins do not need update ever btw) have been marked compatible with FF 5 by Mozilla before FF 5 was released, so, no, they could not break.

Re:AAT is golden

[kangsterizer]

That's incorrect.
Those plugins which aren't plugins but extensions in fact (or add ons) have complete access to Firefox and can modify anything. This is why they are so powerful on Firefox compared to Chrome, and why they require restart and version check.

Firefox also supports Chrome-like extensions, which are as you describe, and guess what, do not require checks or restarts.

Developers should however use them when their extension doesn't require extensive changes to Firefox.

Re:AAT is golden

[lostmongoose]

You develop a piece of software, it's not somebody else's job to keep it from breaking on a new version. Either maintain it, or take it down. Letting someone else take the blame cause it stops working is a rather shitty way to operate.

Re:AAT is golden

[Kjella]

Well, variations of that have been tried and it's no miracle cure. Technically the interface functions can still exist, but they no longer function as advertised. And it's one thing if it's simply broken, another if it's unstable or leaking memory due to browser changes. Or just works conditionally, like adblock working until it tries parsing a regex that uses some particular function - with branching that can depend on the content of the web page and the user settings. It might catch some incompatibilities, but far from all.

Re:AAT is golden

[Ant P.]

Either maintain it, or take it down

Or develop for Chrome, which doesn't have a completely fucking retarded extension system. My code hasn't needed updating in a year and five major version numbers, it just works. And will likely do so a year from now, because it's based on web standards and not brain damage like XPCOM.

Re:AAT is golden

[walternate]

they did not break them actually. how about you get informed before you post aggressively then? FF 4 addons (plugins do not need update ever btw) have been marked compatible with FF 5 by Mozilla before FF 5 was released, so, no, they could not break.

From the Mozilla blog post: "Earlier tonight we updated compatibility information for add-ons that work with Firefox 4 to also work with Firefox 5, except in certain cases where we think the add-on may be incompatible." ... "There were 256 that failed our automatic scanners".

Re:AAT is golden

[kangsterizer]

thats just a few % and thats the point

Re:AAT is golden

[Anonymous Coward]

I donno about that. Lots of people used Firefox before corporations even heard the name, and will continue to use it.
Corps are not the target audience, it's a bitch.

Re:AAT is golden

[BitZtream]

As a plugin author I'll tell you why.

I have better shit to do than keep up with testing against each new flavor of the day from Mozilla. I like to spend my time working on MY products and MY software, not retesting against someone elses interface constantly because they can't manage to write software in a way that it can maintain compatibility.

As of about 30 seconds ago, the decision was made by our company internally to drop support for Firefox until they pull their head out of their ass.

Re:AAT is golden

[shutdown -p now]

It's not XPCOM that's the problem, it's the inability (or lack of desire) on behalf of Firefox devs to design a properly versioned API with full back-compat. That can be done on any language and framework, though some make it easier than others.

Definitely the right move for Linux IMHO

[al0ha]

FF 5 on Linux with the latest version of Java works remarkably well, super fast, even in one of the worst Java applications known to man; Kronos Timekeeper. Usually the slowest application I have to use on a regular bases, FF 5 shows marked improvement for Linux.

Re:Definitely the right move for Linux IMHO

[zero0ne]

God I hate Kronos... I do not understand how a simple use case (time card punching, viewing, etc), can suck so bad.

There are webapps that are more complex and run without problems.

Re:Definitely the right move for Linux IMHO

[BitZtream]

So you think FF5 made your Java VM faster?

You have absolutely no idea what Java is or how it works in a browser, do you?

it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[chiark]

Anyone who uses extensions has also been rather knackered by this move. I use 1password, NoScript and a Garmin uploader plugin. All failed to work with FF5 on the day of release.

I have rolled back to 4.0.1 and will move to 5 once all of those things work.

I'm sure, this being slashdot, it will be pointed out they've been fixed already... Well, apart from the Garmin plugin, and they're closed source so that's therefore inherently evil... But that's not the point, really: FireFox has an ecosystem built around it and you can't just shaft that so quickly. Not trolling, but I see no benefits of 5 if it does not fundamentally deliver the web I want, plugins and all!

The Firefox team seem to be feeling a little insecure... ? Opera 11... IE9... Safari 5... Still, at least they can look down on Chrome.

What the article says

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says the Firefox was always enterprise-unfriendly because minor releases included major functional changes, and the change to the version numbering hasn't altered this.

Which is true. And people wonder why enterprises are reluctant to use Linux on the desktop. Stability matters.

Re:What the article says

[Lumpy]

Because firefox = linux....

Idiot.

Re:What the article says

[Runaway1956]

Uhhh - Firefox is not Linux, and Linux is not Firefox. I don't know how you lump the two together. You're not yet another Microsoft shill, dumping on anything that remotely resembles competition to Microsoft, are you?

Re:What the article says

[Anonymous Coward]

Because nobody looking at Linux would ever consider the stability of the applications that run on Linux...

Idiot.

Re:What the article says

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for proving to everyone that you have NO clue as to what you are talking about.

You must be a Coder for microsoft.

Re:What the article says

[BitZtream]

Right, because this problem is unique to Firefox and not common practice in OSS in general. FF is totally unique ... and fairies rain down from the sky while blowing bubbles with kittens in them ...

A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Animats]

It's a browser, Firefox people. It doesn't need many new features. One new release every year or two is enough.

If so many new releases are needed for bug fixes, have longer betas. If the problem is security, beef up the sandbox design so that less of the code is security critical.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of this is a marketing issue, and it goes back to the early days of the Internet. Blame AOL for making every minor point release a new version, because other companies felt the need to release "new major versions" to be perceived by the clueless public as releasing an update as often. If Google is releasing new major versions(based on version number) every few months, then Mozilla HAS to, or the clueless masses will think that Firefox is not advancing as quickly.

Now, when it comes to new features, hardware acceleration makes a huge difference, so I'd call that worthy of a release, and doing a UI overhaul may also qualify, just to keep up, and if making it a minor point release doesn't get the attention needed to LOOK like Firefox is staying competitive, then doing a major version change is a valid response.

Most people outside of the technical fields have no idea of the difference between 4.0.0.1, 4.0.1, or 4.1...to THEM, it is still version 4 and won't feel any desire to upgrade. If they see 4 followed by 5, they will be more inclined to do the upgrade. Blame general ignorance and stupidity for decisions that are really marketing driven.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it more "blame Google" for Chrome's release schedule and version numbering?

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a browser, slashgoon person. It needs many new features. One new release every year or two is not nearly enough.

If so many new releases are required to add such features, have shorter betas. If the problem is security, aggressively add new security technologies to stay ahead of the curve.

I'm really, really sick of people badmouthing firefox for what it's not. This is the browser that beat IE (Yes, it did). This is the browser that saved the web from stagnation. This is the browser that forced Microsoft to clean up their act after they killed Netscape. It thrives on new features and new technologies to enable developers to create whole new applications you haven't' even begun to imagine. They can't do this if the feature set never changes.

Fire fox is not fucking IE6.

It's not some stable interface for your shitty in-house 10 year old intranet application. Maybe, just maybe, using a general purpose browser that one would use to go on the wild internet is not the same thing they should be using for their legacy web apps. Ever considered that?

Download, install run. Enjoy. Embrace change or get shoved aside.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[the_raptor]

This is exactly my thinking. I don't care about the version numbers, as version systems are entirely arbitrary, but just the drive by Mozilla to subject us to new "features" (like removing established UI elements) constantly.

Browsers are old tech. Browsers are utilitarian. Non-technical people don't want a constantly evolving piece of basic software.

Mainstream browsers are not the place for "cool and cutting edge" development. I want a browser that focuses on security and standards compliance. New features outside that should be addons/plugins until they are so widely adopted, or self-evidently useful, that they get moved into the core of the browser. I call this the Blizzard model because that is the method they follow for World of Warcraft.

Mozilla seem to have adopted We-are-graphic-designers-and-so-know-better-than-you-plebs model that turned "Web 2.0" into a steaming pile of shit.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[gstrickler]

I agree. Mozilla is wrong on this. They're trying to play the numbers game as Chrome is at "version" 12, Opera is at 11, and IE is at 9, so it "looks like" FF is behind. That's stupid. Just jump the version to 10 to address any public perception issue and release a new version every year or two with security updates as needed (every 1-3 months).

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Volante3192]

Actually, as a browser it DOES need features on a consistent basis. Or maybe you'd like HTML 5 some time around 2023?

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[sourcerror]

"because other companies felt the need to release "new major versions" to be perceived by the clueless public as releasing an update as often."

And they are right. Here in Slashdot a lot of people used to say that Java is dead and Ruby/Python is the way of the future.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[0123456]

Or maybe you'd like HTML 5 some time around 2023?

The more I learn about HTML5, the less I want it at all.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[lunasee]

Well they can do a Netscape (v5) and start skipping version numbers to catch up with Chrome. Anymore version numbers don't mean anything. Some products use the year (Windows 2000), a version number that is not true (Windows 7), or a name that doesn't mean anything (Windows Vista).

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[alta]

or do it the way chrome does it... put less emphasis on version. Sure, they have version numbers, but chrome auto-updates. Ask me at any time what version I'm using and I'll have to go hit chrome:about to tell you.

I can tell you that I use the dev-channel build. And I keep canary running as well so I can test session stuff on the same website without them crashing over each other.

And for the curious, I'm running 14.0.803.0 dev-m and canary is only slightly further along at 14.0.804.0 canary

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Kjella]

Yes and no. Releases are fine, as long as they add features in a backwards-compatible matter. This is 4.0, all plugin interfaces are stable for the 4.x series. The thing is that with major version numbers, you can't tell because there's nothing bigger. What's the interface for version 5-6-7 going to be like? They could break *everything*, so no plugin is guaranteed compatible. You have to either force them on and pray, or hope the maintainer is on top of the game every few months. Chrome doesn't care because they don't need to care, It also tends to bring a little responsibility to developers if they have to support their bloopers for a while, then you start making sure what you have is really what you want not just a WIP.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree; the WWW is constantly evolving and pushing new territory. We need browsers that can keep up with these changes, especially now that HTML doesn't have official version-numbered releases.

Why is Mozilla under attack for this, when MS released three browsers in under 12 months?

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, you run Slackware?

I completely agree with you. It's a shame solid thought processes like ours invoke a stereotype of someone who runs code from 1992.

Like you, I feel that everything is way less stable than a few years ago, and none of it is really worth running.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong wrong wrong.

Bug fixes and small features.

Oh right, waterfall method. That'll be awesome. "Yeah, my new version will come out in 10 years. It'll have 5 billion bug fixes AND all of these new features! It'll work out of the box day one when it lands."

Right.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[kangsterizer]

bug fixes and security does not matter. they would be released as minor releases like they always have been.
also, no code currently is bugfree or security issues free no matter how much testing or though has been put into it. Chrome actually has a lot of security issues patched every single month. its upgraded silently tho, so maybe you didn't even notice.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[element-o.p.]

Blame AOL for making every minor point release a new version, because other companies felt the need to release "new major versions" to be perceived by the clueless public as releasing an update as often. If Google is releasing new major versions(based on version number) every few months, then Mozilla HAS to, or the clueless masses will think that Firefox is not advancing as quickly.

Are you kidding me? Most of the "clueless masses" barely know what Firefox is, much less what version they are running. I talk to "field techs" all day who, when I ask if they are using Windows or Ubuntu (we provide Windows laptops and Ubuntu desktops for our remote sites), tell me, "Uhhh....it's a Dell." Then, when their e-mail passwords expire every 90 days, they can't figure out how to change them, even though we've had that password rotation policy for THREE FRIGGING YEARS now. Last night, while helping my mom pick out a new laptop, she asked me if she could "run Google" on the one I recommended :facepalm: My wife can't understand why she lost all of her e-mails when she canceled our Internet account with our (former) ISP and she had only used web mail rather than the Apple Mail program. THIS is how computer illiterate the "clueless masses" are. I guarantee you that 99+% of them have no idea if they are running version 5.x, 4.x or 1.x...nor do they care.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[element-o.p.]

Fire fox is not fucking IE6.

I certainly hope not. The offspring of that unholy union would be truly horrendous!

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[element-o.p.]

Why is Mozilla under attack for this, when MS released three browsers in under 12 months?

Maybe because no one in their right mind wants their browser to be like Microsoft's?

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I didn't care about version numbers. ...Actually, I guess I can pretend I don't care about version numbers.

Just make all extensions to now claim to support all versions of firefox forever into eternity.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that. I'm going back to Netscape 3.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Toonol]

Nobody is upset when Firefox improves it's adherence to web standards or improve it's performance.

It's the status bar. It's killing plugins. It's the damnable 'awesomebar'. Those aren't 'keeping up with a changing web'... that's mucking around with UI. That's what happens when a development teams decides to begin competing based on nonessentials. Changing an existing versioning scheme purely for marketing purposes is a sad demonstration of how Mozilla has taken its eye off the ball.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[im_thatoneguy]

I hear this meme a lot but did Firefox really save us from stagnation or did AJAX finally come into its own.

Older versions of IE still run most sites even the new whizbang ones. We're only just now starting to do things that old versions of IE couldn't.

About the time Firefox "Beat IE" broadband started to finally become common place and we started to see innovation on pushing more logic to the web.

Firefox certainly did a better job of *following* these trends for a long time but I think it, along with the other browsers were more following the trends and natural evolution of a larger technological ecosystem than forging ahead on some new path.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[10101001 10101001]

Browsers are old tech. Browsers are utilitarian. Non-technical people don't want a constantly evolving piece of basic software.

Non-technical people want computers that never break, no matter what you do, and process any request made of them instantly. Hell, I want a computer like that too. But, I'm not sure it's realistic or that browers are so old tech, utilitarian that they are above evolving.

Mainstream browsers are not the place for "cool and cutting edge" development. I want a browser that focuses on security and standards compliance.

Doing decent security involves cool, cutting edge development (like various sandboxing techniques*). Maintaining compliance with the latest standards, which aren't fully defined, is cool, cutting-edge development.

New features outside that should be addons/plugins until they are so widely adopted, or self-evidently useful, that they get moved into the core of the browser. I call this the Blizzard model because that is the method they follow for World of Warcraft.

Ie, copy Opera and Chrome? Well, they seem to be well on that track, which is precisely why they're pushing for the sort of changes people seem to hate. That isn't to say I agree with what Mozilla is doing, either. But, I don't believe there's some sort of clear mandate on what they should be doing as far as an obvious consensus or an evident need. Neither Chrome nor Opera seem much better in that boat either, as there's parts of each browser feature wise I'd like to see merged in the other ones.

Mozilla seem to have adopted We-are-graphic-designers-and-so-know-better-than-you-plebs model that turned "Web 2.0" into a steaming pile of shit.

Perhaps "Web 2.0" was inherently "a steaming pile of shit", just like "Cloud Computing" will be? It's not that there aren't some uses for "Web 2.0" or "Cloud Computing", but few people or enterprises seem to really know what will work and what won't with such concepts. As a result, lots of people try to go full tilt on the concept, betting big on the potential payoff, and only a few technologies really stick as applicable. That's general capitalism, though; that's just how bubbles operate. I don't think there's a really solution for that except for people to stop being greedy.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the browser that beat IE (Yes, it did).

IE is still ahead in usage, so no it didn't. Unless you're redefining "beat" to be "didn't beat".

This is the browser that saved the web from stagnation.

Because there were no other browsers around, and the whole web 2.0/ajax and webapp thing isn't something we were all doing with DHTML and Active Desktop on IE4-6.

This is the browser that forced Microsoft to clean up their act after they killed Netscape.

Netscape killed Netscape by releasing shitty product after shitty product. Do you remember Communicator and Netscape 5? I do. The fact of the matter is that IE did something the W3C standards and especially the "living" HTML5 standard couldn't do: turn the web into a stable development platform.

It thrives on new features and new technologies to enable developers to create whole new applications you haven't' even begun to imagine. They can't do this if the feature set never changes.

Even without the above oversights. Mozilla got to where they were without this current nonsensical release schedule. This isn't about what's best for the web (who the hell is Mozilla to decide that, anyway?) and this isn't about features. This is purely about PR and having penis envy over Chrome's version numbers.

Keep this up and Firefox will suffer the same fate as it's predecessor. People will just stop targeting it like people stopped targeting Netscape, 3 months is barely enough time for a proper beta test, let alone a deprecating a release.

Maybe, just maybe, using a general purpose browser that one would use to go on the wild internet is not the same thing they should be using for their legacy web apps. Ever considered that?

Maybe, just maybe the wild internet doesn't quite fancy the idea of having to readapt their webapps every few months to satisfy Mozilla's version number envy, ever consider that?

Download, install run. Enjoy. Embrace change or get shoved aside.

Consider the wants and needs of your target audience instead of dictating it or get shoved aside.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Bacon Bits]

Mozilla seem to have adopted We-are-graphic-designers-and-so-know-better-than-you-plebs model that turned "Web 2.0" into a steaming pile of shit.

To be fair, Web 2.0 kind of started as a steaming pile of shit. It's just the reason changed from "well, it's new... but just wait!" to "you plebs don't know what you're talking about".

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[hedwards]

Fire fox is not fucking IE6.

Damn straight. If Firefox is fucking any browser, it's Opera.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

What on Earth have you been doing on the web that you weren't doing 5 years ago?
Seriously. Opera had tabs back in the Windows 3.1 days.
The Internet is for reading. Clay tablets would still bring me mail and news.
I have absolutely no idea what new features have been added lately.
The search feature in Firefox was nice, but that was also ages ago.
I switched to Chrome because it boots faster, but it's essentially the same browser.
I have no doubt I could use the Internet just fine if someone slapped a modern HTML parser behind Netscape's GUI.
Point. Click. Scroll. Not rocket science.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[BZ]

> Browsers are old tech.

Wish that were so.

Browsers are a place where ongoing research into dynamic language optimization is happening, where ongoing modifications to the web's security model are happening, where typography features that the web hasn't had before are being added, where new defences against sites attempting to attack and exploit users are being added. This is not old tech.

> I want a browser that focuses on security and
> standards compliance

"standards compliance" to most people means "add support for this spec here". As in, features.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[BitZtream]

Some products use the year (Windows 2000), a version number that is not true (Windows 7), or a name that doesn't mean anything (Windows Vista).

Windows 2000 is a name for Windows NT 5.
Windows XP is the name for Windows NT 5.1
Windows Vista is the name for Windows 6.0
Windows 7 is the name for Windows 6.1.

Every single one of them has a version number under them that is predictable and understandable, and can be used by software to make intelligent predictions about what its running on.

You can name it one thing ... and still keep meaningful version numbers. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.

How sad is it that Microsoft seems to be able to pull it off and Mozilla is unable to do so. Its not like it requires a lot of thought to come up with an idea that has been in the news. Didn't Mozilla even make some retarded comments about Windows 7 having a 6.1 version number as well?

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[BitZtream]

I don't care about the version numbers, as version systems are entirely arbitrary,

Thats true when you're referring to OSS software. Its pretty much false when referring to everything else.

Major.Minor.Patch.Build.

Build is an internal number.

Patch is for hotfixes and security patches that won't break anything.

Minor is for roll ups or fixes that MAY break something but shouldn't.

Major is for a major noticable change. A UI overhaul or a major restructuring thats certainly going to cause compatibility issues.

This isn't hard to understand, its been that way for 40 years, and the only time it doesn't apply is when OSS is involved.

The only reason you think version numbers are arbitrary is because you play with the younger kids who don't actually know how to play the game, they just mimic what their bigger brothers and sisters do without understanding why. Or in this case, just to follow the other new kid on the block ... who also happens to be an infant acting like an idiot (Chrome version numbers).

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[JSombra]

Honestly i could not care about HTML5 as a user or developer until a standard is agreed and finalized because until it is we are just going back to the bad old days "Optimized for Browser X Version Y" or "You need browser Z to view this site"

And even when it is agreed it will be a few years until anyone would do serious commercial development solely in HTML5 due to slow slow speed people upgrade their browsers

Yes HTML 5 is exciting for the actual browser dev's right now (they have had little to do beyond tweaking js for speeding for last few years), but there is no damn hurry to get it out the door because web dev's themselves are a long way off seriously developing in it for a mass audience

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[BitZtream]

If you can tell me why I NEED HTML5, then I'll show some concern. I don't NEED it, hell I don't even WANT it as the only thing it really means ... thanks to douches like Mozilla and Google, that I have MORE compatibility issues to worry about. I can do all the HTML5 shit now, it adds no new functionality, but it does add new ways of doing the same thing that won't be supported the same way across browser until AT LEAST 2023, if ever.

But again I ask, please tell me why I NEED these new features. I'm browsing the web right now, and using it on a browser without those new features ... seems like if I NEEDED these features, something wouldn't be working right now ... but it seems that the web works fine without HTML5.

You need to learn the definition of NEED, and you should probably look up WANT while you're at it, and then go find something that I actually want or need in HTML5 and come back with a reason. Remember, if I can do it now, I don't need a new way to do it.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[rjstanford]

It thrives on new features and new technologies to enable developers to create whole new applications you haven't' even begun to imagine. They can't do this if the feature set never changes

Actually, they totally can. The currently supported feature set is still bleeding-edge enough that most public-facing websites haven't begun to scratch the surface of it, and won't until at least 80% (probably much higher) of their traffic is using a browser that supports it. Yet, somehow, people are still managing to innovate and build tons of new web-based applications.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Darinbob]

Why do we need the new features? What web pages today are not viewable without FF5?

Yes, I admit FF4 fixed some memory and speed problems, but came encumbered with an awful UI (even after tweaking prefs and toolbars). So it was a tradeoff for me. I decided to upgrade and live with it. Now I am going to be downgrading back to 3.6, it wasn't worth the experiment.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[Darinbob]

Agreed. If people think new UIs are better they can plop in a different XML configuration, but leave it alone for everyone else.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[shutdown -p now]

It's not even a problem if they break backwards-compatibility. The problem is solely about dropping support for older versions.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[omnichad]

And the funny thing about that, of course, is that AJAX is ultimately a Microsoft innovation - or at least they provided the hooks first.

maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions?

[alen]

there is a lot of expensive software that requires a specific web browser version. Cognos springs to mind. if you have a later browser it may not work and you have to buy a later version of the software which is very expensive. and companies use a lot of this type of software. cognos, web logic and lots of others.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[AngryDeuce]

Agreed...without Noscript, Adblock, and Greasemonkey, Firefox is pretty much useless to me. If those 3 developers are able to keep up with the release cycles, great, but if they can't, that's a dealbreaker for me.

No problem

[BrokenBeta]

Don't panic, guys. The browser is FINISHED anyway. There isn't anything left to add to it (that plugins can't do), so version numbers is a nonissue.

Re:No problem

[rubycodez]

except firefox deactivated some of my plugins because of version number changes (and no I haven't even hit five yet).

big issue

Re:No problem

[Lennie]

On the technical side there is a whole lot of stuff that has changed, that whole HTML5-thing. You know ?

It added a boatload of features and it will add a boatload of features again because no browser is done with implementating all the HTML5- and related specifications.

The HTML5-specification it self isn't even completely done yet.

Just a random example, how about videoï conferencingï:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcwnQW_AnC8

Re:No problem

[Volante3192]

http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/05/21/firefox-5-compatibility-bump/

Re:No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't panic, guys. Plugins are FINISHED anyway. There isn't anything left to add to them (that the browser can't do), so deactivated plugins is a nonissue.

FTFY

Re:No problem

[rubycodez]

well isn't that special, the 3.x add-ons that don't work anymore get joined by more 4.x addons that also won't work anymore. but no worries, they sent the authors an e-mail. problem solved. let's fix world hunger by sending an email too while we're at it.

Ars proved that it didn't know what it was talking

[jra]

about when it said that the 3.0 Linux kernel release was "merely Linus' preference"; it wasn't. While the code didn't rev, the *kernel release practice did*, and it justified the new version number, even to me--and I'm the one who codified traditional version numbering practice in the Wikipedia article of the same name. It's stuck for 2 years now, so I assume I interpreted it properly. :-)

That said, Ars is wrong here, and so's Mozilla: I *was* IT guy, and had 500 seats to deal with, and they'd be pissing me right off if I was still in that position. I can think of no better way to chase medium to enterprise businesses away than to say "we don't give a fuck about you and your problems"... and that market is probably 30-40% of their marketshare.

Owel; someone will tell them "Oh yeah? Well, fork you!", and the problem will go away.

Mozilla is wrong, not the Enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, Mozilla needs to satisfy the needs of all customers. The users of their software have to be kept central, it would be a strange move to leave out enterprise users.

Re:Mozilla is wrong, not the Enterprise

[c0d3g33k]

Who are these 'customers' you speak of? Mozilla hasn't asked for a single cent from anyone that I'm aware of. A functional browser ecosystem might be important to whomever is providing Mozilla with a revenue-stream, but that sure as hell isn't the 'users', so don't call them customers.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[YodasEvilTwin]

Still, at least they can look down on Chrome.

I'm running Chrome 12. What?

Dear enterprise users:

[drolli]

If you find that testing that it is cheaper if you all put some money together to found a small foundation which has the purpose of continuing another development branch, just do so.

I imagine if it takes that 50% people *more* to test it, then just use 25% of these people and put them in this foundation to bug fix and security fix old versions.

Nobody is stopping you from this (at least no the licenses).

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[Mongoose Disciple]

Well, no.

You know what's even cheaper for enterprise? Continuing to use IE6.

And that doesn't require some kind of odd closest-Fortune-500-equivalent of the United Nations to get together.

If a big corporation can keep doing exactly what it's been doing without spending any money that it's not already been spending, it almost always will.

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[Sylak]

It's exactly that attitude that keeps firefox from being accepted in the Enterprise to begin with, and as several active IT admins have commented already on the last firefox story, many of them are deploying Chrome because of firefox's new release schedule.

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[Tridus]

Better idea - we'll just use something else. Shave off several more percentage points of marketshare (and the ad revenue from Google that goes with it).

- Sincerely, the Enterprise.

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[drolli]

Exactly. If you cant provide what they want, then they wont use it.

If it *would* be so much cheaper cheaper to save testing cycles, anybody could set up a company which does exactly that and sell support for it.

Red hat, Ubuntu, Novell etc do this for linux. If you dont like kernel.org release schedule, and still have updates, use a distribution.

If there would be market for it, then the companies which are hit worst in this case (e.g. big companies with a lot of internal products to be tested against) could spin off an own firefox.

If there is no market for it (and that how one could interpret it) then asking Mozilla to do something is not going to help. If IE is the last thing which hinders the adoption of linux on the desktop, then the linux distributors could do that.

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[Xugumad]

> If you find that testing that it is cheaper

We finally extracted from central IT (because yes, we have non-central IT, don't ask) that they reckoned it would take a week (of a techy's time) to build & test a Firefox install to the level of confidence they needed, and then a day or two to re-test on every update they're required to push live.

By comparison, IE is installed anyway and they have no choice but to update and test it, so Firefox at all is an overhead. The cheaper option is not to use Firefox, rather than to form some external body to make enterprise-Firefox.

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[tbannist]

...

How does that resolve the problem at all? Isn't Chrome releasing new versions faster than Firefox?

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[mini me]

You mean the same Chrome that is on version 12 and has only been available to the public for two years? If IT is afraid of increasing major version numbers, Chrome is the last piece of software they should be looking at.

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck enterprise users, I'm surprised no one has had the guts to say it yet, they bitch about a free product, let them use internet explorer

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[Sylak]

Chrome has a development cycle that expects major number changes, can be deployed or stopped from updating using the same deployment tools as Microsoft programs (MSI installer option) and generally will manage its own updates silently

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[Sylak]

But the difference is in that Chrome has always increased by major version numbers, while firefox randomly changed their development cycle. In addition, Chrome usually installs in user space and can update itself, which is why i have it installed on the thin-client desktop for my user at the university i attend

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[mini me]

So it is okay to allow your users to run the always-up-to-date version of Chrome, but Firefox has to be tested for several months before it is allowed to be used? I understand your point of connivence for using Chrome, but if you are going to allow Chrome to auto-update, why not roll out Firefox as soon as new versions become available too? The chances of something breaking are fairly equal. Why the different treatment with regards to compatibility?

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[BitZtream]

If you find that testing that it is cheaper if you all put some money together to found a small foundation which has the purpose of continuing another development branch, just do so.

So I'm guessing you just repeated the Mozilla Foundations charter, or at least a small portion of it eh?

I imagine if it takes that 50% people *more* to test it, then just use 25% of these people and put them in this foundation to bug fix and security fix old versions.

Yea, or we can just use another browser that does that for us for the same price. You do realize Firefox isn't the only browser ... right?

Nobody is stopping you from this (at least no the licenses).

There are lots of people stopping us from doing it, of course, we're stopping ourselves ... because rather than doing all that effort because Mozilla can't be bothered to get a clue or put some effort into their products ... its far easier to just use something else.

For most businesses, this is nothing more than a 'Why you should continue using IE and not even consider switching to Firefox if you have half a clue'.

As a home user I'm in the same boat, why do I want to do their job so I can use their browser and make them money? If I'm going to have to put a bunch of effort into it, I'll just use IE which is predictable.

Re:Dear enterprise users:

[omnichad]

Except that their security model certainly makes it easier to trust.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Haedrian]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

You're welcome.

Dear Mozilla

[JamesP]

This is the reason IE continues to stay strong in enterprise.

Yes, corporate users are small-minded, and you're incurring in the same error.

Fix, stabilize, make a 'corporate version'. You don't need many resources for that.

Basically, sell a way for them to use Mozilla.

You're making IT people that root for you look bad. And making the dolts that only know IE look good.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Volante3192]

This is the reason IE 6 continues to stay strong in enterprise.

Don't think your argument has the intended effect you want it to...

Re:Dear Mozilla

[ElVee]

This move just crushed any chance of Firefox being approved as an 'alternate' browser at the large faceless corporation I toil for, and I'm one of those Firefox 'fanbois' that was pushing for this, and I'm going to look like an idiot now. I'm not real happy with Mozilla right now.

I'm guessing somebody at Mozilla just doesn't understand the size of the testing effort that was underway to get Firefox 4 approved for enterprise distribution. Let me scale it for you: 40,000 workstations in several dozen countries running several hundred 'critical' webapps. We have to certify exactly what works and what doesn't, in each and every language we support for each specific VERSION that is published. Testing is EXPENSIVE, and every dime we put into this effort is now wasted. That leaves Chrome as the only other "corporate-friendly" choice, and now management is going to ask "Well, what if Google decides to pull the same stunt?".

Microsoft gives us written guarantees as to how long they will support previous versions of IE. That means a lot to my corporate overlords. Mozilla might want to consider doing the same thing. It's called "being a reliable business partner".

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking that the Ubuntu model would be a good idea. Have a LTS version for corporate use that comes out every 18 months and bleeding edge version every 6 months. They have a good chance of supplanting IE in corporations, they shouldn't shoot themselves in the foot.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[JamesP]

Yes. something in these lines probably would be a good idea.
More or less similar to what RHEL does.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[paziek]

There is Seamonkey project, based on Firefox code. It has more sane versioning IMO.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

BULL.

The reason IE (SIX) is still used in enterprise is because half the damned idiots jumped in with ActiveX and are now too cheap to upgrade their huge, ActiveX dependant frameworks to something not crap.

Plenty of businesses have installs or more recent browsers (by that, I mean recent IE) simply because it is there and it never needed installing.
IT departments are some of the laziest people around. The smallest amount of work they can do for the money they get, the better.
They don't want to have to justify installing a bunch of software externally to installing operating systems. Because they will get laughed out the room, or worse, fired, simply for suggesting "that it is better for everyone".

IE will be in business as long as Microsoft keeps it around and as long as Microsoft still exists.
Want someone to blame, point your hatred towards that corrupt FTC who let them off with the bundling crap because they were exporting goods and getting huge profit.
Yeah, how does it feel now FTC? Where is all that money now? Sure is not helping you or your country now is it? Blind idiots.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

That's pretty much what I was thinking. "Oh, darn, now Firefox 4 will NEVER become the new IE6!"

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Volante3192]

Chrome updates regularly, and often transparently. IE gets patches every month usually.

Do you let those sit in limbo until your testing?

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why enterprise want firefox instead of that old version of IE is because they use the same browser to surf the net at work, not just for their apps. So, yes you can see why they would prefer firefox, the news is rife with stories about malware infested corporations that routinely lose data and have security problems because they used an old browser.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[mini me]

The move from 4.0 to 5.0 should require much less testing than the move from, say, 3.6.3 to 3.6.4. Why did that update not scare you off of Firefox way back then? It was far more significant.

If you are hung up on the version number marketing instead of actual changes, why hasn't Chrome going all the way to version 12 in just a couple of years scared you away from it? That is a much quicker major version release schedule than Firefox is doing.

I really don't see the big deal here. Even IE sees fairly frequent updates that need to be rigorously tested.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

You open letter to Mozilla could be written ~10 years ago when Mozilla started. Now you write it again which is sad.

Mozilla lacks someone who throws chairs at characters (*cough* attention whore *cough*) like Asa Dotzler.

That man made a ridiculously ignorant and stupid statement without any need or urge to do so. The fact that he is part of the top heads of Mozilla is the reason why I, now, completely switched to Google-Chrome. I don't want to get upset beause of stupid people anymore.

Asa Dotzler recommended in 2009 also to use Bing over Google (search for it). I'll leave you alone with the impression that makes on you.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[ElVee]

Yes, we do go through a montly patch testing cycle . It's not the same gruesome process as the thorough acceptance testing that goes into introducing a -brand new- browser into a corporate environment, but the important stuff does get tested.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[ElVee]

Simple: FF4 is the version that finally got management's attention and thus the testing cycle was started. Even with FF5 coming out, the testing would have continued on FF4, but with the cessation of security patches, that effort has been cancelled. We'd have to start over from scratch, and, right now, I just don't see that happening. Mozilla is no longer 'trusted' by management.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[mini me]

So what are you going to use instead? Chrome and IE are also constantly releasing updates with security patches. If you continue to test those browsers under previous releases, you will be behind in security patches. If you start over to include the patches, you are in the exact same place you are in with Firefox right now.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[mini me]

Also, why did management believe Firefox would change their updating behaviour starting with 4.0? Firefox is old. There is a lot of history to look back on to see how the project has been conducted. While they may have changed their marketing, the actual development practises remain the same as they have always been.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[ElVee]

Short answer: We'll stick with IE, like we have since the dark ages.

tl;dr: FF and Chrome were being looked at as 'alternative' browsers, to give our users some choice. FF testing got off the ground, Chrome was still in the 'being-talked-about' stage. Testing monthly security patches is something we're intimately familiar with, and can knock out in a couple of days. There's a HUGE difference between testing patches and acceptance testing. With M$ patches, we have a pretty good idea what to test for, and we have our own pet M$ rep on-site to get us the info we need.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Billly Gates]

I would also add, if Mozilla wants the web to move forward it is in their best interests to assist corporate users so we can leave outdated browsers behind. Chrome has such admin tools so you can go slow or have rapid releases like a home user. Both needs are met at the same time. It wont add support for your bug fixes in seperate pataches from your new feature patches and have them applable by a LAN Admin. It really is not.

Just do not be surprised to see your marketshare significantly drop. Please do not blame Google for Chrome. Blame Asa, and the man in the mirror for turning us regular users away as well from this. We will switch.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[ElVee]

Honestly, the history wasn't even considered. We had a big enough pile of user requests for FireFox, so we started the process for bringing new software into the enterprise. You assume management researched the matter and used their keen intellect to thoroughly evaluate the feasibility of supporting FireFox.

Management just nodded their head a lot and sent a 1-line email to the appropriate geek.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Billly Gates]

But that is different. You can chose to patch at a high level with group policy objects controlled by a LAN admin. Google has seperate security patches versus full releases that are controllable remotely. HTML for Chrome 3 renders the same as Chrome 13. No difference, but added features. IE patches rarely break things.

IE right now looks like the best bet in such a situation as the name Microsoft carries weight.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[idontgno]

Say what you will, IE6 has the market staying power and brand loyalty that any number of consumer brands would kill for.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[mini me]

Fair enough. It just seems weird to me that it was good enough a few months ago, but not good enough now, even though nothing has changed at all. It is like evaluating Windows 7 for a few months and then switching to Linux because Windows 8 was released in the meantime.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... and compatability with ActiveX controls that haven't been migrated to better, safer things by the control's developers, or other controls that haven't been updated to spew out non-IE6-only HTML.

You know, silly things like IBM 3270 terminal emulators (I kid you not), etc.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[ElVee]

If M$ released Windows 8 and simultaneously dropped support for Windows 7, that's probably exactly what would happen.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[BitZtream]

Reality is what it is. Unless you're delusional like Mozilla.

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, corporate users are small-minded

Yes, stability is definitely small minded. Fucking enterprise n00bs, I don't see why they just waste man weeks fixing things every time there's a release with craptastic, bug-ridden features!

Re:Dear Mozilla

[QuoteMstr]

So why not apply this less-rigorous process when upgrading from Firefox 7 to Firefox 8?

Re:Dear Mozilla

[Rich0]

Yeah, but Microsoft makes just as much money when somebody deploys IE6 as IE8 or whatever. That is why they still support it - they understand enterprise customers.

Ubuntu thinks supporting a version for three years is LTS. Microsoft will still send you patches for XP. Big browser/OS changes are disruptive to very large companies, so companies will do anything to avoid them, even if it means spending more on licenses/etc.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yes, because it should be the users job to make sure their plugins continue to work through these pointless version number churn.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[vlm]

I'm sure, this being slashdot, it will be pointed out they've been fixed already...

Yeah noscript works fine here today. I have no idea about password stealing automation systems or Garmin GPS stuff.

Not trolling, but I see no benefits of 5

Staggeringly faster javascript and much lower battery / fan use. Maybe their idea is people should be doin' all their stuff in JS instead of addons and extensions?

My secondary box at home used to screech the CPU fans at full blast while running JS based web games like the Lacuna Expanse... Since upgrading to 5.0 on Debian (care of mozilla.debian.net, etc), I don't think the fan has even started up, and its objectively about twice as fast at everything.

Broken Plugins

[Aladrin]

When I used Firefox regularly, it bothered me that almost every update 'broke' a plugin that had specified a maximum version number that wasn't actually accurate. They would set the value thinking that they could update it later if it turned out to work.

Just the other day I was just reading a message posted by Linux Torvalds where he said that version numbers should be used for kludges that hack issue in old kernels, instead of trying to predict the future. In that post, his point was that if the kernel version number can't be read, it should be assumed that the normal way of doing things will just work, and to try it instead of explicitly denying things when you aren't sure.

I see this situation the same way. Until a plugin developer has tried the plugin and found it fails on a new version of the browser, the future should be wide-open.

Every time Firefox released a new version, the first thing I would do is force all my plugins enabled. And they almost always worked.

Re:Broken Plugins

[dzfoo]

>> Until a plugin developer has tried the plugin and found it fails on a new version of the browser, the future should be wide-open.

That assumes that any failures will be obvious and noticeable. This is not necessarily the case. What should a user do when his AdBlock program all of a sudden starts corrupting or removing elements, in a subtle way, from the output stream of, say, a banking application?

Mozilla (and all browser makers, for that matter) cannot expect to turn the Web into a reliable platform for all types of disciplines and commercial interests, while at the same time treat it as the ever-changing playground of their newest and coolest ideas.

It reminds me of companies that test new features in their production environment. There is never a problem, of course, until something breaks.
        -dZ.

Re:Broken Plugins

[hedwards]

So does that mean you want plug ins that behave in a flaky manner or plug ins that are greatly limited in what they can do? Because you can't have plug ins that tightly integrate into the browser and ones that are reliable between releases if you don't have some method of saying what versions they're supported on.

test more

[aahpandasrun]

This makes a lot of sense. The amount of code being changed in Firefox source has remained constant over time, but the version numbering system has been changed. Enterprises have assumed that "minor updates" do not need to be tested. The move from Firefox 3.6.3 to 3.6.4 brought bigger changes with out of process plugins than 4.0 to 5.0, which just brought performance and security updates. Besides, upgrading to a new version of a web browser is nothing like upgrading an entire department to Office 2010 or Windows 7. The web is a constantly changing place, with websites redesigning themselves without warning. Maybe enterprises need a more rapid web browser deployment system that can keep up with Firefox, Chrome, and IE's upcoming rapid release system.

Re:test more

[BitZtream]

The web is a constantly changing place, with websites redesigning themselves without warning. Maybe enterprises need a more rapid web browser deployment system that can keep up with Firefox, Chrome, and IE's upcoming rapid release system.

A new skin on a website doesn't require a new browser.

Maybe enterprises need a more stable browser developer rather than a bleeding edge always partially broken and doing something or unexpected Firefox?

Lets see, they could use IE, Opera, or Safari and get the same net effect with far less gross work.

Maybe ... JUST MAYBE ... Mozilla should consider what their consumers are saying and asking for rather than telling them its wrong. The Mozilla Foundation most certainly isn't an example any intelligent business would model itself after.

There are far more people who are just as intelligent saying this is a dumb idea than there are people saying this is a great idea. The ONLY advantage this offers is a marketing bullet point, yet it brings with it several NEGATIVE marketing bullet points that CLEARLY are more important to people than the first, and then it also brings with it a metric fuckton of technical headaches.

The only thing this shows is how not to run your company.

Sigh...

[ChromeBallz]

Chrome suddenly got a huge share of the market and the only thing Mozilla could think of was to make their release schedule mirror Chrome's.

Simple solution:

Mozilla should remain Mozilla. They're neither Google nor Microsoft. Whoever's running Mozilla should get their heads out of their arses and focus on making the best browser, not on getting to the highest version number.

Re:Sigh...

[Lennie]

Actually, I have the feeling Mozilla is doing this to make developer resources available to fix existing problems add new stuff to the browser (like better support for HTML5 and other specifications).

Instead of having these developers be busy backporting security fixes.

It is a choice, it might be the wrong choice though.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Haedrian]

Well it disables addon checking, so you can run anything.

I'm sure FF should put in a different sort of checking for addon things - especially since the UI might not change, but for now its a good enough fix.

If you notice its marked as valid till FF7 - which is rather interesting - why don't the add-on designers do the same?

You think they're kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

When companies say that the test burden is impossible they're not just pulling this out of their butts. We recently looked at our estimates for full testing of a new browser version and found that it exceeded the release cycle time for Chrome. Obviously this is a problem. We are contractually obligated to support the last two major versions of our supported browsers. This literally puts us in an impossible situation.

Now to be counter to the complaints, our solution is to change how we support rapid release browsers. Since "major" versions of rapid release browsers are much smaller revisions we feel safe saying we will only support the latest version, even if it changes in the middle of our testing. We're looking at redefining the version support part of our contract in light of the changing definition of a major version. If all goes well, supporting Chrome will actually be easier as we only test one version at a time instead of two.

But there is a key point here: Chrome auto-updates. You have to go out of your way to make it not auto-update. If Firefox doesn't do the same thing, it will be literally impossible to fully support it, and we will drop support.

This is about consumer-facing support though. If we were talking internal support, I think the solution would be simple. Pick the current version Firefox and fix that version as the supported version. Do all testing with that. When it's time to test again, pick the current version of Firefox and call that the supported version.

But going back to my starting point, do not dismiss enterprise complaints so easily. They're really not joking when they say providing the same kind of support for Firefox's new model that they did for the old model is literally impossible. They will have to adapt, but they cannot provide the same kind of support for the new model that they did for the old. Where Firefox needs to be careful is that if it is too much of a burden even after trying to adapt to the new model, companies will drop support for Firefox.

Re:You think they're kidding?

[Lennie]

Chrome is auto-updating, but what versions do actually get security updates ? I think it is just the lastest one.

And updates can be on daily or hourly basis, so how do you handle that ?

Sounds like you are obviously always behind.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Beelzebud]

Actually it is, and always has been up to the user to manage their extensions. If you refuse to take advantage of a tool that automates the process, it's no one elses fault. Or you could do the unthinkable thing and wait for a couple of days for the extension authors to update..

Soon it may not even matter.

[blind biker]

Firefox's usage share has been slowly declining since quite some time. They introduced the rather universally hated moron-bar, and paid no attention to the feedback. Then they introduced the unwelcome changes in the UI with Firefox 4, and paid no attention to the feedback. Now they decided to piss off the plugin authors and enterprise customers. In the end, they may become a niche browser, and even Google could decide that their money is better spent elsewhere, than on a bunch of idiots.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please define "rather universally"

http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=1886&aid=-1

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[kangsterizer]

im sure like the other 200 posters that said the same thing that you're aware than 99% of FF's extensions need no intervention from neither user of author to switch from FF 4 to 5. Also that they're called extensions and not plugins.

Oh snap.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Pentium100]

Yea, old style FF interface wastes so much space it's barely usable on my 1600x1200 resolution. Oh wait, it doesn't. Also, I can chenge the resolution to 1920x1440 if I want more space (CRT user here).

That only applies to displays with very low resolution, 640x480 or 800x600 at most. However, most of the PCs that do not support higher resolutions cannot run current version of Firefox because they are too old and cannot run the operating systems that FF4 requires.

At least it is possible to change the interface back to how it was. I also like Opera for this feature and do not use Chrome because I hate the interface.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you haven't notice: Over the course of the last decade a large number of mobile computing devices with small integrated displays (most of them not even using CRT technology!) have emerged. Most (TM) computer users nowadays don't have screens with vertical resolutions as huge as 1200 pixels. Indeed the rather common devices of the form factor so aptly called "netbook" tend to use displays with a vertical resolution of 600px.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[GreatBunzinni]

Firefox's usage share has been slowly declining since quite some time. They introduced the rather universally hated moron-bar, and paid no attention to the feedback.

Are you referring to the awesomebar and how you can tweak it to do stuff such as.... turning it off?

I guess that moron-bar is a good name for it, though. After all, only a moron bitches about it after all this time and still has no clue about how he can simply turn it off.

Then they introduced the unwelcome changes in the UI with Firefox 4, and paid no attention to the feedback.

Can you provide, like, even a single example to back up any of your bullshit claims? The only UI issue which was a major hindrance was the removal of Firefox's status bar, due to it being used to present the user with the target link. Yet, although the status bar has been removed, Firefox now presents an unobtrusive, quasi-statusbar widget as a popup that shows the target link without hogging up precious screen real estate. And, as one of the people who bitched about Firefox4's absense of a status bar, I find this option to be superior than the regular old obstructive status bar. This, to put it in small terms so that morons can understand, represents a considerable improvement over the old statusbar design.

So, what exactly do you see as "unwelcome changes"? Can you at least provide a single example to back up any of your bitching?

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Pentium100]

Well, LCDs can have big resolutions too, full HD is 1920x1080 and 19:10 HD is 1920x1200 (the same vertical resolution as my current one). Also, my laptop has 1280x800 and the Firefox toolbars do not bother me, even though I do not run the browser maximized.

Now, for netbooks with 600px vertical resolution I agree, but it only applies to netbooks. For all other computers there is no advantage in Chrome-style UI, but (in my opinion) it is less convenient. So, why make it the default?

As for CRT - well, I prefer the ability to change the resolution (without degrading the image) and high supported resolutions over being able to place something behind the monitor (there is not much space there, the monitor being in the corner and all).

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox's usage share has been slowly declining since quite some time. They introduced the rather universally hated moron-bar, and paid no attention to the feedback. Then they introduced the unwelcome changes in the UI with Firefox 4, and paid no attention to the feedback. Now they decided to piss off the plugin authors and enterprise customers. In the end, they may become a niche browser, and even Google could decide that their money is better spent elsewhere, than on a bunch of idiots.

You live in your own world, don't you?

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[js_sebastian]

Firefox's usage share has been slowly declining since quite some time. They introduced the rather universally hated moron-bar, and paid no attention to the feedback.

The moron bar, as you call it (Mozilla prefers to call it the awesome bar) is a ridiculously addictive feature once you get used to it. I hardly use bookmarks anymore because I can just start typing and the page I am looking for pops up in the drop down bar 99% of the time. For me it is up there with tabbed browsing, adblock, and noscript as the can't-do-without features that have kept me on firefox over the years, despite the good software that both opera and chrome have been putting together.

I'm not sure what are the unwelcome UI changes firefox 4 that you mention... Oh the tabs are above the URL bar rather than below? That's almost as evil as having the x button on the left instead of on the right! Let's stone them all!..

By the way, if a post discussing a "moron bar" and calling the firefox developers a "bunch of idiots" is modded +5 insightful, that is a pretty glaring failure of moderation...

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the "moron-bar", I appreciate the advanced search features and the fact that it considers more than just the URL to help you find a page. It's quite nice.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Culture20]

Are you referring to the awesomebar and how you can tweak it to do stuff such as.... turning it off? I guess that moron-bar is a good name for it, though. After all, only a moron bitches about it after all this time and still has no clue about how he can simply turn it off.

The cry of "Remeber the Awesomebar!" isn't because of our inability to turn it off now, it's because of the half-assed way it was originally introduced (and the fact that devs were saying they didn't want to implement a way to reset the original features, leading to the oldbar add-on). This smacks of the same "We're Mozilla! We defeated the great evil IE with our advertising campaigns! We know better than you Firefox-users!" attitude.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Culture20]

I hardly use bookmarks anymore because I can just start typing and the page I am looking for pops up in the drop down bar 99% of the time.

That's nice. Sounds like it would be great as a bookmark search field. When I start typing in a URL in a URL bar, I'd like for it to start showing me the URLs that start with what I typed, not any page that I visited previously that has the word I typed on it.

By the way, if a post discussing a "moron bar" and calling the firefox developers a "bunch of idiots" is modded +5 insightful, that is a pretty glaring failure of moderation.

No, you're just in the minority when it comes to liking the idiot firefox developers who shoved the moron bar down people's throats.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Darinbob]

The moved the buttons and bars around. Did you not notice. Why is the home button now on the right instead of the left? Why is the back button a large circle but the forward button is a small rectangle? Why is tab now on top above the URL bar? These are actual changes, people are not hallucinating, FF4 is a different UI than FF 3.6.

Sure, we all relearn it. But why relearn it? Is it better in any way? Not that I can tell. It is different for the sake of being different, like some dev said "I need to check in some code so that it seems like I've been doing something". Now I can't support my mother since I will be unable to tell her over the phone exactly which menu number and position to use. I can't upgrade her until I visit because she's got dialup. Better for me to downgrade to 3.6.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[simmonsjeffreya]

Actually, out of 4,000 or so extensions, ~250 don't work. That's 93.75% that work with no intervention. Also, there are both plugins and extensions, go look for yourself on the Mozilla add-ons website. Please do your research before blindly blasting someone making a valid comment, it makes you look like a fanboy/troll.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the home button now on the right instead of the left?

No idea, probably to move the URL bar closer to the navigation (back/forward), normal people typically use the search bar more often then the URL bar so they may have wanted to avoid accidentally clicking Home instead of Forward.. Right Click>Customize, you can now drag the buttons to wherever you want them.

Why is the back button a large circle but the forward button is a small rectangle?

Because they measured frequently used features and found that "back" was the most commonly used feature by a significant amount (compared to all other toolbar buttons and the contents of the menus). Fitt's Law of UI design says that the bigger an interactive button is and the closer to a screen edge it is located then the easier (faster) it is to click.'

Why is tab now on top above the URL bar?

Because it gets rid of the space wasted by the tab bar and window title bar. Seriously, did you think that big empty space at the top filled with same name information that was already being displayed in the tab title anyway was actually useful for anything?
The same argument also applies to the status bar, the only thing it was useful for was looking at the URL of a link before you clicked it but you don't do that 100% of the time, the new tooltip that pops up at the bottom when hovering does the exact same thing without constantly taking up space when useless. [Okay, so having the statusbar pop up out of the bottom of the window when needed or hovering near the bottom would have worked to]

These are actual changes, people are not hallucinating, FF4 is a different UI than FF 3.6.

The only change in Firefox 4 that took me more than 5 minutes to get used to was the rearranging of the right-click menu for links which moved "Open in New Tab" to the top where "Open in New Window" used to be; it took time to mentally remap that change, I've since learned to just middle-click instead. That change does annoy me personally because, whilst it does make far more sense for "new tab" to be at the top, it hasn't been at the top for so long that the win only applies to new users, not existing ones.

Sure, we all relearn it. But why relearn it? Is it better in any way? Not that I can tell.

That's because you don't WANT it to be better, you want it to be the way it always was, nothing new or interesting about that. People bitched about Windows 95 being too different from 3.11 as well, didn't matter then either. I've already outlined the benefits above but the most obvious benefit of most of the changes was more space for the page and less for the browser widgets which are always there taking up space but not used all that often when compared to the actual page content: "Everything should be made as simple as possible but no simpler". We're only just now reaching the "simple as possible" point.

Now I can't support my mother since I will be unable to tell her over the phone exactly which menu number and position to use.

What language do you speak that uses numbers instead of words? What's wrong with "click Firefox button in top left and click options on the right side of the menu"? Even if she's blind, the screen reader should still allow her to figure it out.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[cavebison]

unwelcome changes in the UI with Firefox 4

I agree about the URL bar, but a plugin kinda fixes that. However there's nothing wrong with FF4 UI - except the status bar, but again I got that back with a plugin. Thank god for plugin devs.

This is my FF4 UI. What's so wrong about that?
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/4374/ffui.gif

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[js_sebastian]

I hardly use bookmarks anymore because I can just start typing and the page I am looking for pops up in the drop down bar 99% of the time.

That's nice. Sounds like it would be great as a bookmark search field. When I start typing in a URL in a URL bar, I'd like for it to start showing me the URLs that start with what I typed, not any page that I visited previously that has the word I typed on it.

It's not any page that I visited previously that has the word I typed on it. It's just in the url or page title.

By the way, if a post discussing a "moron bar" and calling the firefox developers a "bunch of idiots" is modded +5 insightful, that is a pretty glaring failure of moderation.

No, you're just in the minority when it comes to liking the idiot firefox developers who shoved the moron bar down people's throats.

Moderation is not an opinion poll. There is no -1 Disagree modifier, nor a +1 Agree, unless moderators are abusing their role. Regardless of what you think of firefox and its developers, calling people morons is not a constructive contribution to the discussion, any more than writing micro$oft with the dollar sign or comparing everyone and his grandmother to hitler (is this a meta-godwin?).

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[TheSpoom]

Google could decide to move their Mozilla money to the Chrome team right now (and frankly, I'm shocked that they haven't already).

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[jwhitener]

What sites are you seeing a decline in Firefox use on? Our community college web site from March 2010 to now had about 16,000,000 visits, with a very steady 30% using Firefox.

Re:Soon it may not even matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

The money Google pays Mozilla, is because Mozilla make Google the default search engine for Firefox, and it is a small slice of the revenue Google makes from ad clicks from searches made from the search bar or start page.

Sure Google could stop this money, but they currently have a contract with Mozilla, so they would be in breach of contract, but it could also be construed as being evil. Google doesn't really care which browser people use so long as it supports open web standards which they need for their products.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Tridus]

Because they aren't allowed to, and trying to do so specifically doesn't work.

I disagree strongly....

[mseeger]

I honestly don't understand that insane schedule the Firefox is taking. Patches for a softwareare fine, even if they occur often as long as they don't impact handling or functionality.

But it is my impression, that the new Firefox versions come out just for the sake of new versions. With the speed webmasters are adopting new technology, a one version every year would be fine.

You don't update any software in the enterprise twice a year (or more often). This is just too expensive. It may be the right choice for the Firefox team ego, but it is 100% wong for an enterprise.

Yours, Martin

Re:I disagree strongly....

[Infernal Device]

Because Mozilla is looking at all the mindshare being stolen by Chrome and thinking: Damn! We need to be like them! They're being all quick and innovative and we're not!

Beyond that, I think they've just lost their fucking marbles.

Re:I disagree strongly....

[mseeger]

Looks like:

Chrome is winning market share, so let's take their greatest weakness and mimic it. But let's do it with a fraction of their ressources.

Re:I disagree strongly....

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

"With the speed webmasters are adopting new technology, a one version every year would be fine."

I think Mozilla would argue you've got cause and effect backwards here. How about "With the glacial pace that new technologies are becoming available in web browsers, webmasters don't bother with new technology".

I don't think this is as big of a deal as it sounds - my impression is that there has been a backlog of "new web technologies" waiting to be implemented in browsers (legally-free media formats for <audio> and <video> tags, css3 animations, websockets, webGL, etc.) but I suspect with a more rapid development pace for Firefox and Chrom(e|ium), the backlog will get cleared out fairly quickly and the pace of development will settle back down.

Otherwise, people seem to be throwing a fit mostly over the fact that Mozilla decided to stop using decimal points for version updates.

Re:I disagree strongly....

[mseeger]

The problem is not in version numbers but R&D ressources.....

Re:I disagree strongly....

[dzfoo]

>> my impression is that there has been a backlog of "new web technologies" waiting to be implemented in browsers (legally-free media formats for and tags, css3 animations, websockets, webGL, etc.) but I suspect with a more rapid development pace for Firefox and Chrom(e|ium), the backlog will get cleared out fairly quickly and the pace of development will settle back down.

Fine, so where are those new web technologies? Not in Firefox 5, that's sure. What we get is tabs on bottom, then on top, then on the title bar; missing status bar; the moronic single input field for all commands; point-and-click to get anything done--oh, now we type keywords to get anywhere; ever-moving menus; ever-changing preferences pane; extensions and downloads in tabs, no wait--on a new window, now back on a tab again (did we catch up with the Chrome look and feel?); and of course, the all-important major-version release number increment.

Yes, it does look like the Mozilla development team is right on top of that backlog of new web technologies that developers have been clamoring for.

        -dZ.

Re:I disagree strongly....

[JSombra]

With the glacial pace that new technologies are becoming available in web browsers, webmasters don't bother with new technology

Might be a valid argument, if FF was only browser out there or had a market share like IE did years ago so other browsers did not matter. But neither is the case.

There are two simple facts:

Web dev's generally will not implement some new tech until majority of browsers in use support it, because otherwise they will have to do two or more versions of everything they do (and we got tired of that YEARS ago)

Web dev's who do it for an actual living don't want to to spend all their time learning every single damn new tech that comes out, not only will their boss object to them having so much downtime but they have lives as well.

Anything new is going to spend a lot of time with amateurs, hobbiest's, 'geeks re-inventing the wheel' just to prove it can be done, who are quite happy to have something only working on one browser, before it will have wide scale uptake. So sure implement it, but there is no damn rush to get it out the door because majority of people will not be using those features for a long while

Just because the situation made it easy for Mozilla to push the web into the future once, it needs realize it cannot do it again and if it keeps trying the only likely future for the web will be one without Firefox in it

How about a car analogy...sure why not.

[geekmux]

"...claiming it makes their testing burden impossible. We're not convinced: we think Mozilla's decision is the right one for the Web itself.'"

Really? You think it's the right decision, huh?

Tell you what, how about I go around and change all unleaded gas over to leaded gas tomorrow, and YOU can work with your various manufacturers to figure out why YOUR make and model of car doesn't run right.

This is EXACTLY what Mozilla has done with their upgrade path (i.e. leaded gas). They've basically chosen to not give a shit about the very developers and coders(i.e. the car manufacturers) that have written thousands of plugins that helped put Firefox on the map and establish Mozilla.

Keep it up Mozilla. I don't care who you try and convince here, perception is reality, and right now the perception that your upgrade path WILL break the very features that make you rather unique in the browser world, will ultimately be your demise.

I've dealt with enough FF upgrades to know to research plugin compatibility before I upgrade, but it's still a pain in the ass even when I have to do it once every six months. I'll quit using FF altogether if that nightmare becomes a monthly battle.

Re:How about a car analogy...sure why not.

[TelavianX]

Exactly. I have worked in large IT groups where every upgrade like this comes with a huge amount of pain. We have to coordinate with all the vendors and make sure every upgrade goes smooth. We also have to test each app through formal processes. This all takes time and there is always that one app which fails and is critical. I always hated the "maintenance day" because there were problems galore.

Re:How about a car analogy...sure why not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact that it's more like adding an experimental CSS feature that enterprise apps aren't going to use. It's a minor update, chances are that it won't break rendering of anything. Firefox isn't a browser that breaks something EVERY SINGLE VERSION (IE).

Re:How about a car analogy...sure why not.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's an analogy so it is not "exactly" what mozilla have done. From 4 -> 5 all plugins will work. The UI is demonstrably more efficient now. Change sucks, I know, but I think you'll find color TVs aren't so bad

Re:How about a car analogy...sure why not.

[geekmux]

No, it's an analogy so it is not "exactly" what mozilla have done. From 4 -> 5 all plugins will work. The UI is demonstrably more efficient now. Change sucks, I know, but I think you'll find color TVs aren't so bad

And 3.6 -> 5?

Considering we're talking about a timeframe of less than 6 months, this is not uncommon to find, and in fact, probably still makes up the majority of FF user base.

And all the channels on the color TV just work when you turn them on. They surprisingly still work 6 months later too when you turn the same knob.

stupid new numbering

[Anonymous Coward]

* bad for remembering ... works wirh browser version 23? 45? 86?
* breaks plugins more easily (especially when the administrator is far away)
* more GUI changes are noticeable to the user and not always the best
* security updates yes, however I don't want new features all the time

I am a "long long" time private Mozilla user and I really think this new numbering system is the wrong way!

Standards might help

[softWare3ngineer]

If you have correctly followed commonly agreed upon standards how much of your application is really going to break? and like everyone else has said previous, they are small incremental changes not akin to the old paradigm of huge versions. you could also use a test suite and automate those tests. just some thoughts.

Re:Standards might help

[Xugumad]

It depends on various factors, but certainly there are subtle cases where layout suddenly stops doing what is expected, but both previous and new behavior are standards-compliant. There's also cases where the standard is nonsensical (for example, HTML 5 currently disallowed the maxlength attribute on number inputs, breaking backwards compatibility with HTML 4), and strictly following is impractical. Browser bugs introduced in the update are also a risk.

Re:Standards might help

[BitZtream]

So you've never dealt with the Mozilla code base I see.

If you want long term compat, you use the Frozen APIs ... thats what they say, not me. That in theory should me the API always functions as documented, even in future versions.

There are two problems with that, first ... the Frozen API is so limited that you can't do much without using non-frozen interfaces.

The second is ... a newly frozen API in FF4, will be depreciated and replaced with a new unfrozen API in FF5. Effectively making their 'frozen' API a lie.

Enterprise is wrong.

[faedle]

If a web-browser change causes a "mission-critical web app" to break, one of the words in "mission-critical web app" is a lie.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why thank you Mr. FireFox Developer. Please explain that to YOUR BANK when you try to transfer funds and it fails. I guess you want them to instead force you to download and install a Windows application to do your online banking since that would be so much more reliable...

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[faedle]

For the record, I don't even use Firefox. But I am a "web developer."

If your mission-critical web app is not standards-compliant, it's not a "web app."
If your mission-critical web app has not been adequately tested to be standards-compliant, you need to rethink the words "mission-critical" and apply either the right resources or rethink whether or not the app is truly "mission criticial."

And your argument is a straw man. USBank, the bank I use, has a web banking service that works in any browser I've ever used it in. Yes, even Opera Mini and the browser on my Android phone. So it can be done.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to believe that everyone making apps in a 10 000+ employee company is a god of coding ; I shure would like to live in your reality.

Let me break it down for you :

In 10 000 employees,
    5 000 are computer dinosaurs, secretaries and beancounters which still think Internet = e (With the yellow bar mind you!) and panic if anything changes.
    1 000 are computer "gods" but somehow are always lined up at the helldesk because "something happened to their machine"
    1 000 are nitpickers who report any tiny problem/upgrade as a "huge detriment to productivity" to :
    2 000 managers, trying to justify their jobs by trying various random management project/theories while slashing the IT budget and reforming every project in sight.
    200 upper managers who can only think of : the production environment is all that counts, it must run at any cost and any downtime means someone has to be fired.
    700 normal users who dont give a fuck about what browser they get because they have a job to do.
    50 users who in turn ask for : FireFox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Lynx, Wordperfect because each one of those is better than sliced bread.
    50 coders working on average 6-8 project each.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

If a web-browser change causes a "mission-critical web app" to break, one of the words in "mission-critical web app" is a lie.

We don't live in a perfect world. Most IT developers I know have a backlog that goes pages. Everything can't be fixed at once, and certainly everything can't be fixed in 3 months. This is idealism versus reality.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[dzfoo]

>> And your argument is a straw man. USBank, the bank I use, has a web banking service that works in any browser I've ever used it in. Yes, even Opera Mini and the browser on my Android phone. So it can be done.

You are precluding the possibility of one of those fast-release-cycle releases of Firefox breaking the USBank web site for no apparent reason. Of course, this could never happen, but if it did, it must be the bank's mission-critical web app "not adequately tested to be standards-complaint." Never mind that it passed all tests on the previous version released just 6 weeks prior.

The real world is a complex and uncertain place.

          -dZ.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[toriver]

No: If mission-critical web app works in browser X and breaks in browser Y, the users will switch to browser X so that they can use the app. Browser Y has then become a liability to those users. Firefox is not a girlfriend, it can be very easily dumped.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[Changa_MC]

I suspect his point was that anything that does not run in $WEB_BROWSER is, by definition, not a web-app. Perhaps calling your proprietary 3rd party app a web-app helps sales, but it's still a lie. OTOH, even Ubuntu has LTS, because no corporation should ever buy into software with a lifespan of less than 18 months, ever.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, your argument is correct. It is also utterly irrelevant in real live.

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[BitZtream]

So if the web browser previously support INPUT fields, and those go away in the next version, you're telling me that someone is lying?

Are you stupid?

Re:Enterprise is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

So true....

As a web developer I write for specs and standards (with the glue that is required). If I wrote a IE / FF / Chrome / Safari only web site or app I wouldn't have a job. If you need a plug in to be "enterprise" then you need a new IT department and / or vendor.

Seriously this thread is retarded to anyone who works in the trenches of enterprise web apps.....

Ars Technica and Peter Bright...

[mschaffer]

Ars Technica and Peter Bright are entitled to their opinion.
Keep in mind that the Enterprise IT managers are getting hammered on both ends: Keeping up to date with the rapid development of new programs and simultaneously ensuring that everything works as it should. I suppose what's good for the "Web itself" is not necessarily good for the Enterprise.

Solution: Just ask the Enterprise to go away???

[mikery1]

From the article:

Corporate users who can't update their browsers because of some persnickety internal application they have to use, but who then go and use that same browser on the public Internet. By unleashing these obsolete browsers on the world at large, these corporate users make the Web worse for everyone. Web developers have to target the lowest common denominator, and the corporations are making that lowest common denominator that much lower.

And the best way to resolve that is to alienate the enterprise even more . . .???

At least at the end of the article, the author discusses having enterprise releases and internal updates. But the kiddies running this show need to realize that the big boy adults (i.e. the enterprise) are going to be the ones that drive the significant majority of sites/work on the web. Just saying, "oh go away I don't want to deal with you" only leads us right back to supporting IE6.

In Summary:

[Swanktastic]

"We disagree that Mozilla has stopped caring about the enterprise. They never cared about the enterprise."

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[chiark]

Aaah, so it's Google's fault. I should have known... "Don't be evil" - pah!

This is so slow release

[handsonsites]

Chrome is now entering a popular stage while Firefox getting low level popular in this web world. So Firefox have to take more improvement to stand in a standard position.

I'll wait for the next version

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'll wait till version 7 in a few weeks time, or maybe version 8, or perhaps I should wait for version 9 which won't be long after that. Sod it, forget Firefox, I'm going to look for a more stable browser instead - both in version numbers and code.

IE 6?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought The Enterprise (at least in the US) was stuck on IE6 primarily for this reason?

No, Mozilla is wrong.

[gamrillen]

I worked for a large corporation on a team that deployed software to ~50,000 desktops and ~10,000 servers. Whenever we wanted to deploy a new software package (Via Microsoft SCCM or Group Policies) it was a huge undertaking, even for the simpler applications. At minimum, it takes at least a month to develop a plan for and deploy an application, and that was just on our end. If it was something that involved websites, and/or browser plugins (Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, etc) then it would take even longer because testing would have to be done on every internal web based application. That alone took several months and a dedicated project team. Once the software change was ready for deployment, it took a week to develop the scripting and deployment policies. After that, it was deployed to a pilot group for two weeks, and then a test group for a week. After that, it could be put into production. However, if there was the slightest hitch along the way, it could set us back several weeks. Enterprises move VERY slowly on their software deployments. If Mozilla is interested at all in keeping Firefox in the enterprise world, they're going to have to slow down, or at least release an "Enterprise" version so that deployment teams can keep up. Six week release cycles are just going to cause folks like me, who manage software deployments, to stop deploying it at all.

Re:No, Mozilla is wrong.

[mseeger]

There would be an easy solution for Firefox: They have a forefront version that changes as often as the dev team likes and a stable version that will be supported for a long time. But no, everyone has to switch to the version compiled last night in a hurry....

Re:No, Mozilla is wrong.

[tbannist]

I'm not really a big fan of the new release number schedule, but frankly, from reading your description of how stuff works at your corporation, it sounds like your IT department is run by idiots. It takes IT a week to write scripts to release one new piece of software? No wonder you can't get anything done, you need to invest heavily in modernizing your IT practices. It should take minutes not weeks to script a release. If you can't do it in minutes, either you're using the wrong tools or you're doing it wrong.

Re:No, Mozilla is wrong.

[ElVee]

You totally missed the point. The actual deployment takes a few mouse clicks and the application is on its way to the enterprise. It's everything you have to coordinate beforehand that takes all the time. You have to test plugins, internal and external webapps and a zillion different things that users use a web browser for. You'd be surprised at what all has to be tested.

The actual deployment has to be planned. Migrate user settings, GPO updates, cleaning up previous versions, making sure you save and restore every little stupid thing. You have to create help desk and field services documentation (sometimes in multiple languages) and then train the helldesk idiots.

You have to coordinate back end webapp server changes. You have to test those changes.

You have to plan and schedule your pilot test. You have to gather feedback from your pilot users and possibly make changes and re-pilot.

THEN you can go production, and watch in amazement when the excrement hits the fan and a million-and-one things you never though of crop up.

Re:No, Mozilla is wrong.

[gamrillen]

First you have to target your subset of computers and/or users, write the deployment (could be anything from ten minutes to several hours), test your deployment with several various scenarios in a VM environment, and have your setup peer reviewed. Following that you must write a MOP (Method of Procedure), have THAT peer reviewed, file a change control request and wait for the request to be approved by several folks (up to the VP level at my former company). Next, you would have to wait for the change control conference call (twice per week) and have the final approval done by change control. Finally, you would then schedule the change for the next available change window (twice per week) and implement the change. All of that can take at least a week, easily. It has nothing to do with an infrastructure that isn't modern (Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft SCCM 2007), but more to do with making sure testing is up to snuff, your change is done the best way possible, and that everyone and their brother knows it's coming.

Re:No, Mozilla is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of your comment? Mozilla is right. They are not focusing on enterprises. You chose Firefox and that's your problem.

Re:No, Mozilla is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's a little overboard, but I guess I'd prefer it to state government's method of forcing major upgrades with no testing at all.

On a side note, it's nice that Slashdot finally unbroke their site so it would work with IE7 again. It was such a pain in the ass to have to use FF4 just to get anything readable out of a fucking news aggregator.

Need an LTS version

[airfoobar]

Ubuntu has it right: have a version that is bringing in through new features and tries new stuff but has a short lifetime, and also a long-time support version that provides stability for those who need it.

No, Mozilla's delusional

[Tridus]

This is not good for the Enterprise. It's not good for Firefox or Mozilla, which is already losing marketshare and isn't going to benefit from pissing off very large users. It's not even good for "the web" despite their nebulous and poorly supported claim that it is.

In reality this is some blowhards like Asa making poor decisions and then trying to defend them when people point out that it's a poor decision. Normal users don't particularly benefit from more big downloads that break things more often and will sometimes get a new gee-whiz HTML 5 feature out the door a bit sooner (which then won't be adopted by any websites until a couple of versions of FF later because of the lag time required to, you know, develop stuff). Enterprise users clearly suffer because keeping up with this requires throwing testing out the window and will effectively just reinforce the idea that you should stick with IE (where Microsoft actually wants your business and doesn't give you a middle finger).

If driving people away from Firefox is "good for the web", then I guess this is good for the web. But here in reality it's good for IE and Chrome.

Re:No, Mozilla's delusional

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Enterprise isn't being wholly honest with ANYONE here. Do they do "long" testing cycles with "Patch Tuesday" updates? Most of them DON'T. It's intrinsically NOT much different with those- they're just changing the version numbering scheme and little more. The version matters little when they make major updates in functionality like they did with Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2007 SP1 (Literally ripping the old code out and placing a whole new version in it's place...).

Re:No, Mozilla's delusional

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even good for "the web" despite their nebulous and poorly supported claim that it is.

Yeah, that claim made me laugh my ass off.

The easiest way to get users to start clicking on shit and thus installing Trojans, is to target a newly updated/changed UI. When they don't know where things should be and what they should look like, they'll start clicking on damn near anything.

Malware authors everywhere are drooling over this massive social engineering opportunity.

Re:No, Mozilla's delusional

[Tridus]

We actually DO have test cycles with Office updates, because they've been known to break some of our legacy Access/automation apps, which thankfully we're not creating new ones of.

But with IE patch tuesday updates? Nope, because Microsoft is really good about not changing how things work in those whenever possible. They don't randomly stuff breaking changes to the Javascript engine in a security update.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[c0d3g33k]

I realize your statement was intended to be sarcastic, but a responsible user has to take at least *some* responsibility for his/her software. That includes actually deciding for themselves whether or not to accept an upgrade after determining whether their favorite plugins are compatible with the new version. Given the fact that Mozilla users are the recipients of fruits of the hard work of many people and are asked for no compensation of any kind, complaining about a delay in plugin compatibility just comes across as entitled whining. Don't upgrade and wait until your plugins are compatible, or lend a hand and help get them ready. Otherwise STFU.

Oh, think what you want, your still wrong.

[Shivetya]

Write all the blogs you want and it won't change the facts.

Firefox is giving up a market because some of the their people have an attitude. An attitude which screams, if you don't like it your the one who is wrong.

Be honest, if your not going to try there are many others who will and then you can keep pouting and stamping your feet all the while wondering why other browsers are taken more seriously. You can also explain to other Open source developers why you decided to give the rest a bad name.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[wolrahnaes]

I run all of these extensions and have been using FF5 since it became available on the beta channel. No problems.

Rarely does a plugin or extension actually break with a new release. The problem is that Mozilla's addon system allows the developers to be idiots and set a max version even if it's not needed. Max version, to me, is something to be set once you know it breaks rather than preemptively.

Not sure what is so hard...

[MoldySpore]

Considering 5.0 is mostly just a newer revision of 4.0, how can testing be that hard? We have Firefox 4 deployed on all our computers (over 5000). We will test it in a lab environment and then push out the new version with our deployment software to all machines at once. What exactly is hard about that? I suppose it would be hard if you didn't have something like patchlink or an equivalent software to do mass deployments. But then again that isn't really a Firefox issue is it?

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[Volante3192]

Exactly.

The way people are bellyaching around here, you'd think Microsoft Patch Tuesdays cause nuclear apocalypses every month. Any change in software can cause unexpected results, but if you think 4.0 to 5.0 is anything more than what MS does monthly, what's wrong with you?

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[ElVee]

I could press a button right now and have FF5 on 40k desktops by midnight. I'd lose my job, but I could do it.

Testing isn't hard, it just takes a lot of time and money. We have to CERTIFY exactly which of the several hundred internal and external webapps FireFox works with, and which it doesn't, and then create copious documentation in several languages for help desk and field personnel. We have to plan and manage GPO settings for dozens of different groups. If code changes have to be made on servers to support the new browser, that has to be coordinated across the enterprise.

There's more to it than browsing to a few websites and then letting the code fly.

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[Ryanrule]

The bigger issue is they cut off support for 4.0.

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[JSombra]

Considering 5.0 is mostly just a newer revision of 4.0, how can testing be that hard?

Because for many it not the testing of the actual browser or it's add's that's the issue (though for many others it is) it the testing of all the web apps that the browser interacts with that is the real time eater (and time is money) And that's before we even begin to cost any actual redevelopment costs required

Minor versions upgrades generally are just security bug fixes so forth (same as MS patch Tuesdays), rarely seen a web app affected, testing required is generally minimal for web apps. Major versions can and do change lots, including rendering, testing has to be a lot more detailed

By no longer having update types clearly defined, all updates must now be treated as major, because while 4-5 was minor there are no guarantees 6>7 or 7>8 will be and because they are EOLing the previous version straight away if a major exploit that affects multiple versions is discovered you will have to upgrade straight away or be exposed, because Mozilla will not patch versions that might be only a few months old

So choice for enterprises is simple, have a massive non stop ongoing testing cycle massively boosting the TCO to maintain Firefox compatibility or drop it totally.

To anyone with an ounce of common sense the choice will be obvious

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[Volante3192]

Then don't take the shortcut of looking at the number and instead look at the changes.

Or stick with IE6...seems to work for a lot of companies...

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[dhavleak]

We will test it in a lab environment and then push out the new version with our deployment software to all machines at once.

But if your testing fails, what is your recourse? Your scenario assumes your tests will always pass!

The app / plugin that broke could be authored in-house or externally -- fixing it (and deploying its fix) could take time. Do you run with an unpatched browser while waiting on that fix, or do you patch the browser (to stay secure) but break the app?

And what about having to do that all over again in 3 months.

This is why security fixes aren't co-mingled with features. Your above assumption of "tests will always pass" becomes a reasonable assumption when that's the case. That's what Mozilla / you / Peter Bright aren't getting. Mozilla in particular aren't just saying they'll mix features with security fixes -- they're saying it'll happen every 3 months. Is there even a roadmap for what your browser will have evolved into, a mere 1.25 years from now (i.e. 5 releases from now)?

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[dhavleak]

you'd think Microsoft Patch Tuesdays cause nuclear apocalypses every month

The security fixes in patch Tuesday don't contain new features. The assumption is generally made that when you run your monthly tests, the tests will pass, and then you will deploy the patches. That assumption fails when security patches are mixed with new features, mixed with ambiguous roadmap a mere 6+ months down the road.

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[dhavleak]

Then don't take the shortcut of looking at the number and instead look at the changes.

I can't understand these responses!

What if you look at the changelist and see a major breaking change? Or discover one in your testing?

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anyone championing the enterprise perspective is claiming that the problem is in deploying the new version. The problem is ALWAYS in making sure that's a wise thing to do. I'm glad you're proud of having patchlink on-hand, but we all have very powerful tools for doing colossally stupid things very quickly. It's our challenge to use those tools to do otherwise.

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya the people who think it is simple to roll out browser updates in Enterprise are just plain crazy or have never been in such situation.
The new browser may not break anything but even if breaks ONE thing its over. Not to say if that one thing involves payroll calculation or
accessing customer information. Firefox had found a nice niche in enterprises. They were ditching IE7 in favor of FF but this is all about to
change now. Testing and supporting a new browser every 3 months is just impossible.

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[omnichad]

Except that Mozilla was adding/changing features on every point release. They really needed to change the numbering to match what they were actually doing.

Re:Not sure what is so hard...

[jwhitener]

I could press a button right now and have FF5 on 40k desktops by midnight. .

Well since you have that control, I assume you can wait any length of time you choose. Web standards evolve slowly, and Firefox builds to web standards. Even if Mozilla releases a new version every week, there shouldn't be any reason for you to have to upgrade. Firefox 3.6 still works fine to browse the web.

I'm not sure what level of control you have, but we have local plugin repositories for the various Firefox versions. I have Firefox 3.6 and 4.0 running on the same computer, each with their appropriate plugins. You can't lock your users down to using a version of Firefox that has been tested?

Gist of the article

[Nerzhul]

Browser version numbers are completely irrelevant. It's new features or changing behavior which is causing problems for Enterprises because they require a complete regression test of all internal web tools (in theory at least).

So even if FF5 would have been called FF4.0.1.1 the new features (CSS animations, more HTML5 support, various internal changes) would mandate a thorough regression test. You can't blindly roll out a new browser version just because the version number was incremented by 0.0.1 instead of 1.

Btw the FF3.6 branch received more than security fixes, e.g. changes to the way plugins are executed. The new version numbering simply highlights the faulty Enterprise processes.

Now, if Enterprises would simply code against standards there'd be much less problems in migrating...

Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess Firefox wants to give more market share to Chrome.

Things will settle down eventually.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once HTML5 is fully completed and browsers have been optimised to hardware limits there will only be bugs to be fixed. IE6 gave some stability but only due to HTML4 being frozen for a long time. Firefox is only 7 years old compared to the 20 year old age of the web. It needs a good proper critisism do squeeze out the bugs.
Chrome is even more immature due to weaker extensions APIs but still accepted by home users. Safari and Opera have varying release cycles but are more niche in market share.

IE is the most conservative of web browsers, and it shows.

version masturbation

[jirka]

This is "version masturbation." There seem to be lots of people who all they do is upgrade their computer all the time. Then they are somewhat unhappy when a new version comes out once every few years rather than once every few months or days. If you don't actually use your computer, then yes, upgrading every few months is fine. If all you use your computer for is browsing porn, then yes, it is fine. But if you really don't care what version you have, you just want it to keep working, then this is nonsense.

Did anyone notice that Win XP is still very popular, and not just among businesses. Still it is the most used system. Why? Because why change if it works. The problem with upgrading is that it will inevitably lead to something breaking. If the computer is a tool, you don't want it to update automatically all the time.

Why is TeX/LaTeX still heavily used (e.g. in Physics, CS and Math community, the community it was intended for). It is not because a new version comes out every year. In fact, a new major version has really not come out in 17 years. Nobody is complaining. There is a LaTeX3 project, but it has been around for more than 20 years. A new version is not likely to come out. OK, some new macros have appeared in the meantime, but you don't have to use them. In fact, I know someone who still uses plain TeX to write papers (and uses unix "mail"), and is very productive with them (I have gotten him to use LaTeX for some of our collaborations though, and he does sometimes start "pine" for mail to send/receive an attachment).

But TeX/LaTeX is used by the scientific community that uses it as a tool. If a new version comes out, it will be years before it would get adopted.

The upside of updating to new firefox is minimal. Actually one can't really see much of a difference over all the firefox versions really. There are very few websites that won't work even with very old firefox. The downside is work interruption.

Re:version masturbation

[rtobyr]

Just like when Slackware went from version 4 straight to version 7 just to keep up with Fedora's version numbers.

Re:version masturbation

[jirka]

Sun did even better with solaris ...

And now MS office went straight to 365 ... it'll be hard to find easily recognizable numbers that are higher ... Hmm wait ... they actually have gone down, they had 2010 just before. Isn't 365 2010?

Re:version masturbation

[jirka]

I put a less than sign between 365 and 2010, but slashdot ate it

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[c0d3g33k]

there is a lot of *poorly written yet expensive* software that requires a specific web browser version. Cognos springs to mind. if you have a later browser it may not work and you have to buy a later version of the software which is very expensive. and companies use a lot of this type of software. cognos, web logic and lots of others.

There, fixed that for you. Given that the vast majority (ie. almost all of it) of web-based software, much of it quite sophisticated, does *not* require a specific browser, let alone a specific browser *version* and works just fine, this speaks volumes about the poor software engineering skills of the vendors in question. Not to mention the questionable judgment of the customers that pay for this expensive brittleware.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Culture20]

I have rolled back to 4.0.1 and will move to 5 once all of those things work.

you should roll back to 3.6.18. 4.0.1 has some sec vulns: http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox.html#firefox5

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[Prosthetic_Lips]

I have AT&T UVerse, and when I upgraded to FF5, I got a "your browser is not certified to work, please upgrade to FF3+, IE...". I clicked the "don't tell me this any more and try to work" (and it does, of course).

So, it's not just enterprises, it is the websites that are trying to be pretty forward-thinking.

The author, and Mozilla, are who are utterly wrong

[whitroth]

I realize that all the k3wl l33t k1ds gotta have the latest, n33t3st features... even if they don't mean a goddamned thing. The other 95% of us, the ones that made Firefox break IE's monopoly, want a stable, reliable browser that works 99.99% of the time (let's not talk about java webpages). The last upgrade or two - and I'm on 3.6.17 - has broken things that used to work seamlessly, like streaming media, or my stupid webmail.

Fork Mozilla - give us the equivalent of fedora and CentOS. Then all the pre-born adopters can scream over all their crashes, and debug if tor the rest of us, who just want to browse the web.

                        mark "maybe I should look at konqueror...."

Enterprises aren't self-contained microverses

[rtobyr]

If my enterprise did not interact with other enterprises, then faster version numbers (be they major or minor changes) can be coped with. The problem is that we interact with other enterprises. My ADP timecard program still doesn't support Firefox 4. My Cisco Scan Safe proxy service *just* announced support for Firefox 4. My AT&T online trouble-ticket software is browser based, as is my internal Numara Track It trouble-ticket software. My customers (judges) are required by the state to use a browser based application for calculating child support rulings. All of these things have to work with my browser, and if one of my partners decides that Firefox 5 isn't supported while Mozilla isn't supporting Firefox 4, then I have a problem that drives me back to Internet Explorer.

Re:Enterprises aren't self-contained microverses

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Avaya management interfaces still don't support anything older than FF3.6 and IE6, Juniper Netscreen management interfaces don't even pretend to load in IE9 and that list goes on.

Enterprise Web Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but the Enterprise should NEVER be piloted, nor any systems controlled by web applications. Especially when Romulans have been ramping up the use of FIresheep to steal Enterprise apps' session cookies. Next thing you know, even the Klingons will be able to remotely control the Enterprise.

Too funny.

[Beelzebud]

Yeah if only Firefox were just more like IE6, then corporate users would love it!

Re:Too funny.

[xororand]

I wish I had mod points. +5. Funny.

Re:Too funny.

[Darinbob]

Why do people keep thinking we have only two alternatives, archaic and buggy IE6 versus rapidly changing and unstable FF27?

dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised to see many IT shops starting to ignore Firefox altogether. By dictating things like this to others without regard for the true impact ( technical / financial ) they will certainly find people telling them to just eat shit. In fact... eat shit Mozilla. You make life more difficult, not easier... which I think is the entire point of programming and technology in general. Which you clearly missed somewhere along the line.

Nuh uh.

[geminidomino]

Nope, definitely Firefox being wrong. Again. It wasn't bad enough when they decided to shit all over the UI a la Apple, Google, and Canonical. That pisses me off more than the broken plugins, actually.

Honestly, what is it with open source lately? OpenOffice, we saw coming as soon as Oracle got their tentacles on it, sure. But Firefox, Gnome, KDE... has Apple started offering free flunkies for usability testing or something?

When you start making Microsoft look good, you're fucking up.

Common response: blame the user

[fizzup]

The millennium bridge sways because people are walking incorrectly.

You're holding your phone wrong.

A common response for engineers and software developers is to blame the users for doing it wrong. Usually the users win. No matter what, though, the developers lose.

Re:Common response: blame the user

[thetoadwarrior]

Yes sticking with IE 6 for over a decade is a tremendously stupid move. MS didn't even want that so there is only people to blame is the user.

Free Software Philosophy

[Frankie70]

The customer is always wrong.

Re:Free Software Philosophy

[toriver]

"There is no customer."
    - Gneo, The FOSS Matrix

Re:Free Software Philosophy

[Culture20]

The customers are IBM and Google. IBM is complaining, and Google's cheering on the Chrome-envy since it's hurting Firefox. Google has bigger pockets, so IBM loses out (along with all of us leechers).

What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

And who's call was it to change version numbers? And who was the asshole who told Enterprise users (paraphrasing) "We don't give a shit about you."

Mozilla went out of its way to pick a fight. And that one statement right there is all it takes. It's not what Mozilla changed. It's the fact that they dumped a codebase on its ass after 3 months. That's not credibility building. That's saying "We have no clue how to plan or beta test our products properly."

Putting those two things together is, in no way, "the right [decision] for the Web itself." It's fanboy smoke blowing up CIO asses. If it's so right, why is it that Opera, Safari, and Chrome are not on the hot seat? Chrome undergoes changes at a super-rapid pace automatically, but I hear nobody really screaming about it. Two reasons, really. First, it just works, which can be said of FF, but it is not an aura they present especially when they have to drop support after only 3 months of a major release. Second, Google has never said, "F#$% you, CIOs!" Google has made it clear that they want to be the one stop shop for cloud for business.

The question is, what the hell does Mozilla want? I don't see a vision. They're worse than UI devs who argue over who's system is better, forgetting what their goals actually are.

At Mozilla, all I see is mismanagement. They can't control their code. They can't control their staff. And they are continually lagging behind all competition, which is especially sad given their rock star performance not too long ago, with social buzz propelling a large install base.

They don't do anything news worthy anymore, except piss people off. MS learned how to change that, and most CIOs are excited about IE8/9 as a real evolution. Chrome continues to innovate and add support. Opera is continually pushing the mobile envelope.

Not only were they assholes, but the question quickly flies back into Mozilla's face, "What have you done for me lately?" That mobile app? It's a joke. Slow, bulky, and not appealing. It is not even comparable to other mobile browsers like Opera or Dolphin.

Nobody really cares about Mozilla anymore. And those that do are finding it harder to justify using it. This isn't about what's "right for the web", this is about a tech that's outlived its prime, by a team that's outlived its usefulness.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[Billly Gates]

"And who was the asshole who told Enterprise users (paraphrasing) "We don't give a shit about you.""

That would be Asa. A little FYI he is not part of the PR department, nor is he authorised to speak for Mozilla in any way. If Mozilla has any sense they would fire this guy ASAP. He even posted on slashdot and ... paraphrased "Please go back to IE 8. I beg you too! ..." to someone whining how he convinced management to side with him to upgrade to Firefox, and Asa just put his job on the line.

Well F*** you too. To me the biggest blow is not the shoddy releases nor the promise to say corporate America you are shit out of the creek, but his attitude. It is one thing to question privately whether to support corporate users. It is another to bash them when many of its I.T. professionals are swinging their bat out of their way to get your product in.

I no longer use Firefox as a result of all of this and they are turning into irrevelence. They can't change the web for open standards unless corporate users use something besides IE. Well, there solution is to say fuck them. There reply will say screw you too. The webmasters will notice an increase in IE usage and ignore html 5. ... not very bright Asa.

Now if they fire Asa and apologize and offer an acitive directory tool and maybe an enteprise edition of Firefox that is updated every 6 months all would be forgiven. But, a lot of damage has been going on from this and Firefox itself is in trouble. Quality is very low and it is the bottom since Firefox 3.6.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

give chrome noscript and I'm done with FF

no, notScript isn't noscipt

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[westlake]

The question is, what the hell does Mozilla want? I don't see a vision.

How can it have a vision of its own?

Mozilla remains, for all practical purposes, bound hand and foot to Google:

The receivable from this search engine provider represented 71% and 80% of the December 32, 2009 and outstanding receivables respectively.

Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements: Note 9 - Concentration of Risks

There were two zingers in this month's news from Net Applications:

The iPad has 0.92% share of all browsing. In other words, the iPad has 53 times the usage share of its nearest competitor.

When Microsoft decided not to support XP for Internet Explorer 9, they narrowed the front for the browser wars to Windows 7. We've been tracking this strategy ever since, and in May, Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 reached 12.2% worldwide (including custom editions). In the U.S., Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 averaged 17% usage share during the last three days of May.

Headlines

Firefox, all versions, all platforms: 22%
IE 6 10% IE 8: 31% IE 9: 4%
Chrome 11 10%

Firefox is the new legacy browser, the browser for platforms in decline.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[mbrinkm]

At Mozilla, all I see is mismanagement. They can't control their code. They can't control their staff. And they are continually lagging behind all competition, which is especially sad given their rock star performance not too long ago, with social buzz propelling a large install base.

I agree with your observations whole heartily and it feels like a giant fuck you to me and I would assume to a lot of people that have been praising and endorsing Firefox for years.

Oh well; on to something else.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about chrome? I think they update automatically AND every few months a new version.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[Darinbob]

But Asa is the Firefox product manager. He's not just some "look ma I'm helping the OSS movement!" dev spouting off his mouth. His vision is the Firefox vision. At least until he gets fired.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[Billly Gates]

"But Asa is the Firefox product manager"

Wow, that says a lot and explains a lot. Maybe he is defensive because he feels he is about to get canned? This would surely explain things and lets Mozilla does the right thing. Maybe someone else can save the project? Either way the damage maybe irreversible to those in the enterprise now as according to comments here and in ars technica show Chrome is now prefered if IE is hated in organizations.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And who was the asshole who told Enterprise users (paraphrasing) "We don't give a shit about you.""

That would be Asa.

So Asa's last name is Hole?

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[jalefkowit]

At Mozilla, all I see is mismanagement. They can't control their code. They can't control their staff. And they are continually lagging behind all competition, which is especially sad given their rock star performance not too long ago, with social buzz propelling a large install base.

You say that like it's something new, but it has been ever thus. Firefox, for instance, wasn't created because of any genius master plan. It was created because a couple of programmers got sick of riding on the failboat that was the Mozilla Suite and built Firefox on their own initiative as a fast, lean alternative. (One of them, Ben Goodger, tells the story here.)

That skunk-works project proved wildly successful, of course, and Mozilla, newly spun out from Netscape, was smart enough to jump on it and adopt it as their own. But they've never really been able to drive Firefox to the next level, ceding technical leadership to Google and Chrome. Moreover, all of the developers who originally created Firefox have left for greener pastures. (One of them, Dave Hyatt, went to Apple to create Safari, which quite conspicuously rejected Mozilla's Gecko engine in favor of the then-practically-unused KHTML engine, which Hyatt and Apple would evolve into the now-wildly-popular WebKit.) Not to mention that they don't really have any other hits besides Firefox -- Thunderbird has been stagnant for ages, and Firefox Mobile is way behind WebKit in the mobile space.

In other words, the one hit they have is a hit they lucked into, and their stewardship of even that has been a bit rudderless. So it shouldn't be a surprise to see them steering erratically now.

Re:What is the purpose of Mozilla?

[EdIII]

The webmasters will notice an increase in IE usage and ignore html 5. ... not very bright Asa.

If it were only that simple. Every single enterprise website and project that we have developed on, it has been clear from the beginning that we needed to support all major browsers. Period.

My bank the other day made a change that broke transfer capability in the latest version of Chrome. I called figuring it was an account problem and they stated they don't support Chrome and to try FF.

Well that is unacceptable. It really is unacceptable to any serious business that wants a working web presence that can not support the majority of all of their current customers browsers plus future ones. Incompatibility is not an option.

By itself, it generates customer support calls time and time and time again. The true costs of not supporting an browser are more than one might think.

From the consumer's perspective they don't care about *your* problems. Telling them you don't support something and they need to change a browser does not always go over well. Especially when you just up and "decide" that you don't support IE 7 anymore at all.

Devs that make websites that say anywhere on it that the site is best viewed in Firefox are amateurs at best, sadistic jerks at worst, and clearly have no business sense.

It really just comes down to "sucks to be you". That's the current situation of a web developer that has to make some pretty complex sites.

All the devs out there need to nut up and just make your website and all the code compatible in 95% of all browsers. Which does mean you can ditch IE 6. It's percentage is so small that you can safely ignore it.

It's hard work, it takes skill, but it can be done.

So enterprise can just ignore FF and go with IE8/9 or Chrome. Webmasters don't have the option you are thinking that they do. Not if they are true professionals delivering complex websites that just need to "work".

Believe me, I hate it more than anybody that the ass clowns in *all* of the browser companies can't get along and render a document the same way. That's life. *sigh*. I just have to work harder and make sure we have IE7/8/9, Chrome, FF whatever, Opera, & Safari covered.

This issue is way overblown

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all let me say that Mozilla's decision to change their version numbering in this way was extremely foolish, I'm not defending them in any way.

On the other hand. Enterprises are getting their panties in a bunch for no reason. The update from Firefox 4 to 5 included no real major changes. In all ways except the version number, it is just a minor release, similiar to any small security or other patch for IE, and unlikely to change any major functionality. Any system/network administrator worth his salt should figure this out real easy by just reading the patch notes or just blogs and discussion pages such as this one. Do system admins also get upset when IE get's a little patch on patch tuesday? Do they run a full test suite and acceptance test for every minor version of IE?

Deployment Options

[jdkc4d]

In a university environment, we tend to have to pick and choose the frequency at which we release updates to software. We had not yet even finished testing 4, and now 5 is out, and 4 won't be getting updates. No harm done, but there could be a situation where we deploy a version of Firefox, and then cannot update that version for quite some time. Maybe a couple of months, maybe a semester. It gets interesting when your users see the media hype about the new version and want the new version, but we can't go to it yet. If Mozilla is going to follow Google's chrome like release cycle, then I do wish they would quiet their releases down a bit.

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[CastrTroy]

Of course, it would be completely impossible to install 2 versions of a single browser on a single machine. Oh, wait it isn't. If these companies really have that much of a reliance on old browsers, maybe they should figure out a way to keep the version they want that works with apps that don't support newer browsers, and then just use newer browsers for the rest.

There we go

[Billly Gates]

Wow, that really convinced us to implement Firefox at work, by saying we are all wrong. NOT!

This is simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me? or does anyone else feel Mozilla could just form a new arm of paid support for Enterprise for older versions?

Seriously, why punk them off? There's no need, it's a friggin web browser for crying out loud, this isn't Astrophysics simulations or anything.
Just start a new business arm, charge Enterprise up the wazoo (something they aren't comfortable without), and use the funds to continue support and dev of new releases.

I swear they did this on purpose to see how many high-end whiners would fall out of the Enterprise woodwork.

Until i restarted my browser,it skipped 2 versions

[Anonymous Coward]

with an ugly bar and incompatible plugins after restart.

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a lot of expensive software that requires a specific web browser version. Cognos springs to mind. if you have a later browser it may not work and you have to buy a later version of the software which is very expensive. and companies use a lot of this type of software. cognos, web logic and lots of others.

You are paying a lot of money for software that runs in a browser, and they don't update it for the latest version of supported browsers? I don't know if the problem is that your vendor is incompetent, or that you buy from them anyway. I do know that this is not Mozilla's fault!

No, Enterprise is delusional

[Anonymous Coward]

Enterprise by it's nature is slow, inefficient and bureaucratic. To think that a company (Mozilla) who is striving to advance a technological field (the internet) should cater to (wait for) these "enterprise" users is RIDICULOUS. How ego-centric do you have to be for that to sound like a good idea. It's only an appropriate time to advance the web when your company is ready???? Really?? Part of working with a platform is building your system in a scalable way such that when a new version is released you're still compatible. IE 6 is by no means a recent release and yet there are still enterprise users out there who refuse to switch because their applications won't work. There will never be a time when all enterprise users are "ready" to upgrade. So Mozilla shouldn't worry about it. If you don't like it ... stick with IE6 as your platform and stagnate with the rest of those that are too slow to move forward.

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[mini me]

So you give your users a "Cognos" application as a wrapper around the officially supported version of Gecko/WebKit/Trident/etc. and let them use the latest and greatest web browser for the general web. I don't know where the idea of one single web browser to rule them all came from.

Google Chrome Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Download Google-Chrome
2) Download Noscripts https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/odjhifogjcknibkahlpidmdajjpkkcfn
3) Import your Bookmarks from Firefox
4) Optionally use your proxy.pac by starting Google-Chrome with this option: --proxy-pac-url=file:///home/user/proxy.pac
5) ... (use it for a while)
6) BEST FUCKING BROWSER IN THE WORLD

I have been using Netscape and Mozilla browsers for more than 10 years. Now it is time to throw a chair at them.

This means enterprise webapps will stop supporting

[Anonymous Freak]

My company makes an enterprise application that uses a web interface. Because of the long development lead times, we're still behind-the-curve on web browser support (only just added IE8 support and FF3! But thankfully we did finally get to drop IE6, in spite of a huge outcry from some of our enterprise customers.) We 'work' on Chrome, Safari, and FF4, but there are some glitches.

Many of us in the company prefer to use Firefox to do everything, as do quite a few of our customers. If Mozilla makes changes that break our product, though, we're going to have to just remove Firefox from our supported browsers list.

Firefox 4 really sucked! How is 5 any better!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 4 is a complete piece of junk! I've had to help a number of friends downgrade it because they can't hardly use it (it is not "usable" in the sense of "usability").

Whatever retard designed the new "Save Password" dialog should be shot along with however made the old "Add Bookmark" border-less modal!

Firefox is a piece of crap lately, utterly. They're gonna spend a year fixing the memory leak we all affectionately know as Firefox, yet still release a version 5?

The Internet must be smoking crack...

Disable Select all Text on Click in URL Bar

[kruhft]

I have to work on windows at work and the default behavior for clicking in the URL bar is to select all text, which is generally because *normal* people don't want to edit the url, they want to replace it. Exactly the opposite of what I need.

The best thing is that in Firefox this is a user configurable option in about:config: browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll. I haven't seen an option like that in any other browser, so for now, things like this keep me with Firefox (and NoScript, and AdBlock and Firebug and....).

Thunderbird too?

[rossdee]

No, not Thunderbird 2, but the latest release of Thunderbird is 5 (What happened to version 4?)

Anyway with all the bugs of FF5.0 theres no way I am gonna upgrade to Thunderbird 5

(its not just add-ons that don't work with FF5 - I cant get on my online banking site now.

Time for a new /. poll I think

Now that FF is F'd, what browser are you going to switch to:

1) Chrome
2) Chromium
3) Opera
4) Safari
5) Seamonkey
6) I have to use IE (work policy) you insensitive Clod
7) If Lynx is good enough for CowboyNeal, its good enough for me

Re:Thunderbird too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome. Been using it forever now. The only thing I keep Firefox around for is useless crap like Slashdot and porn.

May try out Opera - had to install Opera Mobile on my phone for testing a client site recently. Seemed amazingly solid and speedy - on a comparatively ancient (eg, my two year contract is up shortly) phone. Damned impressive.

Memory Leaks Not Fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

They could've atleast fixed the atrocious memory leak problems. I'm reading Slashdot in one tab and have Gmail open in the other and Firefox.exe is sucking up 1.4GB of RAM. On another note, IE9 isn't that bad and I've switched to it as my default browser on my laptop. GPU acceleration plus it doesn't have the memory problems that Firefox has. It has a tab-per-process like Chrome. And *gasp* I can disable the Adobe Reader plug-in that plagues Firefox and Chrome.

Chrome is the better browsing experience except for the gosh-awful address bar that tends to forget your history requiring you to manually re-type every URL again. Maybe we can have a mashup of IE9's GPU acceleration + Chrome's stability + Firefox's "Smart" Bar.

But, in the time it took to write this post, Firefox has now released version 12.0

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[tbannist]

To be fair, it may not be that Cognos is poorly written, it might just be that the people running the company are the worst kind of money grubbing leeches imaginable and have built in the browser version requirements to ensure a steady stream of revenue from their customers.

Of course there's that old saying "Never attribute to malice what can be reasonably explained by incompetence", so you're probably right.

too shrill, too hyperbolic

[buback]

Disable compatibility check

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

i think i've only had a problem once with a plugin not working once the compatibility check was disabled.

Re:Solution: Just ask the Enterprise to go away???

[jimicus]

At least at the end of the article, the author discusses having enterprise releases and internal updates. But the kiddies running this show need to realize that the big boy adults (i.e. the enterprise) are going to be the ones that drive the significant majority of sites/work on the web. Just saying, "oh go away I don't want to deal with you" only leads us right back to supporting IE6.

I dunno, y'know.

See, I can't remember the last time I saw a site on the public Internet that demanded IE. But there are most definitely sites that are only available to corporates - maybe through a VPN, maybe through something as simple as HTTP authentication - that are IE only. I wouldn't describe them as the majority of sites by any means.

Are they for real?

[houghi]

Get your high horse out of the ivory tower. Or as Linus says: "what have they been smoking?"

Blame the users is never a great idea. Many people who are corporate are ALSO home users. You know, those who you want to please.

And sorry to burst your bubble. You do not develop for the Web. You develop for the users. Get your head out of your ass and get your priorities straight.

users will do with the web not thanks to you, but despite of you.

Exactly.. so why go to 5?

[gosand]

Here's the thing.. if you've tested your web app against FF 3.x and are in process of testing against 4. Now you have 5 to contend with. Suddenly, your 3.x testing is 2 releases behind. If you are planning for an enterprise release that will be in a few months, you need to know what releases to test against. I understand the technical issues and that FF4 and 5 aren't that different, but for compatability testing this is a huge pain in the ass. There's enterprise documentation, support, customer support, test labs, etc. And the fact that it was pretty much a surprise didn't help things.

Ubuntu too

[ThatsNotPudding]

Nearly all of the same dumb moves are being done by Ubuntu; I now look on each new version with increasing dread.

Pardon my tinfoilism, but it damn near feels like both companies are being paid by Google to slowly commit suicide.

Why so worked up?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an enterprise and have not had a problem with 5.0. All plug-ins I have work. Also many of the updates will only fix bugs in the browser. So unless it is security update or the bug affects you you don't have to update to every single version that comes out. Plus its not like a new version comes out everyday. Read the the release note before for you cry foul. Plus run your test on someone who works Firefox hard. If they are going to have a problem it will be in the first day or two. Then push it out to the other users. It does not take a month to test a browser update. I'll admit I don't like them moving to a faster release schedule but not much I can do about it. It's still a good browser. You could also use Sea Monkey.

Re:Why so worked up?

[Culture20]

I am an enterprise and have not had a problem with 5.0. All plug-ins I have work. Also many of the updates will only fix bugs in the browser. So unless it is security update or the bug affects you you don't have to update to every single version that comes out. Plus its not like a new version comes out everyday. Read the the release note before for you cry foul.

Think ahead. This isn't a problem with 5.0 specifically, it's a problem with the new release cycle rules (n-1 is immediately EOL). 5.0 may only have minor changes, but if 6.0 or 7.0 comes out, and the release notes show game stopper changes, you have to choose between bad new changes or bad prior security vulnerabilities (remember, n-1 is EOL, thus no updates of any kind). Seems a lot safer to be using something else, even as a home user.

Why can't the "enterprise"...

[John Hasler]

...pay someone (such as Mozilla...) for support? It's Free Software. They've got the source and the license.

Re:Why can't the "enterprise"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Internet Explorer is good enough and already has the features enterprises require. It is Firefox who wants to conquer the browser market, not the other way around.

Re:Why can't the "enterprise"...

[westlake]

...pay someone (such as Mozilla...) for support? It's Free Software. They've got the source and the license

1 "The Enterprise" is fragmented.

There must be tens of thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of corporate enterprises whose core competence is not to be found in software development.

2 "The Enterprise" has Microsoft.

Do you want corporate-wide deployment and management with fine-grained control?

No problem.

3 "The Enterprise's" interest in FOSS is wholly pragmatic.

Do you want to play internally generated H.264 videos in the corporate browser? If the answer is "Yes" and you are running Chrome, Safari or IE 9, you are good to go.

Re:Why can't the "enterprise"...

[Darinbob]

Pay who? Two weeks ago there was no hint that Mozilla was going to be so boneheaded as to declare FF4 was end-of-life and that future releases would be on an accelerated schedule with tiny lifetimes. Two weeks is not enough time to start up a fork and get it working and stable, and not enough time to create a company dedicated to supporting the fork.

Re:Why can't the "enterprise"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the codebase is really complex and there are very few people around who are likely to be able to correctly backport the security fixes. Of the ones I can think of, only one doesn't work for Mozilla Corporation - the networking module owner - and it's unlikely you'll be able to hire him away from Google.

Mozilla itself isn't going to bother with this even if you pay them money, they're comfortable now and want to go build newer versions instead. At the moment, they are more constrained on people than dollars.

Everyone should do this

[thetoadwarrior]

Fuck catering to lazy corporations. That sort of thing has damaged the internet enough as it is. Maybe they'll quit buying into rubbish technologies if they can't rely on keeping the same awful browser around for over a decade.

Re:Everyone should do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Well make us a a great corporate browser that can be managed with active directory and admin group policies that wont have a new way of rendering html differently each release and we will cater to you. Otherwise suck it up because we wont change.

Re:Everyone should do this

[Darinbob]

Fuck lazy developers at Mozilla who don't want to create a stable versus active branch. They've essentially said that they hate their customers. Let's see how long they survive with the notion that customer support is unnecessary in their reality.

Mozilla knows best

[wombatmobile]

Some Mozilla people know more about what the web needs than anybody else. Their role is to eliminate anything they consider to be inferior to whatever they like at Mozilla, including technology that has gone through the whole W3C standards process and been implemented by other browsers.

Meanwhile, times change.

Re:Mozilla knows best

[BZ]

> including technology that has gone through the whole
> W3C standards process

This is he standards process where people giving feedback on the specs were explicitly told to shut up and go away, right? When they weren't just stonewalled in perpetuity?

Did you actually try participating in that process back then?

The W3C has gotten a bit better since, but there are plenty of terrible (not to mention self-contradictory, both within a single spec and between specs) specs with the W3C stamp on them out there. So just because it's a W3C recommendation doesn't mean much.

Heck, CSS2.0 is a W3C recommendation, and that spec can't actually be implemented as written!

Why upgrade?

[creigs]

So why even upgrade to FF "5".0? Actually I regret even upgrading to 4.0 -- it broke one financial web site I have to use. For that matter, why bother with FF at all? With Chrome available, FF almost seems redundant. Furthermore, it seems like each version gets worse and worse with regard to the bloated amount of memory it wastes. Maybe that is due to the add-ins I use, but it is frustrating to watch my computer screech to nearly a halt when FF is "running". I keep hoping each "new, faster FF" will actually be faster, but instead it just uses even more memory and goes even slower. I don't care what part of it is faster if it takes 5 minutes to load. The only reason I haven't completely switched to Chrome is purely inertia in getting my favorite add-ins (if they exist) installed in Chrome. But whenever I have a problem with FF, I run to Chrome in an instant, and it always works. After writing this comment, I've almost convinced myself I should take the time to get my Chrome customized so I can use it full-time instead of FF, even if some of my fav add-ins are missing there.

Firefox should go

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome is faster than Firefox, and the code base has some holdovers from the Netscape era. Webkit was based on the nice KHTML codebase. Webkit has matured, and the inferior Firefox browser should be replaced. I think the increase in Chrome market share, and the decline of Firefox's is expected. I am surprised Firefox's loss of market share is so slow.

With all do respect...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about plugin authors using the Beta or, better yet, the Aurora release to get their shit updated for the final release? God forbid the extension/plugin authors actually do anything to alleviate a problem with a simple solution. No, they'd rather bitch about having to update it instead.

...to heck with you. You know software developers who donate their time to make something (I'm talking about all the free plug-ins everyone loves) useful shouldn't have to worry much about this. Why should they spend their valuable time fixing something that wasn't broken. Look at this way, they will now spend time making their product work with an interface instead of adding new features. The FOSS community has to get it through the collective heads that legacy needs some support over time or you will orphan a ton of great stuff.

They did change something there..

[leuk_he]

according to this

Under the new proposal, add-on testing will be automated. Add-ons hosted on Mozillaâ(TM)s website will be tested against any new Aurora and Beta builds and automatically marked as compatible unless some problem is discovered.

Unless this mechanism is only for beta. ,...

Ubiquity ..

[skywatcher2501]

.. doesn't work also after setting ignore-compatibility-check. I will downgrade, because there's just no proper replacement for it.

Don't anthromorphize the Web...

[idontgno]

It doesn't like it when you do that.

Seriously. The first mistake is thinking "The Web" is a Thing. It's not. It's just information, some of it seriously wrong, the rest of it poorly organized and miserably presented.

"The Enterprise" is as illusory, although at least it had some tangible incarnation at some point.

tl;dr version of the story: Mozilla is in love with "release early, release often". Large organizations move much more methodically. Mozilla is playing the populist card. Large organizations are anything but populist. When push comes to shove, slow-moving organizations will migrate away from Mozilla, and neither side will miss each other much. The End.

Neither Moz nor corporate interests are "wrong" here. They just have incompatible and mutually-exclusive goals.

I wonder if any corps have thought about supporting their own fork of Moz? They don't have to keep up with the Joneses. The only risk is that old source code won't easily get security-related backports from newer versions, especially if whole code engines change over time.

Enterprise Needs Mozilla!

[linebackn]

I'm afraid this version number insanity is just proof that Mozilla has gone totally nuts.

They don't seem to understand that enterprise desperately needed Mozilla - or more specifically a solid "web" platform they can develop applications against besides Microsoft Internet Explorer. I had always hoped that contracting and consulting companies that provide such applications to corporations would get involved in the Mozilla development and help steer the direction.

They needed a browser that could take the lead and add needed features. For a time it looked like the open development nature of Mozilla could provide that. Opera mostly seems to play catch-up, and it doesn't feel like Google develops for anyone other than Google.

This version number mess worked for Google because their product, as far as I am concerned, is still permanently in "beta". Corporate enterprise on the other hand needs something that is stable, production quality, and supported for a significant amount of time.

You know what should happen now... Just to piss of Mozilla, Google should stabilize the Google Chrome version number.

Re:Enterprise Needs Mozilla!

[Anonymous Coward]

As somebody who has attempted to get changes into Mozilla, I can report that doing anything of the sort is extremely difficult. If you look around at the various Mozilla-based applications around, all of them carry around stacks of patches because pushing things upstream that doesn't immediately benefit Firefox is pretty much impossible.

Red Herring - this isn't just about "Enterprise"

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying this is just an "Enterprise" problem is a Red Herring.

This kind of upgrade cycle is exactly what I would not recommend to anyone, for example my family/friends.

It takes a LOT of energy for people to continually adjust to feature updates, in particular if the UI is modified. Personally, I'd say nearly 100% of the UI changes in FF over the last 5 years have only led to confusion in the various end-users I know.

Here's a clue Mozilla

[golemite]

People aren't abandoning Firefox because of the version number or missing features. They're doing it because the underlying browser sucks in comparison to the competition.

I've had nothing but problems since upgrading to Firefox 4 and have recently abandoned it for Chrome and Safari.

Re:Ars proved that it didn't know what it was talk

[Billly Gates]

The difference is 3.0 is not downloaded automatically to your mission critical RHES servers at work. I am in favor of changing it so software vendors can write better scripts to support whatever version. Distros ... excluding Ubuntu ... wont be using it for awhile, and enterprise ones like Redhat probably wont use it for 2 years at least.

Force plugin campatibility

[iiiears]

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21478/how-to-bypass-firefox-4.0-betas-incompatible-add-on-error-and-install-extensions-anyway/

You might also edit the plugin itself.

"Customers"

[xororand]

Yeah, I wonder how many of those alleged customers actually donate to the Mozilla Foundation.
Hey, if you're really that obsessed with version numbers, why don't you just start a small foundation and/or pay a handful of developers full-time to backport security fixed to a "stable" 4.x? Oh, sorry, that would imply actual involvement.

Re:The author, and Mozilla, are who are utterly wr

[Anonymous Coward]

Fork Firefox and make it stable?

It's called SeaMonkey. This is just the same annoying churn Firefox has been all about since day one.

I contend that Firefox became popular less because of marketing and the name change and drop the suite and more because the Mozilla/Seamonkey/Gecko had reached a point of maturity. Which of course the attention defecit mb2/phoenix/Firebird/Firefox developers coudn't handle and had to start making things more unstable again.

Remember this is a codebase that has frequently and pointless tried to reinvent itself. They tried to rewrite the whole thing in Java at once point for chrissakes and even that didn't discourage them from XUL a few years later.

Chrome

[kwr760]

Why not just use chrome?

FireGPG plugin lost (Possibly forever)

[scanman1]

There are already plugin authors that are writing the plugins as freeware. They mostly have daytime paying jobs.
If Mozilla continues to throw them under the bus on a rapid revision cycle, we will loose more good plugins.

Case and point: FireGPG plugin, I use this daily.

The origional author decided to throw in the towel. However, he did release the source code to github.com/firegpg/firegpg.

Two fine people updated it to work with 4.0.1. Within weeks the nightly build managed to break this great plugin. Sure enough when 5.0 was released, the plugin is broken again, and there is now nobody willing and able to patch this fine piece of software.

When the next major security breach is found in FF 4.0.1, and I am forced to update to FF5, then I will also curse Mozilla.

They are going to alienate the core plugin authors, as this was the main reason for thier sucess over browsers.

the issue isnt that 5.0 didnt break anything

[Anonymous Coward]

I see all these comments about how firefox 5.0 didnt break anything and the enterprise is just over blowing it but the point is the enterprise will have no version number cue to determine if the next version has a significantly new ui or rendering engine. THe mozilla argument is that there will be no major changes ... ever. That every version will be a minor revision to the previos one. Enterprises handle this typically by saying all version 4.X products are supported. But now there is no major revison number and therefore firefox has absolutely no way to make a major change to the codebase .... ever. OR they will make major changes to the codebase but end users and enterprise customer will never know what version firefox decided to implement that major change as the version number cue is irrelvant. THis leaves them in the situation where they have to assume that every revision is a major change (since every other softwrte company reserves the first number to designate major releases - the classic VRM designation).

Its a bad decision ....

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[BitZtream]

set a max version even if it's not needed.

Actually, setting the max version is a REQUIREMENT according to the documentation.

Which is why we set our max version to 99.* ... which of course completely defeats the purpose of having any sort of version checking in the manifest file, and is also against the documentation/Mozilla's wishes.

Which should make it clear that NOBODY put any THOUGHT into WHAT the side effects of such a change would be ... they didn't even bother to look INTERNALLY AT THEIR OWN CODEBASE ... and their going to tell OTHER companies their wrong?

When the company 'selling' you a product tells you that you're doing it wrong ... and they have no reason why other than 'we want to do it this way so we can catch up with chrome!' ... well thats an indication of a company you need to not do business with.

Its funny that number of people defending Mozilla's ignorance ...

What if this was MS or Apple? You would totally say the EXACT same thing then ... WOULDN'T YOU?

You might be the one guy who would, but everyone else defending this would be ranting all day long about how evil MS and Apple are for doing the same thing.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[BitZtream]

but for now its a good enough fix.

No its not, thats a hack and its not a viable option for anything more than some geek running FF at home. Thats fine for you, and thats fine if those are the only people Mozilla wants to use FF. I have a distinct feeling when their paychecks disappear, they'll have a change of heart however.

If you notice its marked as valid till FF7 - which is rather interesting - why don't the add-on designers do the same?

Because its impossible to predict what will break in tomorrows nightly build, let alone what will work 2 to 3 version in advance.

As is typical with most if not all OSS software, there is no plan, no concern for compatibility with existing software, its just 'we'll do what we want to do, don't like it? You have the source! YOU FIX IT!' What you get is a bunch of people that hop on board for a while, but as time goes on, more and more people realize that while it was cool riding the bleeding edge train, you aren't really going anywhere. Meanwhile, all the non-bleeding edge people are getting something done OTHER than spending their time just keeping up with changes to the software.

I would note, that the plugins our company produces claim compatibility to version 99.*, and have since 3.0 ... because we learned early on Mozilla has their heads up their ass and has no actual plan or direction so theres no point in worrying about compatibility, it may change drastically in a 0.0.1 release, or it may change in no noticeable way in a 4 to 5.x release. Translation: they made their own compatibility checks nothing more than a royal pain in the ass to developers and users while providing absolutely 0 benefit since you can't trust it at all any time.

Doesn't it seem a little fucked up that someone had to create an extension to turn off the checking because it got in the way so much? Does that not let you see the writing on the wall in perfect clarity? Do you need someone from Mozilla to come slap you in the face and scream at you until you get the point?

Suicide ...

[silfy]

Mozilla is getting retarded. When they say that most of addons are tested and are working. It's a LIE. Read the fine print. EVERY binary addon is incompatible by design and has to be at least rebuilded. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=656331. And then they say that interfaces are not frozen anymore. Well AFAIK most firefox interfaces are used from javascript addons not from binary addons, because of "lacking API" nature of the scripting language. Your browser won't crash but the addons won't work either. Now at least for binary addons they have a solution. Use js-ctypes. Great. Now you can go back from C++ XPCom programing to C programming. So much for fake going forward technology wise. Basically what build mozilla hype is slipping away. Even now I still don't have all the addons working in FF4. Even less with FF5. Goodbye TWAIN addons, goodbye barcode readers addons used in enterprise applications. Well or welcome back IE. Mozilla said that they don't like supporting 10 year old API. Um ... what's wrong with 2 years? Not to mention that most non technical users are using the same browser at home and at work. So by saying fuck enterprise users they are also saying fuck home users. Great job Mozilla. Great job!!!

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[BitZtream]

Since when? 5.x?

I've been doing that since 3.x with no problems, though we've just dropped future support for Firefox due to this BS. Our plugins have claimed 99.* as max version since 3.0 (actually before that but we didn't make them public before 3.0). Maybe you can't upload them to Mozilla with BS version info? Ours are not hosted with Mozilla, so we'd never see that.

academic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fine to say, "Mozilla is right because this is how *I* think the Enterprise should be working!" But, the reality is that these crappy web apps exist and IT departments can't just arbitrarily ditch them because some article on the internets said so. It also ignores the fact that many of us are dependent upon web apps developed by third-party vendors that we have absolutely no control over (and whose business relationships we ain't gonna reevaluate just because Mozilla changed their MO.)

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[BitZtream]

And what happens when they don't update them?

Why is it that other browsers seem to have little problems maintaining compatibility ... yet FF can't do it ... partially because they intentionally block old plugins from working on new versions without updating the plugin ... by design.

They design the plugin system to automatically disable plugins on new versions ... then rapidly release new versions ...

Let me give you a hint, a LOT of people who wrote quick plugins have FAR better things to do than keep up with Mozilla's race to catchup with chrome ... especially since they can just go to Chrome ... which Firefox desperately desires to be and is mimicing more and more often ... and make plugins that do continue to function after the browser is updated without a bunch of effort, or Safari, or even IE.

Mozilla is trying to suck start a fully loaded double barrel 12 gauge shotgun ... while fingering the trigger. You can figure out where this is going, even if they don't.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[BitZtream]

Given the fact that Mozilla users are the recipients of fruits of the hard work of many people and are asked for no compensation of any kind

I'm sorry, what exactly do all the developers the Mozilla Foundation pays getting paid for then? What is the management of the Mozilla Foundation getting paid for then? Where does all that money Google gives them for search referrals go?

Mozilla developers are paid well, so why don't you STFU until you get a clue.

If they'd like to continue getting paid, then they should probably listen to the people who are responsible for their paycheck ... the users. Firefox isn't in a monopoly position. There are at least 3 viable alternatives on Windows alone, 4 if you count Safari. All of them offer comparable feature lists. Telling the people who pay your bills they are wrong and don't know what they want is a really stupid business plan.

Why the Ubuntu comparison?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep seeing these comparisons to Ubuntu, but that doesn't actually help Mozilla's case. A big part of Ubuntu's release schedule includes back-porting updates.

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[c0d3g33k]

I thought of that, but didn't mention it because I was feeling nice and I didn't want to write a book. On the other hand, "poorly written" was meant to encompass even your speculative scenario - artificially forcing version specificity to maximize revenue potential is still bad engineering.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[BitZtream]

Maybe their idea is people should be doin' all their stuff in JS instead of addons and extensions?

Most are already written in JS, the vast majority of the big ones that people love and 'require' are entirely written in JS with no XPCOM native objects themselves.

As for the rest of your post ... you're excited that your browser finally caught up to ... the way everyone elses browser has been for a while? Awesome. Now next week, when its back to slow as balls again cause they couldn't leave well enough alone, let me know what you think then ... in FF 6.

Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Haedrian]

Because its impossible to predict what will break in tomorrows nightly build, let alone what will work 2 to 3 version in advance.

As is typical with most if not all OSS software, there is no plan, no concern for compatibility with existing software, its just 'we'll do what we want to do, don't like it?

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking

Doesn't it seem a little fucked up that someone had to create an extension to turn off the checking because it got in the way so much? Does that not let you see the writing on the wall in perfect clarity? Do you need someone from Mozilla to come slap you in the face and scream at you until you get the point?

That extension is intended for beta/alpha testers to check whether the addons work or not. The reason I've got it was because I beta test.
-

Also I found this interesting part in their roadmap:

"To ship smaller bundles of technology more quickly will require us to take a hard look at our existing systems and re-evaluate some of the assumptions we take as immutable, such as:

    - we must provide binary compatibility for Add-ons "

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap

Re:maybe mozilla can pay for new software versions

[SleazyRidr]

Not all software is written for a wide enough audience to make it worthwhile writing code that will work with anything. You know that everyone using your software will have IE6 available, so you just write it to work with IE6. You aren't going to sell enough copies of it to recoup your costs of testing it in other environments.

Re:Solution: Just ask the Enterprise to go away???

[BitZtream]

Corporate users who can't update their browsers because of some persnickety internal application they have to use, but who then go and use that same browser on the public Internet.

Dear Mozilla Foundation,

Perhaps if you took a few minutes from your day to actually write quality code rather than racing to be the shiniest widget on the block ... that you copied from Google ... poorly, the perhaps those old browsers wouldn't be a threat.

I find it wildly amusing that as an enterprise user I'm being told that I'm the bad guy ... because their software is so poorly written that its full of exploitable bugs.

The browser is NOT more complex than an OS, yet I have several machines with uptimes over 4 years now ... that you couldn't exploit if your life depended on it ... yet for some reason ... its different for a browser.

No, its not different, you just fucking suck as developers and your focus is wrong, and you're blaming us because you're incapable of writing a stable, secure piece of software. If you did your job right the first time, old versions of your browser wouldn't be an issue, but instead you rush rush rush and write shit code.

You fucked up Mozilla, not me, YOU FIX YOUR PROBLEMS and stop blaming your problems on me. I have a simple solution to not running your old buggy ass browser anymore, I'll use something else from someone who puts at least a little effort into it. You're making IE security look completely acceptable, how pathetic does that make you?

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Separate Plugin API Version number

[ciantic]

Yes they should make Plugins API version number. Then they could update the colors of the browser only and the plugin authors wouldn't have to be phoned all over again.

Probably the Firefox Plugin API is so much more broad that idea I present is not easily done as there might be dependencies. Though I could imagine something like that working for Chrome where is strict (in good and bad) guidelines for the plugins.

FF + GNU/Linux made me move to Opera

[roman_mir]

I don't really care to find out why, but youtube's CAPTCHA isn't working in FF for me (the text input box is not displaying), so between that, and various crashes during downloads and memory and speed problems I am now officially using Opera mostly (in the past it was FF mostly and Opera was doing what FF couldn't do at all), but now I finally got so sick of having to retype my replies every time I forget that FF isn't displaying that stupid CAPTCHA correctly, that I made a conscious effort to use Opera mostly.

Feeding the troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, you have to be trolling, but I can't resist, I'm going to respond as if you were serious. Your previous posts show that you are consistently bashing on Mozilla (or Firefox but I don't think you know the difference) so somebody ought to present the other case.

First, calling a group of accomplished business people "retards" when you can't be bothered to spell sane, that's or even It's correctly is the epitome of arrogance; ironically since you ascribed that trait to them.

Netscape has never been that company, they are just a bunch of developers with no leadership

Do you mean to say that Blake Ross (Director of Product at Facebook) is bad at managing software or that Dave Hyatt (Safari developer with Apple) is or both? Could it be that you're thinking of the current people in charge and don't have a clue who is responsible for Firefox in the past or present? Are you really confusing Netscape developers with the massive company that is AOL? Wow.

It is possible that buried in all the muck, you had a point about their long term plans not being fully reliable, but it is hard to separate the dross from the rare gleam of rationality in the post.

Now people have different browser preferences and some have good reasons. If you say that you prefer IE in the enterprise or home because it is most likely to handle all pages, I might disagree with your priorities, but could accept that you have thought about the issues. If, however, you ignore that Firefox itself is a fork that got re-adopted and that other forks have contributed code back, and pretend that IE is better because they don't change development paths, then you're delusional or ... a troll?

Just in case though, lets check a couple things to see if you'd be better off sticking with IE:

• SharePoint - Microsoft's flagship CMS+everything doesn't work well with all versions of Internet Explorer. Older versions don't like new IE and of course older IE versions aren't supported by Microsoft so new versions of SharePoint can't be expected to work with old IE.
• Microsoft Virtual Server - better migrate to Hyper-V because new IE doesn't work with MS Virtual server
• VMWare - (because you can't depend on MS Virtual server) - doesn't work on new IE (or new much of anything for that matter since it was designed to be managed with IE6, but hey, it works with FF Portable 2, which you can still download and use if you like reliable options.)
• Newest IE - wait, IE 9 isn't available to the largest group of Windows users (XP) and IE 10 won't be available to even the group that upgraded from that (Vista.)

On the other hand, IE 9 and 10 are (finally) starting to support web standards, so anything that is programmed to work well on them will work well in Opera, Firefox, Safari or Chrome as well. If you use Firefox (or one of the others) now, then you start getting the feedback you need for long term web site management or to pick software that will still be working if it uses a web portal in five years.

Of course you could just upgrade EVERYTHING and get settled in with IE9 and then IE 10 in a couple months and hope MS doesn't change direction in the next browser like they did with 4 and with 5 and with 6 and with 7. Eight seems like a logical path from seven and nine seems logical from eight. Maybe Ten will be too... you can hold your breath if you like.

Pre-Install Firefox Add-on Compatibility test

[vinn01]

It would be ever so nice of the Firefox install if it would tell you which of your plug-ins are going to fail - before the install is started. I hate finding out that my most useful plug-ins are toast only after the install in completed. Updating the plug-ins should not be an post-install afterthought.

Mozilla really NEEDS a Pre-Install Firefox Add-on Compatibility test! We users should have a way to test our favorite Add-ons BEFORE we install a new version!

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2 - erm, no

[bwcbwc]

If the version number were 4.0.2, Mozilla wouldn't be putting 4.0 at end of life.

You miss the point

[tanveer1979]

What about dependencies.
For example, enterprises will not upgrade the base linux frequently.
So what happens when I want to run 5.0 on my Redhat enterprise 5 machine.
It won't run, because GCC is old.

No problem, we have an alternative GCC path in /usr/local and just set LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Well the damn software does not understand LD_LIBRARY_PATH. With such kludgy engineering, mozilla is becoming the new Internet explorer. Deveopers assume libraries to be in /usr/lib and if you have a non standard OS install, you are screwed.

Firefox is garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to love firefox until they moved to 4 and made a nice browser into junk. Chrome is better in every way. The new interface on firefox sucks, it does not support the scroll bar on my acer aspire one(chrome opera and IE all do), the refresh button is on the wrong Side of the screen and the list goes on. Firefox used to be the best now it sucks.

And corporate needs to adopt a method to deal with browsers being updated like this. Mozilla is doing an upgrade pattern like this because it the right way to do it, the web is changing too fast to not. Chrome is so much better than firefox, Mozilla is just chasing them with features, but they are two steps behind.

It's all about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it: how do you feed your people who are cranking-out code, competing with Google, and giving their product away free? You solicit for BIG donations. It's all a Mozilla ploy. Now that a lot of significant Enterprise organizations consider Firefox their 'default' browser, Mozilla has them over a barrel. Once the corporate funding flow increases, the policy will change.

Now on the other side, shame on the Enterprise folks. This time the cliche applies: you get what you pay for. If you're going to base your corporate IT infrastructure on anything free, you'd better have a contingency plan that you can activate in a heartbeat. It's not Mozilla's fault that some IT execs were seduced by the word "free" and made poor choices. Mozilla is only exploiting its leverage.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:it's not just enterprise users... extensions?

[Beelzebud]

If there is an addon that you absolutely can't live without, I'm sure you can manage to edit the version string, or check the box that says "Load out of date addons"

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[account_deleted]

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where is my ff4.5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Three comments:

This is not a full version change, shame on the commitee that came up with v.5 and support drop for ff4!

How is it possible to beta test something for longer than enjoying the final product?

Please stop force feading me Chrome's UI, I'm a Firefox user; If I wanted Chrome I would use Chrome!

what mozilla should've done.

[MadMaverick9]

firefox should have an external version number for marketing purposes, and an internal version number which follows established rules and practices. and this internal version number is what add-ons check against.

This is one example where Microsoft has done something right, I think.

http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2009/08/a-list-of-windows-operating-system-version-number/

firefox 4 is 4.0.0
firefox 5 is 4.0.1
firefox 6 is 4.0.2
...
firefox 9 is 4.1.0
firefox 10 is 4.1.1
...

Fast dev cycle = better?

[Avalon's_Avatar]

Firefox is getting the sand kicked in it's face on silicon beach performance-wise, there's no denying. I choose to stick with it for general useage and banking purposes because of the plugins (configurability), cross-platform familiarity and security model. But increasingly I find myself switching for some specific uses such as gaming etc. This change in release numbering to match Googles is a fool's errand since it does little to attract new users that empirically see that it's sluggish regardless, but it is doing a great deal to alienate Mozilla's core users for several reasons already cited. Please stop it and revert to the old, trusted model that saw Firefox grab a significant portion of the market share!