Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 7.0 Beta Released
An anonymous reader sends word that the first Firefox 7.0 beta has been released. One of the big areas of focus for this version will be performance enhancements. One optimization "Reduces memory use and improves performance areas including responsiveness, startup and page load time, even in complex websites and Web apps." Another addresses one of Firefox users' long-standing gripes: "The JavaScript garbage collector works more frequently to free up memory and improve performance when you have many tabs open or keep Firefox running for a long time."
Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous... I'm still on FF 3.6
"Obviously, you need to be an Einstein to navigate the Austrian Patent Office website." - platinumrat
From the big Bugzilla thread about version numbers earlier this week:
Effective expiration, lack of bugfixes, and rapidly replaced by newer versions with bugfixes? By any practical definition, there is no stable version. They're all betas from here onwards. The whole notion of a release isn't that it's bug-free, but that it's supported for a reasonably-long period of time.
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
We don't report Chrome versions do we?
We don't?
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/08/12/1943225/Chrome-14-Beta-Integrates-Native-Client
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/08/03/1532247/Google-Patches-30-Chrome-Bugs-Adds-Instant-Pages
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/06/09/1238214/Google-Releases-Chrome-12
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/19/1518221/Google-Is-Serious-Chrome-13-Hides-URL-Bar
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/2218214/Google-Adds-Speech-To-Newly-Stable-Chrome-11-Pays-Big-Bounty
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/11/0013223/First-Look-At-Chrome-10
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/08/2043244/Google-Releases-Stable-Version-of-Chrome-10
Opera doesn't get left out either:
http://slashdot.org/story/11/06/28/1831237/Opera-1150-Released
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/19/0027237/Opera-Goes-To-11-With-Extensions-and-Tab-Stacks
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/11/24/0311226/Opera-11-Beta-Released-With-Extensions-Support
It's news for nerds. That includes new releases from major browsers. Deal with it.
You could use the super-secret Mozilla Add-on SDK
QUOTE: help ensure your add-on continues to work as new versions of Firefox are released.
Nobody seems to be mentioning this solution. Not even Mozilla.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I see what you did there.
And yet we also rail against people for still using IE6. Automatic updates for web exposed applications is a must.
As for Firefox, it's not like they force you to update. There's a very convenient option under tools => options => advanced => update that modifies the behavior.
As for bleeding edge, Firefox 6.0 is hardly bleeding edge. I get that some people don't want to be bleeding edge, but you must not know much about computers if you think that releases 4.0, 5.0 or 6.0 are bleeding edge.
3.6 is is the long-term release as far as I can tell. It still gets updates for security fixes. I just updated to 3.6.20 a few days ago.
Firefox 4, Firefox 5, Firefox 6 and Firefox 7 beta have all been quite consistent in terms of the user interface. More releases hasn't equalled huge change in the UI in my experience.