Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Contemplating Five Week Release Cycle
MrSeb writes with an article in Extreme Tech about the ever quickening pace of Firefox development. Quoting the article: "Mozilla, not content with its monumental shift from four major builds in five years down to a new stable build every six weeks, is looking at outputting a new release every five weeks, or perhaps even less. Christian Legnitto, a project manager at Mozilla (and currently the 'release manager' of Firefox), announced the intention to shift to a shorter release cycle on Mozilla's planning mailing list. In response to one developer citing the success of the six-week release cycle, and asking whether it would be feasible to speed it up even further, Legnitto said: 'Yes, I absolutely think in the future we will shorten the cycle.' There are still some pains to overcome, though, such as add-on maintenance, testing, and localization — and ultimately, as browsers become more like operating systems, do we really want something as important as Firefox receiving a new major version every 5 weeks?"
In other news, it looks like Firefox is losing users faster than ever despite (because of?) the new rapid release cycle.
I've stopped using Firefox. I was a constant user of it since the Firebird days, but somewhere down the line the whole project has lost sight. I find Chrome a good deal faster and more agile. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were a plugin developer, but as it stands, Firefox seems to be a project that has lost its way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Have they totally lost it? It's not like the browser world is making sudden great progress. It's a mature technology. The big problem today is getting stuff fixed.
I'm doing some Firefox extension development, and I'm finding documentation from versions 1.5 to the current one, all out of sync.
Sorry i have other things to do than repackage FF for deployment every 5 weeks.
Picking your battles is an important component of a happy marriage!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Since they're pumping out versions as fast as Chrome, why not do what Chrome does and make the version # irrelevant?
How many people know what version of Chrome they're running? I sure don't know. But Firefox trumpets the "new" Firefox on every release.
If you're going to do a rapid release schedule, you've made the version number meaningless to your average user.
If they keep this up, I will remove it from our labs. I am not going to deal with this shit. Release bug fixes as often as you need to, but new features need to be something that doesn't happen too often. I can't go and test this shit every few weeks, nor do I want to deal with things that are outdated. I like FF, but this policy they have is pushing me to dump it. I haven't yet, but we'll see.
Seamonkey uses Gecko and is compatible with most Firefox extensions, but has a sane release schedule. 4 years from 1.0 to 2.0, 2 years from 2.0 to 2.3 (current version).
It gets new features more slowly than Firefox, but, currently at least, it is as good as Firefox (for my use, at least). Oh, and it has a menubar and statusbar.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
We use Selenium IDE for test scripts. Every new release# kills Selenium. My boss has canceled several projects that were intended to use this for regression and other testing while we try to find something that's not going to die on us every few weeks.
Extensions stop working at random without any good reason and in record time. So many of us use Firefox over Chrome because of extensions.
This plan is just terrible.
Mozilla addons getting shafted because one guy wants faster releases? Sweet.
This will continue until they get to a daily release schedule with each new release containing 1 new feature or 1 or 2 bug fixes. And then look for twice daily, etc.
Mozilla, much more than Google, is pushing me toward using Chrome.
I like the fact that Chrome is just always up to date and they are continuously releasing. I don't have to worry about what version I'm using. Shouldn't all browsers move to that model?
KD
--
Kilroy is Here.
http://itunes.com/apps/kilroy
Not when doing so continually breaks the things that the users you do have care about, no.
What FF user actually wants this model? Most of them don't. Releasing at the same speed as Chrome isn't going to win over Chrome users, but it will chase FF users off. That's what we're seeing here.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I'm amazed at how hateful and petty people are towards Mozilla over this. Google gets a pass though.
I guess the notion of "release early, release often" is dead?
Did Mozilla go hire some MBAs or something? That's the only rational explanation for this idiocy.
The userbase has rejected rapid release. They hate it. Users are leaving the browser faster then ever before ever since it started.
So Mozilla's response is... even faster releases? Is it possible to miss the point any more then this? People don't care about this shit, they just want a good browser.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Chrome scares my from a privacy standpoint. Firefox wants updated between every keystroke. IE is my new browser of choice.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Mozilla should just cut out the race to 5 blades and call nightlies full releases.
As an avid Firefox user, I find I'm torn with this release method. It used to be that when a new version of Firefox came out, it was the shizzle to the nizzle, the bee's knees, the cat's...well you get the idea. Version 3 was leaps ahead of Version 2 and Version 2 made Version 1 look antiquated. However, that's partially because it took Mozilla so long to release them, over the course of a year or so, Firefox would go from being the most advanced, best browser out there to being outdated and slow. This was before Chrome came along, at least.
However, this release cycle doesn't seem to do anything other than piss people off. I actually don't mind it, it doesn't seem to get in the way for me and I do use several extensions, but the jump from 4, to 5, to 6 didn't seem to bring anything new to the table. I couldn't tell them apart without reading the changelog.
I'd move to Chrome, but it doesn't support Windows' DPI settings, so as a user with bad eyesight, this is a deal-breaker for me. Firefox handles it brilliantly.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I suppose they could be gaining users, and that some users...aren't using the browser, leading to paradoxical loss of browser share. More users of Firefox using less browser.
Ow. I think I just sprained my brain.
Let's try this again. Browser share is user share, unless (A) some users are using more than one browser, or (B) some browser users aren't actually using the browser, in defiance of the actual meaning of the phrase "browser user". Like, "non-driving driver", or "non-drinking drinker".
Dammit, my brain still hurts.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The problem of how to blow as much market share and the shortest period of time.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Do you really pretend that people writing extensions for hobby and not for work should rewrite them every 5 weeks?
It's getting so bad with the rapid release cycles that I've tossed out FF4+ as my critical add-ons no longer work. The rapid move from 4 to 6 w/o actually fixing things made as much sense as them simply having gone to Firefox 11 (because it's 1 more then 10).
It's gotten so bad that I'm finding myself actually using IE 10 more then I'm using firefox. I've got tabs and since I've configured my scripts to none except for those websites I actually find that I need them on, I'm finding IE to be more stable and less of a problem. The only thing I'm hoping is that the noscript folks actually get an accelerator/plug-in for IE so I can get the same functionality as what firefox gives me as Noscript is the only add-on that has at least remained compatible with it.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
And I think this is a big flaw in Chrome too. A product shouldn't be just a straight line of incremental fixes, there need to be branches so that you an stay on old versions and still get bug fixes and security patches. The straight line model is the naive straight-out-of-school developer's favorite model, the one they used on their class projects.
The difference is that Seamonkey cares about the customers.
Did Mozilla go hire some MBAs or something? That's the only rational explanation for this idiocy.
The userbase has rejected rapid release. They hate it. Users are leaving the browser faster then ever before ever since it started.
So Mozilla's response is... even faster releases?
Hi, I am a Firefox dev. The answer to your question is no: The answer is not faster releases. We are not currently planning to do faster releases, despite the Slashdot headline.
;)
What is the link then? Someone - not sure if a Mozilla developer or not - posted the suggestion to make it faster. Since Firefox's development is open, anyone can post whatever they want whenever they want. There was some debate, most of it negative - as you would expect. Then someone posted it to Slashdot, where it was picked up.
So, no faster releases. What actually is the Mozilla response to the current situation: To fix the problems. We are working to make updates silent and break less addons. We've also made it so third parties can't install addons without your permission. All of this is in response to user feedback. Hopefully some of that stuff will be posted to Slashdot too
And even GNU has put out some good man pages. My intro to shell programming was reading the man page for bash. It's remarkably comprehensive. I don't know how that slipped through GNU quality control. ;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.