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Mozilla Foundation Releases Firefox 7
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released Firefox 7.0. It hasn't actually reduced my memory footprint at first glance, but let's hope that the memory usage doesn't keep growing like it used to. We'll also see if it crashes less often than once every three days or so."
The initial memory use of Firefox should remain similar to previous releases, but at least the heap shouldn't grow infinitely as it does in previous releases.
Firefox 6? that's so last Thursday.
Now that FF changes versions every time you blink and each one has at best minor changes, why even bother posting the new versions here? It's like posting that the sun came up in the East today.
Maybe a story about the acceleration in market share loss FF has suffered since this rapid release BS started would be more interesting.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Are people still bitching about that? Since I'm usually putting my computers in sleep mode or connecting to VMs that are running 24/7 I am having Firefox running for over a month straight on a regular basis. Both on Windows and Linux. About the only time I have to restart Firefox is to apply a version update. I can't even remember the last time that I had it crash on me that wasn't the fault of something like Java or Flash. I would definitely catch all sorts of hell from my immediate family if Firefox was crashing often or causing slowdowns due to memory bloat and they don't even use NoScript. I'm not sure what people are doing to make Firefox bloat or crash but I'm willing to bet that the cause is add-ons and extensions that they've installed and not Firefox itself.
Actually testing the code wouldn't be in line with Agile methodologies. If you don't like the code, you'll just have to live with it until the next patch.
Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and hired whole departments full of people to test and document a stable release of software before it went out the door; these expenses can be done away with by outsourcing QA to end users in the form of autogenerated coredumps, and the documentation to the end users by third parties hosting banner-ad-funded wikis and web fora. Sure, the product was more likely to actually work, but the unacceptable downside was that under waterfall, users had months between patches, and were consequently several weeks behind the hottest trends in masturbatory UX fashion design.
Agile's so much better than that stodgy old waterfall methodology, because with Agile, you're always on the upgrade treadmill, and only have to wait a few days for the next patch full of bugs comes down the pipe. You may not know what version of the software you're running, but at least you're always up to date!
It's not that it's not tested. It's just that what the Firefox designers want is now completely divorced from what the users want. This has been clear for me since the 'awesomebar'*.
I'm trying out Opera. I used to be a Firefox promoter, moving people off IE6 and onto FF every chance I got; but now... all the browsers seem like necessary evils.
*Not that adding the awesomebar was bad... but forcing the awesomebar, and eliminating the option to turn it off, was. That's the behavior that indicates a company is putting marketing ahead of engineering.
While it used to be true that people compared software by version number, and it certainly is for products that are still in the v1.0 (or maybe 2.0 even), how many people today really compare software by version number any more? Or even know what version they are using (especially of Chrome, which doesn't even advertise it unless you look closely), unless they are fairly nerdy? More relevantly, is there seriously a large group of people (I realize there is at least one person) who didn't use Firefox because it was "only" version 3? And more importantly, was it worth pissing of the very group of people who made your product popular in the first place (i.e. the techies)?
Software versions are supposed to have meaning. Major numbers are for important new features and UI overhauls, minor numbers are for minor features (or large technical fixes) and other small changes, and final digits are for bugfixes. I should be able to look at a version number and be able to estimate how much the software changed since another version. That has been the standard for years, and there is absolutely no reason to change it. Firefox has completely destroyed that. They didn't start it, true, but they also shouldn't have given away to it.
For commercial software, obviously, using the year as a version number makes quite a lot of sense (besides even just selling new copies every year), or for a driver (like AMD does). But for a browser? What sense does that make? Why bother? Why not just do what has worked quite well for years and use a proper version system? That is why people are annoyed at Mozilla. Because the change makes no goddamned sense.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Because the change makes no goddamned sense.
It makes sense from a marketing perspective, obviously; and that makes the outrage even stronger. FF was a damn good browser; and it's painful to see it going in that direction. Most slashdot posters have experienced projects and products going astray when 'steering committees' start dictating design.
It's painful like seeing a great book being turned into a terrible film by focus-group driven studio executives.
Actually I'm pretty sure it is Mozilla's fault. It's not the addon devs who decided to go to this ridiculous rapid release schedule.
Addon devs are volunteers. Expecting them to update stuff several times more often because some people in the ivory tower think that releasing every couple of weeks is a good idea doesn't mean you blame the addon devs. You blame the clowns who are screwing them over.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
When did I miss Firefox 6?
Interestingly, I just set up an Ubuntu 11.04 (previously 10.04) with FF 6.02. With the same addons as I had in FF 4, it's WAY faster and uses close to a third less memory than FF4. If they're claiming that FF7 will reduce memory even more, I'm definitely going to check it out.
It isn't as rosy as it sounds, at least in my general experience (practice always deviates from theory right?).
The theory is you write your unit tests first, and then code until you pass. In practice two things go wrong:
1) You make a mistake writing unit tests (I have seen many times where *only* buggy code could pass the incorrectly written unit tests).
2) Passing even a well-conceived unit test inspires overconfidence. I have encountered more than a few people who honestly believe passing all unit tests as an automated part of a build process was sufficient and no human testing was required.
In short, sure, officially it endorses testing, but really only speaks much to automated unit tests and less to actually taking the time to let some users dig in and do nothing but make sure those users validate you did the work correctly.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I love the awesome bar. It's made my browsing faster and more efficient.
That is why people are annoyed at Mozilla. Because the change makes no goddamned sense.
It does make sense. Back in the bad old days when they were going 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, etc., it showed that they weren't improving very fast. Now that they're jumping ahead (4, 5, 6, now 7), it shows they're improving rapidly, and will soon be almost as good as IE (9) and Opera (11).
Opera goes up to 11, and Firefox needs to work hard to make their browser go up to 11 too. It'd be even better if Firefox went all the way up to 12. That would completely blow away IE and Opera. Just think how cool that'll be. When you see someone using IE9 (or 10, if it's up to that by then), you can tell them "You should switch to Firefox. It goes up to 12!!"
Since people compare software by version number, one is at a competitive disadvantage in number software sensibly. FF7 would be FF4.3 were it not for chrome, why not call it ff 2011.3 and be done with it.
How about everyone get over the version numbering already and enjoy the new features in this free browser? That'd be great.
The memory usage is now much better than Chrome. Speed is improved. None of my add-ons broke. We finally have text-overflow: ellipsis (long overdue!). WTF, people. This is a good thing, not a bad one, and if all you can do is complain about the damned version number, you apparently need to go get a life.
Here's to FF8 in 6 weeks, with improved font rendering and the compatibility assistant! (and a big preemptive SUCK IT to those of you who will inevitably complain about the version numbering and release schedule). If you like yearly release schedules, please switch to IE.
Oh sure, that would be great... except for two things:
Websites like Google expect you to update to the latest version, and will often lock you out if you don't.
Websites, like Banks for example, won't run if you use a browser version they haven't tested -- in Firefox's case that's 3 versions ago.
So basically there no fucking way to win. Or, more precisely, there's no fucking way to use Firefox across all the web any more -- so what is the point?
And that's completely ignoring the broken add-ons, and the fact that many people choose not to upgrade Firefox because they don't like the GUI changes on recent versions.
There's a reason I didn't use Netscape. There was a reason I actually bought the Firefox t-shirt 5 years ago too. But now, Firefox is just Netscape that updates its versions at an absurd and dysfunctional rate. It's now completely worthless as a browser because you can use it on less websites than you could when it was version 0.86.
Goodbye Mozilla, you clearly never learned one fucking thing from the Netscape disaster. You just never fucking listened to anyone who actually used your software.