Firefox 4 the Last Big Release From Mozilla

nk497 writes "Firefox 4 will be the last major browser release from Mozilla, as it looks to mimic Chrome's speedy release schedule — echoing previous statements that Firefox 7 would arrive this year. "What we want to do is get the power into users' hands more quickly," said vice president of products Jay Sullivan. "For example, the video tag was shippable in June — we should have shipped it." That new schedule is also why Firefox 4 has had 12 betas, he said. Mozilla also said future versions of Firefox would feature a stronger "do not follow tool", as the current one is a "non-technical solution"," Sullivan said. "All you're doing is raising your hand and saying 'I don't want to be tracked.' There's no technical teeth.""

Everyone just move to Year.Month model

[Anonymous Coward]

That way we can avoid this "you have a higher number than me" syndrome. Ubuntu 10.10, Office 2010, Windows 98, etc.

End this nonsense.

Re:Plugin Support

[BZ]

Out of curiousity, what do you plan to do once 3.5 stops getting security updates?

(This is a serious question; I'm trying to understand how users respond to that situation so we can take it into account when we decide how long to keep up security updates.)

It gets worse than that.

[SimonTS]

Try searching online for a very special necklace for your wife's 40th birthday and then have THAT still following you around when she is around a few hours later. Cue some very fast bull-shitting excuses and a very quick close-down and cache/cookie clear as soon as she left again.

Release early, release often

[c0d3g33k]

ESR described the most efficient way to release/produce free/libre/open_source software long ago.

Mozilla seems to be late to the game in realizing that the cathedral approach is not the best way to manage software releases when you are actually participants in the bazaar.

Quite ironic, actually, since Netscape was the first publicly visible software product to embrace to "open source" philosophy back in the day. The release of the Netscape source code was quite shocking and simultaneously gratifying at the time. I was quite gratified personally to be able to compile a Netscape browser from source and surf the web back then. Thank you, ESR.

Re:Plugin Support

[GNious]

Geez, I've been on the FF4 beta for like 5 months now almost.

I've tried to use FF4 beta for like 5 months now almost - instable piece of CPU-abusing, RAM-consuming shite.

Yeah - off topic, but FF4s performance issues really annoys me.

Re:What does Jetpack get you...

[bunratty]

From the page I linked to:

The SDK is designed to produce add-ons that will be forwards-compatible with future versions of Firefox, so you won't need to update your add-on every time a new version of Firefox is released. And SDK-based add-ons benefit from a security model that limits the harm that can be caused by a vulnerability in add-on code.

and

Users can install and remove SDK-based add-ons instantly, without a browser restart, making it easier to try add-ons and personalize their browsing experience. They also won't have to worry about add-on compatibility with new versions of Firefox. And SDK-based add-ons will soon load in separate processes, so slow-running add-ons won't slow down Firefox itself.

Re:FF == the next Netscape?

[camperdave]

How about letting ME decide what I want to use the memory for. There's no reason why, with 3G of RAM, that I should have to shut down Firefox to launch mplayer full screen.

Re:Bad Title

[VGPowerlord]

What do you think a smartphone is, exactly? A magic slab of plastic?

In the immortal words of Arthur C. Clarke:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.