Firefox 5 Scheduled For June 21 Release

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has updated its Firefox 5 release schedule and is apparently upbeat that it can release the browser even earlier than previously anticipated. The release was pulled in by a week to June 21. Mozilla is now also using a Chrome-like versioning system for Firefox — where the final Firefox 5 may be called Firefox 5.6.44.144, for example."

High version numbers

[Sonny Yatsen]

Of all the stupid features from Chrome to pick up, the version numbers is, by far, the dumbest. Has anyone considered how stupid a version number in the high double digits might be? Firefox 81 seems kind of clunky, doesn't it?

Re:High version numbers

[Bloodwine77]

Yeah, I personally don't like the major version number scheme used in this way, especially if there are going to be three or more versions of Firefox per year. I am old-fashioned and prefer the X.Y.Z approach. I could maybe see a YYYY.X approach, such as 2011.1, 2011.2, 2011.3, etc. that would track major versions per year. I never realized how close the new Firefox 4 was to Chrome with respect to the UI until I downloaded and installed Chrome the other day. Firefox seems to be hellbent on ripping off Chrome.

Wordperfect vs Word

[Anonymous Coward]

This just reminds me of when Microsoft Word for Windows jumped from version 2.0 to 6.0 just to appear competitive with WordPerfect. This will make version numbers irrelevant and nigh pointless.

Patrick Volkerding should be in charge

[slackzilly]

Then the latest Firefox would be realeased when it's ready to be released. Come to think of it, he should run the world.

Re:High version numbers

[robot_love]

Maybe because at the end of the day your opinion about an arbitrary number doesn't really mean anything? I'm not trying to be rude, but what the hell does it matter what they call it? Will they offend the International Software Versioning Board? No. Is the planet going to spiral into the sun? No. You think numbers should go up in smaller increments. They think they should go up faster. Who gives a crap?

And +5 Interesting to one man's opinion about an arbitrary number? Come on!

Re:Chrome and Firefox's Development Process

[dstyle5]

For those of us who work on browser-based products for large monolithic corporations this is going to be a gong show. Companies are always looking for guarantees of "Official Support" for browser X, version Y and now that you guys are going to be pumping out new major version numbers frequently that means browser QA/verification is going to have to occur far more often now. Not to mention having to test products against a quickly increasing number of versions.

Re:High version numbers

[hedwards]

The issue is that up until relatively recently there was some degree of agreement about roughly what a numbering system should look like. It wasn't prefect and it wasn't universally accepted, but you could be relatively sure that if you were hitting the 1.0 release that it should be relatively stable and feature complete. That a 1.1 release shouldn't require retraining or make any significant changes to the way the program was used or operated. An Alpha release wouldn't be feature complete typically, but a beta release should and a release candidate had better be in the ball park.

The reason for that is that if you're offering these things up to the public, then courtesy dictates that you give them some hint as to what state the code is in. Release notes are nice, but I don't think that it's a good idea to waste people's times looking at the release notes, if they know that using release code isn't OK in their environment.

Google OTOH, is using a revision system that's in keeping with their asinine perma-betas that they like to have. For a situation like that it makes some sense, but for organizations that realize the impact that beta code has on people, it's a stupid version naming scheme to use.