Mozilla Ships Firefox 5, Meets Rapid-Release Plan 282
CWmike writes "Mozilla delivered on Tuesday the final version of Firefox 5, the first edition under the new faster-release regime it kicked off earlier this year. The company also patched 10 bugs in Firefox 5, including one in the browser's handling of the WebGL 3-D rendering standard that rival Microsoft has called unsafe. Firefox 5 looks identical to its predecessor, Firefox 4, but Mozilla's made changes under the hood. Mozilla has denied copying Google Chrome's upbeat schedule but analysts have noted the similarities and pointed out the need of all browser makers to step up the pace. Because of the shorter development cycle, Mozilla called out relatively few new features in Firefox 5."
More work for plugin developers (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems this new schedule will create more work for plugin developers. My FF upgraded itself today to FF5 and I have plugins that don't work. FireGestures and VMware are two to start with.
Will this now happen every few months?
Re:More work for plugin developers (Score:5, Informative)
FF automatically upgraded itself today? (Score:2)
> My FF upgraded itself today to FF5 and I have plugins that don't work, tom17
Why did you change the "Ask me what to I want to do" setting in Update. The option third down from "Automatically check for updates to:". And just under that is an option "Warn me if this will disable any of my add-ons"
Tools->Options->Advanced->Update ..
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because of this:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2257134&cid=36516688 [slashdot.org]
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If Mozilla keeps to this schedule, I may just learn to like Opera's built-in inspector tool instead. I don't have time to be pestered by my browser as if it were a four year old child wanting a cookie.
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Web developers can't and won't use new features in browsers released every 2-3 months. And without the devs, all it is, is a broken marketing philosophy dictating product development.
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This is singularly unhelpful advice because it misses the point. The point is not that it FORCES you to upgrade or that you CAN'T turn off the notices, it's that their philosophy fundamentally conflicts with what browsers are used for.
Web developers can't and won't use new features in browsers released every 2-3 months. And without the devs, all it is, is a broken marketing philosophy dictating product development.
Bullshit. As a web developer, you already know that we do all our coding for the lowest common denominator, which is currently IE 8 for most devs. Firefox can implement all the fancy features it wants, and neither of us can really use it. So your point is moot.
Web browsers are normally used for browsing the web. What you use it for is Firebug. You're making up arguments for the sake of arguing. The normal user isn't going to care, and you shouldn't care because you can just not update and keep using i
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I don't have time to be pestered by my browser as if it were a four year old child wanting a cookie.
I responded by telling you how to stop it from pestering you.
Which apparently is "singularly unhelpful advice".
If you stick with the version you currently have and all the add-ons that work with that version, why do you care how often they are releasing new versions, if you are not planning on updating anyway? Just turn off the prompt to update and pretend like they only release a version every year or two. You state you only use FF for Firebug so if FF and Firebug will keep working if you
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Yeah, I saw the prompt and my immediate reaction was "The only reason I open FireFox at all instead of Opera is if i need to use FireBug. Why should I break FireBug every two months?"
If Mozilla keeps to this schedule, I may just learn to like Opera's built-in inspector tool instead. I don't have time to be pestered by my browser as if it were a four year old child wanting a cookie.
If you're only using it for Firebug / development work, than why do you need to upgrade it so often? Turn off autoupdating, turn off the update prompt, and only update when it is affecting your development.
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firebug works here. FF5 on debian sid. Blue cats theme and noscript work too, and all my lolcat links are correctly preserved, for the record.
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There is a configuration option to disable version checking for add-ons. Set extensions.checkCompatibility.<version> to false in about:config. The add-ons generally work. It might also work as just extensions.checkCompatibility set to false for all versions, but I'm not sure.
SeaMonkey v2.1 (Score:2)
This is why I haven't upgraded SM2.0.14 to v2.1 because of extensions/addons. I am fine with v2.0.14. I will wait for v2.0 to be unsupported and v2.1.x to be stable and ready. I hate upgrading and breaking things. :(
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Huh, mine all work - Lucky I guess. It would be nice to have a way to check beforehand, though... or an "Auto-update-only-if-all-plugins-are-compatible" option.
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Huh, just checked the options dialog, and it looks like there already is an option to warn when add-ons won't work any more... and it's enabled by default. So no problem?
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All of my plugins worked with no problems. And I'm pretty plugin-heavy. :)
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Forget plugins... the logon page to our whole freakin corporate website no longer works thanks to the CSS changes they made in the 5.0 release.
At least Internet Explorer has a compatibility mode to get around stuff like this when they do new releases.
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They got disabled so I assumed they didn't work. It wasn't important enough for me to actually investigate yet.
Thanks for the link.
But for this to work for the average Joe who just wants it to work, the plugin developers will have more work to do.
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Ok, when I say it upgraded itself, I meant it asked me if I wanted to upgrade, to which I thought 'yeah go on then, why not'.
I'm not complaining about the disabled plugins, just stating that this will be more work for the devs.
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Always assume that most of your plug-ins won't work properly for at least a few days after a new major version release (+0.1 before, +1 now).
I use a fairly exotic translation library for my native language, and usually end up waiting weeks for it to be updated to work properly (from 2 to 3 and every time 3 got a major upgrade).
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I dunno, I maintain an addon, and AMO automatically ran some tests and verified that it is compatable with FF 6 already, and marked it as such for me. This was a couple weeks ago. It shouldn't happen as often as it used to.
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Believe it or not, there are language/spell checker packs even from 1st world countries that aren't on AMO. Same goes for several popular add-ons.
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Actually, newer plugins should be based on Jetpack, which uses a newer API of Firefox which will stay stable and thus the addon developers don't need to worry/test/set the version-check anymore or atleast a lot less. It should be handled automatically.
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Minor upgrades rarely if ever break plug-ins. And yes, I just had the same upgrade a few hours ago myself. It's actually became stupid to upgrade from 3.6.x now because of the new update schedule and 4.0 actually stripping needed features to "chromify" firefox.
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Just out of curiosity, what "needed" features were stripped from 3.6.x?
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Status bar makes a great and most prominent example. And no, various add-on replacements don't fully replace the features that were stripped with it.
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Yeah, I don't see how that's an issue. In fact, I see it as a plus (using overlays for displaying addresses) when vertical real-estate is at a premium. The add-on bar is *part* of Firefox 4, and i don't see what it doesn't do that the status bar did.
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Though I didn't say it. This is my point. This is a 4.1 release at best. Making every release a major version number increase rather than the point release it should be means that developers will have to now either re-release their plugin more often or just say to hell with it and set compatibility to *any* future version.
The Major & Minor versioning was great for this. Why did they have to go change it.
Maybe they need a major/minor 'behind the scenes' versioning system and then a fancy 'name' that the
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Before I get called out on the hideous grammar in that post, let it be known that I forgot to proof-read it. Sorry.
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Do fewer things and do them better? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's an admirable and sensible approach. What would be nice, too, is not to ship a product with all the new stuff defaulted to Enabled, a fault I continue to find with Microsoft and Google - "Hey, we like this new hack, let's foist it on our unsuspecting users and turn a deaf ear to them when they howl."
hey, that's dangerous talk there! We need thousands of new features, right now, and damn the bugs!
Re:Do fewer things and do them better? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, this release includes essentially zero new features. Calling it a major release and incrementing the primary version number for what is essentially a security update is confusing to the point of making version numbers useless. This release doesn't even deserve a 4.1 IMO.
Re:Do fewer things and do them better? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>Calling it a major release and incrementing the primary version number for what is essentially a security update is confusing to the point of making version numbers useless. This release doesn't even deserve a 4.1 IMO
Agreed.
I think the FF devs are just trying to be like Google, and use major version numbers for every minor update they conduct. Terrible, terrible.
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>>Calling it a major release and incrementing the primary version number for what is essentially a security update is confusing to the point of making version numbers useless. This release doesn't even deserve a 4.1 IMO
Agreed.
I think the FF devs are just trying to be like Google, and use major version numbers for every minor update they conduct. Terrible, terrible.
There is such a thing as modifying the product in ways which improve efficient user interaction and use of system resources. Why shouldn't such an approach be considered a valid Full Release, rather than cramming in more "New" and unwanted/unnecessary "features"?
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Because from a user perspective nothing had changed. A new version number is a new product, calling a minor update a new product is confusing and fragments the user base, and 10 security bug fixes is an important, but functionally minor update. If nothing else, imagine a year or two from now and Firefox is ready to put out a new release that actually is something new and exciting and they're stuck assigning it the same importance that the assigned to this security patch, because they already assigned the
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Re:Do fewer things and do them better? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>There is such a thing as modifying the product in ways which improve efficient user interaction and use of system resources. Why shouldn't such an approach be considered a valid Full Release, rather than cramming in more "New" and unwanted/unnecessary "features"?
It's the difference between how Google has been versioning Chrome, and, well, how everyone else does it. Remember how excited people were for Firefox 4? Nationwide rollout? Interactive map showing you where all the downloads were coming from? Now try to imagine this excitement over a product whose changelog is: "We sped up javascript and 3D stuff 10% and broke some of your addons."
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On the other hand, this release includes essentially zero new features. Calling it a major release and incrementing the primary version number for what is essentially a security update is confusing to the point of making version numbers useless. This release doesn't even deserve a 4.1 IMO.
Call me crazy, but I thought they should have jumped right to Firefox 7.0.
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This is getting silly (Score:4, Insightful)
We're at Firefox 5 already? Doesn't seem like five minutes since Firefox 4. Used to be that an entirely new version number meant it was definitely worth taking the time to upgrade, but at this frequency how do we know which are the important ones?
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They are all important, because they all fix critical security vulnerabilities [mozilla.org].
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That's a valid point, but is it necessary to mix the bug and security fixes in with other changes? I don't mind it automatically patching vulnerabilities, it's gratuitous interface changes or breaking extensions that's annoying. Fortunately, version 5 has done neither of these so far, at least for me.
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All change !
Don't you know that when you
play at this level
its no ordinary version numbering scheme
(Apologies to Tim Rice, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson (Chess)
Anyway I am finding problems with Add-Ons too, even though the only one that was listed as incompatible was Foxytunes
FoxTabs doesnt work at all, instead of top sites, CTRL-T opens a new tab (blank) but doesn't move the current tab to that one.
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ya no kidding. wtf. we're still working on upgrading to firefox 4 here.. so basically we get to start the whole process over again (of internally validating a major version change) so soon simply because of this asinine artificial ramp-up of major version numbers. just call the bloody thing what it is.. firefox 4.1
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Emacs is at version 23 because at version 1.13 or so, they decided the major number would never change and was therefore redundant. You could call it 1.23 if you wanted, but then Richard Stallman will come and haunt you in your sleep.
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Also it's been around since 1976.
Tabs on top still broken (Score:2)
They still haven't fixed a glaring bug in how tabs work in the OS X version. Tabs aren't drawn correctly in the title bar in OS X, as Chrome does, but are on their own bar right below it. This results in wasted vertical space and just looks ugly.
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No kidding.
Tabs belong in the tab bar, not the title bar. Chrome looks awful.
The only things that belong in the title bar are the close button, the dock button, and the zoom to max content size button on the left, the window title in the middle, and the toolbar button on the right.
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The only things that belong in the title bar are the close button, the dock button, and the zoom to max content size button on the left, the window title in the middle, and the toolbar button on the right.
Are you some kind of an Apple HIG fanboy? Is this a sub-cult of the Apple cult of some sort? The way Chrome does tabs halfway in the title bar makes perfect sense. This approach leaves more screen real estate for the content, while retaining the ability to grab the top of the window to move it around. Besides, Apple breaks it's own HIG quite often. iTunes, Mac App Store - those are the main culprits in the current version of OS X. And God forbid you from using the Address Book in Lion.
Which dumbass analysts are these? (Score:2)
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Do note that the first four letters of analysts is anal. Explains everything, no?
Re:Which dumbass analysts are these? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why not 4.1? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not 4.1? (Score:4, Interesting)
2. When a European, there are some 500 million, starts up a new Windows computer he needs to select a browser from a list.
3. The ~90% of Europeans that don't understand computers will like to get the best and select the browser with the highest number.
4. Conclusion, Mozilla needs to get to a higher release version.
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The idea of a "version" doesn't really fit with fast semi-major changes, just the idea of a "release number", which is only used to distinguish which "release" you're using. Allows for better evolutionary changes to the browser instead of huge changes all at once and several months of debugging. Add a new feature, run it through basic testing, release it on the public, fix bugs as the crop up, move on to the next group of features on the to-do list. Kind of "fine grain" versioning instead of "course grain".
WebGL getting worse not better :( (Score:2)
The WebGL news is pretty depressing. Found this recently [contextis.co.uk] (explained here [mozilla.org])
I'm still very excited about having a real drawing API in the browser to work with that's not tied to MS or Adobe. Guess it'll still be a while until this tech is ready for prime time (sigh, been waiting YEARS already).
It's not helping that MS is slinging as much FUD as possible. Claiming that IE is "more secure than Chrome or Firefox" is laughable, but crap like this is not helping our case to the casual observer.
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I could see many games and tools for making games running in a web browser. Having done both - native apps and web dev, I have to disagree.
The text handling capabilities alone put the browser WAY ahead of the alternatives. Not to mention you can make the flat parts of your UI in HTML, SVG, whatever. It's a handy environment with a lot of facilities that make app dev simpler.
As long as upgrading is easy... (Score:2)
Frankly, I don't care what numbers they use for each release, I just make them to make it simple to keep up-to-date. What's good about Chrome is not the frequent releases, but the fact that I don't have to worry about upgrades in spite of the frequent releases.
One thing that is quite annoying is the calls I get from users who are being prompted to upgrade Flash, Adobe Reader, or Java. It makes it harder to train users not to install stuff and to take any system prompts seriously when they are frequently p
5 FINAL??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've finally gotten 4 configured the way I like; and prior to that, I completely skipped over v3.
People don't want cutting edge web browsers. They want them to work, and they want them to look and feel the same for years at a time. Add support for new media types, tweak the rendering engine, but leave everything else alone!.
And that doesn't even consider how this crap breaks plugins... Literally half the plugins I currently run, I had to edit the install.rdf just to get around the damned version check (after which, they all work just fine of course).
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And that doesn't even consider how this crap breaks plugins... Literally half the plugins I currently run, I had to edit the install.rdf just to get around the damned version check (after which, they all work just fine of course).
And that's because Mozilla requires a max version in the addon .rdf file, and they also say this:
This number needs to be less than or equal to an announced version of Firefox [mozilla.org].
At the moment, the highest on that page is Firefox 7.
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I used to edit the .rdf too, but this comment (above) shows a better way:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2257134&cid=36517372 [slashdot.org]
There is a configuration option to disable version checking for add-ons. Set extensions.checkCompatibility. to false in about:config. The add-ons generally work. It might also work as just extensions.checkCompatibility set to false for all versions, but I'm not sure.
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Did you actually try FF5?
Most of the changes are under the hood. GUI looks almost identical. I'd say it fits what you're asking for almost perfectly.
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And that doesn't even consider how this crap breaks plugins... Literally half the plugins I currently run, I had to edit the install.rdf just to get around the damned version check (after which, they all work just fine of course).
or you could have set extensions.checkCompatibility.5.0 (replace the number with your version or nightly for nightly build) to false
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How about a version 4 that people like? (Score:5, Informative)
Preliminary for june 2010-2011 here [statcounter.com]. Changes from May:
Chrome: +1.08%
IE: -0.25%
Firefox: -0.79%
After six months in the lead in Europe, Firefox is now again behind IE. They're backing on every continent except Africa (+0.2%). I don't think rapid-fire will work any better if you don't have the bullets.
Seriously, a computerworld link? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rapid release schedule != better software (Score:2)
I can't believe this rubbish. All this is doing is confusing users, causing more work for admins and developers - and for what? To keep up with the Jones' release schedule?
Software is made better by working hard, testing, bugfixing, testing, bugfixing, testing... not by artificially increasing version numbers because time has passed.
Debian, please, please, please, don't *ever* adopt this type of release schedule. I feel like you're the last honest software development team out there I can depend on to *know
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Shit. Nevermind, I guess I blocked their new 2-year release cycle out of my head. =(
Google Apps Support (Score:2)
Firefox 4 hasn't been out long and if Google keeps with the browser support schedule [blogspot.com]. Starting August 1st they won't support Firefox 3.6 anymore. I am all for getting people to upgrade but it seems like they'll be dropping support for Firefox versions pretty fast if Mozilla can keep up with their rapid release schedule.
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It will be a sad day on august 1st then, but in the end, I suspect that many will stick to 3.6 anyway.
Why didn't they just call it Firefox 14? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the version numbering scheme is total nonsense anyway (this is hardly a major change over 4, it's more like 4.1) why not just leapfrog over everyone and call it Firefox 14? Then Chrome will have to play catchup!
Critical addons (Score:2)
If they break adblock and noscript- I'm moving to another browser.
I'm sure there are critical addons for other people.
I also must have a portable app version.
I went to FF4 on one browser at home and it BROKE my F5 plugin required for work.
No update yet.
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I'd suggest using palemoon [palemoon.org] it's a FF3/4 spinoff, but sadly it's windows only. But since that's all I use it works for me.
Are they replacing "dot" releases with full ones ? (Score:2)
I mean, are they just changing their numbering scheme, or actually doing more work ?
'coz if numbers magically become features, windows 2000 becomes much better than WIndows 7 ?
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They changed their numbering scheme.
Firefox 5 is basically just Firefox 4.1
I believe they plan to have Firefox 6 out by the end of the year as well. Three "major" versions per year.
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Thanks for the clraification
That's sadly demagogic then. I guess in a couple of years they'll increment version numbers by ten at a time, and declare victory ....
No, it doesn't. (Score:2)
Where is the promised x64 version for Windows?
I like it (Score:2)
I like the fast release stuff. What I don't like are the version numbers, but they will get bored of it eventually.
Other than addon concerns (which, lucky me, no one broke this release) and the senselessness of removing non-major releases, we get updates more often. I like that.
Still running 3.6 (Score:2)
FF5 release notes (Score:5, Informative)
In case you're wondering what's actually new:
- Added support for CSS animations
- The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
- Tuned HTTP idle connection logic for increased performance
- Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
- Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
- Improved spell checking for some locales
- Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
- WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
- Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
- Fixed several stability issues
- Fixed several security issues
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Now there are plug-ins that cause memory grabs but that's a different group of developers.
Anyhow you can see for yourself, just type about:memory in the address bar to check where memory is used.
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From my understanding, Mozilla Corporation gets most of its funds from Google. I get the sense that Firefox is being setup to fail with Google Chrome being the main beneficiary.
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So Mozilla gets funds from Google because they have Firefox, therefore they want to sabotage Firefox to stop receiving funds? Great logic.
If Firefox fails, why would Google continue to pay? And if Firefox keeps above Chrome, why would Google stop paying and risk Mozilla changing the default search engine to Bing or DDG?
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I'm sorry, but the rapid release cycle does make a lot of sense. Firefox as a whole is relatively speaking not very buggy. It certainly is less so than IE or Safari (at least I don't hit any noticeable Firefox bugs on a daily basis but Safari regularly crashes [windows] and IE dev tools have so many problems that they are nearly impossible to use).
New features/enhancements/fixes used to be implemented on trunk, with a "bake" time needed to make sure that they didn't degrade the product. Now they are done in
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Firefox as a whole is relatively speaking not very buggy. It certainly is less so than IE or Safari (at least I don't hit any noticeable Firefox bugs on a daily basis but Safari regularly crashes [windows] and IE dev tools have so many problems that they are nearly impossible to use).
So you've clearly never used any of the browser you mention for more than 30 seconds ...
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Geeks may use Firefox incidentally, but their target audience isn't geeks. Their target audience are the parents and grandparents of geeks, along with the non-geek friends of geeks.
No. The product they are selling is the default search engine setting, and their target audience is Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.
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Your first mistake is thinking that Mozilla is primarily about selling a product to start with....
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".... And it might stop some of the free tech support I have to provide."
If people think you'll fix things for free they won't lift a finger to help themselves. I hate to say it but I even charge family a non-trivial amount, just to tip the scales towards them trying to figure the solution out themselves. It's not a great solution but I got sick of spending my whole weekend fixing the same problems over and over and it gives me a bit of beer money.
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I don't charge family, but I do my best "Nick Burns" impression whenever I get called on to fix something for the nth time (where n > 1) unless they demonstrate that they did what I showed them last time and it didn't work.
I think they'd prefer I charged them. But it works!
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http://netscape-browser.brothersoft.com/ [brothersoft.com]
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The amount of bugs is a function of the amount of changes and the amount of time spent testing them.
Unsurprisingly, there are less new features than in FF3.6->FF4.
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I'm certainly considering going back to version 4... ever since the update half my plugins don't work, and I've lost some of what I thought was basic built in functionality (for example when I right click on a picture, "view image" is no longer an option)
Between lost features and lost plugins I've seen a few steps backwards but none forwards with firefox 5 over the previous firefox 4