Mozilla To Remove User-Facing Firefox Version Numbers 683
MrSeb writes "A great collective gasp issued from tuned-in Firefox fans when Mozilla announced that it was switching to a Chrome-like release schedule for its browser. Now Mozilla wants to take things one step further and remove Firefox version numbers entirely — from the user-facing parts of the browser, anyway."
You can see the Bugzilla entry for this change, and keep up on Mozilla's reasoning and discussion through a thread on the mozilla.dev.usability newsgroup. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler explained, "We're moving to a more Web-like convention where it's simply not important what version you're using as long as it's the latest version. ... The most important thing is confidence that they're on the latest release. That's what the About dialog will give them."
Are they -trying- to kill Firefox? (Score:5, Insightful)
This add-on only works with version.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem here. Firefox's ever changing APIs which are always breaking add-ons. The Chrome add-on API is much more limited and as such doesn't need to change as frequently or as drastically. How Firefox thinks they're going to succeed by becoming a crappier version of Chrome is beyond me.
Did the Gnome guys take over Mozilla or something? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a really stupid idea.
If the user wants to hide the version number, someone will write an extension to do that. Quit dumbing down Firefox.
Addon breakage (Score:4, Insightful)
Now people will think their addons break at random. I doubt the typical user will ever look at about:troubleshooting
Mozilla needs to rethink a lot of things about addon support before pushing their new release and version philosophy any further.
Version information can be important (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the developers want me to have the latest version, but it's not always what I want, and above all, whether latest version or not, I want to know what I've actually got.
From my pov, this will ensure that I never go back to Firefox (after abandoning it a while back because of the memory leaks and denials that there was a problem.)
-wb-
Well, have fun with bug reports ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I've found this bug in Firefox ..."
"Do you run the latest version?"
"I don't know. I'm running the version my distro gives me."
"So which one is it?"
"I don't know. It won't tell me."
"Please update to the latest version."
"Well, I already have the latest version my distro gives me. If this is actually the latest version, I have no idea."
Be Firefox, not Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does Mozilla keep treating Firefox like it's something they need to apologize for? Firefox has the best add-ons out there, hands down. And it's been around for years. Why are they acting like Chrome and others are setting the standards now? Why do they act like they're in some kind of pissing contest with Google? Google is the one with something to prove here, not Mozilla.
Just knock it off and stick to your strengths.
Asa Dotzler as a verb (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to start using his name for boneheaded changes done for "me too" reasons and decision by committee.
"Man, T-Mobile really Dotzler'd their unlimited plan."
Hmmm .... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not so sure I'm entirely keen on this.
From an IT perspective, it's helpful to know what versions people are running. And, from a practical perspective, who the heck updates every single day?
This is like agile development and continuously running the steaming build from last night ... it seems to completely violate any notion of a tested, supportable version of software, and turns it into a thing that is completely difficult to nail down. It's just a constantly evolving piece of software. So if something was broken for a day or so, you'll never really know WTF it was.
Hell, having done QA and the like ... the version of the browser you're running is part of the stuff you need to know so you know what you support. You can't even begin to say your software supports Firefox if you can't say anything more than "well, whatever Firefox looked like in January, we know it works on that".
I've dealt with a vendor who pretty much does constant releases of their software (several times/week), and their idiot support people mostly won't listen to you until you're running the latest version. It takes me several weeks to promote a version through my environments to do testing and get approvals, and you think my production instance is running the steaming turd you released on Friday?? How do you expect I've managed to do that? By having no control whatsoever as to what is deployed?
I'm pretty sure that for some organizations, this is going to make it really difficult to use Firefox. I'm pretty sure that in at least one or two places I've worked, this would be a complete non-starter.
Standards... (Score:5, Insightful)
From one of the posts in the group...
Microsoft Guidelines show version number in their About Box example.
----------
Excerpt from Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines:
About ApplicationName
Opens the About window, which contains the app's copyright information
and version number.
----------
Excerpt from GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 2.2.2: ...contains the name and version number of the application, a short
Help About
description of the application's functionality, author contact
details, copyright message and a pointer to the licence under which
the application is made available.
----------
Could someone please post references to the relevant standards Firefox
will comply with after implementation of bug 678775?
Re:Are they -trying- to kill Firefox? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Be Firefox, not Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to be a fan of Alex St John in MaximumPC.
Basically, he used to work for Microsoft and helped write a bad clone of postscript for Windows 95 and was influential engineering DirectX1 & 2 when it was called WinG for Windows 3.11.
He had an article detailing how Microsoft wins over its rivals. How? The rivals see the big bad scary Microsoft and end up doing something stupid and killing themselves out of fear. MS had nothing to do with it. I look at Mozilla and you know what I see? Someone freaking out trying to be something they are not in a market they are not.
I believe in 2 years Firefox will start to become irrelevant. Grandmas might use it and of course some geeks will have it on their computers even if they do nto use it but the marketshare will drastically go down and that is a shame. What Firefox had that Chrome didn't was a stable release cycle and some limited enterprise use for clients who had to stick with IE 6, but needed a secure more up to date browser for the internet. But Mozilla wanted to be cool like Chrome and follow all of its disadvantages and be something that they are not.
Chrome was well planned to be gradually updated with stable api's and a similiar rendering engines with all versions with slight additions rather than complete changes. Firefox was in such a hurry it didn't implement it right. May they rest in peace.
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
> ... because addon creators are too lazy or don't care enough ...
So let's see, we are both talking about developers who spend their own free time writing FF add-ons and give them away for free? Because "lazy" and "don't care enough" isn't exactly the first thing that comes to my mind about them.
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got it right here (Score:5, Insightful)
Could someone please post references to the relevant standards Firefox will comply with
RFC 9.402.001: Dicking around with vesion numbers and GUI behavior in lieu of performing actual work
Firefox devs are suddenly idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for the love of God, Firefox admins, what's going on, does the sweet, sweet, wall candy taste good? Your Aunt Mom tell you you are a special little snowflake and never mind what the bad, bad real world has to say?
I love Firefox. I really do, but honestly, it's like they are trying to be as stupid as humanly possible. I'm getting sick of "my way or the highway" program developers breaking things and telling me that they've been fixed. Do you morons notice how your market share is shrinking? Do you notice that you're producing nothing but bad press these days and people are getting pissed off at you? So your answer to this is to get in everyone's face and tell them to suck it up or go away? What are you, Tea Party-ists?
I work in tech. I need version numbers to tell what the hell people have. "You have the latest version" lies all the time like a cheap rug.
Firefox - it's this type of attitude that got me to switch from Ubuntu, where they've developed the same attitude that negative feedback means they're doing the job right. Learn a lesson here or lose more market share.
Time to purge some MBAs from management, you bozos.
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Opera has features. Safari has features. Firefox has... a rendering engine and a cadre of passionate programmers who make the browser palatable for Mozilla at no charge.
I would understand this particular trend in Mozilla if their browser actually did anything useful besides view web pages out-of-the-box. But it doesn't, and so I don't.
I guess the bottom line for this one is that I'm now, as a web developer, going to have to treat Firefox as a completely unsupported browser. Sure, I can go to the about:support page for my testing if I want, but when I get a bug report from an end user, how much effort is Mozilla expecting me to put in just to support whatever flavor of the week they have now?
When this "fix" is committed to Firefox, it officially comes off the list of officially supported browsers. If clients want support for Firefox, I'm not charging extra to recuperate the extra costs it will inevitably incur.
Re:Are they -trying- to kill Firefox? (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if my local gas station pumps were so stupid as to only support certain named car brands, going to great effort to ensure I can't buy gas unless my vehicle is on the approved list
Better yet, that the model year needs to be on the supported list, and then every year getting all defensive when patrons start showing up in the newest model and asking why they can't get gas. They tell them that they can't have gas until it's tested in that model year car because "who knows, maybe the 2012 Ford Focus runs on hydrogen", before finally blaming Ford for changing the year number even though the fuel didn't change.
What's really needed is an engine (API) version number that gas stations (addon developers) can target, and that only changes when the engine (API) changes. A well designed number would capture both added features and removed features in a way that a plugin can be marked with a range of versions that provide the required API features.
Re:Version information can be important (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, you mean you don't constantly restart Firefox? My good sir, you are clearly doing it wrong!
By which I mean that Firefox no longer checks for addon updates while Firefox is running. As of Firefox "Several Months Ago, I think, I dunno" (previously known as "Firefox 4") Firefox only bothers checking for addon updates when you start Firefox.
Or maybe it only bothers mentioning that there are updates when you restart, but will happily and silently download them in the background. I dunno.
Clearly, the proper and intended way to run Firefox is to constantly close and reopen it to make sure your addons and plugins are kept up to date.
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not blame Mozilla because addon creators are too lazy or don't care enough to update their addons properly
But I do blame Mozilla for starting down the path of a rapid-release cycle that is unneeded and unwanted by Firefox users. I do not blame the addon developers if they choose not to participate in the egregiously inane rapid-release cycle that Firefox is using.
The root problem is not with the addon developers, no matter how much you try to deflect the issue.
The root problem is the foolish and resource-wasteful rapid-release cycle that Firefox has engaged.
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not blame Mozilla because you are too lazy or don't care enough to unzip the addon, open the config file, and change the max version number yourself.
The non-technical end user should never - ever - be told to jump through these hoops.
The user doesn't understand the rules for development or the relationship between the developer and Mozilla. They only know that the Firefox browser has disabled an extension they need.
Re:Well, that's one way to reesolve the problem... (Score:0, Insightful)
Now only if we could solve the problem of people using the subject field for the beginning of their posts...
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only solution I see is to just not support Firefox, then allow clients to pay the development costs associated with supporting it. Just the process of taking bug reports will be hours of endless run-arounds trying to figure out what version I can duplicate some random idiosyncrasy in.
Re:This is a horrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds to me like this is how they looked at the recent outcry over their rapid release schedule:
Problem: People are upset about our rapid changes in major versions.
Solution: Don't show people the version numbers!
I expect this kind of reasoning from the PHB in a Dilbert cartoon. I expect a bit more from an organization that is trying to create the bestest browser ever. I mean, I understand that they're setting themselves up for failure with trying to be everything to everyone, but at least there are good ways to aim too high, and then there is aiming high and shooting yourself in the foot.
Fuck you Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all of us WANT to run the latest version. Not all of us WANT to update every time you push your supposed "latest and greatest".
This, next to Linux, is the clearest example of Rule #1 of IT: Never let a programmer program your application.
This constant push to have "shiny" shoved down everyone's throats without regard to what the end user wants must stop. People have no idea what they're running now so your dictatorial forcing of upgrades does nothing to make people feel comfortable with the software they're using.
Maybe YOU want to have the latest version, but I don't. And as is said on here on a daily basis, once it's on my machine, I'll do what I want with it.
It looks like it's time to move to another browser and stop suggesting people move from IE to Fx. Congratulations you arrogant pricks, you've jumped the shark.
Re:The version number makes no difference (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why people get into such a huge fuss about changing the fecking version number, it's probably the most inconsequential part of the entire browser?
Because most people want software that, you know, works.
They don't want things to randomly break and force them to spend half an hour on Google trying to fix it.
They don't want to be forced to upgrade to a new version that removes useful features.
They don't want to be forced to upgrade to a new version simply because the developers refuse to port security fixes back to the old one.
When a software developer starts to imagine they're more important than their users, they soon discover they don't have any users anymore.
Re:I like it (Score:5, Insightful)
And those guys still stuck in Internet Explorer 6 or whatever from 1999. You want it to work? Don't write to a browser version, write to a standard. I LIKE IT that it will be impossible to write for a browser version. I want a standards compliant browser, not version 12.345.2-19 of a browser and memorization of which sites require -20 and with can't work on anything newer than -18.
You think that browsers are all magically going to be standards-compliant just because version numbers are removed?
You think web developers *like* developing around browser idiosyncrasies and coding conditionally to specific versions? They do it because the HAVE TO.
You think every organization is going to allow all their machines to do automatic, arbitrary versioning of the browsers they allow their users to run?
Maybe you should get your head out of your ass.
Re:This is a horrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)
From idiocy to stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
1- take a perfectly working version numbering scheme
2- mess it up to try and look like Chrome, come with all love Chrome for its sexy, round version numbers. And for nothing else.
3- get rid of version numbers entirely rather than admit you're idiots,lose face, and backtrack
4- enjoy the entertaining confusion about updates, addon compatibility, features, security....
5- watch your userbase exodus to saner pastures
6- ???
7- Profit ! (for Google)
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Slashdot crowd may be vocal and anti the new Firefox, but the Mozilla developers need to sit up and take note. The vast majority of their current user base don't care enough to complain - they just switched to Chrome or IE. A significant number of friends and family who I converted to Firefox over the years have switched to Chrome in the past six months.
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
I write and maintain an addon used by my employer's customers. The addon is part of the software suite we sell and contains proprietary intellectual property - so it is not available to the public. The addons break due version number changes and too-rapid release cycle creates a burden on addon developers.
Here on slashdot is a lot of people from IT field. The majority expresses themselves against these steps planned by Mozilla. But they still keep going. So if they are not listening to IT crowd, who do they listen to?
Re:This isn't a Mozilla problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
You've conveniently skipped over those changes that really break existing add-ons. Autorolling the version range won't magically rewrite an add-on that depends on a toolbar or menu or behind-the-scenes-hook that Mozilla decided to remove or drastically change between versions.
As for lazy devs not rewriting their add-ons - As a developer myself, I can find the time to deal with Major Platform X releasing a new version once or twice a year. I do not have the time to try to keep up with this new "gotta beat Google at their own game despite them paying people to do this" monthly release philosophy. And if you want to tell me "good riddance", you certainly have every right to do that; And when the authors of Adblock, NoScript, Firebug, Download Helper, or a dozen others, decide they would rather have a life than play catch-up? Good riddance to the lot of 'em, we can always just use Chrome instead?
And as for "blame" - I would prefer Mozilla stop this shit, but I don't blame them. I just won't upgrade until all my "must-have" add-ons work.