No Additional Firefox 4 Security Updates 445
CWmike writes "Unnoticed in the Tuesday release of Firefox 5 was Mozilla's decision to retire Firefox 4, shipped just three months ago. Mozilla spelled out vulnerabilities it had patched in that edition and in 2010's Firefox 3.6, but it made no mention of any bugs fixed in Firefox 4 on Tuesday, because Firefox 4 has reached what Mozilla calls EOL, for 'end of life,' for patches. Although the move may have caught users by surprise, the decision to stop supporting Firefox 4 has been discussed within Mozilla for weeks. In a mozilla.dev.planning mailing list thread, Christian Legnitto, the Firefox release manager, put it most succinctly on May 25: 'Firefox 5 will be the security update for Firefox 4.' Problem is, users are being prompted to upgrade now but are hesitant because the new rapid release of updates means many add-ons are not compatible. And without security updates in between, many could be left exposed with unpatched browsers."
This is gonna suck... (Score:2)
...for anyone running a Linux distro :-(
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Ubuntu upgraded to FF 5 this morning. I was surprised, given that Ubuntu has not been too swift with previous FF upgrades. I suppose the EOL is the reason.
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Let me check...
Yup, I'm also in FF5. I didn't know! xD
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3 words: Rolling release distro.
Like Arch or Gentoo, or Debian unstable if you want.
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3 words: Rolling release distro.
Like Arch or Gentoo, or Debian unstable if you want.
Yeah right.
I love gentoo, I hate the idea of non-rolling-release systems.
However.
It takes ~1h to compile the new xulrunner and firefox on my 2.5ghz dual core laptop.
If the fast release cycle keeps accelerating, soon Firefox X+1 wil be out before I'm d-one compiling Firefox X
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Also I really hate how distros mark software deemed stable by upstream as totally experimental and dangerous (applies to pretty much everyone).
Stable doesn't just relate to the software, but how the software works on a specific platform (that is, whether it plays nice with other libraries and such, whether the dependancies have been specified properly in the ebuild (or whatever your distro of choice uses), etc..).
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It often is. Even if we leave out the obvious bias people might have about software they wrote, there's the simple fact that there are more users than developers, so the former will almost certainly run into bugs the latter didn't. And of course, any project with proper testing will continue finding new bugs all the time, so the developers have to decide which ones
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Just unpack the tarball somewhere convenient and be happy. If you had FF4 working, 5 will just drop in.
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Yeah and then have to keep doing that to get updates...
I've heard Ubuntu has FF5 in their main repos now, so users will get updates, but Mozilla needs to have repos ready for the final versions of their browsers at the same time the final version is released as a .deb package/tarball. Typically I end up sticking to the old browser or running a beta from a repo, then I have to wait weeks after the final release for a PPA for the final version.
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How does that suck any more than waiting for the security update to be packaged?
It's the same decision it always was. Wait for your distro to update the package or grab the tarball direct and forgo management on that package.
Had FF5 introduced a serious bug thjat could impact productionm, I might be more upset, but for all practical purposes, it IS the security update to 4.1 and should be treated as such. If you like, rename it to FF4.2
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It'll break most of your add-ons, but it will just drop in.
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I usually use mozillateam PPAs but I can't find any for Firefox 5 final.
Still, having to mess with repos AGAIN is why it sucks.
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whats a linux dildo
Basically the same as regular dildo but anyone's free to dick around with it however they want.
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I thought the windows one was made of broken glass, and the linux one had a point out to the side (front if standing up) like a little beak.
BSD has two points at the end and a pitch fork.
MacOSs can only be used on one part of the body, and only in one room of the house, only at the time Mr. Jobs lets you use it, and only with Apple approved partners...
Guess I'll just wait a few months (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, the only thing they "broke" is the version number. If you disable compatibility checking, loads of add-ons from ff3 still work, and ff4 ones *do* work. Even in ff7 nightly.
If they hadn't broken addons... (Score:5, Informative)
...they would be fine.
However, it looks like Mozilla failed to communicate it well enough, thinking their own notice was enough. The result is that Mozilla seems to take Microsoft's path for once - refusing to patch security issues on a relatively new release, and washing their hands clean with an EOL.
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What? Microsoft are still supporting Windows XP. It's a bit more than three months old.
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MS provides only security patches at this point and will do so until 2014 IIRC, which means well over a decade of security patches.
But, Firefox doesn't really need to do that as it's open source and upgrading to a newer version is free.
FSVO "free" (Score:3)
Firefox doesn't really need to do that as it's open source and upgrading to a newer version is free.
As long as you're not doing any incoming qualification, that's dandy. Of course, in an enterprise setting you just might want to make sure that the new version supports all of your mission-critical applications. If you're running a distribution, you might want to do some QA on it.
As it is, Gentoo (to name one) still has 4.0 in unstable, and Mozilla's rapid releases are practically guaranteed to keep any of the new releases from ever reaching stable. That's not a joke; running tarballs is a quick way to
Re:FSVO "free" (Score:4, Insightful)
You are not kidding, half of my add-ons/plugins are not compatible to the new release. so I'll sit on the sidelines for a while.
Now I think that Firefox should find a point and say, clean up time, make a few versions updates, then poll the community for the next official features, this way you get some stability over time and new features, heck I don't mind if they did that every 9 months, at lease I would know that the older versions would be somewhat safe to utilize on the current platform of my firm.
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However, it looks like Mozilla failed to communicate it well enough, thinking their own notice was enough.
Um, how much more notice should they provide? An ad in the Times?
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Kind of hard to fix a security issue if you only know that it exists, but not where.
The new release cycle is going to hurt Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not be surprised if their new release cycle causes their marketshare to start shrinking in a significant fashion.
I have been a long-time Firefox user (ever since it was Phoenix) and their current release philosophy is really turning me off. They just seem so misguided and detached from reality.
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FWIW I agree. I switched to Chrome.
Thanks for the laugh. Seriously, I chuckled. When Firefox implements forced, rapid-iteration upgrades your response is to... erm... switch to a browser that has a policy of forced, rapid-iteration upgrades?
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A developer not serious enough about their code to test with new versions of the browser as they come out is not someone who should be developing add-ons.
False. Many add-ons are simple, e.g. UI-related ones, ones that can practically be considered "finished" once they reach a certain point. Such add-ons don't have bugs like security vulnerabilities and they don't need to be constantly updated. These are often made by someone in his spare time, and then, after "finishing" it, he gets a new job, or a school semester starts, etc, and then a few months later a new version of Firefox comes out and "breaks" his add-on, even though the only problem may be the ve
I don't get that (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they trying to kill their user base ?
Anybody serious deploying system WILL NOT ship a mozilla product. Obsoleting a software 3 month after its release is ridiculous. You can't try to get market share and killa release in 3 month. If you don't plan to give any support, call that a development version!
I am SO disappointed in them!
Re:I don't get that (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody serious deploying system WILL NOT ship a mozilla product. Obsoleting a software 3 month after its release is ridiculous. You can't try to get market share and killa release in 3 month. If you don't plan to give any support, call that a development version!
Indeed. For my users, I'm tempted to say "Sorry, I can't support Firefox because Firefox doesn't support Firefox", and switch them all over to Opera.
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HTML is versionless now as HTML5 is the last version to be released. Everything else from here-on-out is just an addition to HTML5. As long as your support HTML, you should be fine.
Not support as in "write HTML for", but support as in, you know, support - assist users with actually using the program, finding out why it doesn't work as expected against applications they have to use, moving bookmarks from one machine to another, install company bookmarks for them remotely, perform backups and restores, and everything else that support entails.
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Would you have been more comfortable installing this release if it were labelled as "4.1"?
If so, just download the installer, rename the file to "Firefox 4.1" and install it from there.
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I would have been more comfortable if Mozilla hadn't terminated support for a three-month old release!
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It is not that I am not confortable with them releasing a version 5.
I won't deploy firefox 5 on any machine I need to provide support for. Because I have to assume there won't be any support for it in 3 month from upstream.
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Chrome is different. It automatically updates Chrome on startup if there is a new version. I don't believe there is a way to opt-out and stay with an older version. I generally use Firefox and not Chrome, so I am not as adept at Chrome and I could have missed an update toggle setting in Chrome.
I don't know how Chrome handles plugins with regards to compatibility when Chrome is updated.
Re:I don't get that (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you but how does Google Chrome succeed? "You can't try to get market share and killa release in 3 month"
Lack of plugins - or at least being much less common and quite possibly with a more stable API/ABI. A "security update" that breaks plugins is a sure-fire way to catch Firefox users between a rock and a hard place. It's a typical case of developers coding for developers - who are all on a very recent version and can fix what's broken for them - instead of regular users. Keep going like this and they'll be the #3 browser by Christmas...
This frantic update thing is getting annoying (Score:2)
Google seems to be updating Chrome at a high rate because they want to control both the server side (all Google properties) and the client side. Google properties now use features that only work in Chrome. It's Microsoft's old "Embrace, extend, devour" applied to the Web. Microsoft tried this with Silverlight, with less success.
Whether Firefox should cooperate in this effort needs to be questioned. Whether Firefox users should go along is very questionable.
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Google properties now use features that only work in Chrome.
Google uses web standards that have been implemented in Chrome. The only thing keeping other browsers from implementing the same standards is their slow release cycle. Nobody is calling into proprietary Chrome APIs.
...including web "standards" that they wrote, such as SPDY.
Oh, and did I mention those were massive sarcasm quotes?
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Google uses web standards that have been implemented in Chrome.
Ummm..... partially true. Google does use web standards, but also adapts chrome-specific extensions based on web standards that will probably (but not definitely) be approved. If you write CSS for Chrome, it will not work for other browsers unless you include each browser's own customized version of the same thing.
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WebRTC.
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Sucks for corporate use (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't want to have to push out a brand new version of FF every few months and risk breaking my users' plugins that they use.
Re:Broken by design (Score:5, Informative)
Because that's not the way the addon versioning system works?
Look, it's really pretty simple. An addon needs to say what versions of Firefox it supports, as the API is known to change with each version.
The old rule was that you were pretty safe in assuming that the "patch level" number (the third/fourth number depending on release) could change without breaking any addons. Changing the minor number might break existing addons and could add new APIs. (For example, the change from Firefox 3.5 to 3.6.)
Changing the major number indicated a major change in functionality that could, potentially, require addons to be rewritten. (For example, Firefox 2 to Firefox 3.)
How the hell do you work that into the new versioning system?! The only way would be for the browser itself to "know" that Firefox 5 is basically Firefox 4 and not flag addons written for "4.0+".
Am I supposed to assume that an addon I write against Firefox 4 will work in Firefox 5 and Firefox 6, when the same was certainly not true for Firefox 1 to 2 - and 2 to 3, and 3 to 4? When will they be changing the API again? Am I supposed to be psychic when setting the maxVersion number?
Keep in mind that it's the browser itself that enforces these version checks. It's not something that addon developers really have any control over.
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Decouple Program/API versions (Score:5, Insightful)
How the hell do you work that into the new versioning system?! The only way would be for the browser itself to "know" that Firefox 5 is basically Firefox 4 and not flag addons written for "4.0+".
Am I supposed to assume that an addon I write against Firefox 4 will work in Firefox 5 and Firefox 6, when the same was certainly not true for Firefox 1 to 2 - and 2 to 3, and 3 to 4? When will they be changing the API again? Am I supposed to be psychic when setting the maxVersion number?
Two things they could do. The one they probably should do right away is to decouple the API versions from the program versions, since those have become meaningless. Heck, even Windows did this when their marketing department got the clout Mozilla's seems to have - developers could still query the real (meaningful) version number even though the box had a year or stupid name on it. They could leave things as they are now for addon developers or they could introduce a new maxAPIVersion check, one time.
If they were feeling energetic, they could teach the browser how to introspect its API changes and make smart decisions. Say, an addon uses foo() and bar() - those did not change since the maxVersion release, so run the addon. Another addon uses foo() and baz() and declares the same maxVersion. The browser knows that baz() changed semantically, so it prevents baz() from running.
I'd probably rather see that approach since it takes the weight off of thousands of developers and puts it onto one or two.
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I'd just set it to 99 or whatever and patch shit as it breaks.
I'd rather have an app that's buggy on a new version of FF than one that *would* have worked fine but had maxVersion set too low...
Last I checked, you're not allowed to do that and have your addon be hosted on addons.mozilla.org. Which is why none of the addons on there do.
Not to mention that doing that was strongly discouraged by Mozilla and, prior to Firefox 5, at least, a really bad idea.
Forget the Version Numbers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forget the Version Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the version numbers do matter when it comes to plugins and the maxVersion string. They are going to be breaking add-ons left and right with this shit.
Version Numbers and Add-on Compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
But that is merely a symptom, not the cause.
If nothing else, the new release philosophy causes the incredibly stupid approach to add-on compatibility to be highlighted.
People have complained about add-ons 'breaking' for years with other (point) releases, usually stating that after updating the maxVersion string manually, or using Nightly Tester Tools to override, the add-on continues to work perfectly fine.
Perhaps it's wishful thinking.. but part of me is hoping that the new release schedule forces Mozilla, and the community, to re-think add-on compatibility reporting; flagging add-ons as 'broken' not by default, but after testing.
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Doesn't Firefox have some sort of "capabilities"-type discovery for add-ons?
Re:Forget the Version Numbers (Score:4)
It is a new way of developing software that has been happening for a while now.
And that's the problem. It needlessly pisses people off. Who are the developers who start using this scheme when I don't know a single developer who thinks it makes sense?
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Clearly, they are developers you don't know.
And many of them work for projects that have been very successful using this approach, which is more relevant to assessing the utility of the approach than random people on the internet claiming that it "needlessly pisses people off".
Its a pretty obvious approach that reduces waste and duplicatio
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Granting, arguendo, the truth of that assertion, that's irrelevant because Firefox isn't commercial software.
Uh, sure, with commercial software where someone has paid a million dollars for the last version and will be charged a substantial fraction of that too upgrade to the next major version, the tradit
Beginning of the end (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been a committed Firefox user for many years, using daily many plugins that I find irreplaceable (zotero, noscript). I'm now seriously considering alternatives. I find it irresponsible that Mozilla would not stand behind the major release of one of their products for more than three months.
Time to pester plug-in writers to support Chrome (Score:2)
This really sucks. A copy of Firefox that I leave running 24/7 on an older notebook near my bed is already nearly worthless after having switched from Firefox 3.x to Firefox 4 because of the absurd memory demands of Firefox 4 (had dozens of sites open under 3.x, now opening 2 sites in 2 tabs is a challenge). One of the key things that I do with this systems depends on using a plug-in. Can't run Firefox 5 until the plug-in is ready and even then fear that the memory issue may get even worse. Now I'm told tha
Put a fork in it (Score:2)
Mozilla just keeps making more and more retarded decisions. The last good branch was 2.x. It's been all downhill since then. I'm still using 3.6.x since I refuse to upgrade to version 4 or 5.
The only real options left:
1) Put up with their decisions
2) Fork it
3) Jump ship
I'm choosing option 3.
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Lynx
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4 and 5 are basically identical
So, uh, why do we need FF5?
This is the same kind of developer Retardovision which has become endemic over the last few months with Gnome and Ubuntu also pushing crap on users that don't want it.
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v5 was only released to get Firefox onto the new upgrade schedule. The only thing retarded about it (apart from any arguments about the new release schedule itself) is that they chose to do it so quickly after Firefox 4 was released, creating a lot of extra work for addon developers who just finished making their addons compatible with v4 and dropping on bombshell on Linux distro maintainers and users by discontinuing support for v4.
Should have just skipped version numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole version number thing is insane and pissing off anyone who needs a singe stable version that is supported for a reasonable length of time.
If they wanted to up the version number they should have just skipped 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 to 11 or 12. Or since everyone skips 13 anyway just go directly to 14 and be done with it. Then keep it there for at least a year.
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I think version numbering should be dropped completely from public view.
Software improves over time (hopefully) but the name (brand) remains the same. When updates are around it could be indicated to the user by telling that you are lagging so many days or being so many percent from complete. Being 100% complete would mean you'd have the latest 'version'. This would make the whole process feel like a game where you catch up with the others.
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So they kill support for an old version... (Score:2)
Google Funds Most of Firefox Development... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mozilla Corporation gets most of its funds from Google. Something to keep in mind in regards to the future of Firefox...
My gut says, barring some significant change in funding / lead developers, that Firefox's future is bleak - what's happening now feels to me so much like what happened back when Netscape jumped the shark with their bloated Communicator suite. People bailed in droves.
The ideal situation would be for a group of developers to fork Firefox 3.6.x, throw in some of the improvements from 4, and run with it. Many would be greatly appreciative, and likely support it in both time and donations; don't make the same mistake as Mozilla Foundation has in regards to relying too much on any one major donor.
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Correction: In the last sentence, I meant to write Mozilla Corporation.
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What is holding Opera back from the mainstream? They have been around for eons and have innovated a lot of features (or at the very least implemented said features well before their competitors). Still, Opera seems to remain a niche web browser.
Granted, I don't use Opera myself and I can't quite put my finger on why I don't use it. The first time I tried many years ago I didn't like ad banner in the interface of the free version (I think they got rid of the paid version of Opera and the ad banners in free O
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Opera the closed-source browser with a BSD-sized user base? Yeah I have no idea why it's less popular than Firefox or Chrome.
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What is holding Opera back from the mainstream?
A number of things. Most users will relate with at least one of these points:
* Although, those few w
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What is holding Opera back from the mainstream? They have been around for eons and have innovated a lot of features (or at the very least implemented said features well before their competitors). Still, Opera seems to remain a niche web browser.
No proper adblock plugin*. That has been the killer feature for EVERY normal user I've switched from IE to firefox over the years. That, and firefox is big enough that it gets tested these days, along with IE. Some small yet critical for some user website breaks in o
It's not stealing. (Score:3)
If it's "stealing" to view a web site without "viewing" the ads, then it's "stealing" to mute the TV during a commercial, or change the channel, or go to the bathroom. Same for the radio.
I have made no agreement with any web site owners to look at or download any content they may place in their pages. Site owners who make content freely-viewable do so at their own risk, without any guarantees.
Don't let the **AAs co-opt the meaning of "theft". Don't let them brainwash you.
Next thing you know, people will
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Fork 3.6? What's wrong with v4/v5? You don't like the speed and memory efficiency improvements?
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Fork 3.6? What's wrong with v4/v5? You don't like the speed and memory efficiency improvements?
Don't like using an interface designed for a tablet or mobile phone on a desktop with a 1200 pixel high screen?
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Because 3.6 was the best version? Version 4 is completely different UI for no discernable reason, it's not easier to use that's for sure, it feels like your typical change-for-the-sake-of-change feature. Who knows if it's faster if it takes longer to use overall? FF4 sucks and from the news it seems that FF5 will be worse.
Who is This Helping? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who, exactly, is the rapid release schedule helping? It's certainly not helping web developers and organizations who try to list their supported browser versions and actually try to code towards those versions. The quickest path to get the corporate PHBs to stop supporting your browser is to have the IT staff say "Guess what, the next version of Firefox is already out so we need to make updates." At some places, support for browsers other than IE is tenuous at best, so making it more difficult to support these browsers only hurts the browser manufacturers.
Want to gain more support? Release a stable product, with wide support for standards and add-ons, and do so on a sane, well-publicized schedule. People don't care about version numbers; updating software isn't something people want or like to do. Why are you making it more difficult and cumbersome for users to use your product?
Screwed extension support means good-bye (Score:2)
Here's the thing, Mozilla. If/As you screw over extension support, I have no reason to stay with you.
You'd better rethink the implications of your "rapid release"... nomenclature. And really, it's just nomenclature. So, you are willing to toss your competitive advantage for the sake of bumping version numbers like Chrome?
Dear Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:3)
I am still using Firefox 3.6 and will stay that way until either Mozilla lay down the crack pipe or I find another browser whose UI designers aren't similarly crack addled (sorry Chrome).
It's Official: Version Numbers Are Meaningless (Score:2)
With Linux 3.0, Firefox 5, and the weekly Chrome version bump, "version numbers" are essentially meaningless.
Version numbers are really a relic of the boxed software, major release days anyway. Rolling updates seem to be the future, so build numbers may be more appropriate.
Seriously? (Score:4)
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It's a minor update: just like they didn't keep updating 4.0 when 4.0.1 came out, they don't keep updating 4.0.1 when 4.0.2 came out. But for marketing reasons, they decided that 4.0.2 would be called "5.0".
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It's just a release. Releases are deprecated almost immediately with security updates, new features / API changes etc. The only difference here is the version numbering is insane which makes it harder to see what has broken.
They are doing it wrong. (Score:3)
They are trying to copy or catch up with Chrome on the version numbering thing, but they are missing something important here. With Chrome, it gets auto-updated all the time (at least mine is, on both OS X and Ubuntu), to where I've always got the latest and greatest, and all the inherent security fixes and such. If I had to manually download a new copy of Chrome regularly, even every three months, I would grow tired of it. But the auto-updater does it for me; I installed Chrome once and am now done with that part of it. I couldn't tell you what version of Chrome I am running, except for I know it updated itself earlier this week.
Firefox, on the other hand, won't auto-update to a "major version", like going from 4.x to 5.x. Mozilla should know they had a hard enough time getting people to download a new copy, even when it took 18 months between major versions. People are not going to re-download it on such a quick schedule.
And Mozilla needs to update Firefox's handling of extensions, with its "max version" attribute. Once again, it was bad enough when there was a new FF update every 18 months and it took forever for the extension developers to make the simple integer change. All I have read this week with FF5 is how this extension and that extension disabled itself, when it will probably work just fine.
I was a long-time Firefox supporter and didn't like Chrome at first. Now I am either going with Chrome or Safari all the time, and feeling sad for the days when Firefox was the shiznit.
Is Mozilla becoming closed and self-serving? (Score:4, Insightful)
Although the move may have caught users by surprise, the decision to stop supporting Firefox 4 has been discussed within Mozilla for weeks.
Who cares what the users think about EOL'ing a product that was only released a few week ago. We The Developers are going to do what we want, users be damned.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Just Came to Say ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Christian Legnitto, the Firefox release manager, put it most succinctly on May 25: 'Firefox 5 will be the security update for Firefox 4.' Problem is, users are being prompted to upgrade now but are hesitant because the new rapid release of updates means many add-ons are not compatible. And without security updates in between, many could be left exposed with unpatched browsers."
Came to say that.
Don't the people in charge think these things through? It appears not.
The new versioning schema is the new security hole in Firefox.
And all done for no real gain or benefit.
Idiots.
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Or maybe it's a security hole in your extension that it prevents you from keeping Firefox up to date.
It's all in the numbering! (Score:4, Insightful)
add-ons are to firefox what software is to windows (Score:4, Interesting)
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Then why do I have 2 addons that doesn't?
Re:BS Article (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I agree, the arbitrary version compatibility strings are the problem, for extensions in a lot of cases. A move from 4.x to 5.0 should not actually break many (or any?) extensions, because they haven't changed those interfaces.
If there's no update for an extension that is essential and the versioning doesn't jibe, there's this extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/ [mozilla.org]
That allows you to ignore the compatibility version check, enable disabled extensions and submit "this extension works" or "this extension doesn't work" to developers.
I'm using Firefox 5.0 in Linux (self compiled), but in Windows I use Nightly, because it gives me a 64 bit firefox that gets updates. When Nightly reached a version number that was to disable my Status4Evar addon, I used the tool to enable it again and it's still working with the firefox version being 7.0a1
Re:BS Article (Score:5, Interesting)
You might be able to post an add-on with a maxVersion of 4.1alpha or something, but it would break on 4.1 final. Of course, there's no way to quickly re-enable the add-on, because Mozilla thinks you can't be trusted to run your own browser, an interesting concept coming from open source software.
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I believe you can install the Mozilla Add-on Compatibility Reporter (made by Mozilla) to manually turn on any outdated/incompatible/whatever add-ons.
I can't blame them for making such functionality take a couple of extra steps because I imagine the support nightmare from your average user is hell otherwise.
I'm not a big fan of this new rapid release thing with major version numbers just to look better, though.
Re:What the h. . . ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot story [slashdot.org]
No big news, except that the Mozilla Foundation has gone out of its mind. I think I'll stick with Firefox 3 until it reaches end of life, and then upgrade to Firefox 25.
Re:FF5 is out? (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically, SeaMonkey is still at version 2, when it comes from a branch of the Netscape tree that should make it six or seven.
And furthermore, all of these web browsers are identified as Mozilla/5.0 in their user agents.
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If it helps you sleep at night...
No, that's just given me even more to contemplate while staring at the ceiling. I'm surprised to hear FF8 is planned already....care to share any spoilers for what goodies I can expect in FF6 and 7 in the meantime? Actually never mind, I'll just wait till next week when they release both within 24 hours...
Re:FF5 is out? (Score:4, Funny)
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It matters for add-ons. If they bump to a version past what is an allowable maxVersion string they will break many plugins and it will cause plugin writers to have to go through constant churn of bumping version numbers to keep up so their plugins don't run into issues.
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It's just a number that prevents users of my add-ons (extensions) from installing them once the number changes. I released those pieces just for the hell of it, since I already wrote them for myself, they use minimum features, so there is really nothing to do for me between releases, the add-ons just continue working. But there is a long lag between the release of the 'new' FF 'version' and the time the automated tests show that there is nothing in the add-ons that needs to be changed, in the meanwhile I s
Re: (Score:3)
Does it really matter what the version is?
Obviously it does. Have you not read the comments? Marketing that drives people away from your product is bad marketing.
Re: (Score:2)
Congrats, you just (loosely) described Java Applets, Silverlight, Flex, etc
Now figure out the problem. (Unless that was your point, and it went woosh over my head)
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Why use the latest version? Newer versions are not better, they do not have fewer bugs, they do not have better features. I'm certainly never going to upgrade and disrupt my work merely to make some total stranger happy.