Firefox Moving To a Faster 4-Week Release Cycle (mozilla.org) 50
Mozilla announces in a blog post: We typically ship a major Firefox browser (Desktop and Android) release every 6 to 8 weeks. Building and releasing a browser is complicated and involves many players. To optimize the process, and make it more reliable for all users, over the years we've developed a phased release strategy that includes 'pre-release' channels: Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition. With this approach, we can test and stabilize new features before delivering them to the majority of Firefox users via general release.
And today we're excited to announce that we're moving to a four-week release cycle! We're adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, and bring you new features more quickly. In recent quarters, we've had many requests to take features to market sooner. Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Considering these factors, it is time we changed our release cadence. Starting Q1 2020, we plan to ship a major Firefox release every 4 weeks. Firefox ESR release cadence (Extended Support Release for the enterprise) will remain the same. In the years to come, we anticipate a major ESR release every 12 months with 3 months support overlap between new ESR and end-of-life of previous ESR. The next two major ESR releases will be ~June 2020 and ~June 2021.
And today we're excited to announce that we're moving to a four-week release cycle! We're adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, and bring you new features more quickly. In recent quarters, we've had many requests to take features to market sooner. Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Considering these factors, it is time we changed our release cadence. Starting Q1 2020, we plan to ship a major Firefox release every 4 weeks. Firefox ESR release cadence (Extended Support Release for the enterprise) will remain the same. In the years to come, we anticipate a major ESR release every 12 months with 3 months support overlap between new ESR and end-of-life of previous ESR. The next two major ESR releases will be ~June 2020 and ~June 2021.
Great new Features (Score:4, Insightful)
Just my 2 cents
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great.... more downloads to deal with (Score:3)
This is the same on at least 50 PCs I support because we use FF for a Cisco CUIC dashboard.
You can thank Google monopolism for that. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google actively adds useless features for the sole purpose of killing off competitors.
Firefox is the only browser left, because they could keep up.
I presume they did this to keep up. And the cosmetic and top-level changes are just bycatch.
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Keep up? Keep up with what? Their userbase has pretty much gotten so fed up with all the changes that they've abandoned Firefox for, well, Google.
Fast releases might work, if only they'd stop shooting themselves in the foot first that drive users away from the platform.
Bri
Re:great.... more downloads to deal with (Score:4, Interesting)
I still miss FF 2.0. Honestly, I fail to see what "new" features a browser can have other than security updates.
While there's also...
Firefox 2.0.0.13 scores 53/100 in the Acid3 test.
So supporting out-dated modern web standards is one of those features outside of security updates. But while we're talking about security. XPCOM and XUL are horrible from a security standpoint, their death couldn't have come sooner.
XPCOM adds a lot of code for marshalling objects, and in the Netscape era XPCOM was overused for internal interfaces where it wasn't truly necessary, resulting in software bloat. This was a key reason why in 2001 Apple forked KHTML, not Gecko, to create the WebKit engine for its Safari browser.
Here's a link [archive.org] to back that up, just in case. So many people are hooked on nostalgia and are quick to forget how absolutely horrible the code base for Firefox was in the five or six years post-Netscape. Even after the post-2008 "clean up" it was still a mess and further clean up got passed over time and time again because of that whole Firefox OS thing we all forgot took up all of Mozilla's resources. The whole Electrolysis rewrite was what should have happened shortly after Netscape took their exit completely.
I'm sure people will say what they will about the release schedule change. It's whatever, but let's not all forget how bad the code was in early Firefox. Whole DOM trees would get passed around for no clear reason. Some functionality was written so hastily, no one could read what the heck the code was doing. Features were so boiler plated on, it wasn't uncommon that a change in something like traversing the DOM tree to completely break something entirely unrelated like registering callbacks with the UI engine. If the ideal ethos is "small pieces that do one thing and one thing well", Firefox back in the day was "one gigantic blob of a Rube Goldberg machine."
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> I fail to see what "new" features a browser can have other than security updates.
The "big 3" reasons why software is updated is due to:
* Features
* Performance
* Security
Now you could argue that maybe JavaScript / Ecmascript or the Web shouldn't have evolved to become a "platform" but that ship sailed LONG ago. Web Sites are wanting to do more and more things other then serve static pages. Dynamic interaction requires (demands?) something other then a toy language designed and written in 10 days (Java
Hello, Windows user! (Score:2)
Still haven't got a real package management system, have we?
For the record: I completely agree, that Mozilla, and indeed everyone in the What(TheFuck)WG is batshit insane.
I personally verified that, in a three hour discussion with them. And I know enough psychology, thanks to my family.
I just think that your complaint is not the problem. (E.g. most Linux desktop distributions automatically update once a day or such, and most of the time only download diffs and patches if they are done right.)
I am on ESR and I like it! (Score:5, Interesting)
These short release cycles tend to distrub the workflow of pretty much anyone who uses the browser for something serious!
This reeks of desperations. Seems like moz:\\a is trying to outgoogle google... what could possibly go wrong? Well pretty much a lot of people will get feed up with the cadence and then either abandon firefox for greener pastures, or go to ESR.
I, myself, I got into ESR since 42 (after all, I use the browser for serious work), and love the stability that brings...
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I move to ESR at 56.8, when firefox decided to dump XPCOM/XUL and wouldn't support the tab groups addon. I'm stuck preparing to move to the new ESR because now they won't support their RSS codebase. But they expect to support 4 week development cycles while forcing their user base to participate in agile testing???
Literally, the only reason I *try* to stick with firefox is because they provide complete source code. I'm not seeing how their strategy to "keep up with chrome change cycles" is supposed to ma
Less time for people to complain (Score:2)
By moving to a 4-week schedule, there is less time for Luddites to complain that their favorite add-on is being blocked by this week's INSANELY great new feature. And you can also eliminate those pesky testing phases.
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Whatever happened to building the source tree when you wanted bleeding edge?
Oh yeah, because it takes longer to compile a typical 1st class modern browser than it does a full OS.
Hmm ... (Score:2)
Building and releasing a browser is complicated and involves many players. ...
And today we're excited to announce that we're moving to a four-week release cycle!
So... it's complicated and involves lots of people, so you're going to do it faster? (What could go wrong with that?)
We're adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, ...
You know you can actually be too "agile" -- right? (Maybe miss a step or two here or there with all that agility ...)
Be still my heart. /sarcasm ((Oh joy, more things to disable.)
Remember Mozillians, this is really a marathon, not a sprint (see what I did there?) Slow and sure wins the race.
Continuous release! Do it already! (Score:1)
We all know you want it!
You wouldn't know why, but you do.
So cut to the chase, and release for every single new patch!
Or are you waiting for Firefox 100*? Like Windows 10.
_ _ _ _
* 100 is not a version number. A version number communicates compatibility changes. And a build number merely changes. This here, is neither. It is a Brundlefly of versioning.
We'll never make it, we're doomed! - Glum (Score:2)
This won't end well.
Users don't want this! (Score:5, Interesting)
Users don't want to have to go through their settings every four weeks to find out what's been removed. They don't want to have to spend time looking how to disable the worthless new features. They don't want to have to be alert to Mozilla's latest privacy invasions that sends all their data to Cloudflare. They don't want the latest "innovations" from the deranged UX designers. Users just want a browser that works well and that leaves them alone to browse the web.
In recent quarters, we’ve had many requests to take features to market sooner.
No, you haven't. You've likely had many requests to stop fucking up the browser, but you ignore them. If you look at videos on the Firefox YouTube Channel [youtube.com] you'll see that they always disable the comments precisely because they don't want feedback. They also don't allow comments on their blog [mozilla.org] posts. They used to allow comments, but they'd delete anything remotely negative, which usually left them with about three comments, all of which were glowingly positive. They said it was because the negative comments were unproductive, then they stopped accepting comments all together. You can still submit feedback [mozilla.com] but I suspect selecting "Firefox makes me sad" leads to your comment going straight in the bin. They just don't want to know.
The question is, what's wrong with them? Their market share continues to decline, down from 13.26% to 8.42% [netmarketshare.com] in the last 24 months, and their remaining users hate them, so they must know they're getting things very wrong, yet they continue to make unpopular changes. I simply can't comprehend their mindset. It seems they believe religiously in what they're doing, and that the heathens who tell them their browser is garbage are wrong and must be silenced.
Now we'll be getting more crap shoved down our throats every four weeks, when we just want them to leave us alone. Stop changing the UI, stop removing useful features, stop adding worthless garbage like Pocket, stop taking control of our DNS requests, just stop! That's it, I've had enough. I'm calling it quits with Firefox and switching to Pale Moon as my main browser. Mozilla are obviously incapable of listening to their users, so there's no hope for them.
Fight back, stop using or recommending Firefox (Score:2)
They won't listen to users. Their conduct indicates they despise us. I return the favor and recommend against Firefox whenever I've opportunity.
Take away their market share, break the company, and someone who isn't a piece of shit will move forward with a fork unimpeded by their nasty legacy. Firefox leadership are wealthy and immune to criticism. They aren't immune to market decline.
Firefox is not a necessity. I use Pale Moon and Chromium.
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And IT people loves to have to change OS images and test new software integration every 4 weeks (because every major version introduces behavior changes and new bugs). Hurrah.
They so much love that, that they will avoid the culprit software like the plague.
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Didn't realise the marketshare was so terrible, I almost feel bad leaving them - but I'd had enough, performance went to the total dog house when abusing browser with hundreds of tabs.
Chrome, does not have that issue (or no where near as bad)
Eventually, FF had to go, they destroyed all the plugins with the engine change which was going to be "revoloutionary!" too - and allowed them to use Google Chrome plugins or something (However, pretty sure that doesn't work...........?)
Nope, bye Firefox.
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That's why Mozilla call it a Beta pre-release, the clue is in the words.
“over the years we've developed a phased release strategy that includes 'pre-release' channels: Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition..”
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Users don't want to have to go through their settings every four weeks to find out what's been removed.
That's why Mozilla call it a Beta pre-release, the clue is in the words.
over the years we've developed a phased release strategy that includes 'pre-release' channels: Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition.
You are correct, as per the press release, the general release is also moving to a 4 week cycle:
..Firefox Nightly, Beta, and Developer Edition. With this approach, we can test and stabilize new features before delivering them to the majority of Firefox users via general release. And today we're excited to announce that we're moving to a four-week release cycle!
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Who cares about firefox among the paid developers, for that matter? They'll just make moonshots until Mozilla runs out of cash & relevance.
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They'll just keep losing marketshare, to the point that businesses will cease to kick in funds to support them. If a company needs a browser alternative to support their company specific service, they'll just go to a more stable company like Opera or work with open source Chrome.
Then Mozilla "management" will burn up any remaining cash making moonshots with their inadequate coding staff. Firefox will be dead in the water, unable to keep people on the staff that can issue security updates or make minimal m
Change for its own sake isn't progress (Score:4, Insightful)
Firefox doesn't need any changes not requested by users or to patch security holes.
Change for its own sake is really so a person or team can attention whore to further their career(s).
Rapid release cycles should not be a mark of pride because the practice works against quality.
Once upon a time there was an appropriate reaction to this shit. It was fast, light, not run by SJW careerists who despise users and consider the browser a random playground, and its name was Phoenix.
There is only one feature I want (Score:1)
There is only one feature I want from Firefox: use less memory.
Sincerely,
your Firefox user, since before Phoenix.
I stopped recommending Firefox long ago. (Score:2)
Geeks made Firefox got popular and what we made we can help break. I don't mention Firefox to noobs, I don't offer to install it, and I discourage others from installing it. Firefox "leadership" should have their fuck you attitude repaid a thousandfold.
They have 4.44 percent market share because they chose to suck. That's 4.44 percent too much. Firefox needs users but users don't need Firefox. https://gs.statcounter.com/bro... [statcounter.com]
Firefox used to be awesome then hubris smashed its market share. Those running
Doesn't affect me (Score:2)
I stopped "upgrading" at the 54 version. Being forced to use the latest and greatest pile of yak manure at work (I refuse to use Chrome) has shown me there is no need to upgrade.
If Mozilla really wants to get people on board, grab the machetes and start hacking away by removing all the fluff, gruff, and guff they've shoved into their browser. Make it slim and fast like it was back in the Phoenix days and stop hiding useful items in a config file. Or removing them all together.
No more features. (Score:2)
No more features.
No more features.
No more features.
No more features.
Stability, performance.Stability, performance.
Stability, performance.Stability, performance.
Did I mention Stability, performance?
https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7010095&cid=49123241 [slashdot.org]
Sadly, Mozilla wasn't listening then and isn't listening now.
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Really? You aren't using the screenshot tool or the video chat client? How about that pocket bullshit or the button to share something on social media?
Users don't like updates (Score:3)
As user, i just want a yearly update cycle. The only thing they should do in between is critical security patches.
Users don't like updates as much they think they do. Developers like updates, probably for vanity reasons. As a user i'm just good, thank you. To me the browser works just as well as in 2005. The only improvement has been html-5 compatibility, and to be honest i could live without that, too.
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Sounds like a bad case of agile development (Score:3)
In recent quarters, we've had many requests (Score:2)
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Mozilla are focussing on their core competencies.
Namely, the ability to burn through $500 million/year of Google's money. They've got toilet-roll holders that dispense $100 bills over at Mozilla HQ.
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I don't believe Google financially supports Mozilla anymore, for a long time. That's what's allowing Mozilla to attempt to put in advertiser unfriendly features.
Task bar? (Score:2)
Will the bring it back soon please? And while we are at it, get rid of that stupid pocket thing please.
Patch Tuesday ... (Score:2)
They should release on the second Tuesday of each month. That way, everything can fall apart at once.
Mandatory update nagging (Score:2)
Wow, and just recently they changed the update preferences so you can no longer refuse automatic update checks. Every day my browser shouts at me to update, and there's no way to turn off the damn messages.
The browser doesn't force you to update, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are moving in that direction.
Yawn (Score:1)
Alzheimers (Score:1)