Firefox 6 available, version 8 to offer add-on control

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Firefox-6-available-version-8-to-offer-add-on-control-1322874.html

by carusen • 15 years ago

46 44 15 years ago

h-online.com

ck22• 15 years ago

Firefox 9 will be out this December, lol, https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

Who on earth though this was a good idea?

So, every six weeks a new release - that means Version 15 this time next year. Seriously?

ch0wn• 15 years ago

I don't see the problem. Version numbers no longer matter as long as browsers are concerned. IE is an exception, as always.

nirvdrum• 15 years ago

Through my line of work I end up seeing a lot of nuanced differences between browser version numbers. It's kind of a myth that browser versions (usually read as releases -- not actual version numbers) don't matter any more. I see things break quite regularly that people don't expect. And while browsers on the whole are getting better, the slow introduction of CSS 3 and HTML 5 features make a huge difference.

st3fan• 15 years ago

What is the problem exactly? You don't like updates that improve things a lot?

Really, it is just a version number.

ck22• 15 years ago

They are MAJOR version numbers. Are all these going to major changes in GUI, API, backend?

Are you okay with Version 20 by next December?

Version 35 the December after that?

Or should version 6 really be version 5.2 ?

tom97293• 15 years ago

Version numbers aren't meaningless if you have a good system, e.g. major/minor/patch. You just can't use them to compare between two different products. I know Moz wants to be a bit more like Chrome with frequent releases but it seems like this could be done a bit more sensibly wrt the version number.

kylec• 15 years ago

I agree, the new version numbers are stupid. If they wanted to copy Chrome's rapid-release schedule, they should have just ditched the version numbers altogether (like Chrome) and just continuously and transparently kept their install base up to date.

There's also a real practical problem to fast-growing version numbers. Historically, a major release would have major new features and might break existing extensions. Minor releases were typically safe to install and were designed to be as compatible as possible with the version they were supplanting. With new major versions of Firefox coming out every 6 weeks you're constantly checking to make sure they haven't changed something critical.

nxn2• 15 years ago

Chrome has version numbers. And similarly, firefox doesn't make a big deal about new version releases since 4.0 was out. The ones that do make a big deal out of them are blogs and tech sites, but those will get bored of doing so soon enough.

mtogo5• 15 years ago

Actually firefox is just doing what chrome is doing. Chrome has a major release every 6 weeks and changes it's major version number every 6 weeks. It's great when chrome does it, but when firefox changes their versioning schedule it's "stupid"?

markokocic• 15 years ago

Why is this a problem for FF, and not a problem for Chrome, since they are doing practically the same thing now?

notatoad• 15 years ago

version numbers have been completely de-emphasized. go on the mozilla website (the public site, not the ftp) and find me where it says a version number...

ivanbernat• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, FireBug doesn't work in FF6.

capnrefsmmat• 15 years ago

The latest Firebug claims to be compatible with FF5 and 6:

http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/08/10/firebug-1-8-1/

You should try updating all your addons.

mtogo5• 15 years ago

Firebug works great for me in firefox 7.

fedorabbit• 15 years ago

Just downloaded Firefox 6. Umm... I don't have benchmark software to test internal improvements, but I don't really feel like any difference. Probably because Firefox 5 is already fast enough for me. But Xmarks addon is broken now, and I experienced some issues with trying to install some of the add-ons. Everything else is fine.

AndrewDucker3• 15 years ago

Yeah, it doesn't look like there are massive changes in 6. 7 is where the changes for memory are coming in, I'm rather looking forward to that.

On the other hand, the list of fixed bugs is pretty massive: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/6.0/releasenotes/buglis...

jcromartie2• 15 years ago

How you can know Chrome is doing this kind of versioning correctly: when you don't know or care what version of Chrome you're running.

dpcan• 15 years ago

YES! I have never been happier with my switch to Chrome.

I'm actually quite frustrated with myself for having put my friends and family on Firefox as it's constantly needing updates, getting new versions, changing its look, etc.

It's more frustrating than dealing with IE now.

Mozilla's game of "look how fast we are moving" is absolutely frustrating and painful.

I can just click my "About Chrome" link now, and it says it's up to date. How refreshing.

EDIT: All a Firefox update means to me anymore is that my plugins won't work anymore so I need to stick with an outdated, probably less secure, and slower Firefox version.

AndrewDucker3• 15 years ago

I've not had a problem with addons since 3.6. They've autoupgraded all the ones on the Mozilla site, so far as I can tell.

jolie92• 15 years ago

Rapidrelease is really confusing me wildly, and all my customers. You support which of the 50 combined Chrome and FireFox versions now?

AndrewDucker3• 15 years ago

There are three versions of Firefox: Release (the version that you should be using) Beta (If you want to do some testing, or don't care about minor instability) Aurora (If you are feeling particularly risky and need a new feature NOW).

That's it.

jpdoctor• 15 years ago

Won't bother with the upgrades until add-ons upgrading is dealt sensibly.

AgentConundrum• 15 years ago

This is my biggest problem with Firefox. Up until Thursday, I was still running 3.6 because I really dislike dealing with add-on issues during upgrades. When a new version of Firefox comes out, I tend to backup my install, upgrade to see how badly it breaks, then revert back out to the older version.

When I finally upgraded to v5, I spent a solid hour trying to get the thing back into a workable state.

The biggest mistake I ever made with Firefox was installing Tab Mix Plus, because now I have easily manageable rows of tabs, which led me to using tabs as ephemeral bookmarks - things I want to read but not now. I currently have 175 tabs open (and no, I don't complain about memory usage - it's not that bad and I know what usage there is is my own fault).

To keep things in check, I use an extension called BarTab, which keeps tabs unloaded on restart until I switch to that tab. Upon upgrading to FF5, that extension broke horribly, leading all of my tabs to fire at once. Turning off compatibility checking didn't fix it, and neither did installing a beta version upgrade to the extension. In the end, I had to go searching the extension library until I found something called BarTab Lite, which worked.

Also, my theme was incompatible with Firefox >=4, but I resigned myself to just deal with it, since I was tired of being made fun of for not upgrading a not-quite-five-months out-of-date browser (the community seems to be becoming one of the worst parts of Firefox). Eventually, I found a new theme, which was a non-linked upgrade to my old one. It would be nice if that was a little more obvious.

That was a long winded way of saying I'd like to see more explicit links between extensions. Rather than saying "there are no upgrades for this broken extension", I'd prefer that there be a way to identify "spiritual successors" so that Firefox can tell you "it's got a different name, but this is where extension Foo lives now."

It would have saved me a lot of time and trouble, because as it stands right now it seems a lot of broken extensions don't have upgrades when really they do - they're just hidden and you need to spend some time looking for them.

(Sorry.. /rant)

josscrowcroft• 15 years ago

What the heck, I seriously updated to FF 5.0.1 TWO DAYS AGO

Still, this is great.

alok-g• 15 years ago

As far as you can "trust" the updates that come, version numbers are not very useful. I generally see minor versions as bug fixes (number of bugs reduced hopefully) and major versions as major feature changes (number of bugs most likely increased).

Now I just cannot tell anymore whether to upgrade or not. Believe it or not, the current browser* is running just fine for me. I am OK with a speedier browser etc, but not at the cost of more trouble.

* Does it really matter which? (Firefox 5)

samic• 15 years ago

the only thing that changed for me is disabling of some add-ons due to compatibility problem!!

Firefox 6 available, version 8 to offer add-on control

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