Firefox moving to 4 week releases • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#11

Post by minikites » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #7

> In recent quarters, we’ve had many requests to take features to market sooner. Surely not from the users. > Feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles. Poor guys. At least the process “guarantees” long term quality as the result. > Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product planning and priority changes due to business or market require…

People say they want better software internals and don't care about visual improvements, but people are empirically wrong about what they say they want:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040525-00/?p=39...

>I wouldn’t be surprised if these are the same people who complain, “Why does Microsoft spend all its effort on making Windows ‘look cool’? They should spend all their efforts on making technical improvements and just stop making visual improvements.”

>And with Calc, that’s exactly what happened: Massive technical improvements. No visual improvement. And nobody noticed. In fact, the complaints just keep coming. “Look at Calc, same as it always was.”

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#12

Post by Mathnerd314 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

For comparison, Chrome updates "every two-three weeks for minor releases, and every six weeks for major releases".

I guess Beta is moving to daily releases? I suppose it's good, generally I have to restart Firefox once a day for resource leaks and restarting through the update UI is easier than opening the browser console.

I was using Nightly for a while but it turns out that even daily updates aren't fast enough for that. If a new patch breaks something, typically the offending patch isn't backed out and it takes 6-12 hours to get fixed, meaning the fix isn't available in the next nightly and you have to suffer for several days.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#13

Post by gruez » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

lvh wrote: post #3

There's an incidental benefit here. There's at least one system (I think Duo + Okta?) which, when configured to check if your browser is out of date, makes a logic error. It should check if your browser is the most recent, and, if it isn't, if the _new release_ is over N days old. Instead, it checks if your browser is the most recent, and if it isn't, if the _old release_ is over N days old. So, if you run Firefox an…

Must be fun for ESR users, because ESR reports the base version regardless of when it was patched. So ESR 60.9 (released alongside 69, still supported), would look a year out of date.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#14

Post by muizelaar » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #12

For comparison, Chrome updates "every two-three weeks for minor releases, and every six weeks for major releases". I guess Beta is moving to daily releases? I suppose it's good, generally I have to restart Firefox once a day for resource leaks and restarting through the update UI is easier than opening the browser console. I was using Nightly for a while but it turns out that even daily updates aren't fast enough for…

Have you filed a bug about the resource leaks?

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#15

Post by ken » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

> 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.

Mozilla has been tweaking their process forever, but all of it is for naught if they don't work on what users want. The latest FF brags "we are shipping a new “New Tab” page experience that connects you to the best of Pocket’s content", while standard keyboard shortcuts have been broken for well over 10 years. This is not a problem with their release cadence.

Users have a curious way of asking for what they believe is feasible. I've seen users encounter an obvious bug, and work around it by hand, and turn around and ask for something completely different, like an alternative workaround. (Just add a macro system so I can record this sequence of 7 steps to work around this weird thing...) They literally don't think to ask "Fix this bug".

I wonder if that's what's happening here. As an occasional Firefox user, I know that keyboard shortcuts have been broken since the Bush administration, and the codebase is far too complex for me to work on even the simplest features (I've tried). I can absolutely see a user thinking "If they can't do what we want, at least they could do it faster". That feels like a change that's feasible in a way that "Fix the massive complexity problem" or even "Fix keyboard shortcuts (which are apparently massively complex)" do not.

Firefox itself was created by a couple programmers chatting late at night in a Denny's. They made a far better browser than the Mozilla organization of the day could. It's an important organization and it's impressive they can regularly ship useful free software, but user interfaces have never been a strong point for open source, in the way that compilers and runtimes and databases are. Tweak away, but I don't hold much hope for the situation to improve. The next great open-source browser is going to come from 2 or 3 people chatting in a Denny's, not Mozilla with N-week releases, for any value of N.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#16

Post by ChrisSD » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #15

> 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. Mozilla has been tweaking their process forever, but all of it is for naught if they don't work on what users want. The latest FF brags "we are shipping a new “New Tab” page experience that connects you to the best of Pocket’s content", while st…

What's broken with keyboard shortcuts?

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#17

Post by maxerickson » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #15

> 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. Mozilla has been tweaking their process forever, but all of it is for naught if they don't work on what users want. The latest FF brags "we are shipping a new “New Tab” page experience that connects you to the best of Pocket’s content", while st…

What's a concrete example of a broken shortcut?

The shortcuts I use work fine, so I don't understand the complaint.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#18

Post by Mathnerd314 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

muizelaar wrote: post #14

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #12

For comparison, Chrome updates "every two-three weeks for minor releases, and every six weeks for major releases". I guess Beta is moving to daily releases? I suppose it's good, generally I have to restart Firefox once a day for resource leaks and restarting through the update UI is easier than opening the browser console. I was using Nightly for a while but it turns out that even daily updates aren't fast enough for…

Have you filed a bug about the resource leaks?

I looked a while ago and it seems to be due to some of the webextensions I have installed, probably uBlock Origin but I can't be sure (28 extensions). Basically some things get cached that don't need to be, and then the cheap 5400rpm disk drive makes the browser stutter swapping between tab content processes.

I'm waiting for the hard drive to die so I can justify getting a new SSD or laptop, which I'm pretty sure will solve the problem, so no, I haven't filed a bug.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#19

Post by misterdoubt » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #18

muizelaar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you filed a bug about the resource leaks?

I looked a while ago and it seems to be due to some of the webextensions I have installed, probably uBlock Origin but I can't be sure (28 extensions). Basically some things get cached that don't need to be, and then the cheap 5400rpm disk drive makes the browser stutter swapping between tab content processes. I'm waiting for the hard drive to die so I can justify getting a new SSD or laptop, which I'm pretty sure wil…

> 28 extensions

Yeah, you should probably hold off on the bug report.

Re: Firefox moving to 4 week releases

#20

Post by theferalrobot » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

muizelaar wrote: post #14

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #12

For comparison, Chrome updates "every two-three weeks for minor releases, and every six weeks for major releases". I guess Beta is moving to daily releases? I suppose it's good, generally I have to restart Firefox once a day for resource leaks and restarting through the update UI is easier than opening the browser console. I was using Nightly for a while but it turns out that even daily updates aren't fast enough for…

Have you filed a bug about the resource leaks?

Not OP but Firefox on mac has a long-standing issue with webrender that causes major resource utilization issues.