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Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

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Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#71

Post by Padraig »

mbrubeck wrote: post #60
code_duck wrote: post #21

Sounds like the main story is that they're redefining what a major version number means a la Chrome. Chrome's numbers are not in the same scale as FF and IE too, of course. Users can't tell the difference between Chrome 6 and 7 like one can distinguish FF 2 and 3, or IE 6 and 7. I wonder, though, if Google was just trying to catch IE in version number with Chrome and once it's at 10, they'll stop increasing it so rap…

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla.) Anthony Laforge, the Google program manager in charge of Chrome releases, was kind enough to give a talk at Mozilla's all-hands meeting in December. He gave a version of this presentation: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/google-chrome-release-cycle... Each Chrome release is in development for 12 weeks. There are always two 12-week cycles in progress at once, staggered by 6 weeks. So…

You can have a fast internal development cycle without devaluing the established concept of major version numbers.

I don't appreciate this because I make money from software. To me, a new major version number is:

a) an indication that there have been major changes. It's not something that increments every 12 weeks.

b) something most people reasonably expect to pay for.

I know Mozilla isn't first with this approach. It still sucks.

Edit: Interesting that it has been driven by the same company that rendered the term 'beta' meaningless.

Edit 2: Why the downvotes?

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#72

Post by SkyMarshal »

mbrubeck wrote: post #60
code_duck wrote: post #21

Sounds like the main story is that they're redefining what a major version number means a la Chrome. Chrome's numbers are not in the same scale as FF and IE too, of course. Users can't tell the difference between Chrome 6 and 7 like one can distinguish FF 2 and 3, or IE 6 and 7. I wonder, though, if Google was just trying to catch IE in version number with Chrome and once it's at 10, they'll stop increasing it so rap…

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla.) Anthony Laforge, the Google program manager in charge of Chrome releases, was kind enough to give a talk at Mozilla's all-hands meeting in December. He gave a version of this presentation: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/google-chrome-release-cycle... Each Chrome release is in development for 12 weeks. There are always two 12-week cycles in progress at once, staggered by 6 weeks. So…

For clarification, are all the different channels simultaneously present in stable release that regular Joe's dl and install, just hidden by by pref/build option/cl-flag switches?

For example, when you say developers don't have to decide which version to install, but only which channel to follow, is that how they switch among channels - just restart the stable version using a different switch?

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#74

Post by mbrubeck »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #72
mbrubeck wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla.) Anthony Laforge, the Google program manager in charge of Chrome releases, was kind enough to give a talk at Mozilla's all-hands meeting in December. He gave a version of this presentation: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/google-chrome-release-cycle... Each Chrome release is in development for 12 weeks. There are always two 12-week cycles in progress at once, staggered by 6 weeks. So…

For clarification, are all the different channels simultaneously present in stable release that regular Joe's dl and install, just hidden by by pref/build option/cl-flag switches? For example, when you say developers don't have to decide which version to install, but only which channel to follow, is that how they switch among channels - just restart the stable version using a different switch?

No, the update channel determines which code is downloaded to your computer. The "stable" and "beta" channels receive builds from release branches, while the "dev" and "canary" channels receive snapshots from trunk.

Regardless of your channel, you can turn on different features in Chrome by going to "about:flags" (or sometimes by passing command-line switches) - but only if those features are in the build you are running.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#75

Post by SoftwareMaven »

cfinke wrote: post #56
ecaron wrote: post #3

To be able to support this, they're going to need to do some major overhaul of how add-on versioning works. As a Add-On developer ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/font-finder/ ), I shudder at the thought of 10,000 different addons needing to keep having their support version incremented w/ each upcoming release.

I have 21 different add-ons on AMO right now, and while it's kind of annoying to do so, it only takes me about 10 minutes to update the maxVersion on all of them every time a new version of Firefox comes out. Of course, the problem isn't that it's hard or takes a long time to do; the problem is that developers forget to do it. Maybe it's time for Mozilla to move to using minVersion only, like Chrome does.

That requires a major commitment to backwards compatibility, which is a massive time-suck and reduces your ability to innovate. Look at Microsoft for an example of how nasty that can be.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#76

Post by Silhouette »

Padraig wrote: post #71
mbrubeck wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla.) Anthony Laforge, the Google program manager in charge of Chrome releases, was kind enough to give a talk at Mozilla's all-hands meeting in December. He gave a version of this presentation: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/google-chrome-release-cycle... Each Chrome release is in development for 12 weeks. There are always two 12-week cycles in progress at once, staggered by 6 weeks. So…

You can have a fast internal development cycle without devaluing the established concept of major version numbers. I don't appreciate this because I make money from software. To me, a new major version number is: a) an indication that there have been major changes. It's not something that increments every 12 weeks. b) something most people reasonably expect to pay for. I know Mozilla isn't first with this approach. I…

I don't mind faster releases if they're doing things we traditionally associated with minor version numbers, such as performance improvements or slightly UI tweaks.

I really hope they don't change any rendering components at the same pace, though. I already have to strike any contractual obligation to test/support Chrome in commercial web development projects, because it's a moving target and Google do release breaking changes. If Mozilla browsers go the same way, then I really will start coding for the nice, stable, standards-friendly world of IE -- and that's never a statement I thought I would write on a serious forum with a straight face!

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#77

Post by Silhouette »

eli wrote: post #24
code_duck wrote: post #21

Sounds like the main story is that they're redefining what a major version number means a la Chrome. Chrome's numbers are not in the same scale as FF and IE too, of course. Users can't tell the difference between Chrome 6 and 7 like one can distinguish FF 2 and 3, or IE 6 and 7. I wonder, though, if Google was just trying to catch IE in version number with Chrome and once it's at 10, they'll stop increasing it so rap…

Chrome auto-updates and generally always looks the same. I can't imagine why anyone -- users or developers -- would care what version number it's up to.

> I can't imagine why anyone -- users or developers -- would care what version number it's up to.

One reason is that while Chrome's UI may look much the same, its behaviour often changes significantly, and not always for the better.

They broke CSS3 rounded corners just as web designers were starting to use them instead of graphics.

They made a political decision to remove H.264 support just as the HTML5 video tag was starting to gain traction.

There is a reason technical communities develop standards. Unfortunately, the web development community has completely lost the plot in recent years. The W3C have become so slow and politicised that they have become irrelevant. The browser vendors are moving so fast that no-one can keep up.

No-one can actually use all of these state-of-the-art features in serious projects anyway, because they don't work in most browsers. As keen as web developers are for long-standing pain points to get fixed and to play with new toys, to get the job done you still have to use the old tried-and-tested techniques anyway as a fall-back for all the browsers that don't support the latest cool stuff. If you have to do that anyway, there isn't much point to using most of that cool stuff in the first place.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#78

Post by cpeterso »

Perceval wrote: post #53
code_duck wrote: post #21

Sounds like the main story is that they're redefining what a major version number means a la Chrome. Chrome's numbers are not in the same scale as FF and IE too, of course. Users can't tell the difference between Chrome 6 and 7 like one can distinguish FF 2 and 3, or IE 6 and 7. I wonder, though, if Google was just trying to catch IE in version number with Chrome and once it's at 10, they'll stop increasing it so rap…

I think Mozilla is also aware of the problematic perception that this particular release generated among onlookers. They've already spun 10 betas and are going to make at least two more betas before the release candidates. It seems like the Firefox 4 project simply got out of control, there was no clear cut-off, features were added willy-nilly throughout the beta process, and the browser (for a while) seemed stuck in…

Firefox 4 = Netscape 4? :)

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#79

Post by runjake »

mbrubeck wrote: post #60
code_duck wrote: post #21

Sounds like the main story is that they're redefining what a major version number means a la Chrome. Chrome's numbers are not in the same scale as FF and IE too, of course. Users can't tell the difference between Chrome 6 and 7 like one can distinguish FF 2 and 3, or IE 6 and 7. I wonder, though, if Google was just trying to catch IE in version number with Chrome and once it's at 10, they'll stop increasing it so rap…

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla.) Anthony Laforge, the Google program manager in charge of Chrome releases, was kind enough to give a talk at Mozilla's all-hands meeting in December. He gave a version of this presentation: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/11/google-chrome-release-cycle... Each Chrome release is in development for 12 weeks. There are always two 12-week cycles in progress at once, staggered by 6 weeks. So…

> Do you notice every time they add fix bugs or improve performance on Google Maps? No - every time you open the app, you simply have the latest version.

Since you asked... not every time, but often. You see, it's apparent from my experiences that Google makes incremental changes to the live system.

So, somewhat frequently, I'll see mis-loaded pages. Sometimes I fire up the web inspector and see that someone's typoed a JavaScript function, or a CSS element. Very annoying. This happens with GMail and GMaps fairly often.

Re: Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011

#80

Post by Lewisham »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #75
cfinke wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 21 different add-ons on AMO right now, and while it's kind of annoying to do so, it only takes me about 10 minutes to update the maxVersion on all of them every time a new version of Firefox comes out. Of course, the problem isn't that it's hard or takes a long time to do; the problem is that developers forget to do it. Maybe it's time for Mozilla to move to using minVersion only, like Chrome does.

That requires a major commitment to backwards compatibility, which is a massive time-suck and reduces your ability to innovate. Look at Microsoft for an example of how nasty that can be.

It's not necessarily any worse than if the developer simply doesn't care enough to test it/update it. It might be better to use minVersion, then have plugins that use deprecated functions disabled.
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