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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

#81

Post by wayne »

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.

They could also pull a Windows 7, which has the underlying version number 6.1, and decouple the real version number from the marketing version number: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/200...

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

#82

Post by bzbarsky »

Silhouette wrote: post #76
Padraig wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 breaki…

The plan is most certainly to make Gecko updates on a 3-month cycle. That means new features, bugfixes, etc.

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

#83

Post by fligtar »

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.

Hi ecaron,

I lead the add-ons team at Mozilla. Add-on compatibility was definitely a big consideration in our plans to switch to a faster release cycle, and we're working on proposing some changes to the way it works. As you mention, the current way of doing things won't work 4 times a year.

These changes will probably include automatic compatibility with certain major versions. We'll have more to share soon on the add-ons blog.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by nitrogen »

Silhouette wrote: post #76
Padraig wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 breaki…

Can you give some examples of HTML/CSS-compliant layouts or layout features that were broken by changes in Chrome or Firefox?

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

#86

Post by catshirt »

fligtar wrote: post #83
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.

Hi ecaron, I lead the add-ons team at Mozilla. Add-on compatibility was definitely a big consideration in our plans to switch to a faster release cycle, and we're working on proposing some changes to the way it works. As you mention, the current way of doing things won't work 4 times a year. These changes will probably include automatic compatibility with certain major versions. We'll have more to share soon on the a…

forgive me if i'm wrong, but i couldn't help but feel like the documentation for upgrading addons from 3 to 4 was extremely scarce and scattered. i pieced together several documents from MDC, the developer forum, and the Mozilla blog, and still couldn't get a full view of the changes that affected my addon.

revisiting the submission process itself is welcome and seemingly necessary; but i'd be willing to deal with an inefficient submission process if the upgrade was well documented.

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

#87

Post by nitrogen »

kgtm wrote: post #25
mrcharles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brain-hand response is not the same thing as a perceived delay. Once latency becomes greater than 50ms, it becomes human noticeable -- aka "not instant." Given that UI response isn't used to trigger human reflexes, you are just misunderstanding the intent.

From my first hand experience in FPS gaming in non-amateur settings the vast majority of average users will not be able to notice a (say) 50 ms difference in UI responsiveness. I covered that when talking about network latency in my previous post. Of course this is just my experience, scientific findings may very well dispute my ignorance.

Musicians will start to notice anything greater than about 7-10ms between keypress and sound. Below the threshold of consciously noticing the delay, it's still possible to make an instrument or UI feel subjectively "snappier" by reducing the delay further. If the browser is to host any audio-related applications, the minimum latency needs to be much lower than 50ms.

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

#89

Post by ck2 »

farnsworth wrote: post #67
ck2 wrote: post #65

Oh. So they are going for the completely fracturing the user base approach. Meaning since people will learn that upgrading major versions will constantly break things, they will stop upgrading and consider other browsers like Chrome.

Yes, Chrome, to avoid changing major versions.

LoL, okay so they will go back to IE8 for infinity.

Do Chrome major version number changes break their plugins?

I don't understand this rush to double-digit version numbers.

Do they think because IE is at version 9 that newbie users will also want their other browser to be at version 9 ?

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

#90

Post by Cyranix »

If version numbers weren't useful for marketing, I'd suggest using a hash of the codebase as a true version identifier. It'd be a consistent umpteen alphanumerics long (no more squabbling over who has the biggest number) and could actually serve a technical purpose under the hood.
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