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Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

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Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#11
post #4

Why do we have version 5 already?

Firefox is moving to a more Chrome-style of version numbering, to try and get enhancements out to the web quicker.

If I wanted Chrome features, I'd download Chrome. The reason I use FF is /because/ I don't want to use Chrome. If FF just copies from other browsers, why have FF at all?

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#12
The state of PDF support in Firefox on OS X has me stuck at FF 3.6, and it doesn't look like that'll be changing for a while (unless I want to experiment with random xpi's and running FF 4+ in 32-bit mode, etc).

Until that's resolved, all the fancy CSS tweaks in the world won't mean a hoot.

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is moving to a more Chrome-style of version numbering, to try and get enhancements out to the web quicker.

If I wanted Chrome features, I'd download Chrome. The reason I use FF is /because/ I don't want to use Chrome. If FF just copies from other browsers, why have FF at all?

It's about faster release cycles not copying features.

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is moving to a more Chrome-style of version numbering, to try and get enhancements out to the web quicker.

If I wanted Chrome features, I'd download Chrome. The reason I use FF is /because/ I don't want to use Chrome. If FF just copies from other browsers, why have FF at all?

Of course, chrome-style versioning doesn't necessarily mean Chrome features. As I recall, at some point plans for Firefox just had way too many features and goals, so in draft at least they got split into 4 separate (and relatively rapid) releases. Is that correct? That sounds like necessity-driven decision making, rather than imitation-driven.

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#15

The state of PDF support in Firefox on OS X has me stuck at FF 3.6, and it doesn't look like that'll be changing for a while (unless I want to experiment with random xpi's and running FF 4+ in 32-bit mode, etc). Until that's resolved, all the fancy CSS tweaks in the world won't mean a hoot.

On OS X, there's possibly the best PDF viewer ever, in Preview. I'm curious why you'd want so strongly to avoid using it?

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#16
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of bugfixes is hardly nothing: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/5.0beta/releasenotes/bu...

Still, there's no reason to break bugfixes. Heck, a lot of them still work, if you flag some "developer mode", but you don't need to do that in Chrome. Who care's if Mozilla has more extensions? They cause too much trouble when you upgrade.

I don't think it really counts as an "upgrade" if you opt-in to a beta.

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#17
post #8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of bugfixes is hardly nothing: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/5.0beta/releasenotes/bu...

Still, there's no reason to break bugfixes. Heck, a lot of them still work, if you flag some "developer mode", but you don't need to do that in Chrome. Who care's if Mozilla has more extensions? They cause too much trouble when you upgrade.

"Who care's if Mozilla has more extensions? They cause too much trouble when you upgrade."

Exactly. I switched to Chrome because of this and Chrome's better (less buggy!) Sync features.

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#18

The state of PDF support in Firefox on OS X has me stuck at FF 3.6, and it doesn't look like that'll be changing for a while (unless I want to experiment with random xpi's and running FF 4+ in 32-bit mode, etc). Until that's resolved, all the fancy CSS tweaks in the world won't mean a hoot.

On OS X, there's possibly the best PDF viewer ever, in Preview. I'm curious why you'd want so strongly to avoid using it?

I prefer opening a PDF in a tab until I've had a chance to see if it's something I want to keep. With download-and-open-in-Preview I'm filling up my Downloaded Files folder with a lot of PDFs that I don't want to keep, and I'll have to delete them manually.

Re: Firefox 5 Beta is available for download

#20
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is moving to a more Chrome-style of version numbering, to try and get enhancements out to the web quicker.

If I wanted Chrome features, I'd download Chrome. The reason I use FF is /because/ I don't want to use Chrome. If FF just copies from other browsers, why have FF at all?

What does a new release cycle have to do with using Chrome?
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