Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#41

Post by freehunter » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:11 PM UTC

chousuke wrote: post #37

freehunter wrote: post #3

I wish they'd just bump the version number to 30 then save major revision numbers for major revisions. I don't see anything in here that would warrant anything but a bump from 15 to 15.5 under the old Firefox revision standards.

The thing is, given the Firefox project's new development model, their old versioning scheme makes absolutely no sense. Deciding which version numbner to bump would be completely arbitrary and exactly as informative as just using a single number that tells the user "this version is newer than the one with a lower number", which is the only useful information they can convey using version numbers. Would you also be on…

I had originally included Linux in my complaint, but removed it because I didn't want to open that can of worms.

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#42

Post by Timmy_C » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:12 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #30

How many people here have stuck with 3.6? It looks like it's only a few percent of FF users ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox It was a really long road but with 3.6 essentially gone and silent updates, developers can worry a lot less about legacy in the Firefox world.

Anecdotally, I have an oddly large population of vistors to my site with Firefox 9. I don't know what changes were made to how Firefox updates around that time. But it seems like the update train has unwittingly left few users behind.

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#43

Post by sabret00the » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:18 PM UTC

webwanderings wrote: post #36

shardling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, that's great for you and all, but what the fuck does it have to do with the article?

I know one person's opinion doesn't matter, but I owe it as my duty to tell a parting friend that I am parting ways. Given that this friend has no interest in taking people's opinions (there is no official mechanism in place to take opinions), HN is as good as any other place to make statements. Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not? Perhaps something is lurki…

Thanks for putting some context on your content. I too was wondering what you were getting at with it. In regards to Mozilla "not listening", did you file bugs for your ideas/gripes?

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#44

Post by shardling » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:22 PM UTC

tadfisher wrote: post #35

shardling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, that's great for you and all, but what the fuck does it have to do with the article?

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

I would totally have said that face to face. :)

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#45

Post by Surio » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:25 PM UTC

When it comes to font rendering FF wins hands down (over Chrome). For the last couple releases Chrome's rendering of (some) fonts on screen has been atrocious, to put it mildly. Have seen a few independently filed bug reports on this issue, and getting bumped up everyday with new screenshots.

Also, FF's memory handling and loading of extensions seems to be much better implemented than Chrome's. At least memory usage on my task manager seems to validate this. Chrome memory usage shoots up way up compared to FF. If Chrome can somehow come up with JIT extension loading, that would be great. ;-)

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#46

Post by shardling » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:26 PM UTC

webwanderings wrote: post #36

shardling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, that's great for you and all, but what the fuck does it have to do with the article?

I know one person's opinion doesn't matter, but I owe it as my duty to tell a parting friend that I am parting ways. Given that this friend has no interest in taking people's opinions (there is no official mechanism in place to take opinions), HN is as good as any other place to make statements. Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not? Perhaps something is lurki…

>Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not?

For the simple reason that noise drowns out signal, and because every damn article mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing.

If you had in some way brought it around to this particular release, your comment would have been on topic. Maybe there's a particular feature you've finally given up waiting for. Maybe some recent change in the UI that you dislike. Whatever! Don't just post empty blather, though.

("Fuck" here is simply used as emphasis, to indicate that I am exasperated by the prevalence of such empty comments.)

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#47

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:32 PM UTC

webwanderings wrote: post #36

shardling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, that's great for you and all, but what the fuck does it have to do with the article?

I know one person's opinion doesn't matter, but I owe it as my duty to tell a parting friend that I am parting ways. Given that this friend has no interest in taking people's opinions (there is no official mechanism in place to take opinions), HN is as good as any other place to make statements. Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not? Perhaps something is lurki…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#48

Post by webwanderings » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:33 PM UTC

shardling wrote: post #46

webwanderings wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know one person's opinion doesn't matter, but I owe it as my duty to tell a parting friend that I am parting ways. Given that this friend has no interest in taking people's opinions (there is no official mechanism in place to take opinions), HN is as good as any other place to make statements. Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not? Perhaps something is lurki…

>Now, why the "fuck" do you care if what I write here has anything to do with the article or not? For the simple reason that noise drowns out signal, and because every damn article mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing. If you had in some way brought it around to this particular release, your comment would have been on topic. Maybe there's a particular feature you've finally given up waiting for…

"every damn article mentioning Firefox brings out someone saying the same thing."

Agree, but people making such comments are also real and they may be as exasperated as you are.

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#49

Post by Steuard » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #18

superxor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's time to cut this 'version number' debate. Mozilla has been pretty clear about the plan to use such a system. The only problem was from enterprise users which Mozilla has addressed. The background auto-update is in the stable builds now, should be enough to keep FF updated. I am really tired of this versioning non-sense. Users complained, Mozilla addressed legitimate concerns. Now it's just a difference i…

I know they've been very open about why they're using major revision numbers for minor features. I don't like it when Chrome does it either. I just don't like the arms race that is developing to have the higher revision number. I just get a little disappointed when I see a new major number and the changelog is minor additions and bugfixes. Just because Mozilla has their reason for making the change doesn't mean every…

I don't see this as an arms race at all. (Heck, it took a major outcry just to convince Mozilla to show the version number in a place where normal users could find it.)

I agree that it's a redefinition of what "version number" means: now it's essentially date based, rather than feature based (though the two are obviously correlated). But I can't see any obvious reason to read "redefinition" as "corruption". It's just different, and both Mozilla and Google had sensible reasons for making that change.

In fact, their decisions may make it worth questioning those assumptions more broadly. Is there a chance that your version numbering method is causing subtle problems for your own development process?

Re: Firefox 16 live: Here's What's New

#50

Post by FooBarWidget » Tue, Oct 09, 2012, 5:45 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #18

superxor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's time to cut this 'version number' debate. Mozilla has been pretty clear about the plan to use such a system. The only problem was from enterprise users which Mozilla has addressed. The background auto-update is in the stable builds now, should be enough to keep FF updated. I am really tired of this versioning non-sense. Users complained, Mozilla addressed legitimate concerns. Now it's just a difference i…

I know they've been very open about why they're using major revision numbers for minor features. I don't like it when Chrome does it either. I just don't like the arms race that is developing to have the higher revision number. I just get a little disappointed when I see a new major number and the changelog is minor additions and bugfixes. Just because Mozilla has their reason for making the change doesn't mean every…

The fact that you're talking about "major revision number" means that you're still thinking about this from the old perspective. There is no "major version number". There is just a number that gets incremented with each release. They could have just as easily used the date as version number. Now I'm thinking that maybe they should, just to get rid of this senseless discussion.