Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

downloadsquad.switched.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 115 posts

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

#61

Post by didroe »

philjr wrote: post #49
code_duck wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that they wanted to avoid PHB types saying 'Internet Explorer is at version 9 - this new Google browser, only version 3? Is it ready for the enterprise?'.

There's that, but it probably fits better into their development model. If they're continually adding features and not breaking backwards compatibility on a "fixed" timeline, then the major version jumps that Firefox, IE do etc. seem more pointless than anything. If I've got this application that we're continually developing on and we're using a 2 month lifecycle for development ... at what point does it make sense t…

I personally find larger version numbers a bit odd. Generally people tend to work better with smaller numbers. I think the Ubuntu system is pretty good, use the major version for the year and have the month as the minor version. The Chrome 2 month releases could go 1.1, 1.3, 1.5, etc. That way they wouldn't chew through so many numbers. Ultimately I guess projects must go through a reset of their versions before they get to really ridiculous numbers.

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

#62

Post by carussell »

MatthewDP wrote: post #37

Does it seem like Mozilla is lowering the bar as to what will constitute an integer release (4.0, 5.0, etc.)? It was July 2008 when FireFox 3.0 came out, 19 months later, 4.0 hasn't come out yet.

It's just "Firefox".

Mozilla has been talking about faster iterations for a while now. 3.6 was, I think, supposed to be the start of that initiative; 3.5 was June 2009, and 3.6 was January 2010, even after slipping by a month or two.

You could argue that the platform version change from 1.9.1 to 1.9.2 isn't that big of a difference compared to the jump from 1.9.2 to 2.0, but you have to keep in mind that the decision to dub the-platform-behind-Firefox-4 as "Gecko 2" wasn't even made until over the summer.

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

#63

Post by true_religion »

christonog wrote: post #57
Ygor wrote: post #13

One subtle message I got out of this: Web applications are a good choice. Stick with it.

Honest question, can you possibly expound on how you got that message? Does it mean web apps are necessarily better than developing for browsers via extensions?

Probably because Mozilla explicitly said their focus would be on web apps, particularly javascript improvements.

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

#64

Post by wmf »

code_duck wrote: post #42
thisisblurry wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As per the last paragraph of this post: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/07/release-early-release-often... "Please don’t read too much into the pace of version number changes - they just mean we are moving through release cycles and we are geared up to get fresher releases into your hands!"

Thanks, but that actually addresses how they will be moving the whole version numbers up even faster than before, not how they've chosen to use whole version numbers to represent fairly minor milestones, in contrast to established practices.

Would you prefer Linux/SunOS-like version numbers where the major version never increments? When you do a release every 6-8 weeks, they're all going to be minor.

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

#66

Post by bengoodger »

zephjc wrote: post #43
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 is a pretty spankin' good browser, but it's version number system has bugged me, like theyre only doing it to seem like they make advances quicker than other browser vendors.

Not true. The core elements of the number are major and minor. Major represents a new stable release from the trunk. Minor is a subsequent release from that branch. We almost never do minor. The notable exception was 4.1, which came off the 4.0 branch.

We don't emphasize version numbers in our marketing because consumers are almost never aware of what version of the browser they're running other than "latest". Do you know what version of GMail you're using? Neither do I. With this in mind we chose a predictable versioning scheme even if it's somewhat unconventional in the world of desktop software.

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

#67

Post by farnsworth »

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.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by bengoodger »

One interesting thing to note... Chrome operated with a 4-releases per year schedule from beta launch until late 2010, before switching to the interleaved 12-week cycle mbrubeck mentions. While the quarterly release process represented a definite improvement over the one release every 12-18 months we had been familiar with before, it still had some drawbacks.

The period of time required to put together a release was still sufficiently large that both engineering and management felt pressure to shoehorn stuff into releases. The cost of missing a release was waiting another quarter. For many engineers this means missing your quarterly objectives completely. The temptation to ship unpolished features was high, and the morale hit for missing a release was still tangible.

Moving to the interleaved cycle with 6-week updates is intended to break down these problems by making the consequences of missing a release less severe to both engineers and management. We are still in the early days of this approach and the team is getting used to the adjustment.

I'm pleased to see Firefox is going to be trying to improve the frequency of their releases. Staying fresh is critical to vitality in this modern browser landscape. When I worked on Firefox prior to 1.0 we would do releases roughly quarterly but the team size was much smaller. A high level of discipline in engineering and management is required to maintain regular releases with a large team size.

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

#70

Post by mbrubeck »

code_duck wrote: post #32
eli wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My theory is that they wanted to avoid PHB types saying 'Internet Explorer is at version 9 - this new Google browser, only version 3? Is it ready for the enterprise?'.

Chrome's 6-week release cycle (with no support or security updates for old versions) is probably a much harder sell to enterprise IT departments than a low version number would be.
Post reply on HN