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Firefox Roadmap

What insanity has infected the Mozilla project? This is not how version numbers work! Why the hell are you planning version 7 when you don't even know what you're going to put in it?

New version numbers are for major changes to the product, all this:

- Always respond to a user action within 50 ms
- Never lose user data or state
- Support new operating systems and hardware
- Polish the user experience for common interaction tasks
- anything that improves responsiveness and is ready
- anything that improves stability and is ready
- anything that polishes the user interface and is ready
- anything else serving product priorities and is ready

All that is nice, but that's all bug fixes and refinement. That's what you use .# revisions for. Releasing 4, 5, 6 & 7 all in the same year is going to cause a crap-ton of incompatability and make using Firefox into a pain in the ass.

Argh!

Make it a pain in the ass? It can easily hog half my PC's memory at any given time...

Ever since switching to chrome, I've never looked back.

Of course, I'd already traded in firefox for opera.

The roadmap includes mentions of 4, 5, 6, and 7 not because they intend to release them this year, but to make sure everyone understands the priority - they are NOT going to attempt to build FasterCache into the product until version 6, for instance. Just because they mention it in the same roadmap as they mention what they hope to accomplish this year doesn't mean they'll release those versions. Further, some features need to start development now if they're going to be released in 5 or 6 a few years from now.

Things change over time, don't expect them to adhere to this roadmap anyway.

First Lady Puffinstuff said:

The roadmap includes mentions of 4, 5, 6, and 7 not because they intend to release them this year,

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To quote:
"Ship Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 in the 2011 calendar year"

Oh. In that case someone is sore that chrome and ie are both at version 8, and firefox is old and busted at version 3.

Why do version numbers matter for free software like this? Now that automatic updates are the norm, does it really matter?

Even point releases for Firefox have a bad habit of breaking compatibility with themes, add-ons and plug-ins. My concern is that new version numbers are going to cause even more breakage.

However, automatic updates are available but often unused. I can't seem to find statistics on it, but I have heard web developers complaining about having to support old version of Firefox.

The only thing I miss with Firefox is the robustness of the script-blocker addons and the pop-up blockers. Everything else, including the speed that FF no longer provides for some reason, I can get with Chrome, and their script/pop-up/ad blockers are decent, if not quite as comprehensive and good.

Until chrome gets as good at blocking annoying ads (flashblock, and normal image blocking - don't need something as strong as adblock) and until they fix their faulty text selection, it'll never be my primary browser.

figmentPez said:

My concern is that new version numbers are going to cause even more breakage.

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Let the breaking begin! Firefox 4 came out recently, and it's not compatible with my theme of choice (Qute). This is why I'm concerned about all the version number upgrades. I want my browser to work and look the way I want it to.

Dammit! The theme maker has no intention of updating Qute to work with Firefox 4. I've been using Qute since it was the default theme back when Firefox was beta. After 7 years of a consistent look, I don't want to change.

I liked FF fine before moving to 4. Now I am pissed off at it.

SpecialKO said:

the speed that FF no longer provides for some reason,

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I installed Firefox 4 on my netbook, and it's noticably faster than Firefox 3.6. I can't compare it to Chrome, since I don't use it much, but it's a nice improvement in responsiveness and page loading. I can open a bunch of tabs and it stays responsive, even on my this things little Atom processor. That surprises me. I'm going to have to test Hulu playback later (one of the few things I use Chrome for on my netbook).

I can see why Firefox 4 broke themes, since they've changed the layout of the toolbar, but I miss the color that Qute brings. The new features and performance improvements are probably going to be worth upgrading my desktop as well. (oooh, bookmark performance improvements as well. I hope that'll help with my thousands of cosplay bookmarks.)

Oh, good. I'll give it a try then. I care not about themes.

Um.. dudes, wtf? The arbitrary number of the version is not going to cause more incompatibilities than a "point" upgrade... it's literally just a matter of editing a "5" instead of a ".5".... hell, you'll find most incompatible themes/extensions are only incompatible because the developer didn't change the number it "allows". This can be easily overridden with Nightly Tester Tools (an extension).

Unless each new version comes with HUGE differences from the previous ones (they won't), this is exactly the same as if you were upgrading from Firefox 4 to 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7. Take a chill pill, it's an arbitrary number.
Added at: 20:54
(That being said, I've been using and LOVING Firefox 4 since Beta 10)

SpecialKO said:

Oh, good. I'll give it a try then. I care not about themes.

Click to expand...

Bear in mind that the forums have some sort of glitch with No Script, Firefox 4 and embedded Youtube videos.

I am liking the new "app tab" feature. It's not a big thing, but it's nice. You can set any tab to be an "app tab" and it will lock to the left side of the tab bar, and shrink down to just it's icon. I've been using it for Twitter, and the tab even highlights when there are new tweets. It's simple and useful.