Weekly Edition
Return to the Announcements pageRecent Features
| |||||||||||||
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica)
Ars technica covers
Mozilla's launch of Aurora, a new release channel for Firefox that will be
more robust than the nightly builds, but still aimed at testers and early
adopters. "Users can expect to see updated Aurora builds issued roughly every six weeks. Mozilla will do a small amount of quality assurance prior to rolling out the updates in order to ensure basic reliability. In addition to being useful for testers and very-early adopters, the Aurora channel will also be useful to Web developers who want to experiment with implementations of the latest emerging Web standards."
(Log in to post comments)
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 14, 2011 21:14 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
Can't they just actually deal with the version they have just put out the door instead of driving a pointless version number arms race?
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 14, 2011 21:28 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> Can't they just actually deal with the version they have just put out the door
FF5 is basically tweaks and stabilization for FF4 - there are no major new features - so that is basically what we are doing.
> instead of driving a pointless version number arms race?
I agree that what Chrome and Firefox are doing with major version numbers is a little silly. I myself would prefer something like Ubuntu's versioning, so 11.06, 11.08 and so forth instead of 5, 6, etc. So I find this bit annoying as well.
But seeing as both Chrome and Firefox are doing this, we may eventually get used to it (like many people used to be annoyed by Google's perma-beta, which originally was a total redefinition of the term 'beta').
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 1:08 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
>FF5 is basically tweaks and stabilization for FF4 - there are no major new features - so that is basically what we are doing. I myself would prefer [date-based numbering]
Version numbers are *the* marketing instrument. With sensible numbering, a user could (reasonably) trust the developer that a version bump was in relation to the change. If however versions are bloated to the point where they are only as good as plain integers, like the version numbers of udev and Fedora, or a %Y%m%d-style date tagged release, which is just a big number in the same way, they are no longer telling. One side effect of that is that they are unlikely to experience the usual enthusiastic feeling of wanting to try out an update.
Speaking generally, not just about firefox: Merely "tweaks and stabilizations" traditionally do not warrant a bump in the most-significant position of a /^\d+(\.\d+)+$/ scheme. Doing it nevertheless will be seen by users as a deceptive tactic to hide the fact that there is nothing new on the plate. Don't forget that a negative critique weighs in more than a positive one. And with the recent announcement that FF7 is to be out in this year, Mozilla has already accumulated minus points.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 1:33 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
As I said, I agree about this matter. You're preaching to the choir ;)
On the other hand, Google has been doing exactly this for a while now in Chrome, and with little or no bad press about it. The opposite, in fact. So maybe people like you and I, that are bugged by this issue, are in a minority.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 19, 2011 13:04 UTC (Tue) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
Google don't really market Chrome's version numbers at all. The browser automatically updates itself, so end-users aren't presented with it anywhere unless they go out of their way, AFAIK.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 4:51 UTC (Fri) by Mook (guest, #71173) [Link]
Actually, Firefox 5 is more just checking in the backlog of patches that were not Firefox 4 blockers but had been piling up since July or August of last year (with Firefox 3.7 beta 1 where the tree went into approvals-only mode).
Note that "Chrome did it first" is a pretty bad excuse, especially given that (as far as I can tell) Chrome extensions aren't version-dependent, whereas Firefox ones automatically stop working on version bumps.
There's a thread in mozilla.dev.planning about changing addons.mozilla.org to assume everything is compatible, but that doesn't help situations like people who don't host there, or Firebug where it actually is version-dependent.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 17:10 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> Note that "Chrome did it first" is a pretty bad excuse, especially given that (as far as I can tell) Chrome extensions aren't version-dependent, whereas Firefox ones automatically stop working on version bumps.
Yeah, the extensions issue is a major difference with Chrome, and it will be very tricky for Firefox to get right.
I don't think "Chrome did it first" is an excuse for rapid releases, though. We are moving to rapid releases not because they are doing it, but because it's a good thing to do. Or did you mean, an excuse for the version numbering? I agree about that, I am personally not in favor of major version bumps so quickly.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 17, 2011 17:21 UTC (Sun) by Mook (guest, #71173) [Link]
Yep, just the version numbering problems. I'm very happy to be getting, if things go on schedule, Firefox 4.1 in about two months (with a built-in bug of a bad version number causing all extensions to die).
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 18, 2011 11:47 UTC (Mon) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link]
Won't dead extentions be a good thing since it'd force rebuild and awareness of the new 64-bit Firefox for Windows?
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 19, 2011 5:32 UTC (Tue) by Mook (guest, #71173) [Link]
Not really, no - the vast majority of extensions are XUL and JavaScript, so the bitness of the platform is largely irrelevant. For those with binary components, I suspect initial uptake will be slow, since 32 bit Firefox works just fine in most cases.
Also, the Aurora (to be Firefox 5) nightlies do not appear to have Win64 builds at the moment. XULRunner, where the SDKs come from, seem to only have Linux builds (except for latest-mozilla-beta, which only has Win32 builds).
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 6:11 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Letting your competitor set the agenda, for features or version numbering or anything else, is the first step towards failure.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 9:21 UTC (Fri) by tcourbon (subscriber, #60669) [Link]
Not borrowing good ideas (from whatever point of view) from your competitors is the first step to show the world you're a stubborn idiot that will fail sooner or later.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 20:45 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
There's a difference between being inspired by your competitors and blindly copying whatever they do. Their niche might not be your niche (or perhaps more practically, their extensions may not work the same as yours).
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 21:30 UTC (Fri) by tcourbon (subscriber, #60669) [Link]
If your point is Mozilla is blindingly copying what Google does then I don't support this theory.
Release early and often seems a good idea to me and the channel (or whatever they call it) development model the way Mozilla do it seems capable to bring it more releases while preserving some quality. At least on the paper.
Also I really wonder in what niches of Chrome and of Firefox could be that different ?
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 8:03 UTC (Fri) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] They have Chrome channels and inflated version numbers. How long until they add support for Native HTML5? Wouldn't want to fall behind IE 10.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 14:07 UTC (Fri) by bjacob (subscriber, #58566) [Link]
A bug is already filed:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=649408
You can track current status there:
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 12:06 UTC (Fri) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]
Installed it and it immediately disabled both of my extensions installed (presumably they would work if I manually bumped the version in install.rdf). I am aware that this is a pre-beta version, but this is going to get more severe even for production releases as they bump versions more quickly; the extension makers are not going to catch up.
Extension bumping Posted Apr 15, 2011 13:18 UTC (Fri) by knobunc (subscriber, #4678) [Link]
The "nightly tester tools" extension[1] will ease some of the hassle of bumping. Not that it helps if the interfaces actually change.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nightly-te...
Extension bumping Posted Apr 17, 2011 5:00 UTC (Sun) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]
That would be awesome, if it actually worked. "Force Addon Compatibility" still leaves the addons disabled after browser restart.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 15, 2011 16:21 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] This is a major pain with Firefox in general. Version number checking for compatibility makes as much sense as checking navigator.appVersion for javascript compatibility used to. They need a better way to do this so that extensions which depend on certain behavior really can advertise when they will and won't work.
Ride the Firefox development wave with Aurora pre-release builds (ars technica) Posted Apr 17, 2011 7:41 UTC (Sun) by rilder (subscriber, #59804) [Link]
Use -- https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/checkcompatib... . Involves changing a setting and there you are done.
Date based version Posted Apr 16, 2011 1:18 UTC (Sat) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link]
Just go to date based versioning and be done with it.
|
|||||||||||||