Thunderbird too [LWN.net]

Thunderbird too

Posted Nov 10, 2011 23:49 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281)
In reply to: Thunderbird too by rahvin
Parent article: Firefox 8 released

> I'd just like to know why every release is a major number increment. At the rate they are going we are going to be at Firefox 39 in 3 years. Why couldn't we stick with the major.minor release numbering where only major upgrades got a new major number?

Firefox and Chrome both bump the major version number every 6 weeks, because they *do* include changes in those 6-week updates that break earlier stuff. Not bumping the major version number would be potentially misleading, since people assume minor version numbers do not introduce incompatibilities.

Firefox also had the reason that Chrome already used that numbering scheme, so it makes sense to standardize on one that is familiar to people already.

Side note: I'm surprised by the comments here on LWN. I expect Slashdotters to say "Mozilla and Google are just trying to get high version numbers, it's all marketing, blah blah", but here? I expect more from LWN readers! ;)

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Thunderbird too

Posted Nov 11, 2011 15:36 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

However, Chrome has a proper extensions API, so version number changes almost never break extensions.

Thunderbird too

Posted Nov 11, 2011 22:15 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

Yes, Chrome's extension API is simpler and less susceptible to breakage when there is an update. (Firefox has jetpack addons which are similar, but they aren't used much yet.)

But websites can and do break with Chrome and Firefox updates. There is no way around that. So to not use a major version number would be misleading.

Thunderbird too

Posted Nov 12, 2011 15:35 UTC (Sat) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (1 responses)

The downside of which, of course, is that extensions can't do nearly as much in Chrome as they can in Firefox. They can only do what the Chrome developers allowed for in their API.

Gerv

Thunderbird too

Posted Nov 12, 2011 16:56 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

One simple extension that always works is worth a hundred cool ones that can break at any time because of an update including security fixes that you *have* to do. Maybe I am showing myself to not be a cool cat by valuing stability and security above whizbang, but so be it.