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Arantor

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Firefox 6 tomorrow
« on August 15th, 2011, 01:14 PM »
Seriously, they're emulating Chrome's game.

Firefox 6 is quietly accessible today, but the official release is tomorrow with 7 beta available on the same day as well... seriously WTF?

The trouble is, it breaks plugins (Chrome doesn't really have such a strong element here anyway) and I can only wonder why they feel the need to bump major version numbers so often. The latter is true of Chrome, of course, but the difference is I don't really notice massive changes, and I don't really have to worry about the version - I can legitimately just say 'Chrome latest' even though 'latest is not a version'... :whistle:


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/15/firefox_6_code_lands/ has a little more.
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Nao

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #1, on August 15th, 2011, 01:23 PM »
Quote from Arantor on August 15th, 2011, 01:14 PM
Seriously, they're emulating Chrome's game.

Firefox 6 is quietly accessible today, but the official release is tomorrow with 7 beta available on the same day as well... seriously WTF?
Well, I would have WTFed Chrome first...
I don't mind that they're doing that. I mean, if it can help regain some market shares, why not. They're targetting those who think that if Firefox is "at version 4", it must be incredibly older (and thus worse) than Chrome 17.51...
Even I was pretty much a fan of large version numbers back in the KMJ days. As a reminder, the final version of it (after 9+ years of development) was v21.42. ;)

Firefox 6 still has a couple of nice freebies. At least I can tell. I can't remember what FF5 added to FF4 in the first place...
I'm on the beta channel so I've been using FF6 for a few weeks now, with no problems. I'm mainly worried about plugins because of the max versions for them. Thankfully the big mods know what to do and plan ahead, but the smaller ones, they're still limited to FF4.* or so...
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The trouble is, it breaks plugins (Chrome doesn't really have such a strong element here anyway)
I promise I didn't read that line before I wrote the previous one :lol:
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and I can only wonder why they feel the need to bump major version numbers so often.
Most of the important FF plugins provide for this. You can specify a far max version, most do either 6.* or 7.*, and that was back when FF announced they were following the Chrome versioning concept.
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The latter is true of Chrome, of course, but the difference is I don't really notice massive changes, and I don't really have to worry about the version - I can legitimately just say 'Chrome latest' even though 'latest is not a version'... :whistle:
Chrome major updates don't have many changes either... I don't even know where to find their changelog. At least FF provides one... :^^;:

PS: my Firefox was updated to Final 6.0 yesterday, IIRC. No 7.0 beta out yet.

Arantor

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #2, on August 15th, 2011, 01:30 PM »
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Well, I would have WTFed Chrome first...
Oh, we already did. It just bothers me that FF feels it has to emulate this approach.
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I don't mind that they're doing that. I mean, if it can help regain some market shares, why not. They're targetting those who think that if Firefox is "at version 4", it must be incredibly older (and thus worse) than Chrome 17.51...
Chrome 13 isn't the target per se, Internet Explorer 9 and Opera 11.50 are notionally the more important targets (since I think only web developers even care what version of Chrome it is)
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Even I was pretty much a fan of large version numbers back in the KMJ days. As a reminder, the final version of it (after 9+ years of development) was v21.42.
After 9 years of dev, version 21 is allowed.
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Firefox 6 still has a couple of nice freebies. At least I can tell. I can't remember what FF5 added to FF4 in the first place...
Most of the stuff that's changed in Chrome is stuff that isn't here yet for everyone else. Stuff like WebSockets support, for example.
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I'm on the beta channel so I've been using FF6 for a few weeks now, with no problems. I'm mainly worried about plugins because of the max versions for them. Thankfully the big mods know what to do and plan ahead, but the smaller ones, they're still limited to FF4.* or so...
Say, does that remind you of something? ;) If only they provided an API that didn't rely on version detection... :whistle:
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Most of the important FF plugins provide for this. You can specify a far max version, most do either 6.* or 7.*, and that was back when FF announced they were following the Chrome versioning concept.
Then they have to scramble to fix it if FF6 or 7 breaks something unexpectedly...
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Chrome major updates don't have many changes either... I don't even know where to find their changelog. At least FF provides one...
So does Chrome. http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/

Nao

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #3, on August 15th, 2011, 01:43 PM »
Quote from Arantor on August 15th, 2011, 01:30 PM
Chrome 13 isn't the target per se, Internet Explorer 9 and Opera 11.50 are notionally the more important targets (since I think only web developers even care what version of Chrome it is)
Which is a bit of a bugger. Who remembers what version of Chrome added support for what CSS3 feature, eh...?

The only good thing is that Chrome updates itself and you can't do a thing about it (except by unplugging your Net, in which case you don't have many uses for Chrome), so basically we don't need to worry about the feature set.
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Even I was pretty much a fan of large version numbers back in the KMJ days. As a reminder, the final version of it (after 9+ years of development) was v21.42.
After 9 years of dev, version 21 is allowed.
And every major version had a feature list that was a very honorable size. :)
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Most of the stuff that's changed in Chrome is stuff that isn't here yet for everyone else. Stuff like WebSockets support, for example.
The thing that most people don't know is that Chrome's most interesting experimental features aren't documented and accessible at all from the main interface. Just like Opera's opera:config, Chrome has chrome:flags, with things like tab grouping (unfortunately NOT stacking) and vertical tabs (which are enabled on my copy. Way better...)
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Say, does that remind you of something? ;) If only they provided an API that didn't rely on version detection... :whistle:
Ah......
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Then they have to scramble to fix it if FF6 or 7 breaks something unexpectedly...
Sure, but it's always the case for every single plugin on every single app... The only way not to have this happen, is to never update the main application. Which, on the web, is unlikely to be a good idea.
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I should have said, Chrome doesn't provide it from a usable place (upgrade-time tab, About box...)
AFAIK.

Arantor

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #4, on August 15th, 2011, 01:50 PM »
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Which is a bit of a bugger. Who remembers what version of Chrome added support for what CSS3 feature, eh...?
Not really, because as you mentioned, it's self updating and we can rely on users having at least the current minus one stable version (so 14's in beta, 13's stable, we can expect most people to have 12+)

But such stuff is documented - and generally if it works on stable, it'll work in any in-use version of Chrome.
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And every major version had a feature list that was a very honorable size.
:)
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The thing that most people don't know is that Chrome's most interesting experimental features aren't documented and accessible at all from the main interface. Just like Opera's opera:config, Chrome has chrome:flags, with things like tab grouping (unfortunately NOT stacking) and vertical tabs (which are enabled on my copy. Way better...)
Most people don't want 'interesting or experimental'...
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Sure, but it's always the case for every single plugin on every single app... The only way not to have this happen, is to never update the main application. Which, on the web, is unlikely to be a good idea.
It's swings and roundabouts. On the one hand you can be forward thinking and assume it'll work on later versions, which there is a decent chance of, and be speculative about putting in version numbers, or you can be conservative and only put in the branches you've tested, which leads to the usual setup of people having to wait or bodge it themselves.
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I should have said, Chrome doesn't provide it from a usable place (upgrade-time tab, About box...)
AFAIK.
Who reads the changelogs? Most users do not care exactly what changed in a browser unless they're developers/geeks, and/or something breaks, in which case they turn to their friendly dev/geek to fix it anyway.

Only last week someone asked me to downgrade their IE to 7 instead of 8 because apparently they thought it would make it faster. They don't care that it's more secure to run 8, nor that it's more standards compliant or indeed anything else that changed.

DirtRider

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #5, on August 15th, 2011, 02:17 PM »
Seem that the normal user is more worried about the plugins working or not working more than the actual version of FF. I like to keep updated for test purposes but other than that as long as it works and does what it is supposed to do without any major defects it really does not matter much what version you are running
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Arantor

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #6, on August 15th, 2011, 02:33 PM »
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Seem that the normal user is more worried about the plugins working or not working more than the actual version of FF
Correct. They don't care about versions of things, if it isn't broken, they don't want it touched. Even if you give them all the compelling reasons (security etc), if it isn't broken, don't 'fix' it.

The problem is you get versions with bug fixes intermixed with new stuff and the new stuff tends to upset people because it's not what they're used to etc.

DirtRider

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #7, on August 15th, 2011, 02:42 PM »
 :lol: Well I am a real sucker so I suppose I will give it a go as long as my main plugins work  :whistle:

Dismal Shadow

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #8, on August 15th, 2011, 06:08 PM »
I don't use plugins on browsers since it update constantly. :P
“I will stand on my ground as an atheist until your god shows up...If my irreligious bothers you much, and if you think everything I do is heresy to your god I don't care. Heresy is for those who believe, I don't. So, it isn't heresy at all!


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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #9, on August 15th, 2011, 06:13 PM »
You guys are so behind the times... I use FF8a1.  :P

Norodo

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Nao

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Arantor

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Re: Firefox 6 tomorrow
« Reply #12, on August 16th, 2011, 11:02 AM »
Stallman is very enthusiastic about his stance. I think he's actually a bit wrong in some respects (read the entire debate that post refers to, and you realise that he's actually so far down his line of thought he's actually blind to certain logical arguments)

I may be an evangelist at times for certain things but this guy makes me look tame.
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