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Firefox 71
- MikeTaylor 7y agoDid the FireFox people ever explain why they abandoned a more typical version numbering system and instead started releasing a new major version every couple of weeks?
- Lammy 7y agoGoogle started it with Chrome, and Firefox had to adopt it too or look like an also-ran. More info here: https://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-to-Copy-Google-Chrome-Development-Schedule-New-Versions-Every-Six-Weeks-190232.shtml https://news.softpedia.com/news/Firefox-to-Copy-Google-Chrom... Chrome was three years old and on version 10.0 when this was published, and Firefox was on version 4.0 despite a decade of Mozilla legacy. It’s marketing, plain and simple, but I think it was the right decision.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI feel like consumers are smarter than this? I don't think anyone chooses iOS because it's on version 13 versus Android's version 10. The difference also becomes less meaningful as the disparity grows. If Chrome is on version 78, and Firefox is on version 6 (or whatever), it's relatively intuitive that "versions" don't mean the same thing between the two. Same with the Playstation 3 versus Xbox 360, really. Most people probably don't even know what version they're running, anyway.
- TylerE 7y agoConsumers are in fact this dumb. That's why it was the Xbox 360 and not the Xbox 2, because XBox 2 < Playstation 3.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI'm aware that this was Microsoft's original thinking behind the Xbox 360's name, but then they called their next console "Xbox One". That felt to me like Microsoft deciding that their original concerns had never been legitimate.
- smt88 7y ago"One" instead of "1" suggests unity and oneness, rather than a version number. I still think it was an awful branding decision, though.
- ljm 7y agoConsidering how the PlayStation has dominated the market without messing around with branding like that, it seems like MS dropped the ball by bike-shedding the name instead of nurturing quality content.
- VRay 7y ago<ArmchairExecutive> Personally, I think Microsoft should have put way more effort into polishing their Kinect user experience. The X-bone could have been everything that the Echo/Siri/Google Home ecosystems evolved into if Microsoft had just worked harder on polish up front. Instead, Microsoft pretty much alienated their core gaming base in order to half-assedly fail at a broader goal. They didn't even manage to push through more than a couple of decent Kinect v2 games </ArmchairExecutive>
- TylerE 7y agoPS didn't dominate that generation. It outsold the 360, but only by about 5%. Ironically the PS 4 did outsell the X1 almost 2:1.
- jorvi 7y agoThat doesn't hold up because they went Xbox One vs Playstation 4.
- gmiller123456 7y agoI don't think anyone chooses iOS because it's on version 13 versus Android's version 10. Users generally choose the phone, not the OS. And the most popular phones are pretty close on the numbering schemes. Another example is SSL and TLS. SSL 3.0 was the last version, then TLS 1.0 took over, but a lot of people still thought SSL 3.0 was the latest and best.
- Krasnol 7y agoMost non IT people I know, use Chrome because "one day it was just there". Installed through some freeware program where they forgot to uncheck a box. Yeah...people are not that smart.
- roca 7y agoI was there when this decision was discussed and made. It was nothing to do with marketing. The really important decision was to switch to a rapid, time-based release cycle from a traditional long, feature-based release cycle. We wanted to reduce the amount of work that was "fixed in the next release" but not yet shipped to users; to increase our responsiveness, so that if a new feature suddenly became important, we could quickly get it into the hands of users; and to avoid developer issues like schedule chicken and rushing to get not-really-done features into a release because the next release is far away. This change was indeed inspired by Chrome, and it worked well; those goals were achieved. Then a much less important question was how to do version numbering in a world where you're doing these frequent releases. There is no technical reason why some releases should bump a major version number and others should not; the amount of new features or breaking changes will fluctuate from release to release, but the same kinds of changes are present in every release. It is therefore simpler to just have a uniform numbering scheme so no-one has to decide whether a release should bump the major version number, and users aren't trying to understand the difference between a major version bump and a minor version bump (when there isn't really a meaningful difference).
- jotm 7y agoI don't care either way, but they'll have to switch to something else at some point, cause the numbers will look ridiculous. Firefox 157... Firefox 349... Firefox 1071 Intel's processor names already look ridiculous to me. Core i9-10980XE? Can't say that with a straight face, "normal" people seemed confused way back when Sandy Bridge got released
- Lammy 7y agoThey could do like NVIDIA and switch back and forth between two, three, and four digit model numbers every decade or so as the numbering scheme gets stale. I remember having a GeForce2 MX400, then a Ti4600, then a 8600, then a GTS 250, then a GTX 460, then a GTX 970, then a Quadro P4000, and now they seem to go for a hybrid scheme where they have the two-digit "16 series" or "20 series" containing four-digit models like 2080 :p
- ygjb 7y ago
- kekebo 7y agoThey have a write up about it here https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/09/moving-firefox-to-a-faster-4-week-release-cycle/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/09/moving-firefox-to-a-faster...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- asymmetric 7y agoYes, see this[0] for example. If memory serves me right, the TLDR is that the more typical release management system can cause certain features to not be released as soon as they're ready, because other features that should go in a major release are not ready yet. By removing the semantic component of release numbers and releasing often, this does not happen. Feature ready -> shipped soon. [0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/09/moving-firefox-to-a-faster-4-week-release-cycle/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/09/moving-firefox-to-a-faster...
- mythmon_ 7y agoI'd say that Firefox versions are mostly a unit of time now, since they aren't generally semantically meaningful in the way semver is. While working on Firefox, we often make plans that are delineated not in weeks, months, and quarters, but in Firefox releases and the nightly/beta/release cycle associated with them.
- retonom 7y agoWell, actually it was introduced after Chrome switched to this same model. So it looked like Chrome is advancing faster because they released a new major version every few weeks and it got more press. I suppose that's why they really switched. If it would be just a matter of the management system you'd better adapt the system instead of version numbers. Anyway, after so many "major" releases the press has died down. So what we have now is version numbers that are quite meaningless because you can't pin major changes in the architecure to version numbers anymore.
- mythmon_ 7y agoThe recent change to having a releaes every 4-5 weeks is a small modification of the existing practice of having a new version every 6-8 weeks. The 6-8 week schedule is about a decade old now. It's original goals were to help ensure that unrelated features didn't block each other from releasing, and make releases more consistent, which helps localization, testing, and project management. In that regard I think it's been very successful. It's probably not worth nitpicking a decade old decision though.
- coldpie 7y agoI'm not sure what you mean by "more typical." If you mean the "major.minor.bugfix" thing that was the norm for a while, I think we've all realized it's basically useless. So many projects had no criteria for incrementing the major number, so it would just sit at 0. or 1. forever, informing no one of anything. So don't think of it as "a new major version every couple of weeks," think of it as dropping the implied (and useless) "1." major version with a new minor release every couple of weeks :-)
- usrusr 7y agoBut now actual major changes are unnecessarily hard to communicate to non-technical users. If e.g. the "quantum" activation could have been celebrated with a once-in-a-couple-of-years major increment, far more people would have taken notice, with much less marketing effort. A rarely incremented major number is a marketing tool, a continually incremented number is merely a vector clock.
- agapon 7y agoJust my 2 cents. I think that the traditional versioning system is most useful for libraries and other shared components. It is much less useful for "end programs" for end users (aka applications).
- r00fus 7y agoFF is my browser of choice now. I work with large XMLs as a part of my dev process and Chrome is simply unresponsive with large XML files that must display on the page.
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- deedubaya 7y agoWebsocket message inspector, yay!
- meddlin 7y agoWell, playing with SignalR and securing real-time web apps just got more interesting. Along with full-text network panel search--I didn't even know I wanted that!
- noisem4ker 7y agoThat's a big "I would use Firefox if ..." vanishing, at least judging from the most common complaints here.
- rbtprograms 7y agoFirefox just keeps looking better and better. Lots of features added and QoL increases. I have switched over to using it for general browsing, but continue to use chrome for development. That might be changing real soon!
- meddlin 7y agoI frequently find myself bouncing between them for development, but lately...I'm not really sure why. FF has everything I need. Even a dark mode (Chrome does too, I think).
- eitland 7y agoI might be a top 5% Firefox fan and I dislike Chrome. I'll still keep a Chromium instance around to test in when I do frontend work. Luckily though if it works in Firefox then it usually[0] works in all other browsers as well. [0]: While doing Android development I can remember once where it failed in Chrome but worked in Firefox.
- soperj 7y agoYou should try Firefox Developer Edition. Once I started, I ditched Chrome entirely.
- chrisweekly 7y agoSame
- open-paren 7y agoWhat's the difference other than being an alpha (2 major versions ahead) and having some nicer default settings?
- WorldMaker 7y agoNo Google telemetry, for a start.
- 7y ago
- sectiondetail 7y agoI love everything related to css grids. Subgrids enabled by default is going to simplify my life greatly. Thanks, Mozilla!
- alberth 7y agoToo bad Electron isn’t based on FF.
- ilkkao 7y agoIndeed. Scrolling Monaco editor here https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/ https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/ feels much smoother on Firefox than on Chrome for me in my very unscientific macOS test.
- ljm 7y agoI hope one day we get a new embedded FF through Servo or something.
- elkos 7y agoI remember how excited I was back in the old days when I could change KDE's browser Konqueror's engine from KHTML to Gecko in just a setting (or was it a tab?)
- pmoleri 7y agoThere used to be a similar project, PRISM: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Prism Products like Zimbra Desktop were based on it.
- bhauer 7y agoThe increased performance of the developer tools window is highly appreciated. Please prioritize #1219917 [1] to allow a single undocked developer tools window to be reused across all tabs! Would be such an improvement for multi-monitor developers. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1219917 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1219917
- smacktoward 7y agoOh, man. I want this so bad. But the Bugzilla thread makes it sound like it's a really hard thing to do (grrr).
- ljm 7y agoI bet. Safari has it, as a small drop down hidden in the corner of the window. Easy enough to switch tabs if you remember it’s there.
- mnm1 7y agoThe FF dev tools is one of the reasons I switched. IMO, they are miles ahead of Chrome. Or at least, they were when I switched up until a few months ago when source maps stopped working. Without the possibility of debugging, it makes the dev experience much worse. I wish they would focus on fixing crucial bugs like that instead of speeding up the loading time. One gets you the dev tools a few milliseconds faster and the other one is a core functionality of the program. And yes, they work fine in Chrome and the way they are generated hasn't changed in 5 years.
- jtanner 7y agoI switched from Chrome to Firefox 6 months ago when Google started playing games with it's ad blockers. All of my Chrome extensions and features were supported by Firefox and I was a happy camper. Then two problems got to me: 1. Slow performance on web apps like Gmail (use it for work) 2. Firefox regularly crashes (more than 10 times per day) I'm trying to switch to the Brave browser (Chromium) now, but I was almost a Firefox convert.
- cpeterso 7y ago> 2. Firefox regularly crashes (more than 10 times per day) Needless to say, crashing 10 times a day is not normal. :) Can you share any Crash Report IDs from your Firefox's about:crashes page? The crash reports will say whether a bug has already been filed or fixed.
- RandomBacon 7y agoIt might be your setup, I do not experience that. (I too use Gmail in FF.)
- mktimon 7y agoFirefox does not seem to crash on me. However, the FF performance has never been up to par. Especially with Google products(Gmail, Docs, etc.).
- timbit42 7y agoDoesn't that make you suspicious?
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- Lendal 7y agoPicture-in-picture is a game changer. This is awesome!
- majortennis 7y agohow do you activate it
- majortennis 7y agoPicture-in-picture video comes to Firefox for Windows: Select the blue icon from the right edge of a video to pop open a floating window so you can keep watching while working in other tabs. Learn how the feature works.
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- clitoralStimuli 7y agoIt's funny that here on HN, we see this constant narrative of "only one browser" like, which browser is objectively the best, and thus the only one that will be used. People in HN comments frequently talk about "switching" to a different browser, as if it were true that you could only have one browser installed at a time, which is laughably false. Is there an OS setting for a default? Sure, but that setting is inconsequential, since many shallow shortcuts to both browsers are readily created, and equally accessible. Furthermore, many HN users profess a deep mastery of command line expertise, explaining how effortless it is to use the console in a terminal window and pour shell commands from their finger tips. Surely, it would be just as easy to enter the name of one browser or the other, or both, alternative arbitrarily, as needed. The false narrative of loyalty to a browser is beyond silly, when you can just use all of them, and most people frequently do exactly that. So, what does it mean when we see, over and over again, nameless, faceless users boiling to the surface to broadcast a deep emotional investment in a browser? I think it means there are a lot of liars. People presenting themselves in a disingenuous manner. Sometimes I do get asked by regular less technical people, what my general tendency is, and I tell them it doesn't matter, this all bullshit, and the cards are stacked against you. The default settings are designed to reveal your identity as unique, JavaScript is forced when it need not be, and an emphasis on the perfection of CSS graphical representation is overburdened and counterproductive. Differences among browsers are superficial, and we haven't seen anything truly new since 2004. That last new thing was tabs, and since then, the mass migration has been to mobile deviced where options and real estate are limited, forcing the adoption of apps, locked into the OS of the device vendor's choosing (apple or google). Sure, we use laptops, but browsers don't really matter anymore. Gaming rigs and work stations? Who cares? Our future has been stolen from us, and we are lie to about it every day. Stop arguing about browsers. It's absurd and untrue to claim that the browser is what will save us. All important things happen on the server side, and that is where we are ruined.