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Firefox 4, 5, 6 and 7 to be released before the end of 2011
- ComputerGuru 16y agoIt looks like Windows 7 64-bit will be officially supported with FF5, too. You're kidding, right? Do they REALLY not support the fastest growing OS version + platform combo? OEMs are finally paying attention to 64-bit computing, and Windows 7 has been replacing Vista like wildfire.... and FF is still two releases away from official Windows 7 64-bit support? EDIT: Oops. Seems stupid Aol/Weblogs/Switched/DowloadSquad (I don't even know what it's called any more!) didn't bother to fact-check, and they're referring to 64-bit native builds of Firefox. EDIT2: So I'm really being downvoted because the original story got it wrong? I guess that's one way to take out your anger on inaccurate writeups...
- wyday 16y ago>> You're kidding, right? Nope, they're just misinformed; they read the roadmap incorrectly. What the Firefox devs mean is a 64-bit version of Firefox (i.e. an x64 process). Right now Firefox runs perfectly on both Windows 7 and 64-bit versions of Windows.
- mrseb 16y agoThere are 32-bit and 64-bit builds of Firefox. The 64-bit builds only work on 64-bit machines -- and the 32-bit builds work on both 32- and 64-bit machines.
- mauriciob 16y ago64-bit build for Windows? Can you please provide a link to that, I'd like to test/use it.
- robin_reala 16y agoIf anyone’s interested, there are 64bit Windows builds at the bottom of https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/ https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/late... The usual proviso apply of course: these are nightly builds and come with no guarentees, nor should they be used as an indication of the quality of the release going forwards.
- ecaron 16y agoThey're not talking about "Windows 7 64-bit operating system", they're talking about "64-bit Firefox" (running on Windows 7 64-bit). One of the biggest slowdowns for this hasn't been FF's ability to run in 64-bit, but plugins (e.g. Flash) not having a 64-bit version for Windows.
- robin_reala 16y agoChrome doesn’t run in 64bit mode either on Windows or OS X.
- mrseb 16y agoAuthor here. There are 64-bit nightly builds of FF4, but _only_ nightlies: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates... This suggests that there won't be an official 64-bit build of Firefox 4 -- we'll have to wait for Firefox 5. As some people comment below me, only some parts of it are working in the 64-bit space (and most notably, the Flash 64-bit plug-in is still beta/alpha.)
- orev 16y agoFirefox is far from becoming "more and more irrelevant". Just because you've switched to an alternate browser doesn't mean the rest of the world has. Chrome may be incrementally gaining some share, but it's mostly at the expense of IE. Firefox has almost 25% of the market, while Chrome is 5%.
- Samuel_Michon 16y agoChrome currently has 16.5 percent global usage share, IE has 45 percent. FF's share remains stable at 31 percent. Chrome gained ten percent points in the last year, while IE lost ten percent points. At its current growth rate, Chrome will pass FF in 15 months. http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201002-201102 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201002-201102
- BrandonM 16y agoAnd just six short years after that it will eclipse 100% usage!
- callahad 16y agoHear, hear. I've been using Chrome / Chromium exclusively since its release, primarily due to the simple, uncluttered UI and blazing speed. It was a breath of fresh air, and I switched readily. But something changed with the recent Firefox 4 betas. The browser feels fast, again, and the UI seems more reasonable. I find Panorama useful. And slowly, Firefox is winning me back. In time, I think it may win back other developers, too. And if it does, I could easily see a fairly stable equilibrium developing between the two browsers. Firefox needed the competition from Chrome, and in many ways, it's starting to meet that challenge.
- ecaron 16y agoTo be able to support this, they're going to need to do some major overhaul of how add-on versioning works. As a Add-On developer (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/font-finder/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/font-finder/), I shudder at the thought of 10,000 different addons needing to keep having their support version incremented w/ each upcoming release.
- Perceval 16y agoYou're right. But they have been making a simultaneous push toward the Jetpack addons (as opposed to the traditional extensions), which are apparently less of a hassle to deal with in terms of versioning and compatibility.
- celticjames 16y agoThis announcement doesn't say anything about versioning for the underlying mozilla platform (which moves from 1.92 to 2.0 between Firefox 3.6 and 4.0). The versioning for the platform only changes when the api changes and breaks binary compatibility for people who use binary components in extensions. Authors writing pure JavaScript extensions can code them to be compatible across multiple Firefox versions.
- cfinke 16y agoI have 21 different add-ons on AMO right now, and while it's kind of annoying to do so, it only takes me about 10 minutes to update the maxVersion on all of them every time a new version of Firefox comes out. Of course, the problem isn't that it's hard or takes a long time to do; the problem is that developers forget to do it. Maybe it's time for Mozilla to move to using minVersion only, like Chrome does.
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoThat requires a major commitment to backwards compatibility, which is a massive time-suck and reduces your ability to innovate. Look at Microsoft for an example of how nasty that can be.
- bhousel 16y agoGreat, now I'm going to need to learn a bunch of new CSS selectors.
- code_duck 16y agoThe new stuff in CSS3 is so useful that this is an opportunity, not a curse!
- l0nwlf 16y agoIsn't the development cycle a bit too fast. 4 major versions in a single year.
- mrseb 16y agoBoth Firefox and Chrome are hoping to catch Emacs before 2014.
- nagnatron 16y agoI just spilled coffee all over myself
- mrseb 16y agoNot a vi user, then :P
- jodrellblank 16y agoMy browser hasn't even caught up with Windows 98. :(
- davej 16y agoWhy? Major versions are just a number. How many major versions of Chrome were there last year? I haven't looked it up but I bet it was more than 4.
- l0nwlf 16y agoGoogle Chrome version number is meaningless as told by Google itself: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/11/google-chromes-version-number-is.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/11/google-chromes-vers... This doesn't however mean that other browsers too have meaningless version numbers.
- davej 16y agoThat link is an unofficial blog. Either way, the point stands though, they're still just arbitrary numbers. Back in the day when software was paid for by version number, an increase of 1.0 was a marketing tool that usually meant a significant update. Browsers are free and are beginning to implement auto-update which makes the version number of a browser even more insignificant.
- kgtm 16y ago"the main focus of Firefox development in 2011, is to make sure there is no more than 50ms between any user interaction and feedback from the browser" Quite surprised to see this, judging from the fact that empirically the average human brain-hand response is around 200 ms. Only in competitive CS have i seen <100 ms response times. Sure, f.i. 20 ms instead of 50 ms network latency in a non-LAN setting makes a difference in that scenario, but only when you are not on the very top of the relevant Bell curve. Seems like a moot bragging point. I'd love to hear from a more knowledgeable person what i'm missing.
- mrcharles 16y agoBrain-hand response is not the same thing as a perceived delay. Once latency becomes greater than 50ms, it becomes human noticeable -- aka "not instant." Given that UI response isn't used to trigger human reflexes, you are just misunderstanding the intent.
- kgtm 16y agoFrom my first hand experience in FPS gaming in non-amateur settings the vast majority of average users will not be able to notice a (say) 50 ms difference in UI responsiveness. I covered that when talking about network latency in my previous post. Of course this is just my experience, scientific findings may very well dispute my ignorance.
- mrcharles 16y agoCorrection, the vast majority of users will not be able to explain that they feel a responsiveness issue, but they do indeed feel it. Less hardcore gamers will often just blame other things -- loose controls, or ignored button presses, or what not. I see it pretty regularly in playtests and such. Anyway, it's not something someone can simply say "Hey, this app took longer than 50ms to respond!" It's more of a gut feeling that something about it is slow. They are likely aiming at the 50ms threshold because that's the point at which you really can't notice it, most of the time. At > 50ms, it becomes more and more noticeable, and by just 100ms people actively start complaining about the slowness of response. edit: As for the FPS gaming issue, the reality is that you don't notice it in FPS gaming because the games are built to hide it from you -- when you press your fire button, your gun fires, regardless of net latency. And that has been true for a very long time. I think the last game to really wait for server response before doing anything was Quake 3, and probably some of the Quake 3 engine games. I could never stand Quake 3 for that reason, if you had anything higher than 30-40ms it started feeling like you weren't controlling the game.
- Ygor 16y agoOne subtle message I got out of this: Web applications are a good choice. Stick with it.
- christonog 16y agoHonest question, can you possibly expound on how you got that message? Does it mean web apps are necessarily better than developing for browsers via extensions?
- true_religion 16y agoProbably because Mozilla explicitly said their focus would be on web apps, particularly javascript improvements.
- Ygor 16y agoYes, that too. But even if not for the explicit mention - rapid development of a certain platform is usually a sign of a strong and lasting ecosystem of applications for that platform. And browsers are certainly an important component of the web platform.
- timtadh 16y agoFrom the road map it looks like their main focus will be on product polish. They will be adding some features to the system. These features seem to cluster around "Web Platform" features (ie. HTML5, CSS3, Social stuff, etc...) and continued improvements to their add on system. The polish focuses on improving interaction times for all user interactions. Their goal as previously mentioned is to get it down to 50ms from user action to visible response. They also say the have 50 common usage paths (identified from testing) that need to be improved. This looks like a reasonable though ambitions plan for Mozilla and if they stick to it they will remain competitive and relevant.
- msmith 16y agoI'm pretty excited about Account Manager, the identity management feature, that's scheduled for Firefox 5. It has the potential to make the web both more secure and simpler to use. Usually those goals are opposing. Of course, the biggest obstacle will be getting people to add support for the feature to their site.
- Perceval 16y agoThat was a feature that was supposed to be in Firefox 4, but got pushed back at some point.
- code_duck 16y agoSounds like the main story is that they're redefining what a major version number means a la Chrome. Chrome's numbers are not in the same scale as FF and IE too, of course. Users can't tell the difference between Chrome 6 and 7 like one can distinguish FF 2 and 3, or IE 6 and 7. I wonder, though, if Google was just trying to catch IE in version number with Chrome and once it's at 10, they'll stop increasing it so rapidly.
- eli 16y agoChrome auto-updates and generally always looks the same. I can't imagine why anyone -- users or developers -- would care what version number it's up to.
- IgorPartola 16y agoExactly. In the ideal world, I would simply create a web app, and it would run on all browsers. No more keeping 3 VMs just to do some browser testing. Alas, until there is a high enough price for not following the standard to the letter, we won't see this happen.
- code_duck 16y agoMy theory is that they wanted to avoid PHB types saying 'Internet Explorer is at version 9 - this new Google browser, only version 3? Is it ready for the enterprise?'.
- barredo 16y agoThat's why Microsoft called the new Xbox "Xbox360" instead of Xbox2, because it will _seem_ a less powerful machine in front of a PlayStation3
- philjr 16y agoThere's that, but it probably fits better into their development model. If they're continually adding features and not breaking backwards compatibility on a "fixed" timeline, then the major version jumps that Firefox, IE do etc. seem more pointless than anything. If I've got this application that we're continually developing on and we're using a 2 month lifecycle for development ... at what point does it make sense to jump a major version? Never? What's the point of it then? It's the fact that we've become accustomed to major versions representing periods of time. Version numbers should be representative. If it was the case that they used the minor number to represent their two month cycles, then they'd be at 1.11. What's the point of the 1 in that scenario? It's redundant. The major version increments fit in better with their development lifecycle, so why not use it?
- MatthewDP 16y agoDoes it seem like Mozilla is lowering the bar as to what will constitute an integer release (4.0, 5.0, etc.)? It was July 2008 when FireFox 3.0 came out, 19 months later, 4.0 hasn't come out yet.
- dochtman 16y agoNo, it seems like they want to ship major releases more often and don't want to think hard about what version increment the new release's features merit.
- carussell 16y agoIt's just "Firefox". Mozilla has been talking about faster iterations for a while now. 3.6 was, I think, supposed to be the start of that initiative; 3.5 was June 2009, and 3.6 was January 2010, even after slipping by a month or two. You could argue that the platform version change from 1.9.1 to 1.9.2 isn't that big of a difference compared to the jump from 1.9.2 to 2.0, but you have to keep in mind that the decision to dub the-platform-behind-Firefox-4 as "Gecko 2" wasn't even made until over the summer.
- ck2 16y agoOh. So they are going for the completely fracturing the user base approach. Meaning since people will learn that upgrading major versions will constantly break things, they will stop upgrading and consider other browsers like Chrome.
- farnsworth 16y agoYes, Chrome, to avoid changing major versions.
- ck2 16y agoLoL, okay so they will go back to IE8 for infinity. Do Chrome major version number changes break their plugins? I don't understand this rush to double-digit version numbers. Do they think because IE is at version 9 that newbie users will also want their other browser to be at version 9 ?
- bengoodger 16y agoOne interesting thing to note... Chrome operated with a 4-releases per year schedule from beta launch until late 2010, before switching to the interleaved 12-week cycle mbrubeck mentions. While the quarterly release process represented a definite improvement over the one release every 12-18 months we had been familiar with before, it still had some drawbacks. The period of time required to put together a release was still sufficiently large that both engineering and management felt pressure to shoehorn stuff into releases. The cost of missing a release was waiting another quarter. For many engineers this means missing your quarterly objectives completely. The temptation to ship unpolished features was high, and the morale hit for missing a release was still tangible. Moving to the interleaved cycle with 6-week updates is intended to break down these problems by making the consequences of missing a release less severe to both engineers and management. We are still in the early days of this approach and the team is getting used to the adjustment. I'm pleased to see Firefox is going to be trying to improve the frequency of their releases. Staying fresh is critical to vitality in this modern browser landscape. When I worked on Firefox prior to 1.0 we would do releases roughly quarterly but the team size was much smaller. A high level of discipline in engineering and management is required to maintain regular releases with a large team size.
- tomlin 16y agoI won't be excited until they reach 9 or 10. That's when it really gets good.
- halo 16y agoI find it awfully sad that they are turning Firefox into Chrome. If I wanted to use Chrome then I would have switched already.
- Cyranix 16y agoIf version numbers weren't useful for marketing, I'd suggest using a hash of the codebase as a true version identifier. It'd be a consistent umpteen alphanumerics long (no more squabbling over who has the biggest number) and could actually serve a technical purpose under the hood.
- athom 16y agoWhen I read that headline, the first thing that came to my mind was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors Presumably, the course of Firefox will run a little less bloody. =)