Rapid Release Process

August 25th, 2011

Recently Mozilla implemented a rapid release process, where we release a version of Firefox every 6 weeks. This has involved changing a number of our processes. It’s also raised some new issues. For example, some enterprises find the idea of rapid browser change to be disconcerting at best and potentially unmanageable at worst. Add-on compatibility is another. I acknowledge these issues are complex and difficult. There is work to be done to make the rapid release process smoother and hopefully more useful to more of our userbase. I’d like to describe why I believe the rapid release process is important enough to pursue despite these difficulties.

Before Mozilla instituted the rapid release process, we would sometimes have new capabilities ready for nearly a year before we could deliver them to people. Web developers would have to wait that year to be able to make their applications better.

A browser is the delivery vehicle for the Internet. And the Internet moves very, very quickly. Philosophically, I do not believe a product that moves at the speed of traditional desktop software can be effective at enabling an Internet where things happen in real time. If we want the browser to be the interface for the Internet, we need to make it more like the Internet. That means delivering capabilities when they are ready. That means a rapid release process. If we don’t do something like this the browser becomes a limiting factor in what the Internet can do.

Sometimes we can address this problem without a new release of code. For example, if one goes to the Firefox Menu Item for “Add-ons” the content one sees is a web page. This part of the browser enjoys all the benefits of the web. It can be managed in the ways people have come to expect of a web experience. The rapid release process is another technique we’ve adopted to allow the browser to deliver new capabilities quickly.

As my colleague Brendan is fond of saying, “There is no free lunch.” This means we need to listen carefully to those who are experiencing difficulties. We need to be creative and try to find practical ways of alleviating these difficulties if we can. This is true for the enterprise use case, and it’s true for the add-on experience. I know that’s not a perfect answer, and it’s not a promise that we can meet everyone’s needs perfectly. Despite this, I believe the rapid release process is the right direction.

Categories: Mozilla

178 comments for “Rapid Release Process”

1
kam said on August 29th, 2011 at 2:52 pm:

I also hear that Mozilla wants to push silent upgrades, presumably not giving users a choice. Once again chasing Google’s tail.

I do not install anything from Google on my system, including and especially Google Earth, because I have to agree to let them run any update on my system at any time they want.

When hell freezes over. NOTHING gets installed on my systems with out my knowledge and explicit say so!
2
anyád apád said on August 30th, 2011 at 3:27 am:

I decided to copy my thoughts from a certain site (filehippo):

“Making time-limits like ^new release every X weeks^ is a good thing, but jumping main version numbers like a crazy chamois just doesn’t make any sense. […] In this aspect, LibreOffice has got a much more acceptable pattern.”
3
Tom Dietsche said on August 30th, 2011 at 6:08 pm:

If you are going to force rapid releases into corporate environments, then for cripes sake have the common sense to keep them backward compatible and do NOT change existing features just because you think they will be neat or cool or whatever mysterious criteria you seem to use.

End users cannot be re-trained on how to use the software every six weeks, that is something only geeks like you guys do. Every think about that? Good grief. If you add new features, at least keep the OLD ones that people know how to use and rely on. Don’t take things away at random.
The status bar is a great example, even a techie like me had to Google it to figure out how to turn it back on. That is a shame, at least you should have defaulted the new addon and configured it to show the status bar if you could not bring yourself to save the old one, which worked fine.

Well that’s enough for now but get a reality check when you do this stuff, this is not just for geeks any more.
4
App G said on August 31st, 2011 at 6:53 am:

Hi Mitchell
I’m staggered that there are so many people complaining about Mozilla moving too quickly… folks, it’s simple if you don’t want to update – don’t update!
But please, stop your whining and let Mozilla and the rest of us keep moving/updating/improving.
5
Pingback from Mozilla chair defends rapid-release Firefox | FaceColony.com

[…] are secondary compared to the alternative of holding up new features for a year, Baker said in a blog post today: A browser is the delivery vehicle for the Internet. And the Internet moves very, very quickly. […]
6
Pingback from Mozilla Defends ‘Rapid Release’ of Firefox Versions | BuyX-Comp

[…] unmanageable by enterprises, the chair of Mozilla Foundation, which maintains the browser, said in a blog post on […]
7
Todd said on September 1st, 2011 at 10:05 am:

I am always amazed when a company argues with success and changes what made them great. It always leads to the downfall of the company if they change their formula that brought them success in the first place.

The best does not need to imitate the others … The best leads the pack and does not follow.

People will move to something else if FF causes them continuous trouble and, apparently, this is what this policy change is causing.
8
Pingback from Mozilla Defends ‘Rapid Release’ of Firefox Versions | BuyX-Comp

[…] capabilities by almost a year. Kees Grinwis, commenting on Baker’s blog post, for example, suggested a long time support (LTS) version of […]
9
Twig Nguyen said on September 1st, 2011 at 9:37 pm:

Personally I think Firefox is trying to be cool and act like Chrome/IE9 with their vamped up release cycles.

Firefox has one thing that they don’t have, a huge add-on base and you’re ruining it.
No matter how popular addons are, developers are limited by time. Look at the number of addons that have been abandoned and then continued by another person.

Since Firefox 4, I’ve been keeping an eye on the rapid releases and installing them only on dev machines (which have no addons). PCs with addons which I use regularly for personal browsing stay on Firefox 4 to maintain compatibility.

Firefox7 works fantastically and the memory improvements in are great, but we (in our workplace) think that the change log between Firefox5 and Firefox6 (a couple of security fixes, CSS3 improvements and changes to the addon manager) isn’t worth upgrading for.

With the huge fanfare involved with Firefox 4 and the record breaking number of downloads,
Firefox 5 should have been “Firefox 4.01” and Firefox 6 being 4.02.

There is a mental “uh-oh” that comes with big new revisions. Why Mozilla thought they were special enough to break this barrier, I don’t know.

Chrome is somewhat exempt from this, mainly because their updates are sneaky and you don’t really have a way of disabling it.

The big version number changes should be reserved for massive revamps, even if it’s just under the hood like Firefox 7’s memory management. Much like how IE8 to IE9 was a HUGE improvement in CSS compatibility.
10
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11
Pingback from Firefox releases are killing me - Apple, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Reviews, Help, Tips, and News | Macworld Australia

[…] rapid changes. Last week, Mitchell Baker, the chair of the Mozilla foundation, acknowledged in a blog post, that the issues many businesses have raised are significant. She explained the reason for the […]
12
Matt said on September 7th, 2011 at 12:09 am:

I would like to echo what Andrew #38 said:

Stability > Bells and Whistles.

I don’t want to be a beta tester; I need to get my work done. If web developers want to use the hottest new feature, they can create an add-on or fork Firefox so that their niche users can enjoy it.

What I need is a browser that works reliably, including with my add-ons.

I also think that a rapid release schedule is going to result in a release with a major bug in it, sooner or later. Having major new features kept in the unstable version for a year sounds like a great thing to me.
13
drow said on September 7th, 2011 at 7:41 am:

look, it’s clear that you’re now making firefox for your own self-gratification, and not the benefit of the people who actually want to use it. so at least do us the favor of taking your dirty smut into the bathroom.
14
Navan said on September 7th, 2011 at 6:41 pm:

I’m simply not upgrading anymore.
15
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16
Sherman Bausch said on September 15th, 2011 at 5:08 pm:

I’m joining the camp that’s a:) no longer using firefox for myself and b:) not recommending it / installing it. This is sloppy policy and contrary to any level of support stability.

Good luck and thank god there are other good browsers out there.
17
ben said on September 17th, 2011 at 8:08 am:

I’m completely surprised by this dreadful turn of events in the Ff development cycle. I’ve spent the last 5 years getting clients (and anyone that would listen) to switch to Firefox; now I’ve spent the last two months rolling back to 3.6 so that functionality/performance robbed from my clientele was returned. Many have switched back to IE or Chrome. There is a reason why I am… excuse me, WAS… not using or recommending Chrome, and that was because Firefox was awesome – even if it took 10 times longer than IE or Chrome to start up. Now it’s broken, buggy and slow all the time with these new releases addressing none of the obvious crashing and freezing up. Thanks a lot, Firefox.

How can I/you expect extension developers, who are working FOR YOU FOR FREE, to hurry their development cycles to accommodate for your arbitrary updating? How can you expect business users (let alone “normal” users like my mom and grandmother) to keep using your browser when the things that worked last week don’t this week or if they must stick with a insecure and outdated browser to have stability and the functionality they’ve come to rely upon? How can you expect IT people that have reputations and are forced to deal with the fallout of this terrible decision to continue recommending Ff?

Chrome has taken up the mantle of extensible, fast browsing, and IE has the full weight of Microsoft and brand recognition behind it. Firefox, the one-time leader and innovator, has now turned and begun following the followers. I guess I should give the new leader another try and find out what Chrome has that is so awesome. It’s the new easy fix for Firefox – install Chrome.

Good luck Firefox. I’m sorry but you’ve done it to yourself, which is the worst offense of all.
18
anonymous said on September 17th, 2011 at 9:55 pm:

Please slow the Firefox updates, or at least come up with a long-term support strategy. I’m an IT manager for a government agency, and it is a large pain to have to re-test STIGs, compatibility with various internal web applications, and add-ons such as PKCS#11 middleware. The quick major releases with no long-term support commitment gives Firefox a bad rap with my colleagues.

Installable software applications are different than web applications. It is not just about giving web developers access to the latest HTML5 tools; it is about providing a stable user experience.
19
YesBaby said on September 24th, 2011 at 2:10 am:

Yeah, please make it shorter! The decision, whether I’ll tackle on alternative browser (which why I chose Firefox in the past) is now also far more shorter. Really good job! You should get an award to get to Firefox 20 in July 2012!

I’m glad that there are still browser which do not need big numbers every few weeks and where developers have enough time to let a number stay a number.
20
Suraklin said on October 3rd, 2011 at 4:57 am:

On the offchance this has any influence I too tried following through the version 4 – 7 and found each one less stable and with new things I could not do that I used to be able to.

For example I haven’t been able to access two online financial accounts on FF since version 4.0 surfaced.

Luckily I still had install binaries for 3.6 so I have rolled back to a version that allows me to, you know, browse all the sites I use daily.

You must remember that the one and only ‘killer’ function of a browser is the ability to browse the internet. No quantity of bells and whistles is going to appeal to me if I can’t do the basic browsing to start with.
21
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22
Marcel said on October 6th, 2011 at 1:29 pm:

I can nothing but wholeheartedly support Dan’s comment #18, http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/08/25/rapid-release-process/#comment-19110.

I wish the big wings at Mozilla realized that it’s not just the enterprise folks who care about stability (releases & API).
Simple question: what do you think counts more for the average non-enterprise Firefox/Thunderbird user
a) a few new features every month thereby loosing a few add-ons because fewer and fewer add-on devs want to release that quickly (they all devote their *spare* time, get it?)
b) a batch of new features every 9 months which had given add-on devs ample time to prepare

Isn’t really a question, is it?

Firefox isn’t so great because it’s Firefox from Mozilla but because of the ecosystem around it. Go out and piss off those who built the ecosystem and it’s gonna die.
23
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[…] Why not start by commenting the chairperson’s personal blog post: http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/08/25/rapid-release-process […]
24
Justin said on October 7th, 2011 at 8:30 am:

Please stop rolling major version numbers. Stop pretending its a marketing gimmick. Firefox users are not dumb mass users…that’s what IE users are. Firefox users choose Firefox for a reason and you’re ruining that reason.

When you implemented Tab Candy…that was awesome and a great reason to roll a new version. Since then?…WTF?
25
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[…] Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, said recently on her blog, “If we want the browser to be the interface for the Internet, we need to make it more like the […]
26
Bob Trower said on October 19th, 2011 at 5:56 pm:

As another user mentioned, I suggest you spend some time understanding this guy:
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/08/25/rapid-release-process/#comment-19110

I have been developing systems for decades in a wide variety of environments and I had an instant and visceral reaction to this nonsense of a ‘rapid release schedule’. It is too much to go into here, but the people promoting this have a deep, profound and difficult to correct misunderstanding of the process of developing and releasing production software. They should be replaced by people with more sense.

There would certainly have been people with their head screwed on right that screamed about this at Mozilla. Find the ones that made coherent arguments and put them in charge while you sort out this mess.

YES you should be doing relatively stable builds on a rolling basis and you should be prepared to release bug and security fixes in a timely fashion. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO (BAD DOG!) you should not make architectural, UI and compatibility breaking changes and rolling them out without a great deal of advance notice, buy-in, testing, a proper roadmap, etc. What you have created is chaos. I am doubtful that the benefits you think you are delivering are all that beneficial, but even if they were, they are RADICALLY outweighed by the disruption the releases have caused. There is not a whisper of doubt about this. You are absolutely, unequivocally wrong and the wisest course is to admit it surely, quickly and convincingly while you still have a chance to salvage something.

I have already switched my default browsers on my various systems from FireFox to Chrome. Unless someone gets a grip on this situation, I will be uninstalling FireFox and will abandon it altogether. This is not because I am peevish (though I am), it is because what you have now is becoming unusable. I am typing this in FireFox v 3.6.23 because the software has no option to update to whatever the latest is (7.01 this week?).

You have taken a fine and highly competitive product with a user base in the millions and goodwill created over many years and thrown it all away on a foolish, impetuous whim born of hubris and ignorance of your craft.

You are in a hole. STOP DIGGING!

It does not matter how eloquent your arguments are, you have made a disastrous mistake and no amount of preaching to your user base (which includes likely tens or hundreds of thousands of users with more development experience than you have) will make that mistake go away. What you need to do is recognize your mistake and take corrective measures while you still have a user base.

The only reason you should break compatibility is to make major architectural changes that are required to allow you to, for instance, finally correct your horrendous memory and stability bugs.

I am so disappointed that the hard work of many excellent programmers over all these years and the dedication of a long suffering user base is being wasted because some journeyman developers cannot see past their own noses.

Other than that, I suppose everything is OK. I would really love for FireFox to get back to a rational time-honored release regime similar to:

MM.mm.rrr.bbbb (Major/Minor/Release/Build).

Your goal should be to build a product so sound that the major version stays in place for years, minor versions last a year or two and releases and builds can be updated at whatever rate is required without disrupting anything.

The notion that rolling updates should happen quickly without user intervention is fine, but only for bug fixes and security updates that impact nothing else.

It is much worse than this, but you have, for instance, confused/conflated Major Version Releases with Minor Updates.

This is harsh and I apologize for the tone, but this is an emergency. I doubt that FireFox will survive unless you take sensible action quickly. Releasing version 16 next year is not a sensible action.
27
Bob Trower said on October 19th, 2011 at 6:05 pm:

Clarification re: “because the software has no option to update to whatever the latest is ” — The Help/Check for Updates is there, but it reports that there are no updates. It is effectively broken either by reporting falsely that there is no update or failing to mention that the update pathway for this release is (perhaps temporarily?) closed. Sigh.
28
jimstaffer said on October 26th, 2011 at 4:22 pm:

I whole-heartedly agree with Bob Trower’s comments above. Very succinct, accurate and insightful. There are undoubtedly many other excellent points made by others, but I haven’t read the entire blog…

If the desired outcome is for people to abandon firefox in droves – Mozilla has chosen a very effective strategy. I have not tried chrome, due to “Big Brother” concerns about Google, so I installed Opera instead. Until all this madness with firefox started, I had no reason to use anything else.

This affects me more because I run Linux almost exclusively for my small business.

Think of it this way. You’re the captain of the Titanic – a state-of-the art ship. _Lots_ of people around you are saying things like this to you: Captain, we’re at a very high latitude. It’s a bad time of year for ‘bergs. The water is savagely cold. It’s dark. We’re going very fast. We don’t have enough lifeboats. If we get in trouble, nobody will be able to help. Your response: “We don’t want to be late – steady as she goes…”

If you stay the course, a disaster is not likely, it’s a near certainty. Honestly, this is ridiculous. I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion…
29
Bob Trower said on November 1st, 2011 at 8:26 am:

I have added a response to Mitchell’s update here:

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/10/03/rapid-release-follow-up/#comment-20012

I am not sure where things stand as of now, but for myself, I have switched all but one of my default browsers to Google’s Chrome and have left FireFox on my systems (about a dozen Windows/Linux boxen) as a backup or for when I need a particular plug-in. It pains me to do this, but FireFox is currently somewhat dysfunctional and from what I can tell it is threatening to become more so.

A thought for someone involved in this Mayhem at Mozilla:

“There are more things in heaven and earth … Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. Because I have a large number of special purpose Virtual Machines and intermittently used equipment, it happens that I can (and do) fire up a system that has not been used in weeks or even months. In fact, I have a bunch of things running v 3.x of FireFox that I have used, but did not have the energy to stay up to update its version of FireFox. My current experience with FireFox is that I spend about as much time tending to its needs as I do browsing with it and unless it is already running and updated, I am almost certain to be delayed while it fiddles with one thing or another. It is effectively unusable for me. I sure I am not alone.

I do not think Moz people are actively malicious. I doubt they have set out to dis-include me and people like me from their user base. They just have not thought this through properly, and a part of that, it seems to me, is because the people in charge have a poor understanding of what they should be doing.

It is discouraging that after all the feedback, Moz seems to be officially framing this as a failure in their ability to communicate and/or educate their users rather than a breakdown in their understanding of the problem. They just don’t get it.
30
Simon said on November 6th, 2011 at 1:23 pm:

How long before this update cycle drives me to Chrome, because it will.

75% of the plugins I use and require for my work are incompatible with version 5, let alone 7.

Firefox was touted as the plug-in friendly browser, and sure enough a huge community of plugin developers built up. Great, good idea, it really worked.

So now what to do? Yeah piss all the plugin developers off, make them re check every 6 weeks. You think that’s going to go well? Ever wondered why Mr Firebug left?

In what parallel universe does that make sense.

Speaking of pissing people off, how much fun is it to keep trying to work out which version of FF will work with your plugins. Do you expect me to go to each and every plugin and page and keep track of their supported versions. Maybe I could keep a spreadsheet!!! So much fun to look forward to!

So I have a choice of Firefox 4 or IE or Chrome, Chrome is also diseased with the insane update schedule, Firebug is better than IE tools…. So I will stick with Firefox 4 for the foreseeable future.

S
31
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32
Rich said on November 9th, 2011 at 12:39 pm:

As someone who has used Firefox since prior to version 1, and doesn’t like IE, Chrome, Opera, or Safari, what I have always known and loved about Firefox is that it has such a huge number of great add-ons (more powerful than Chrome’s add-ons) and until recently, Firefox has always gone through a great deal of planning and beta testing before releasing new versions to the public, resulting in a better quality product and giving the add-on developers the time to ensure compatibility. And this version number inflation is quite off-putting, as I remember using versions that were 0.x back before 1.0 came out, and how they were superior to Internet Explorer 6.0, which was the official release version of Internet Explorer for YEARS. I like the way you USED TO do things, how you used to have browser updates not happen ALL THE TIME, how I could use the same version of Firefox for a long time and have a whole lot of great add-ons to enhance my browsing experience and the headache of upgrading to a new version and having to deal with incompatible add-ons didn’t happen that often. I don’t see why you have to inflate the major version numbers so much; you were doing the version numbers fine until you went straight from version 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 to 8; now I’m using Firefox version 8.0 to type this, and I haven’t yet sorted through all my extension compatibility problems. This is getting to be quite annoying to me as an end-user, but I don’t see any better options out there as far as browsers that would support the large number of add-ons that I use. While I don’t think this rapid release thing is ALL bad (you have managed to improve the browser and such), I think it would have been a better process if, say, all of the changes between Firefox 4.0 and Firefox 8.0 had been done ALL AT ONCE so that the release notes would actually have a longer list of new stuff to boast about, and THEN you’d have enough reason to increment the major version number by 1. But since Firefox 4.0, you’ve done what should have been classified as minor versions, so for instance, 5.0 should have been 4.1, 6.0 should have been 4.2, 7.0 should have been 4.3, and 8.0 should have been 4.4. If you increment the version number by 1 every 6 weeks, that is twice in each of the 4 seasons of the year, or 8 times per year total. Do we really need the version number to increase by one 8 times a year, and to break compatibility with add-ons 8 times a year, and have a new version with a very small list of improvements 8 times a year? I’m not saying that Internet Explorer’s release cycle, where it was stuck at version 6.0 for YEARS and had virtually no improvements that whole time, is one to follow. I’m saying there has to be some sort of middle ground. How about having every other Aurora build make it to Beta and every other Beta build make it to Stable… in other words, ever 6 weeks a new Aurora major release, every 12 weeks a new Beta major release, and every 24 weeks a new Stable major release. This way the Aurora and Beta release channels can get more of the early-adopter type people who want releases more often to switch to those release channels and beta test things, while the Stable release channel won’t have to deal with as many versions and will be a more polished, quality product that has gone through more testing and doesn’t come out with a new version every 6 weeks. Honestly, this 6 week Rapid Release idea that you’ve actually followed through on is almost as bad as putting EVERYBODY on Nightly builds. I am getting SO SICK of my favorite Firefox extensions, one by one, no longer being updated to keep up with the latest Firefox versions. I generally just override compatibility using the Nightly Tester Tools extension, but then I have to troubleshoot which extension is causing problems whenever a new version comes out, since I keep all my extensions turned on and override the compatibility testing. But this is just getting out of control. I use Firefox because it is the most extensible browser out there, and what I love about it ISN’T the browser, but the extensions. Please stop ruining things for the Firefox add-ons with this Rapid Release system! You’re destroying your add-on ecosystem! If you stop Rapid Release now and go back to the old policy, add-on developers will be able to catch up and you can minimize the harm done, but if you keep doing this, you’ll destroy what made Firefox great in the first place, and I’ll probably have to stop updating to new versions of Firefox and just stick with a version where my extensions all WORK. Oh, and if you ever drop support for Windows XP like that awful Internet Explorer, that is the last straw as far as I’m concerned. Here is an idea for you: stop trying to be like Google Chrome, and go back to being something different and better, like you were until a few months ago when you started this Rapid Release madness. If you DO continue Rapid Release, you should focus on not breaking compatibility with existing add-ons, such as themes and extensions, and making things as painless as possible for add-on developers, end-users, and people who deploy Firefox in enterprises. And stop it with the version number inflation already. It’s OK to have a lower version number than other browsers, as long as your product is superior.
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34
herbert said on November 11th, 2011 at 9:20 am:

Enough people have made a lot of points on why this is BAD. I won’t repeat them. Just so you know there is one more pissed of user than you expected.

I just got version 9 beta this morning. If I keep getting “updates” that has nothing updated (I know you have done some work for each version, but I cannot see anything and I cannot feel anything updated or changed), I’ll just completely stop playing the “refreshing version number frequently to make me feel that I’m up to date” game. It’s just a waste of time. A million users spend 5 minutes updating for something that benefit, in the short term, 1000 developers and hard-cores (perhaps). Stop pushing, at the insane speed, the update to features that 1 out of 100,000 users care about and stop pushing the fixes that concerns 1 out of 100,000 users. Users’ time is valuable and should not be wasted this way.
35
Marcelo said on November 12th, 2011 at 3:35 pm:

Another pissed off user with this whole madness rapid release.
36
Cassandra said on November 15th, 2011 at 4:42 pm:

Whoever thought this was a good idea?

This new system seems to be fraught with problems, with no real benefits.

I, too, am another user who has left FireFox because of the current direction of Mozilla.

Sad, as I used to be a huge supporter of Mozilla.
37
Gary said on November 16th, 2011 at 10:02 am:

This seems to me to be a classic disconnect with the customer – Firefox’s own version of the Netflix debacle. I have contact with a lot of users and developers and I have yet to come across anyone who was saying “Ooh, it’s much more important to me to have the absolutely latest thing that the Firefox team think I should have than to have a reliable and stable system with which all the add-ons I rely on can keep working”. I would say the 6-week update thing is a developer’s fantasy world, but as I say, I don’t know any developers that think its a good idea. Most of them are battling to keep ahead of the curve and the idea that they would welcome having to more updates and tests of the systems they create, and do this once every six weeks is insane.

Bad move Firefox. The sooner you realize the error in what you’re doing, the sooner you’ll be able to win back the user base that you’re now losing. Admit it was a mistake, implement something less draconian, and move on and your users will forgive you. If you don’t they will go elsewhere.
38
Will said on November 28th, 2011 at 4:23 pm:

It’s ridiculous that you’ve gone this route. Why does the version number have to go up at least 8 times per year? Why do you keep messing with the UI and not giving people a choice about disabling the new features? I mainly stay with Firefox due to Adblock Plus (hope it never gets disabled by newer versions of Fx), and because I like the alternatives (IE, Chrome) even less.
39
Ben said on November 30th, 2011 at 11:44 pm:

Eventually, the version number of Firefox will become bigger than the version number of Internet Explorer!
40
Ben said on December 1st, 2011 at 12:07 am:

If you’re having trouble with add-ons, you can always get Add-on Compatibility Reporter.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/?src=search
41
Ben said on December 1st, 2011 at 12:29 am:

Eventually, the version number of Firefox will become bigger than the version number of Internet Explorer (and Google Chrome!)!
42
Sergey Grigoriev said on December 1st, 2011 at 8:57 pm:

Why my add-ons don’t work anymore ? As a user I don’t care about version numbers, the old version numbers system was OK, but now you give me a better version numbers but my add-ons stop working with every upgrade when major version changes. Firefox’s advantage was add-ons ecosystem and you destroyed it.
43
Brent Passarella said on December 7th, 2011 at 10:08 am:

As a system administrator in a school district, I’d like to portray the challenges that the rapid release system has presented to us.

To lead off with, we have over 700 computers, and 2 people to support them. We are limited in our ability to “push” updates out because not all our hardware is the same, and tend to do most of our re-imaging and non-critical updating over the summer. Our school uses gmail for education, and the instructors enjoy plug-ins like gmail notifier, and other conveniences. When firefox updates, and for security reasons you need an administrator ID to update it, that forces 2 guys to go around and physically touch every computer in our district to get things updated. Worse yet, when the interface changes, we get overloaded with confused teachers wanting to know where this, or that went. Then we have to research new plug-ins to give our users the conveniences they have become accustomed to, and manually hit every machine to make those plug-ins available.

Our solution for these issues at the current time, is to slowly phase out firefox in favor of a more stable, update-friendly browser like Chrome. I think the real question you should ask yourself, is are these updates so important that it’s worth losing many of your enterprise users for?
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Chris said on December 17th, 2011 at 1:35 pm:

I have found two places on the internet where there is people suporting these changes.

1 – the mozilline forums, there is lots of fanboys there who I think mainly run nightly or beta versions, they are the early adopter type and I got shot down when I voiced my concerns.
2 – the mozilla bug pages, every dev who posts there seems to think nothing is wrong and all back the idea.

I agree with all the concerns in the replies. For me the broken essential plugin is bartab, and its not to do with the verisoning it simply broke in ff4 onwards. FF4-6 all broke sites that used the verified by visa page which was many major shopping sites from large companies, it took me many weeks to get used to the gui change that removed the very useful down button to get previous pages, on my laptop its still a nuisance to adjust to this change as it has no mouse so right clicking is much harder.

I have no idea why chrome has the userbase it has, as the majority of people will be happy with something that “just works” and is stable. Most people dont like changing interfaces. But its a grave mistake to think copying chrome is a good idea, as you just make it easier for people to leave as there will be less barriers and you trying to cater to chrome fans instead of firefox fans who liked ff how it was in 3.6. New features ‘should’ take a year or more to arrive as they should be properly tested and fine tuned. I think this is a classic copy chrome and also a decision made for the dev’s, developers of software hate it when people dont use the latest version they themselves use and hate even more coding old code, the FreeBSD devs have the same issue although to a lesser degree as they support multiple versions at once whilst firefox dont.
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Wolfie said on January 12th, 2012 at 9:51 pm:

“If we don’t do something like this the browser becomes a limiting factor in what the Internet can do.”

That phrase right there makes me question how much you know and understand about the Internet. The Internet isn’t made up of web browsers, it’s a collection of computers that transmit data. When I use an instant messenger, that’s not affected by what the latest version of FireFox or any other web browser for that matter. There are online games as well as other usages that don’t even touch web browsing or it’s level of development. So to say that a web browser becomes a limited factor in what the Internet can do is just a clue to the world that you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

I can understand wanting to implement the latest agreed-upon/proven/endorsed technologies, but jacking up the primary version number is careless and pointless.

It would make more sense to save the major version numbers for HUGE changes and to use smaller version numbers for slight enhancements as well as bug fixes.

Let’s take FireFox version 10.0.1 for example (I know I know, right as I said that, version 12.0.1 got released and version 13.0.1 is coming out in a few minutes..). Fixed a few bugs? Great, let’s make that version 10.0.2. Some new technologies that have been added in as well as some bug fixes? Okay, let’s make that 10.1.1. Oh wow, the primary design/development of FF just got an overhaul, so that it’s more efficient, new features, new technologies, etc etc etc? Okay, make that version 11.0.1.

Face it, inflating the version numbers is nothing more than a stupid idea based on what was thought to be a good premise but is now causing more harm than any possible ounce of good that might be coming from it.

Oh and for the record, go to college and learn what the Internet really is, because the fact that you think a web browsers can affect the development and advancements of the Internet as a whole is just ridiculous and stupid, and that’s putting it NICELY.
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Wolfie said on January 12th, 2012 at 10:02 pm:

Oh and it’s stuff like this (bloating up the version numbers to seem impressive but claiming it’s for another reason) that turns people away. Halfway tempted to toss FireFox aside since the constant version numbers are a hassle and not a help. (Are we at version 8675309 yet? I missed it already?!? Wow…)
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K Silva said on January 17th, 2012 at 6:43 pm:

Back to the incompatibility of extensions after installing the “latest release.”

Version 9.0.1 was most recently offered to users as the “latest release” of FF for download and installation–as is the custom. And, after installing this “latest release” countless users are again plagued by numerous incompatible extensions post-upgrade.

Suggest:
What if FF adopted the terminology “latest stable release” to indicate a release is intended for all users and has met criteria necessary to ensure that users can install the “stable” version without concern that they may lose the use of some extensions after the uopgrade.

My two cents.
————————–
Ken
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rojanu said on February 1st, 2012 at 6:16 am:

I don’t like this version inflation at all, very difficult to get your had round it. Why does each of these “Rapid Release Process” releases grant a major version change? So far I haven’t met anyone who can understand and happy about it.
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PC Pros 2 Go said on February 1st, 2012 at 11:28 am:

I just notified for version 10 today. Really? Considering a year ago we were all running version 3. This pretty much goes against the version process that has been around since home computers started coming out.

Which is something like this, x.xx.xx Major Version, Minor Version, Incremental release. And maybe each of these rapid releases have some major changes to them, but they really don’t appears to be all that different from 3.6.

I mean was it all really to make Firefox appear more mature that IE9? Let’s catch up with their numbering and keep on getting it?

Not to mention add-on developers having to continually re-release their work. Or having to make conditional patches because one version works great in FF3-6 but needs this patch for 7 and a different one for 8-9, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, Firefox has and will continue to be my main browser but this is just a little ridiculous.
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Steven McKeon said on February 2nd, 2012 at 1:01 pm:

I think that this is getting out of hand. As a web developer I have to check our sites in all major browsers. For Firefox we now have to check it on 7 different machines because you can’t install 2 versions on the same computer. Maybe I should invest in a data center just to test out sites in FF.

I have been a loyal Firefox user for many years and have converted many IE users but now I will be pointing them to Chrome.

Good job Mozilla soon you wont have to worry about versions because you will have lost the whole internet community.