The non-profit foundation has decided to increase the version number of the next major release to 1.5 from 1.1, reflecting the sheer number of bug fixes and features that have been worked into the next version of the browser. Mozilla still plans to ship the next version of Firefox around September of this year. Read the updated roadmap here.
What about a new name? We’re due for one. Watertarsier? Moonantelope?
LOL
I don’t see the point in this. They didn’t change the feature list or ship date, so what purpose does calling it 1.5 serve?
I don’t think there is even enough changes to warrant calling it 1.5. But oh well, it’s just a version number.
They don’t think the name 1.1 would reflect the number of fixes and new features. They are doing a fair bit, maybe not a lot visible and lot is being done under the hood.
well, they need to catch up with IE, after all, which is going to be at version 7 soon.
Since when does the minor version number get incremented in accordance with the amount of work thats gone in to the release?
Surely it should just increment by one each time to signify ‘this is the next release in the current series, regardless of whether 1 bug has been fixed or 100.
Maybe they’re trying to advance to version 7 as soon as possible in order to compete with the new version of Internet Explorer.
Saying that, both Microsoft’s and Mozilla’s browser are inferior to Opera; that’s at version 8!
All the version number juggling is getting rediculous! As if trying to keep Thunderbirds minor versions in line with Firefoxs wasn’t weird enough, now this? What do they possibly have to gain besides copious amounts of annoyance and confusion???
Ah well, they always say that genius comes with a touch of insanity. We’ve had a good bit of one, now for a touch of the other…
Actually, it’s (or was anyways) a very common practice in the commercial software sector. For example, Photoshop went from 5.0 to 5.5, Mac OS went from 8.1 to 8.5. More recently, I believe there was no iTunes 4.4 before iTunes 4.5 (I think it just went from something like 4.2 to 4.5). It’s not an uncommon practice.
Just because something is common does not necessarily mean that it is good practice.
1.1 was meant to be just a bugfix release in the first place that re-synched with the Gecko trunk and made a few Mac fixes, making for better performance and OS-integration. Instead, when the Deer Park Alphas arrived, they had a new update system, new options menu, draggable tabs, dramatic revisions to the rendering engine, along with many new features.
1.5 was meant to be the next “big” release, so it only makes sense that when Deer Park became “big”, its version number would be changed.
What is the source of this news? last roadmap version has been published 5 days ago and it still includes Firefox 1.1, not 1.5.
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:1.1_Product_Team
The source is here, brother:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.html
When 1.0 came out and I saw that Deer Park wasn’t going to be around until the spring, I was disappointed. Now it’s going to be nearly 12 months before a new release (assuming they hit their new date). Gnome and KDE, which are both much larger projects, are able to release every 6 months. For something that is simply a web browser, they should be able to release more often.
As for Deer Park being big, it isn’t. It adds SVG support and better dialogue boxes on the Mac platform and uses an updated Gecko, but there’s nothing phenominal that I’ve heard of. They’re just naming it 1.5 so that people will upgrade.
They’re just naming it 1.5 so that people will upgrade.
I’m inclining to agree. This seems much more like an upgrade push instead of a true reason to jump from 1.0 to 1.5. Goes to show that open-source groups are just like normal commercial companies
.
That being said, in the end it doesn’t matter. Firefox is a decent browser, and the version number scheme is gonna change fcuk all about that.
Now it’s going to be nearly 12 months before a new release (assuming they hit their new date).
It’s planned for September *this* year.
It’s planned for September *this* year.
Yeah, but September of this year is nearly a year from the 1.0 release date. Oh, I meant a year from the original release, not from now. Oops.
As for Deer Park being big, it isn’t. It adds SVG support and better dialogue boxes on the Mac platform and uses an updated Gecko…
Erm… speaking as someone who develops Mozilla-based apps, this is quite big, and you missed the “canvas” tag support also. An updated Gecko itself can be quite big, given the number of programming impediments that I have run accross.
Also, there will be the new remote update/synchronization methods.
In other words, maybe there won’t be that many visible changes to the end user, but the result will be many more possibilities for extendability and development.
I’m going WAY out on a limb here, but I would venture to say that a near-perfect release for any Firefox release is HUGELY important. They should take the time they need to get it it right, as long as it avoids the vaporware tag.
It is true that Gnome and KDE do release every 6 months. But I would hazard a guess that more people use Firefox than KDE and Gnome (if anyone has any stats here, I would love to know and/or be hastily corrected), and as such, they need better and more accurate upgrades.
I, for one, could care less about the numbering scheme. 1.5 implies they are half way to The Next Big Thing. So go with it.
S/W Upgrades for the Doze users is probably what gives them the most headaches and sleepless nights.
They haven’t mentioned what is improved in Gecko 1.8. I really wish they’d give Gecko a big workover and make it less of a resource hog.
But the other repliers are right: To some, their web browser is more important than their OS; because all their OS does is run their web browser.
Gnome and KDE, which are both much larger projects, are able to release every 6 months. For something that is simply a web browser, they should be able to release more often.
Gnome and KDE are made up of many mostly smaller components, which makes it easier for more developers to work on. In any case I’d rather have 9-10 months between releases if it means that they get in extra features/improvements that I care about rather than a release in 6 months with less significant improvements and push stuff they can’t fit into that time frame back to the next release.
Gnome and KDE, which are both much larger projects, are able to release every 6 months. For something that is simply a web browser, they should be able to release more often.
Again, that’s a little disingenuous; Gnome and KDE are bigger in “end user” scope, but think about what Firefox is:
– a completely cross-platform browser (Gnome/KDE are not)
– not just a browser, but a completely cross-platform development environment
– an implementation of XUL, an XML-based GUI description language
– possibly the best existing implementation of current CSS and HTML standards
So in one sense it is quite a large project, and involves certain types of complexities that Gnome and KDE do not.
– a completely cross-platform browser (Gnome/KDE are not)
Uh.. don’t both run on the BSDs? And AFAIK, you can run KDE on OSx and even Windows.
– not just a browser, but a completely cross-platform development environment
This is true. They really reinvented the wheel when designing Gecko, XUL and the whole platform it runs on.
Uh.. don’t both run on the BSDs? And AFAIK, you can run KDE on OSx and even Windows.
They do, and that’s how I in fact use KDE, but still they are desktop environments aimed at Unix-type systems. Running KDE on windows requires Cygwin or some other Unix compatibility layer, and even then, I doubt it would be as functional or useable.
The Mozilla platform, on the other hand, with all its warts, is the only system I have seen aside from Java that really attempts to build cross-platform modularity into the core. That’s why it can work virtually identically on *nix and Windows systems. Show me the other cross-platform app that accomplishes that, much less another cross-platform development system that does. Even old Netscape was significanly different on Windows that Unix.
I think the closest thing I can think of is Gimp for Windows, which uses Windows GTK. There, you are getting close, but even then, they are different projects, not even released in sync.
At least it retains the same name
Look at the version numbering for solaris 10, or is that SunOS 5.10…
Solaris 10 == Solaris 2.10 == SunOS 5.10
Nuts, ain’t it?
The changes are pretty big, though. A bigger perceived “jump” usually tells people not to expect everything to be the same or WORK the same, since we’re “halfway to the next version.” They hope that people will think to upgrade extensions and any helper apps before applying 1.5. Marketing works sometimes.
User Visible Stuff:
They revamped the Preferences windows too (not all for the better…). Let’s see, more silly tab tricks, Mozilla Update that Really Works This Time We Promise, much of SVG supported, <canvas>, Windows shortcut folders WORK, Mac version much less sucky. XForms may make it in thanks to XTF.
Under the Hood:
Security was turned upside-down and backwards to make it easier in the future to keep stuff secure by default, especially Java/ECMAScript. Extensions were completely overhauled (they can be packaged and use the registry, etc). They fixed many leaks and optimized stuff (tabs and windows release resources better when closed). Mozilla Update that Really Works This Time We Promise with Binary Patching for the main app.
XUL Runner was conceived and developed: this is basically a small package that lets you deploy any XUL app. The ultimate goal (2.0 versions) is to have FF, TB, Nvu, and Seamonkey/Suite share XULRunner as a common runtime. XULRunner and apps update separately of course. Note: do not make Java and .Net comparisons. This has nowhere near the scope of those two.
So, yeah. Having integrated SVG and XForms would be enough to make it a 1.5, really, as those are two nontrivial features, and thats the point. FF1.5 has tons of NONTRIVIAL new features, but not enough was done for a real 2.0.
–JM
I love FireFox, Thunderbird and I didn’t tested the alphas yet (I’m waiting for a beta version at least…), but I hope they fix all the annoying interface problems in this version if it’s called 1.5 now.
Most of them are related to the tabs code XUL (I think). Try type something in the location bar of a new tab. them right click toolbar buttons and select “Customize…”, just cancel now and look to the location bar; it shows “about:blank” instead of what was typed (mostly users will hope this behavior).
Other annoying problem is that tabs can’t be moved (it needs an extension currently to do that, but I don’t think it’s the extension problem, just how FF handles tabs and it’s interface) before it has received any answer from the server.
And a similar problem is the location bar not showing anything before the server replys too. This behavior is VERY annoying when the connection fails and you loose the address you was trying to open. You can’t blame the connection for something else than not making the connection possible, the interface behavior should be smarter and expect this errors… as they’re common in shared connections in corporations, schools for example and also in wireless connections, where the signal can be very unstable.
But the worst problem, IMHO, are the memory leaks… FF can slowly take most of your memory if it’s open for hours… of course you can just restart the browser, but it’s no good solution as it didn’t solve the problem.
Some quirks of scrolling speed (specially in pages with fixed bgs) and not rendering pages equal everytime (like and image loading speed making the result different from the refreshed/cached page).
Somehow, better customization of toolbars would be great. Like, for example, moving the Google Toolbar right next to the Navigation Toolbar. And moving the Gmail Notifier in the status bar after the security icon+text (so, it won’t change it’s horizontal location everytime I do login somewhere and making harder to click in the notifier changing places). I know some/most of this problems with toolbars and extension could be in their could, of course, but sure it looks like some of the code in the browser itself is responsible for this limitations.
As a designer, of course I wanted Acid2 compliance too for something called “1.5”… it would make the transition of compatible users a lot faster… but if it’s not possible because of the freeze, it’s “ok”…
I do love Firefox. I use it everyday and some extensions make my like a lot easier. I just hope it could evolve to be faster and not so memory hungry… I’m not expecting miracles, just real evolution of the code, no bloats and so on… There’s so much Firefox can innovate, I do hope for a bright future for FF! =]
or in this case an article by its title. I was about to get all ticked off when I read the story title, then actually reading the article I was relieved. It sounds like they are imlementing a lot of new features and bug fixes, but are going to release it in september. I thought the original 1.5 roadmap said that 1.5 wasn’t going to be released til next year. So I’m actually kind of glad they were able to bump this up early. If I’m completely wrong on this, please excuse me, and correct me.
You are wrong. Nothing new aside from what was going into 1.1 is going into 1.5. They didn’t add anything, just changed it from 1.1 to 1.5
“When 1.0 came out and I saw that Deer Park wasn’t going to be around until the spring, I was disappointed. Now it’s going to be nearly 12 months before a new release (assuming they hit their new date). Gnome and KDE, which are both much larger projects, are able to release every 6 months. For something that is simply a web browser, they should be able to release more often.”
When I hear this type of crap, I get just about as irritated as Mr. de Raadt. Firefox’s quality should not suffer just to get a product out in a 6 month cycle. Commercial software suffers from this, if OSS is to overtake the commercial stuff it needs to differentiate itself not just on price, but on quality. There is no substitute for quality.
“For something that is simply a web browser, they should be able to release more often.”
For a lot of people the web browser is the most used and important software they use in a day. Because of this web browsers have become stupidly large.
Ah for the days when pages rendered fine in lynx.
id require one more feature…. which would save me ever having to go back to IE…..
save a web page (everything) as a single file… firefox does this and created a directory structure and html code outside…
IE saves it as an .mht … also a way to convert mht’s to firefox single file webpage…
the update system will be very useful for non-tech minded
Hope it goes well…
🙂
Raise a feature request:
http://bugs.mozilla.org
Check out the Mozilla Archive Format extension. It lets you open mht’s and if im not mistaken lets u save maf’s (mozilla’s archive format, hence the name) and mht’s.
For the anonymous person who wanted to use .mht files with Firefox, check out the Mozilla Archive Format extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=212
I just hope they won’t go from 1.5 to 5.0 after a month or so. Just because..
I wouldn’t trust these guys…
I know I don’t trust them. They lost that when they abandoned all the original Mozilla users. But thankfully the SeaMonkey project is picking things up and now we have SeaMonkey builds!
But yeah, I don’t get why they decided to jump from 1.0.x to 1.5 overnight like that. Other than for “looks”. They never felt the need to do that with Mozilla.
I really don’t care for the direction they’re taking at the moment. But then hey, it’s their show to run eh.
There are only a couple of developers. So , join them if you complain too much. Start your own branch.
Deerfields fast back still gets stuck on damn ads.
Something needs to be done about malicious hoverads .
http://dhtml-menu.com/menu-demos/demo347.html
When are Sunird and Thunderbird going to have upgrades?
Thunderbird has the potential to be excellent but needs much work still.
I would love to see a T’bird marketing campaign liek that for Firefox when it reaches a little more maturity.
Sunbird has beeen sitting on version 0.2 on all the FTP servers I check for seemingly forever. IS this to be merged with Thunderbird? What on earth is happening?
Congrats to the Firefox developement team. They went from being the little software team that could, to just another piece of crappy software in less then a year. That’s right, now Firefox competes with the big boys by missing release dates, pushing back features, and releasing software that requires a fix in less then a week. Wow, they really are “rediscovering the web”, rediscovering how much it sucks. Someday they might figure out how to write a patch – instead of a full reinstall, but I won’t hold my breath. Boy, they’re really showing those Microsoft chaps how it should be done.
gotta have the gratuitous post about memory leaks… give it up already! It uses half of what IE does anyway so even if it is a bit leaky it is still better than the alternative! But a new gecko will probably help with this situation but I dont see it as a big deal! Close firefox occasionally, heck minimize occasionally should take care of it! I keep firefox open most all day, occasional minimize and seems fine for hours on hours….
But I dont consider a program that holds stuff in memory to be “leaking”…..
“sheer number of bug fixes”
why dramatize?
mozilla…
1) stands up and admits their mistakes
2) notifies the public promptly
3) fixes them correctly and usually promptly
4) does it all without the big bucks behind them
how about a little more support and less FUD.
seriously does the version number really matters that much?
for me & i think for a lot of other users what matters most is the working & stability
i don’t car if they release verson 1234.462 instead of 1.1
if they improve stability & feature i will surely upgrade
When are they going to fix up that major MacOS X fugliness, and the lack of aqua or aqua like widgets? when are they finally going to use Quartz in stead of the god awfully slow QuickDraw?
Huh? Ever wondering to change theme instead of complaining?
Which has nothing to do with the form widgets at all.