Mozilla Firefox 7.0 Released
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 27th Sep 2011 19:45 UTC, submitted by lemur2
Mozilla & Gecko clones Mozilla has released Firefox 7. Unlike releases of Firefox 5 and Firefox 6 which were relatively minor upgrades to the browser, Firefox 7 includes a number of significant improvements, most important of which is probably the drastically reduced memory usage.
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smitty
Member since:
2005-10-13

smitty,

"Starting with Firefox 8. The extensions will start being treated as compatible by default, with certain one blacklisted if they are known to cause problems."

I'm running FF 9 Nightly alpha builds, and almost every single update breaks some addons. Just 5 minute ago I was prompted to update, but warned that it would break some of my addons.

http://www.screenshots.cc/photos/medium/50180-a1w8g.jpg
http://www.screenshots.cc/photos/medium/50179-nhsgj.jpg

If what you say is true, I'm curious why they haven't applied this fix to FF9 Alpha yet. Mozilla hosing addons all the time sucks, both as a user and as a developer.


You put my words in quotes like you were taking them exactly, but that's not what i said at all.

I said, they were going to start addressing the addon issue starting with FF8.

Then, separately, I said there was a plan to make addons compatible by default. Although I'll admit i worded it a bit unclearly. I don't know when that is supposed to take affect. Perhaps FF10, which is due to go into Aurora any time now.

The automatic compatibility also won't apply to any binary extensions, but I think the vast majority would be included.

Reply Parent Score: 2

lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

You put my words in quotes like you were taking them exactly, but that's not what i said at all. I said, they were going to start addressing the addon issue starting with FF8. Then, separately, I said there was a plan to make addons compatible by default. Although I'll admit i worded it a bit unclearly. I don't know when that is supposed to take affect. Perhaps FF10, which is due to go into Aurora any time now. The automatic compatibility also won't apply to any binary extensions, but I think the vast majority would be included.


I'm sorry, I was too lazy there. I wasn't commenting on your words, I was making a comment on the claim that "almost every single update breaks some addons".

This wasn't your claim.

While it may or may not be true, the way it was worded gives an utterly false impression of the scope of the problem. To get a real handle on the scope of the problem, a more representative statement is that "interface changes are minimal, and 99% of add-ons are compatible without requiring any change".

That was my point. I should have removed the words quoted which came from you, because indeed your words had nothing to do with it.

Edited 2011-09-29 01:45 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

smitty Member since:
2005-10-13

I was actually replying to Alfman and not you - unless you are the same person?

I think we actually agree on most things, as I was getting my info from that same link you posted earlier.

What I was specifically referring to was this:

And it was quite eye-opening when I learned that only 25% of the 600 million add-ons in use every day in Firefox 4 and later are active on AMO. That means at least 75% of add-ons aren’t getting the benefits of the automatic compatibility system we created, as well as the security and quality reviews that hosted add-ons receive. When we created the compatibility plan for the new development cycles, we weren’t aware that so many add-ons wouldn’t even be affected by it.


So while the CURRENT system of auto-updating all Mozilla hosted addons may be hitting a 97% success rate, lots of Google Toolbar extensions are not included in that. It's true that they generally just have to bump the version number to fix it - but that is something these 3rd parties are not doing in a timely fashion. Therefore, in the future the system will change to always assume the addon will work which should fix this problem.

Reply Parent Score: 2

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Alfman Member since:
2011-01-28

smitty,

"You put my words in quotes like you were taking them exactly, but that's not what i said at all."

I did quote you exactly, I added the quote to provide context. If I misinterpreted your post, then I apologize.

"I said, they were going to start addressing the addon issue starting with FF8. Then, separately, I said there was a plan to make addons compatible by default. Although I'll admit i worded it a bit unclearly. I don't know when that is supposed to take affect. Perhaps FF10, which is due to go into Aurora any time now."

I have no idea what you are saying here, what does it mean to start addressing issues in FF8, but not have it go into affect until FF10? I honestly don't know what you mean.

Reply Parent Score: 2

smitty Member since:
2005-10-13

I did quote you exactly, I added the quote to provide context. If I misinterpreted your post, then I apologize.

Ok, sorry, let me explain it a little better. I went back and realized my post was garbled a lot more than i had originally thought.

My thoughts started in the title:
There is a plan to improve extensions

And then continued on the next line:
Starting with Firefox 8.

That was one sentence.

Then, in a new paragraph, i said:
The extensions will start being treated as compatible by default, with certain one blacklisted if they are known to cause problems.

That's not happening in FF8. Probably not in 10 either, but maybe 11. However, it is the current plan for dealing with extensions in the medium term.

Then I made a new paragraph, indicating a new thought:
FF8 will bring a way to manage the addons installed outside the browser as well, like those Java addons.

Mentioning what it would start doing in FF8. This was just to indicate that movement was starting on the whole extensions issue starting in FF8, and would continue in the future in other ways.

And then i finished with another new paragraph mentioning some of the long term plans that would happen in later releases.
Eventually the goal is to get all addons using the new JetPack API which will remain more stable, and allow for restartless installations

Reply Parent Score: 2

Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

Here's what the current release plan says.

In firefox 8, they begin warning the user on update if an add-on is incompatible, allowing them to cancel the update.

Starting from firefox 10, add-ons will begin to default to "compatible".

See : https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking

Reply Parent Score: 1

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Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

Firefox 10 indeed : https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Add-ons/Add-ons_Default_to_Compati...

(By the way, I strongly recommend having a regular look to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Features/Release_Tracking, it's nice of Mozilla to present the planned evolutions of each release so much in advance)

Reply Parent Score: 1