Firefox 6 Official release on Tuesday

[Core]

Oh for God's sake...much as I love Firefox, which version am I supposed to use?

 

[clifford_cooley]

Here's a new one. Now Mozilla is apparently doing away with version numbers. Here's a link to an article about it. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/firefox_lose_version_numbers

Oh for God's sake...much as I love Firefox, which version am I supposed to use?

How about the new one that doesn't show their version number to the general audience.

I personally think this is the best course of action. Halting this rapid acceleration process and working on updates to the only Firefox download available.

 

[Core]

I just want to use something up-to-date that my extensions support. I don't want to use a beta/nightly version... The cutting edge doesn't interest me, stability and functionality do.

 

[clifford_cooley]

The cutting edge doesn't interest me, stability and functionality do.

I believe that if they stop this rapid acceleration and start focusing on updates to a single version, Firefox will gain its stability and functionality back.

 

[davehc]

Possibly, Cliff.the problem may be, if you look for the differences between versions, is that everytime they come up withn update, they may prefer, for their own reasons, to change the version number instead of just getting on with an update

- Keeps the user poll high for the web benchmarks, if users keep downloading each new version. ??

 

[brkkab123]

Core. You want Firefox 6.0. The other's are beta's after 6.0 {i/e: 7.0, 8.0 ,9.0, etc.}

 

[Core]

Thank you for the tip. I upgraded to 6, which felt odd to do since I just updated to 5 not that long ago from version 4.

I think a rolling release system, whereupon we just receive updates to Firefox without there being specific versions, is the ideal approach. Like CC said.

 

[brkkab123]

I think they need to do weekly update's when they switch from showing it's version number to not showing it's version number. In reality also, all the browser's should switch to weekly update's. People alway's find vulnerabilities.Adobe and Oracle also, need to switch to weekly update's for flash & java.

 

[Mychael]

I'm still on FF 3.6.20. Any clear reason I should change? Currently it all works and set up how I like it.

 

[TrainableMan]

I think a rolling release system, whereupon we just receive updates to Firefox without there being specific versions, is the ideal approach.

It is only ideal if you can be assured all your add-ons still function without any hitches; so far they haven't been able to do that and since the add-ons are not written by Mozilla that probably will never be possible.

 

[Core]

The compatibility of third-party add-ons is the responsibility of their developers. I don't want my browser to hold back on fixing security flaws or performance issues, much less unveiling new features just so that add-on developers don't have to take the time to keep their product current.

 

[TrainableMan]

The compatibility of third-party add-ons is the responsibility of their developers. I don't want my browser to hold back on fixing security flaws or performance issues, much less unveiling new features just so that add-on developers don't have to take the time to keep their product current.

And I don't think they have withheld patches etc just because of add-ons; and I'm not saying that they should. But if an add-on only works or has only been tested up to a certain version, then how is it helpful to me that I need to take extra steps to find out what version I really have?

And if they start spitting out updates on a weekly basis then it is that much more often that my add-ons may suddenly stop functioning. Since I don't auto-update and am still on a version older than Mychael's it isn't as big a concern; but for people who do auto-update they will never know from week to week if their Firefox will have downloaded something that makes their browser stop functioning like it had the day before.

By not having updated I guess it's clear I choose stability over security every day. Most of my add-ons ARE for security, it's the browser I need stable.

 

[Ace]

The compatibility of third-party add-ons is the responsibility of their developers. I don't want my browser to hold back on fixing security flaws or performance issues, much less unveiling new features just so that add-on developers don't have to take the time to keep their product current.

I've already modified all of my plugins from the source so that they are compatible with my version of Firefox.

Firefox 9 came out yesterday (9.0a1) and i'm using that right now.