Firefox 1.1 Scrapped 482
An Anonymous Reader writes: "The Firefox team has decided to scrap the planned 1.1 release (already in Alpha 2) and instead release the final version as 1.5 due to the significant number of bug fixes and changes. The 1.5 feature complete beta is expected next month." From the article: "We are planning for a Firefox 2.0 and 3.0, but will divide the planned work over (at this point) three major Milestones, 1.5 (September 2005), 2.0 (unscheduled) and 3.0 (unscheduled). All major development work will be done on the Mozilla trunk, and these releases will coincide with Gecko version revs."
Scrapped? (Score:5, Insightful)
They really need to fix autoupdate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Good. (Score:0, Insightful)
Seems to be bigger jumps (Score:4, Insightful)
This makes some sense, a lot more work on what was 1.1 has taken place (mainly on the automatic update and enterprise deployment side) so it warrants a 1.5 designation.
Whether 2.0 and 3.0 will be significantly different then we won't know until the time but as long as the product is good people will use it. I used it back in the 0.x days (before it was even called Firefox) and it still beat IE and the Mozilla suite in many ways. So whatever version numbering scheme they use is fine by me.
Can you read this? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no good option for making text zoom permanent if you have bad eyes. You can kludge by zooming default fonts and then disabling everything else in CSS.
The people working on Firefox are not interested in fixing this because "text zoom breaks page layouts." The fix that they've decided on, which may or may not come someday, is a page zoom feature that zooms everything. (Raise your hand if you love sideways scrolling.)
I am amazed at the lack of consideration for people with bad eyes -- it's not a small number of people either. Mozilla composer bends over backwards to enforce alt tags for images, but when it comes to usability nobody cares.
Maybe we'll start to see some consideration of this sort of thing once the average age of open source coders hits 50 and they find themselves having to squint more often.
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Free as in must pay for Windows to legally use it!
They scrapped their UNIX versions ages ago (yes they used to support Solaris and IRIX) and the Mac version when Safari was released.
Mod parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst part of the tragedy of Microsoft's domination is the illusion that components like IE are actually free. I hate to break it to you, but you know the plastic toys inside cereal boxes that said "Free Whiz Bang Balloon Racer", well it wasn't free, and neither is Internet Explorer.
Re:Slashdot should be more positive (Score:1, Insightful)
I think Slashdot has been exceptionally fair in reporting these stories.
Re:They really need to fix autoupdate (Score:3, Insightful)
"What! They know there's a security problem but they only release it in some places! And auto-update doesn't work for a couple days! This is ludicrous... switch to open source!"
Is there any plan to ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've noticed the biggest complaint people have with upgrades is that they render their extensions/themes incompatible.
Also, it must be a pain for the extension authors to maintain extensions across so many different releases.
If something is exteremely popular, maybe it should be part of the browser to begin with. Especially since so many people want it.
Doing so will mitigate the upgrade issues, and they'll end up with a more functional browser.
Re:Does this mean they'll fix launch.yahoo.com bug (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would it be Firefox's job to provide a workaround for Yahoo's bad browser-detection routine?
Re:Can you read this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying "that doesn't matter, it's fixed by an extension" is one of the big problems with Firefox. This is a basic usability issue. Is it going to be fixed in the browser itself, or will it get shuffled off into extension-land where it has to depend on some random maintainer fixing it for every new release of Firefox? I see "there's an extension for that" way too often in response to Firefox usability issues. It's holding back innovation.
Re:They really need to fix autoupdate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Does this mean they'll fix launch.yahoo.com bug (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is with Yahoo--not Firefox. Yahoo uses an amazingly shitty browser detection system that lets old Netscape browsers through but still doesn't recognize Firefox.
Re:One small keystroke for a man... (Score:3, Insightful)
At least they are not doing the asinine thing that Sun's marketing has done with Java, with first going from version 1.2 to "Java 2" and now "Java 5".
Re:Can you read this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dodgeball reference. (Score:2, Insightful)
They could make things really interesting, stick to the buddhist naming theme, and code name the 2.0 release Avalokitesvara! [wikipedia.org]
Re:Scrapped? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the headline had said that, the slashdot editors probably wouldn't have even looked at it in the submission queue. The more alarmist entry grabs attention better, so has a greater chance of getting published. Basically, nothing to see here, move along.
Version-Number Junkies? (Score:4, Insightful)
(*).*.* is for rewrites or when the software reaches a seriously major milestone.
*.(*).* is for major bugfixes and changes, like this release will have.
*.*.(*) is for minor bugfixes.
Now I understand the logic of PHBs preferring 'Firefox 1.5' to 'Firefox 1.1.34g' or whatever, but it's sad to see the the old system of version numbers for categorisation seems to have descended into a battle of "look, we have teh numborz!!!". Why not just call it Firefox 9 and get one over on MS and Opera in the number stakes?
Re:Is there any plan to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I looked at the 5 most popular extensions on mozilla's update site. The top 4 may be pretty popular but that's a bad idea since Mozilla would be guaranteed a lawsuit.
The fifth is ForecastFox and a lot of people (myself included) don't want it in there.
Re:Can you read this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Never. I have never wanted to maximize Homestar Runner.
Re:Reccomendations for FF (Score:2, Insightful)
How Firefox is more "free" than IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox is not free either, because I must buy hardware to run it on.
But it is closer to free than the alternatives:
Re:Does this mean they'll fix launch.yahoo.com bug (Score:3, Insightful)
All Mr. End User cares about is that launch.yahoo.com WORKS in IE, but NOT in Firefox. Hence, it becomes a Firefox problem.
If the prevaling attitude of 'its an IE compatibility problem' wasn't avoided by lots of the neat plug-ins and hard work of Mozilla & others, we wouldn't have this great free browser to use.
Re:First Prime Factorization Post (Score:1, Insightful)
2*2*3*75011 = 900132
How on earth do you manage to sign up for an ID like that???
If they're going to bump it up that much... (Score:2, Insightful)
I understand that Acid2 is not the be-all and end-all of CSS testing. However, I think it's difficult to deny that it is an important benchmark, and Firefox is seriously behind the pack. WebCore, KHTML, and Opera have already managed this in their development code (with the WebCore and KHTML engines already available to the public), and iCab has a compliant release version already. No news yet on IE7, but at this rate Gecko faces a real chance of being dead last to get Acid2 compliance among the major browser engines. That's just sad.
Again, I understand that Acid2 is not the be-all and end-all of CSS compliance testing. In fact, as test cases go, it's not even all that great. However, it's difficult to deny its importance as a benchmark, and the Gecko crew is getting some pretty serious egg on its face here.
It's not my intent to bash Firefox. I'm an avid Firefox fan on Mac, Windows, and Linux alike. I think it gets a lot of things right. But I also think that in this case, they're getting their priorities wrong.
Re:Corporate deployments (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the things he desperately needs to get Firefox out there is an MSI installer version.
Any yet he couldn't be bothered to type "firefox msi" into google where he'd fine exactly what he is looking for. I know Firefox isn't perfect, but come on don't go putting up artifical barriers to it when a solution is so easily at hand.
Very FIRST hit on google when you search for "firefox msi"
http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/ [frontmotion.com]
Re:Corporate deployments (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate IT is all about ass covering, and you can't cover your ass with an unofficial MSI.
Re:Corporate deployments (Score:4, Insightful)
An untested and unofficial MSI? I don't think so
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can run it on borrowed hardware, or on any hardware you can get for free.
Plus, firefox is free as in freedom, meaning lots of things aside from costs.
Why do they advertise "fast response" (Score:2, Insightful)
Makes one wonder how they can claim availability of fixes when they aren't really available.
Re:Slashdot should be more positive (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Corporate deployments (Score:2, Insightful)
So, no one is stopping you. Make a good one, then submit it to the Firefox/Mozilla team. If they don't accept it, grumble to yourself, and work with them to make it more acceptable. If it is "nice to have" then it must be nice enough for you that you put the effort into building it... Otherwise, why should someone else do it for you?
Why should people who work voluntarily on a free product without pay scramble to put together something for people who get paid and make a profit? I just don't get how people can expect volunteers to stand up and salute for someone else's need to make money efficiently. You make money, great. You have a need, great. So, give back to the community from which you benefit, and all can be happy.
Re:One small keystroke for a man... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or Xbox to Xbox 360, so as not to seem lesser than Playstation 2.
Actually, they also did a big leap with Word, so they could synchronize Word for Windows with Word for Mac.
Marketers always screw around with version numbers, hoping to make things seem "bigger, better, newer."