Firefox 2.0.0.11 Released 199
BrianAU writes "Firefox 2.0.0.11 has been released, the Release Notes show the only major change as a correction of a compatibility issue with some websites and extensions as discovered in Firefox 2.0.0.10."
More Crashes (Score:3, Informative)
Not a "compatibility issue" (Score:4, Informative)
See more details at John Resig's blog [ejohn.org].
This update keeps crashing on me! (Score:1, Informative)
I tried going back to Firefox 2.0.0.10, but right after starting it up it upgraded automatically to Firefox 2.0.0.11, which of course doesn't work!
Re:Can't reproduce that one here. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.gaby.de/win3x/etips.htm [www.gaby.de]
"Windows 3.1 registry??", you may ask. Believe it or not, but the registry first came with Windows 3.1, not Windows 95.
Re:News behind the news (Score:5, Informative)
Where, exactly? Reading the link you posted I see:
1) Original report
2) 5 comments confirming that it's a problem
3) 1 comment indicating which change caused the problem
4) 1 comment indicating what should be done to fix the problem
5) 1 comment combined with flag changes to make sure there is a regression test in the future
6) 1 comment asking an earlier commenter for the URL to the site they said was broken, to
make sure that it actually gets fixed.
7) 3 comments that say that it's a problem and where
8) A regression test being posted
9) The regression test being checked in
10) Some bugs being marked duplicate
11) The fix being checked in
All that happened over the course of 18 hours. I stopped reading there, since the rest doesn't particularly matter, as far as I can tell.
Where's the problem exactly?
Re:This update keeps crashing on me! (Score:3, Informative)
1.) Get whatever files you need your 2.0.0.10 installation method of choice, then disconnect from the Internet (by whatever means you like).
2.) Once disconnected, install Firefox.
3.) In Firefox, go Tools > Options, go to the "Advanced" section, and click the "Update" tab. You should see an option saying "When updates to Firefox are found: ( ) Ask me what I want to do; (x) Automatically download and install the update". Change that setting to the "ask me" option, and it should prompt you whenever it finds an update.
4.) Reconnect to the intertubes and surf away.
Alternatively, on the same screen, there are checkboxes to determine what features to *look* for updates to.
Re:Yay.... (Score:3, Informative)
works fine for me! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:News behind the news (Score:5, Informative)
We were actually one of the companies that found the bug shortly after the release of 2.0.0.10 and if you can't see why this is news then I'm really glad you don't work on my dev team.
Just so we're clear on what the bug ACTUALLY was, the bug specifically effected the canvas drawing capability in the browser. It's not something they test for and frankly, given our experience developing for IE, it's not one they test for either (if IE's random and aberrant behavior is any indication, hell MS can't even make a browser that displays content in a compliant manner given the HTML spec).
A number of sites and web applications use this functionality specifically for navigation, and when Firefox was updated to 2.0.0.10 on many client machines automatically, some business critical web applications were seriously effected. Because of this it was a pretty serious issue.
The reason this IS news is because after confirming the bug and determining the extent of the effect on the user base, the Mozilla folks had nightly builds in our hands just hours after a fix was checked in. This got most of the immediately effected back to work within hours.
A number of us then independently verified the fix against our code and then provided rapid feedback to the team so they could issue a release.
This resulted in an astonishingly fast turnaround. I think the Mozilla folks are to be commended for both not resisting requests for a new release, and the speed with which they were able to respond to a bug effecting business critical web applications. If this had been MS we would have spent 2 weeks navigating mindless support bureaucracy and then fought with management excuses as to why a fix just "can't be turned around overnight." We would have then been forced to contact all of our customers and go into long, boring explanations most of them would never have understood... it's all down hill from there.
Why this IS big news: It is a really bright and shining example of why this type of development is succeeding even in a situation where recursion testing fails (and if you think recursion testing can't fail then you just haven't been developing long enough).
The other good thing that came out of this is we now have a mechanism where developers can subscribe to a mailing list alerting then to pending releases.
Not only did Mozilla respond with a technical fix to the bug AND promptly issue a release which addressed the issue, but they were humble enough to recognize there was a process related problem that needed addressing as well; they fixed that too.
ER
Re:As if this is news? (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't affect normal images - it broke the drawImage function from the HTML 5 <canvas> element [w3.org] API, which is a fairly new feature and is used relatively rarely but actually quite widely (with ~10 independent bug reports in a couple of days).
Still, I agree it's an unacceptable failure of testing, and I should have said that more strongly. Even the most trivial automated testing of that feature would have caught the problem immediately. Looking at the new tests in Firefox 3, there's still only one which incidentally relies on drawImage. (I have several hundred browser-independent canvas test cases, so I guess I should see if they could be incorporated into Mozilla somehow, to avoid a repeat of this problem in this particular area...)
Re:As if this is news? (Score:3, Informative)
That would be awesome. If you end up filing a bug on getting this done, please cc bzbarsky at mit dot edu and I'll help make sure we get them hooked up.