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Mozilla Pitches Firefox 3.1 Alpha For July Release

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 01, @02:01AM
from the fast-track dept.
Mozilla Software
An anonymous reader writes "Just a week after Mozilla shipped Firefox 3.0, the open-source developer has proposed ship dates for the next version that, if approved, would produce an alpha release next month and a final no later than early 2009. According to a draft schedule discussed at a recent meeting, Mozilla wants to have the first Firefox 3.1 developer preview ready by July, then move to a beta by August. The schedule slates final code delivery in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2009. A month ago, when Mozilla first started discussing Firefox 3.1 internally, Mike Schroepfer, the company's vice president of engineering, said the upgrade's target ship date was the end of 2008. If Mozilla holds to that plan, Firefox 3.1 would be its first fast-track update. Firefox 3.0, for instance, launched approximately 20 months after its predecessor, Firefox 2.0."

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Mozilla Pitches Firefox 3.1 Alpha For July Release 25 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • No Offence To The Devs or Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vectronic (1221470) on Tuesday July 01, @02:07AM (#24012291)

    But so what?

    There's nothing in the article or summary that hasn't already been covered in the other 76 articles about Firefox in the last 2 months.

    Firefox team is still developing Firefox... shit, so is Opera, so is IE, Safari, etc, etc...

  • And after Firefox 3.1 (Score:5, Funny)

    by NovaHorizon (1300173) on Tuesday July 01, @02:25AM (#24012399)
    Comes Firefox 95!
  • Firefox 2.0 was also supposed to be a quick development, based on the same gecko branch. It eventually took about a year.
    I think the past record of Mozilla.org has repeatedly shown that it is unable to release a product on time, given the huge amount of testing/fixing iterations that must come before the final release. A Firefox "quick release" will take time, and divert resources from important future projects such as Gecko 2.
    I would have thought Mozilla.org would have finally admitted that the architecture and development model of Firefox is characterised by long maturation times. This is needed to keep up its high quality level.

      • I hope to see the html 5 video support added for Fx3.1

        You're almost certainly going to get it, with Ogg Theora support at the very least (a DirectShow backend for Windows, QuickTime backend for Mac OS X, and GStreamer backend for Linux are also in the works). But the real question that no one seems to be asking is, where is HTML 5 audio support? It's just as much a part of the specification, and Ogg Vorbis is well-known enough that corporate entities aren't so worried about patents. I've seen some work [bluishcoder.co.nz] on it recently, but I'm not sure it's mature enough to make the deadline. HTML 5 audio and video support in Firefox 3.1 would be a dream though. Safari already has at least some support [webkit.org] for both, and Opera has partial support [opera.com] for audio with video surely not far off. Internet Explorer is obviously going to take a long time to catch up, but I guess we can't have everything...

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vectronic (1221470) on Tuesday July 01, @02:25AM (#24012397)

      6 months isn't "quick", its only the Alpha in a month...that's about normal for most smaller software, especially for a point (*.1) update, this isn't Firefox 4.0.

      Hell, Opera released 9.51 RC1 (now on RC2) just a few days after 9.5...

      Its pretty normal as far as I see it, and I'm glad they are (or seem to be) returning to a more consistent release schedule, it may eventually become my default browser again, which it hasn't been since Phoenix.

    • Re:Acid 3 (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rhapsody Scarlet (1139063) on Tuesday July 01, @02:34AM (#24012459) Homepage

      You can keep dreaming. While Firefox 3.1 is certainly going to improve on Firefox 3.0 (Firefox 3.0 gets 71/100, Firefox 3.1 pre-alpha 1 gets 80/100, I predict Firefox 3.1 final to get 80-90/100), the aim to make changes drastic enough to make Firefox 3.1 pass Acid3 and the aim to get Firefox 3.1 released in a Q4 2008/Q1 2009 timeframe are plainly incompatible. I'd expect Acid3 to pass in Firefox 4.0 myself. Shouldn't be much of a surprise given how long it took Firefox to pass the Acid2 test, but then that never stopped us from using it. ;-)

      • Re:Acid 3 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hedwards (940851) on Tuesday July 01, @04:12AM (#24012959)

        I'd really rather they focus on important things first. The Acid tests are specifically much harder than what a browser needs to handle to do a good job with web browsing, in fact a few of the tests specifically use broken code IIRC.

        Really the updates to the bookmark system scheduled for 3.1 are probably going to make a bigger impact on most users than Acid compliance would.

        I think the main point of getting 3.1 out there is to get the features in that couldn't be completed for 3.0 but weren't necessities. And with the level of rebuilding that 3.0 required it's not a shock that a few less important features would have to be dropped to get the important stuff finished.

        • Re:Acid 3 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Goaway (82658) on Tuesday July 01, @07:31AM (#24013823) Homepage

          The Acid tests are specifically much harder than what a browser needs to handle to do a good job with web browsing, in fact a few of the tests specifically use broken code IIRC.

          The things tested by ACID3 are not in general use because browsers don't reliably support them. Many would be in use if they were actually supported. That is the aim of ACID3, to drive browser makers to actually fix these things so people can finally start using them.

          • Re:Acid 3 (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Jellybob (597204) on Tuesday July 01, @07:13AM (#24013735) Journal

            I would agree, but they HAVE to shoot for Acid 3 compatibility for the next release or browser nerds will be up in arms and it will be a huge PR problem.


            It'll only be a PR problem in the small circle of "browser nerds", everyone else will just get on with their lives, having realised there's more to life then what score your favourite browser gets in the Acid 3 test.

    • "Well, I can dream, can't I?"

      I dream of a Firefox that doesn't have CPU hogging problems. Firefox 3 seems to be a little worse than the previous version.

      For those of us who open a lot of windows and tabs and leave them open a long time, as when doing research, Firefox is a hassle. It slows the entire computer until all windows and tabs are closed.

        • Just kick flash out (Score:5, Informative)

          by DrYak (748999) on Tuesday July 01, @06:11AM (#24013477) Homepage

          Just kick out the damn buggy Adobe Flash plug-in.
          It runs in the same process as Firefox :
          It eats to much memory, slows too much the browser, and take the whole browser down with it.

          Either disable it, or at least use adblock+ and noscript to avoid having 80 flash widgets running inside your 30 tabs.

    • Re:End users don't want constant change (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, @03:36AM (#24012767)

      People getting bent out of shape about the address bar is simply absurd. While I admit, the option to turn it off should appear somewhere, if only in about:config, the development team isn't ignoring it's users. I have a feeling far more people LIKE the new address bar than dislike it. I certainly find it very useful at times. I also happen to find the new user interface to be well thought out and designed.

      The "it's only one option in the config dialog" argument is wearing a bit thin. It also demonstrates a lack of understanding on what testing is required for even simple options. Perhaps terms like "decision coverage" and "condition/decision coverage" are meaningless to you, but they are quite important to software testers. Also important is the psychological concept of the paradox of choice in which many people will not make a choice if presented with too many options. I really am quite sick of hearing, "But it's just one little check box in the option dialog." Take a second and think about how many features that has been said about. Then take a second to consider how much your really now about good user interface design and how much research is done in the area of human/computer interaction.

      The changes presented in Firefox 3.0 are actually quite minor when compared to other UI modifications such as Office 2007 or KDE 4. Such drastic language on your part is quite uncalled for. The changes presented in Firefox's front end are, in fact, not for the sake of change but rather for the sake of improvement. I hope comments like yours don't encourage the developers to stagnate on a single UI design because every time they work to improve it, a vocal minority of rigid people can't pull a stick out of their ass.

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