As of this morning, we know that Mozilla has pulled in the launch of Firefox 5 by one week to June 21 and announced two versions of a versioning system as well as a renamed developer channel.
In order to get its new release system on track, Mozilla adjusted its release schedule for the final version. Version 4.2a1pre, which is version 5, will be leaving mozilla-central on April 12 and enter the new "aurora" channel (previously called experimental) as version 5.0a2. The beta version (5.0) will follow five weeks later and the final version is now scheduled to be released on June 21.
We aren't quite sure whether is versioning system will be entirely applied to version 5.0, but it appears as if Mozilla is planning to use it for version 6.0, which will hit mozilla-central as version 6.0a1 on April 12. Earlier today, Mozilla also discussed a versioning system that resembled Google's system and would have resulted in a version number like this: 5.4.55.123 (version 5, 4 beta releases, 55 experimental (aurora) releases and 123 mozilla-central releases.) There may still be changes - the only thing we know for sure now is that Mozilla will drop the "pre" tag for its preview versions.
UPDATE: Grab the download here.
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It better have a UI that is functional like 3, or I am not coming back to it.
If you really don't like the UI for Firefox 4, you can always modify it to look as 3.x as you would like...FYI.
What's wrong with version 4? What's the point of giving it a very short lifespan...?
It better have a UI that is functional like 3, or I am not coming back to it.
What's wrong with UI?
Enable the menu bar if you don't like the new UI... It's basically the same thing.
Oh please, this new Chrome-ish version naming scheme is so melodramatic! What's wrong with simple, clear numbering? What's wrong with "5.4"? I don't much care for "5.4.55.123" - it might be relevant for developers and testers, but what's the logic behind pushing that nonsense down the throat of users. Hmm.....I wonder how it would go off if instead of Windows 7, I would write, "Oh, I'm using "Windows 7601.win7sp1_rtm.101119-1850" Yeah, that wouldn't go off too well, would it, and yet that's useful info to some, but not to the user. Mozilla, just keep to simple and elegant. Let google be the show off, you don't need to go that way...
It better have a UI that is functional like 3, or I am not coming back to it.
You're one of few.
I hope they fix the serious memory leak in version 4 with this update. I can't even use firefox right now because of it.
It better have a UI that is functional like 3, or I am not coming back to it.
Just make it look like the older version. It's not that hard to do, lol. Link below for people who don't know how below to make Firefox 4 look like Firefox 3.
http://cnettv.cnet.com/make-firefo [...] 02340.html
Looks like they were a little disappointed by the fact their their brand spanking new FF4 got it's ass handed to it by IE9, and are now playing the old "okay, this time we will get serious" card.
So close to 4, after such a long wait from 3 Wow
its a race of versions... who will deliver 10 versions in less than 1 year? :-)
I personally like firefox in all It's forms
fast and easy to use so Idc much what version it is.
(by the way, get rid of those shopping cmoments please, they get annoying)
I had to remove 4 it stopped working couldnt figure out why it also crashed my other programs from loading, using IE 64bit which i dont like much either now. ugh.
It's a stupid renaming system. So we'll be at version 30 in 5 years. How many programs really use that. It seems when most get to 10, then they start naming programs version 2011, 2012. Because they appear that they are getting too high up there, but internally they say 2011, but have like 16.5.12, that's when things get really confusing.
I know this version 4 is a major overhaul, but nothing wrong with calling the next major one 4.1, then 6 months with another big upgrade 4.2. I don't mind the 4.0.10 numbering systems. People can figure out with Google, which would lead them to sites like this that if next one was 4.1.0 was major overhaul from the previous they could figure it out very quickly, they don't need to have a version 5. Yes it's psychological for many, but when you click the update, or it pops up Mozilla could even have a Bing, Yahoo, and Google link icons bringing them to those search pages with the keywords filled in for the reason to switch to a nice newer feature rich update.
still using ff3. why? just because.
I was so excited about FF4 and thinking I would replace Chrome as my default browser...but on noooo! FF4 kept on crashing and crashing and crashing on two out of the 3 computers I put it on. The only stable FF4 is on my Linux laptop. I can't get to run for long on either of my Windows machines.
pclee, that sucks to hear. I forgot to mention that I haven't installed FF4 yet. I'm waiting for someone to update SearchWP, or find a similar one. It will be shortly, but I'll first try installing it in Sandboxie and then seeing how it goes.
Almost forgot, I have to get Roboform 7 first, since v6 doesn't work with FF4 apparently.
Mozilla 5 - now with Chrome numbering update rate!
The only and most important feature yet!
What's wrong with version 4? What's the point of giving it a very short lifespan...?
Nothings wrong. They'll just call FF4.1 - FF5 instead
Could just name it 4.1 or something. I really don't see the point of making a new version for a few new features.
That was the beautiful thing in Firefox until now, that it didn't follow the hoard.
Some notes:
- Firefox 4 took a long time to come out, because it's powered by the first major revision of Gecko: 2.0. It entailed a MASSIVE rewrite. No that it's done, tacking or basing new features on it got much easier - thus the accelerated release schedule.
- When you install a new Firefox version, and said Firefox starts crashing for no reason, you should backup your bookmarks, security certificates etc. and wipe out your profile completely - extensions included. I know that on a computer I had, which started with Firefox 1.5, moving to 2.0 then 3.0 and then 3.5 and 3.6, sometime along the way I had to do this to make it stable. Once done however, it was rock solid.
- Firefox 4 uses hardware accelerated rendering: ensure that you install IE9 (it comes with a bunch of Direct2D patches) and all the latest Vista/7 patches, or (on WinXP and Vista) the latest DirectX version. On all platforms, get the latest release for your display driver.
- right now in the works are tab isolation (the first results of that branch were seen in 3.6.4, with plugin isolation), hardware acceleration on more platforms, better use of the cloud, and a furthering of the interface rework; these alone can justify a major revision.
- the previous release cycle used at Mozilla required one main developer branch (Minefield) whcih forked regularly for the stable releases; due to the monolithic nature of Gecko 1.x, this was the most practical solution; however, it also meant that developing a new feature required creating a fork, work on said fork, and rebase the work on Minefield regularly - which is time consuming, complex, prone to errors and release-unfriendly. The new system would allow better sync'ing between the different development branches, and go better with a rapid release cycle.
What's wrong with version 4? What's the point of giving it a very short lifespan...?
Because after going through 837 bets and RCs to release it and still not be faster than IE9 in the Grand Prix was so embarrassing that they had to get a new one out ASAP
I don't know why Google sticks with numbering the Chrome updates - Chrome has become pretty much a rolling release (a good thing btw).
I just don't see FF working with such a fast, near rolling update schedule. For starters, FF's extension API renders many add ons incompatible with newer FF versions (unlike Chrome's far simpler API).
talk about all the versions coming out. but not a mention as to what new features will be included. it may come to a point i just won't care which version i'm using.
Am I the only one that actually got more confused with how Mozilla names there versions after reading this article?
Yes fix the memory leakage. I leave FF4 open, come back a few hrs later and it's using up 1.5gig and growing!
I think they just rushed version 4 to release it around when IE9 got released. Version 5 will be the true version 4.
Its a shame that Mozilla is moving towards a very deceiving version number used by Google.
Damn. I installed 4 today.
I hope they fix the huge memory leak. When 3.6 came out I switched to Opera mostly. Then when Firefox 4 beta was available, it was really fast and didn't cause disk-swapping slow downs. At about beta 12, they put the memory leak back in. Really bad in 4.0, even worse than 3.6. I'm back to using Opera for the foreseeable future in both my desktop and laptop..