Firefox 1.0 UpdateSunday July 25th, 2004Ben Goodger has posted an update on his blog discussing what's next for Firefox on the road to 1.0. The decision has been made to call the next release "Firefox 1.0 Preview Release" externally, and 0.10 internally. Ben also goes into detail on what extension authors can do to ensure compatibility with this next release. More details on the latest extension standards can be found on the Firefox Project site. A preview release seemsa good thing froma marketing perspective. Being somewhat pessimistic on recent FF scheduling, I feel better now. However, I think a bunch of problems (and possible regressions in the near future) should be addressed : 1. There should be no serious installer bugs. 2. There should be no serious apliccation registration bugs (Windows). 3. Any Macromedia or other important plugin bug should be ironed out (average users should only need to run the plugin installer and nothing else). 4. Any serious localization problems. 5. Topcrashers. Other bug categories are of less importance, imo, if time is a concern for this preview release. A preview release seemsa good thing froma marketing perspective. Being somewhat pessimistic on recent FF scheduling, I feel better now. However, I think a bunch of problems (and possible regressions in the near future) should be addressed : 1. There should be no serious installer bugs. 2. There should be no serious apliccation registration bugs (Windows). 3. Any Macromedia or other important plugin bug should be ironed out (average users should only need to run the plugin installer and nothing else). 4. Any serious localization problems. 5. Topcrashers. Other bug categories are of less importance, imo, if time is a concern for this preview release. All well and good, but where is the roadmap for when Firefox/Thunderbird will become Mozilla Browser/Mozilla Mail and replace the current application suite on the main tree? How much longer will we have this divided effort? That is a good question. The roadmap page http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html was updated a few days ago with this: "The new, significant roadmap update hoped for early in 2004 has been postponed. See Brendan's roadmap blog for thoughts that may feed into it. An interim roadmap update focused on the "aviary 1.0" releases of Firefox 1.0 and Thunderbird 1.0, and the 1.8 milestone that will follow, is coming soon." Doesn't say when it's been postponed to - presumably until after the 1.0 releases and the 1.8 milestone, which are due in the next couple of months. It's not really THAT divided. Most of the stuff added to the Trunk is for the Suite and Firefox/Thunderbird. The suite is being phased out by the users more than anything I think. It will eventually fade off into the sunset. In the meantime, who cares? The suite is important to enterprise/corporate users of Mozilla. Not that it can't eventually be replaced by Firefox/Thunderbird/etc.,, but if that is going to happen we need to know about it well in advance (six - twelve months) so we can plan appropriately. As and when it does happen, I don't the 6-12 months will be a concern. Whatever the final version is, I imagine either that or the last stable branch will be kept going for a year or so. They haven't yet dropped the 1.4 branch completely, and that's over a year old. And of course, with it being open source, even if the Mozilla folks did drop it suddenly (I can't imagine why they would), anyone else can maintain it themselves. BTW, Firefox and Thunderbird will be keeping their names; the decision was made that they would not become Mozilla Browser and Mozilla Mail because that would sacrifice the name recognition that they've developed during the development periods. They will still be replacing the suite at some point, just not renamed. Also, there really isn't much of a "divided effort." There is a solid core of Mozilla code which recieves the great majority of the attention. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey (the Suite's codename) are all built around that; their code consists only of features and interface unique to themselves. So anybody that's contributing to just one or the other is working on features exclusive to that one, and probably wouldn't be cotnributing at all if his pet project didn't exist. I've tried several times to make the switch to the 'birds and each time I come back home to my beloved suite. I don't get all the hype. The suite feels more solid, never crashes, still has more features. The only advantage for Firefox is that the extension writers seem to have migrated en mass to Firefox, but I still haven't found a compelling Firefox-only extension. On the other hand, without Multizilla, Firefox feels like a toy (tab browser extensions is a joke). I truly hope the suite lives long and prospers. I'm with you. Mozilla Mail is so important to me and I don't think I'll be able to switch until Thunderbird is 1.0 Thing is I don't demo e-mail software. It has to be good for me to use it. Chances are I may browse with Firefox and Email with Mozilla Mail since i have 1GB of RAM now. That might be the best solution for me. I never really liked the idea of a suite. it took long to start it (its much better now in the current versions), and i just want a browser. (yeah, i know i can skip the things i dont need) and i never liked mozilla's UI But i allways liked Phönix/Firebird/Fox. it just felt. it looked fine, has all features i need (with some extentions). its just sexier than the suite This is all so very exciting. ... being one of the users who didn't like the "Release Candidate" name they were first thinking about, since the devs *know* it won't be one (i.e. there's 0% possibility it will be released). Good to know they were thinking the same thing. A "RC" designation could've made people thinking it's closer to release than it is. Typed that a bit too quickly :-) I of course meant: "0% possibility it will be released as Firefox 1.0 Final" 0.10 is less then 0.90 Yes, but it wasn't 0.90, it was 0.9.0 - 0.10 is higher than 0.9. It is not supposed to be a decimal number, it's a version number - integers separated with periods, not digits and a decimal point. Otherwise 0.9.1 wouldn't make a lot of sense, would it? That may be confusing to some, but that scheme is only used internally - externally the release will be labelled "1.0 Preview Release". Faster they get to 1.0 the better, then the numbers will be "readable" as decimals as well... I'm inclined to agree. Someone is bound to think this is the first release. Is it possible that having v. 0.10 could break extensions/themes because they think it is 0.1 (Phoenix)? What would be wrong with giving it 0.99 internally? Is it that substantially different from the rest of the 0.9x? It could still be called 1.0 Preview Release publically. That version number won't break themes/extensions. It could be 0.99 but that doesn't give any scope for the other versions, but along those lines, they could make it 0.95 (and then have 0.94, 0.95). But the difference from 0.9.1 to this next release will be a lot more substantial than the difference between 0.9 and 0.9.1 and 0.9.2 zero point ten is more than zero point nine, its the sensible progression. 0.9.2 doesn't make sense because that would signify a very minor upgrade to 0.9.1, ie one with only a couple of bugs fixed. 0.9.9 doesn't make sense because then there are then some versions missing, it is still being billed as a more minor upgrade than to 0.10 and it doesn't allow any other versions to be added (not that they should be at this stage, but look at Mozilla 1.0) If you look at other software projects, you will see lots of them using integer.integer version numbers, eg MySQL 3.23, Apache 1.3.31 Can FireFox ship with Flash 7? What are the issues surrounding this? Because 0.9 did not come with Flash built in. For IE users if they see no Flash plugin that will look bad. These are last mile issues to get a better browser experience for new users...something to think about. Also, if we make Java and easy install then that will get people back to us, cause IE doesn't want to dance with Java anymore. Although Java is not as important nowadays as Flash. ive never had to install flash after upgrading Firefox (and bird), it simply worked. adding an exta 25% to the download size isnt justified because a couple of people dont get it out of the box, and its so simple to install flash that theres no reason for the team to distribute it. Im on a really slow connection and it takes well over 1 hour for me to download firefox in its current state, I would prefer a smaller distribution file not a larger. (actually id prefer it if the update run only updated changed files) . Also there may be legal reasons for flash not being included. But i believe its been said several times that FF wont ship with flash regardless. |