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Firefox 1.1 Scrapped
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:12 AM
from the doing-it-up-right dept.
from the doing-it-up-right dept.
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."
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First Prime Factorization Post (Score:3, Funny)
This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:2)
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://jfctravelclub.com/travelblog/)
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.
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.nps.gov/c...reation/ohioerie.htm)
I am happy with Firefox. I do not think that I would ever pay for a browser however, even if it was really great. I guess we have all been conditioned to want free browsers....
Your browser is NOT Microsoft Internet Explorer. Close this window and re-open.
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:5, Funny)
> Internet Explorer is free about like it is free for me to have sex with my wife.
If your only other option is one involving open sores, then I suggest you stop griping...
Re:This is all getting quite confusing... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday March 13 2007, @02:39PM)
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.
How Firefox is more "free" than IE (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://myatomic.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday November 19 2006, @12:31AM)
Firefox is not free either, because I must buy hardware to run it on.
But it is closer to free than the alternatives:
Great. (Score:2)
Re:Great. (Score:5, Funny)
it's scheduled for release in (brace yourself): "??? 2005".
They must be planning to profit somehow.
Scrapped? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please submit a bug report. (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~Spy+der+Mann/journal/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 15, @12:57AM)
Scrapped? if 1.1 is now 1.5 then ... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.users.qwest.net/~waffleck-asch/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @04:46PM)
No, Firefox 1.5 will be Firefox 5.
Re:Scrapped? if 1.1 is now 1.5 then ... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.intelligentblogger.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 27, @11:47AM)
A Solaris user, I see.
Re:Scrapped? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://mattdm.org/)
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.
Re:Scrapped? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.parseerror.com/)
the method can be summed up as follows: start with a simple one-sentence summary of a story
Firefox Changes Mandate Version Upgrade
Because we're geeks (and slashdot needs to report "new" news everyday), add version numbers
Firefox 1.1 Changes Mandate Version Upgrade To 1.5
But that's too long and informative... we could try shortening and leave the details for the article:
Firefox 1.1 Changes
or
Firefox 1.1 Update
But that's not inflammatory... We need a one-word summation that will scare/startle people immediately upon reading it, but is not too far from the truth
Firefox 1.1 Scrapped
Playing a trick on Bill... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.drydeadfish.co.uk/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 02 2005, @09:09AM)
I can see Bill now, sitting at his computer and googling for the latest news. Seeing the headline "Firefox 1.1 Scrapped", he jumps up and shrieks with Joy, "Steve! Steve! They've given up! Hoo-hoo!"
And then they all go out for a beer.
Just wording? (Score:1)
if you're gonna just throw it away... (Score:5, Funny)
One small keystroke for a man... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://budda.phpwebhosting.com/)
So shouldn't the headline be (Score:4, Informative)
Dodgeball reference. (Score:5, Funny)
They really need to fix autoupdate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They really need to fix autoupdate (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They really need to fix autoupdate (Score:5, Informative)
(http://jfctravelclub.com/travelblog/)
Version Numbers (Score:5, Funny)
--
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing [uncyclopedia.org] and Pong! the Movie [uncyclopedia.org]!
Re:Version Numbers (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.dolemite.com/)
The version number game (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.openvoice.com.au/free/)
Are people really that silly to think that the (soon to be released) IE7.0 is almost 6 versions "ahead" of FF?
I guess this is a sacrifice we need to make to get some of the mum&dad market.
Steal The Thunder (Score:1)
Steal The Thunder and Double It (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.users.qwest.net/~waffleck-asch/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @04:46PM)
Even better, release it right after IE 7 and say it's the bug fix for IE 7.
Does this mean they'll fix launch.yahoo.com bug? (Score:1, Interesting)
(http://www.users.qwest.net/~waffleck-asch/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @04:46PM)
I've lost two FireFox potential converts over this issue just this week.
Re:Does this mean they'll fix launch.yahoo.com bug (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday August 10 2006, @01:41PM)
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:Does this mean they'll fix launch.yahoo.com bug (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.anchorweb.org/)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156428&cid=13
Not to mention you posted the same comment
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156428&cid=13
Nonsensical change (Score:1, Redundant)
Seems like a silly vanity decision. If the changes are not big enough for a 2.0 just make it 1.1.
Especially a piece of software that in its 1.x.x run so far hasn't even done a .1 change.
This will only confuse people. "Oh No! I missed versions 1.1-1.4!"
Re:Nonsensical change (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.danhendricks.com/)
That's okay. Those people are too busy looking for Windows 96-97.
Excited (Score:1, Interesting)
(http://utacatholics.org/ | Last Journal: Monday December 05 2005, @12:23PM)
Seems to be bigger jumps (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://jfctravelclub.com/travelblog/)
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)
(Last Journal: Wednesday September 28 2005, @12:05PM)
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:Can you read this? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.livejournal.com/~pxtl)
What they need is to include these crucial extensions in the installer as optional packages. The firefox installer should come with a laundry-list of important extensions nicely bundled together and thoroughly documented so that a user can either a) just get the minimum or b) make it a point to grab the tools they need. It keeps the core browser light, but it means that people with specific (but common) wants/needs don't need to go hunting around the extension page.
Simple packs like "Usability", "Internet Explorer Familiarity", "Web Developer", "Power User", "Multinational", etc. that bundle together commonly used relevant extensions would go a long way.
Re:Can you read this? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://weill.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday October 01 2005, @01:18PM)
Firefox and its army of extension developers will eventually re-implement Opera, but in the meantime the real thing is much better.
Re:Can you read this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can you read this? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://jfctravelclub.com/travelblog/)
Look in prefereces/options for fonts and there's a pref to set the minimum font size. It's not like it's a hidden pref or anything it's in the standard dialog
I'd be happy if (Score:2, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday April 13 2006, @02:12PM)
Alas, SVG (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.bobgregg.com/)
With the new delays, there's every chance that the IE7 betas will be out before SVG has a chance to become noticed by the general public. That just seems... unfortunate.
Slashdot should be more positive (Score:5, Interesting)
How about: Firefox leaps ahead to 1.5!
Going on to describe: The vast number of improvements to Firefox has warranted a larger version increase, skipping over 1.1 the next release will be 1.5...
Similarly the previous stories could have been "Mozilla.org focuses exclusively on Firefox" and "Thunderbird flies ahead to version (number)".
Of course it didn't help the previous two were copied out of context from Mozillazine articles. Hmm... I don't see anything about this at all on Mozillazine yet.
Anyway Slashdot should be trying to help Mozilla.org and Firefox, not trying to sensationalize every change.
Re:Slashdot should be more positive (Score:4, Funny)
Corporate deployments (Score:5, Interesting)
It would also be nice to have an MSI based installer for easy deployments via exisiting application deployment engines (AD, SMS, Zenworks, etc) and the ability to customize the broser via Group Policy.
I know all of these only apply to the Windows world, but I think these kind of things would help Firefox in the long run.
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
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:Is there any plan to ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://howwhatwhy.com/)
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.
Version numbers... arrg... (Score:2)
(http://libtom.org/)
Just increment the fucking revision count and be done with.
Tom
Version-Number Junkies? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://blandfordexaminer.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 21 2004, @05:40PM)
(*).*.* 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:Version-Number Junkies? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://vlevel.sf.net/)
virgin numbers (Score:1, Redundant)
(http://www.myselfmusic.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 09 2003, @10:51PM)
-b
at what point will free cost money? (Score:1)
(http://technocrat.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 15, @03:58PM)
If they're going to bump it up that much... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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.
obviously sun was involved (Score:2)
(http://www.linuxplatform.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 16 2003, @04:31PM)
What, now 1.0.6 outcry? (Score:1)
Alarmist? (Score:2)
(http://www.hugonz.net/)
Just call it Firefox X (Score:1)
Numbers, schumbers, just get Deer Park (Score:2)
internet explorer versioning? (Score:1)
(http://mjb.de.tc/)
I am glad that they are doing something (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.geocities.com/orion_blastar/contact/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 03 2007, @07:19PM)
Apparently rendering web pages properly is not a priority, but adding extra AOL-Like features that cause more bugs are a priority? Well at least they do have a priority to fix security holes and make the browser more stable.
Yet, WTF? I thought that the last version of Mozilla would be the last one to be developed, and now the major changes will be in the Mozilla browser? Did they have their fingers crossed or something when they posted that?
Will the OSX version of Firefox be Cocoa based?
Take The Adobe/Macromedia Route... (Score:1)
here's what I don't get (Score:2)
(http://briancnorton.info/)
....ummmm, what about 1.6??? (Score:1)
(http://xfirestatusplugin.blogspot.com/)
deer park alpha2 (Score:2)
(http://sewagemaster.blogspot.com/)
now you're able to click-drag-reorder tabs.
i find it even faster than alpha 1,
and alpha 1 is already significantly faster than regular firefox.
now if only they can resolve the annoyance that the menu bar height getting bigger then you move your personal bookmarks up top along side with it. only happens in linux, not windows...
Question: (Score:2)
(http://seventhcycle.net/)
It would be nice if they made that one of the priorities.
moving extensions (Score:1)
name that version game (Score:2)
They also plan a branding exercise. So "Firefox 2.0" will also be called "Mozilla Firefox 2".
So we have three confusing and only weakly linked naming schemes. All this for a browser? Come on, folks, this is a browser, not rocket science. Will there be any significant new features? "Improvements to bookmarks and history", one of four goals stated at the end of the aforementioned page, isn't exactly a radical new thing, is it? Sure, Firefox has that extension scheme, and that's nice, but all the bluster about versions strikes me as being like a wheel spinning in mud.
version numbers (Score:1)
More UI polish (Score:2)
Here's one of my favorites:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7682
(you'll need to cut'n paste and remove the space since bugzilla doesn't like slashdot links)
Arrows always showing on a long bookmarks menu, even when you at the top or bottom of the list.
By the time 2.0 comes out (Score:1)
(http://www.hormel.com/)
They need to catch up... (Score:1)
Re:Logic (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://budda.phpwebhosting.com/)
As far as i'm concerned, I don't really care about what version number my browser is, as long as it's the latest, and it doesn't start with IE.
Re:Logic (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~Shadow%20Wrought/journal | Last Journal: Thursday November 15, @09:11PM)
"No see I'm version 1.1. Before me was 2.5, 3.4, and 4.2. Its a long story involving a time machine and version numbers."
Re:YAY! More broken plug-ins! (Score:1, Interesting)
Sorry for my dyslexia (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/~Spy+der+Mann/journal/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 15, @12:57AM)
Sorry for my dyslexia, but did you say "Do you think they'll have Longhorn ready for Firefox 7.0"?
Re:Logic (Score:2, Funny)
(http://budda.phpwebhosting.com/)
Dont forget the wonderful "beta" qualifier which totally throws what you said to the wind.
Beta 1.0->2.0->3.0->....16.0->1.0!
Re:YAY! More broken plug-ins! (Score:1)
Between Firefox and the junk Symantec has been releasing lately, developers have gotten too arrogant. Just test your stuff before you send it out there.
Re:Reccomendations for FF (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Reccomendations for FF (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @03:30PM)
asia.cnet.com/itmanager/tech/0,39006407,3904850
www.actionscript.com/index.php/fw/1/flash-insec
Need I even say more?
Slashdot breaks these links, apparently. Kill the unnecessary spaces in the links and you'll get your articles. Or you could simply google "Flash browser exploits" and get all your answers there. Regardless, Flash automatically bypasses your browser's security settings, thereby allowing things like the restoration of deleted cookies to generating code that needs to run on your machine. This happens in many flash games where some code must be written and executed on the client side.
Sun Java VM (Score:2, Informative)
(http://www.radialthinking.de/)
So your friend could have both, a secure PC and Java. As far as I am aware, Suns Java VM had extremely few exploits so far.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Re:Reccomendations for FF (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Friday February 11 2005, @11:52AM)
Re:Reccomendations for FF (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Friday February 24 2006, @04:35PM)
I don't envy you the task of trying to sell people on putting in more effort for less convenience.
Re:Reccomendations for FF (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @03:30PM)
Have you ever screwed up your IE so bad and then tried to fix it by simply installing an update? It doesn't work like that. You show me a screwed up copy of IE that gets fixed with an update, and I'll shut up.
But tell me, how does it fix the problem when the problem has already gone past the browser and is now all over your hard drive, hrm?
Remember, education is the most important tool in actually understanding the who, the what, the how, the why, and the where of anything and everything. Without the education, even the less technically-savvy people wouldn't know how to even operate Windows, even as "simple" as it currently is.
Re:YAY! More broken plug-ins! (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.mygamercard.net/)
Unfortunately I'm having trouble with your logic here.
Re:So what's different? (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.rant.st/)
happy as the version numbers went up. I've found it to be
less responsive, more likely to either crash or time out
on connections, and just in general act flakey. And the
memory use can become excessive. (what is it doing with
125Mb of memory?)
Re:Reccomendations for FF (Score:2)