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from the just-release-nightly-builds-oh-wait dept.
Mozilla is planning to speed up Firefox's current 18-week release cycle, code in multiprocess support, and phase out the XUL and XBL languages currently used to build the Firefox UI (a change that may eventually break extensions):
Mozilla is planning big changes in how it builds its Firefox web browser, including speeding up its release schedule and – in the long term – getting rid of some of the Mozilla-specific technologies that have traditionally been used to build the browser's UI and add-ons. The decisions were discussed at Moz's "Coincidental Work Week" meetup in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada during the last week of June and were made public in a pair of forum posts by Mozilla engineering director Dave Camp on Monday. For starters, Mozilla plans to ditch its current 18-week release cycle in favor of something more agile. "We think there are big wins to be had in shortening the time that new features reaches users," Camp wrote. "Critical fixes should ship to users in minutes, not days. Individual features rolling out to small audiences for focused and multi-variate testing."
Firefox 39 was released on Monday. Changes include vsync (smooth scrolling) on Mac OS X, the addition of Unicode 8.0 skin tone emoji, removal of SSLv3, improving IPv6 fallback to IPv4, and support for the ECMAScript 2015 Proxy object. Mozilla has also unveiled a "Games Technology Roadmap," which sets out goals of further improving HTML5 + JavaScript performance relative to native applications, shipping the unfinished WebGL 2.0, and minimizing common issues like audio/graphics latency and "jitter".
Google says TurboFan, a new optimizing JavaScript compiler that will replace Crankshaft, will speed up various aspects of JavaScript performance (it currently shows a "29% increase on the zlib score of the Octane benchmark"). It has been shipping since Chrome 41, but will be improved and switched on in more code scenarios over time until it completely replaces the Crankshaft compiler.
Microsoft's new Edge browser will not include ActiveX and Silverlight support, and will instead use HTML5's Media Source and Encrypted Media Extensions for "premium media", as well as MPEG-DASH and Common Encryption (CENC). Internet Explorer 11 will retain Silverlight support.
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Freeman on Wednesday July 08 2015, @05:05PM
Running outdated software for anything other than private use is irresponsible. Sure, I could wish that Firefox went back to their 1 or two releases a year, but I don't see it happening. Too many people are pandering after the new shiny thing for Firefox to just release new features once every 6 months. I do get annoyed with all of the random UI changes for the sake of change. Some things are better suited to being dull, but constant. Please see Windows 7 vs Windows 8 Menus for ways to innovate vs ways to destroy every rational thought.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday July 08 2015, @05:10PM
Running outdated software for anything other than private use is irresponsible.
Bullshit.
Outdated is NOT a criteria. It is the perfect definition of a FAD.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday July 08 2015, @05:26PM
So you enjoy old and fixed security vulnerabilities with your browsing?
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Wednesday July 08 2015, @06:05PM
Who created the vulnerabilities? Devs are pretty much universally saying "you MUST update, because SECURITY" about everything these days. Yet, they continue to spend their time fucking things up for the user, meanwhile the software continues to have security holes. They've found a slick way of enhancing their job security, which is fine for them. And if you are administering someone elses box and gotta run the latest version so that your ass is covered, that's fine for you. On my personal machines I'll run whatever I want and not have it dictated to me.
Web browsers are the most glaring example of this disfunction. The majority of the development work has been for the benefit of web developers (not users), with the remainder being for their own amusement, apparently. Look at all the progress that has been made in... tracking the user, shoving ads in the user's face, and DRM. Yeehah. Opera had a better UI back in 2004 FFS, compared to any browser now. Browser developers are definitely on my shitlist.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 08 2015, @06:45PM
I can't say that I really notice all the horrible things that happen in these week-by-week new browser versions, although I do use Chrome, Firefox, Firefox, and Opera for different tasks. But there is a huge market for finding and exploiting security vulnerabilities now. Even if getting pwned usually requires you to visit dodgy sites (or not run an adblocker [theregister.co.uk]), web browsers are probably the riskiest old software you can run.
Here is Opera's "successor". It's still on technical preview 3 and it's proprietary code like the old Opera (except for the Blink rendering engine, which is open source):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser) [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 08 2015, @09:29PM
I would prefer security fixes instead of new versions. Note that security fixes normally don't get a new (major) version number. A new version means someone changed the functionality (and probably introduced new security issues that way).
Note that the version number of TeX converges to π as bugs are fixed. That's what makes TeX so useful: You can rely on your TeX stuff to give the same result also in twenty years (while I doubt that you can take e.g. a Word document from twenty years ago, load it into a current Word, and expect it to look the same).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 08 2015, @06:39PM
Outdated is pretty much synonymous with Full of Security Holes that Should be Patched. Why? Because we live in the real world where there are humans that code and other humans that push the coders to maximize output. While you have a somewhat valid point, the problem is that it's an extremely dangerous way of looking at things. At least in a Windows World, not having an Up-to-Date system will screw you in the long run. Unless you are totally disconnected from the Internet, which is an unlikely scenario. Even in a Linux World we have things like the Heartbleed bug and some Serious stuff that would cause major problems, if left outdated.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @07:39AM
Firefix bugfix versions are named x.0.1. Versions introducing new bugs as well as moving the UI around and breaking extensions gets a new x.
The changes we are discussing here is the "new x", aka. major version. Nobody argued against installing the bugfix versions, it's just that bug fixes are so rare in Firefox, where bugs tend to sit as "new" for years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday July 08 2015, @05:39PM
Every piece of software that touches the internet is being or has already been redesigned to be smartphone/tablet friendly, whether it needs to be or not. Annoying to those of us that still use a PC for work.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday July 09 2015, @02:47PM
Not every. My site is not mobile ready. It never will be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @07:34AM
Where are all these people? If people really wanted all these breaking changes (sorry, "new shiny things"), people should have been moving from Chrome to Firefox in droves the last several years.
Seems to me the users have been flocking the opposite way. From "shiny new things" Firefox to stable Chrome.
(Oh, sure, Chrome has a pretty short release cycle, but they manage to do so without users actually noticing. It's like the Chrome release cycle is used to fix bugs, while the Firefox release cycle is used to break stuff, including the UI).