Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | February 18, 2011, 1:39pm PST

Summary: It’s slow progress over at Mozilla with regards to Firefox 4 beta. The next beta, which will be the twelfth, has been delayed.

It’s slow progress over at Mozilla with regards to Firefox 4 beta. The next beta, which will be the twelfth, has been delayed.

Oh, and Mozilla are keeping their options open for another beta if necessary. Here are the details, straight from the Mozilla dev mailing list:

We will not be building a Firefox 4 beta today
We will wait for the few remaining betaN hardblockers before building Firefox 4 beta 12
As of now, beta 12 is the last planned beta
We reserve the right to have a beta 13 if issues found in beta 12 need additional coverage before a release candidate (RC)

Five bugs are holding back the beta, one of which has the highest rating of ‘major,’ two are listed as ‘critical’ and three are ‘normal.’

Given this new delay it is highly unlikely that Firefox 4 will ship this month.

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Mozilla Firefox, Beta, Mozilla Corp., Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

phlogiston2312@... 21st Feb 2011

I will only start to worry if it is missing longer than Duke Nukem Forever. Until then, it is just in a normal dev cycle

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

Loverock Davidson 18th Feb 2011

One day they will have a Firefox 4 final, one day. Sure are taking their time getting it out the door.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

Cyrorm 18th Feb 2011

@Loverock Davidson
Better to take the time to get it right. Would you prefer they did it like Chrome and have a new build every few days and be in perpetual beta?

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

Loverock Davidson 18th Feb 2011

@Cyrorm
No I wouldn't. I understand taking time but they are taking a really long time.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

Cyrorm 18th Feb 2011

@Loverock Davidson
Depends on your definition of "a long time". Look at Microsoft, how long was it between XP and Vista? 6 years? Now I realize that and OS is significantly different than a web browser, so lets look at the time between IE6 and IE7. You have to admit that Microsoft took its sweet time there, not that they really had much pressure at the time to be speedy about it.

I will grant you that it is taking much longer than Mozilla initially intended/told people, but they are not alone in having to put off new releases to work out bugs.

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Option "FUD da IE9" already in play, tho

LBiege 18th Feb 2011

And will remain so as long as they keep delaying.

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Bad examples

Michael Alan Goff 18th Feb 2011

XP > Vista is bad because it's a whole OS.
IE 6 > 7 is also a bad one because Microsoft never came out with a timetable that they constantly failed to meet.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

razzledazzle 19th Feb 2011

@Cyrorm
How many betas makes it perpetual? 13 is a boat load.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

alshawwa@... 18th Feb 2011

its all for the 2 critical bugs that they are working on , if it was only the other 3 normal bugs they would've shipped it and fixed it later with a revised update

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

shellcodes_coder 18th Feb 2011

Firefox 4 = delay hell; it's one the reasons I moved to Chrome which is far more secure and faster than SlowFox

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

maleextra 19th Feb 2011

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To me latest beta was still unusable: it was dog slow in groups ...

DeRSSS 19th Feb 2011

.. management and crashed while in this process, as well as just while browsing.

I will not try to use any betas until final release or maybe something like 4.01.

And this evil thing cut my browsing links history and it was not restored when I went back to 3.6 version. This was really lame since I specifically set to keep these visited links history for 99999 days.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

x I'm tc 19th Feb 2011

@denisrs
Are you talking about beta 11? Where did you crash it? I haven't had a crash since beta 8. I'd love to see a Web page that could crash Firefox. The speed is just as good as Chrome or the latest IE.

And if you run Sync, you will get your history not just on the one computer you use, but anywhere!

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The only crash I had with F4 was caused by Flash

wackoae 19th Feb 2011

@jdakula And that was a single time. Never seen it again.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

bmgoodman 19th Feb 2011

I'm a huge Firefox fan from day 1, but this beta isn't impressing me. I lost a lot of my history, I frequently find not all open tabs are restored between sessions, and sometimes find tabs moving into other groups. I'm definitely not in a hurry to "upgrade" my main computers!

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Loosing history

wackoae 19th Feb 2011

@bmgoodman TURN OFF PRIVATE MODE.

Seriously, most people actually WIPE the history when the browser closes. Keeping history is pretty much useless unless you are too lazy to create bookmarks.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

bradavon 20th Feb 2011

@wackoae: What planet do you live on? Most people don't clear any browsing history.

History is very useful. I have plenty of bookmarks but don't wish to create bookmarks for every site I visit.

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They're talking about 5 and beyond, but...

Tuari 19th Feb 2011

It's funny that the Mozilla crew came out with a story about changing the way they do releases to push out 5 and possibly 6 this year in a rapid release cycle to match google's chrome, yet they can't even get 4 out to final.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

Cylon Centurion Updated - 19th Feb 2011

@Tuari

I think Firefox 4 will be like Vista, completely rebuilt, and will serve as the foundation for releases to come - with shorter dev cycles.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

CPPCrispy 19th Feb 2011

@Cylon Centurion 0005
I hope it does not run like Vista.

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@CPav

Michael Alan Goff 19th Feb 2011

You mean you hope that 10 yr old computers can run it, instead of needing something a little more modern?

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

Cylon Centurion Updated - 19th Feb 2011

@CPav, why the Vista hate? Vista ran fine if you had it set up properly (e.g. not an OEM crapware filled machine). I had it running on my old ASUS EEE 901HA over XP.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

CobraA1 19th Feb 2011

Despite all of the people disliking Vista - it was really a needed update, and is the basis for Windows 7, which runs fine on even netbooks.

IMO it's time for people with 10 year old computers to put them to rest and buy something new. My netbook is what, 10x more powerful for 1/10th the cost? You could afford a $3000 computer 10 years ago, but can't afford a $300 computer today?

Yeah, it's about time to upgrade if you have a system that old. Might as well be complaining about not being able to run it on a 386.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

CobraA1 19th Feb 2011

"Five bugs are holding back the beta, one of which has the highest rating of ?major,? two are listed as ?critical? and three are ?normal.?"

At the time of this writing, the list you linked to is down to 1.

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They won't release the RC

Michael Alan Goff 19th Feb 2011

because of ONE bug. >_>

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

CobraA1 19th Feb 2011

@goff256

. . . and it's back up to three, lol. Seems they discovered two new critical bugs.

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This makes me sad

Michael Alan Goff 20th Feb 2011

I want Firefox 4 now, if only so they can start working on 5. D:

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

View from Here 20th Feb 2011

@CobraA1

I'm not big in Math, but after saying 5 bugs, AKH mentioned 1 major, 2 critical and 3 normal bugs. Sum those numbers up for me, will you!

*just felt like nitpicking*

Right now the link shows 4 bugs.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

unicomp21 20th Feb 2011

It will be worth the wait, check out this GPU rendering link with Firefox 4 beta or Chrome.

http://www.pcprogramming.com/NoiseCube.html

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

View from Here 20th Feb 2011

@unicomp21

Not really sure about that. The beta releases, they don't impress much.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

CobraA1 20th Feb 2011

@unicomp21 Eh, web based 3D isn't all that impressive at the moment. Most of the stuff I've seen looks like a '90s VRML demo.

Remember VRML? It was the first attempt at 3D on the web. I may still have a book about it, even. Sadly, it never got integrated into any browsers.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

zdnet@... 20th Feb 2011

Given the choice of a program which has perhaps been overly beta tested before release and programs which clearly haven't even seen proper alpha testing before release (yeah, MS, I include you in that category) I'll take the former every time.

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RE: Mozilla delays Firefox 4 beta 12, option for beta 13 on the table

bradavon 20th Feb 2011

Get it out Mozilla! The delays next to Chrome and IE9 are doing you no good at all.

It better be perfect and bug free with all these delays. Firefox 3.6 is still my browser of choice but it feels so dated next to Chrome.