This is the first iteration of Agile programming.
Mozilla are off to a good start and it was sufficient for them to make this a bug fix release with a smattering of enhancements. Even one small update to their Java jit compiler has now made Firefox officially faster than Chrome by about 30ms.
The point here is, they've succeeded in making a switch to Agile and are doing quite well. *That* is a major accomplishment.
There will be ensuing revisions with major changes and good luck to the competition who will have to keep up with them. At least Google have a fighting chance, but MS, doubtful.
So, please, cut Mozilla some slack here.
Congratulations to the Mozilla Developer Team are in order!
w00t
I’ve liked Firefox since it first showed up. But, this new Firefox 5 concerns me. Oh, it’s a fine browser. But, it’s not a major new release. At most, I’d call it Firefox 4.1, but really it’s little more than Firefox 4.02.
The Mozilla Foundation, following in the footsteps of Google’s Chrome Web browser, seems to believe that if they keep popping out new “major” releases every six weeks, they’ll convince people they’re better than the competition. That seemed like a dumb idea to me when Microsoft went from Word for Windows 2.0 to Word for Windows 6.0 back in 1993. The idea hasn’t improved any with age.
At least, in the case of Google Chrome, though, there usually have been significant updates. Chrome 12, didn’t deserve its new major release number either though. In upcoming versions of Chrome that may change. For example, We can look forward to Google building Skype-like video and Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) right into the browser. Firefox? Not so much.
As for Firefox 5 itself… well, let’s see… uh. The Do Not Track feature, which makes it easy to keep advertisers’ cookies under control, is easier to find in the Firefox Preferences section. Oh, and they finally got rid of the HTTP idle connection bug. That’s good. Let me leaf through the rest of the Firefox 5 release notes.
Ah, let’s see now, Firefox has also added extra security to its WebGL (Web-based Graphics Library), a Google-sponsored software library that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to browsers, implementation. Mozilla developers did this by blocking cross-domain WebGL elements. In light of Microsoft’s recent attacks against WebGL on security grounds, I count that as an important improvement.
On the other hand, in the few days I’ve played with the beta and few hours I’ve been working with the final version, I have to say that what I find most annoying about Firefox–its lack of stability, especially on Linux, and continued hunger for memory-doesn’t seem to be improved much, if any.
Put it all together, though, is this enough to call this version of Firefox a major new release? No. It’s not even close. Microsoft’s IE programming crew got it right when, instead of a cake, they sent the Firefox developers a cupcake for this new release.
