Mozilla Firefox 5.0 Final

I plan on using 3.6 till I absolutely have to change and then I have serious doubts whether it'll be Firefox. The frenetic pace of updating and change is ridiculous. I can understand security updates but for some reason developers think updates are a good excuse to play around with the interface and other stuff that doesn't need changing, only making it harder to use. They're not really serving the end user but trying to impress their peers and that's what really grinds my gears.

 

Doesn't make things hard to use for me, in fact I like the new slim interface. Serving the end users is of course subjective.

If you like the old one so much, you are free to customize it back. That's one of the great thing about Firefox.

 

agreed, the new one is definitely not hard to use, i think its much better.

 

Or rather, now it certainly doesn't.

I agree with you, this system blows. Version 30.0 by 2021?

One wonders.
Though i'm not switching over this, it doesn't make me happy.

 

Will this be a workaround?

(Not for those suspicious of Google offerings )

 

So yell at Google since they started it. I don't get whatever people are complaining about with Firefox, they're doing exactly what Chrome is doing, and even Microsoft is going to release new IE versions more quickly. What exactly is expected from the "me too" world that browser developers are now living in? Oh, and what "interface changes?"..FF 5 brought exactly zero changes except for under the hood. If people are upset about add-on compatibility, well, "thems the breaks", it happens. The main players are working fine, the little guys are left behind until they step up.

Mozilla isn't to blame for the little guys not wanting to keep up or not being able to keep up. That falls on the add-on developers shoulders. In any case, you might as well not complain, because this "frenetic" pace is here to stay, and for more players than just Mozilla.

 

Tin Eye has been updated. I will keep it.

 

I think that, in essence, is what people are complaining about, isn't it?

I remember when I was a kid and told my mother I wanted to do something because 'everybody else was doing it', she would always reply by asking me if everybody else jumped off a bridge, would I want to do that too?

The point being that why does Mozilla have to do something just because Google, or any other company, does it?

Rather than being caught up in some corporate 'keep up with the Joneses' version numbering/release syndrome, Mozilla should remember where the vast majority of their user base comes from: People who want a secure and efficient browser that's highly customizable through the use/addition of extensions.
These people mostly couldn't care less whether an upgrade is a 'major version' or not-- they just want the browser to be secure and efficient and for their extensions to work properly.

IMO, anyway.

 

Thanks! I've also been reading this lengthy thread that goes into quite a bit of detail in how to deal with the corporate sector. Quite hairy.

 

Updated last night thru the updater, everything seems fine, except that Avast's Web Rep plugin isn't compatible now, so that doesn't work. No great loss though....

 

Chrome's an excellent browser worth emulating. If Mozilla can incorporate Chrome's innovations while retaining its flexibility, that's a win-win.

 

I honestly agree with you, as far as wishing they wouldn't be a "me too" browser, but, they chose to do it. Honestly all of them (save perhaps Opera so far) are just going out of their way copying each other. They all wanted more space for websites (never figured that out, actually. Unless you're stacked with toolbars or are just a bit weird, there is plenty of space to read a website), they all wanted a "one bar"( another "why?" move), they all wanted HTML5 capabilities now, when HTML5 is still years out as far as widespread usage, they wanted hardware acceleration (which makes sense practically, but no one is using it, and I haven't seen its supposed speed increase, outside of a few cutsie little demos. And now we find out it makes us vulnerable to exploits), and now they all want faster releases.

I'm sorry, but Chrome is not that good. Security, sure, I see the point, outside of that, even after 12 tries (versions), I don't see anything that special. It's not faster than IE9, it's not faster than Firefox. I don't care about stinking benchtests, they don't matter, they aren't a representation of actual world performance. But, everybody just has to be like Chrome. *shrug* It's just the way devs work now.

 

I agree with you on Chrome, I have tried it thru all the versions, and there are always minor glitches here and there that annoy me, and I really don't think it's much different in speed from the others either. I prefer Firefox now.

I think everyone tries to copy Chrome now because they saw how it grabbed a 10+ % market share in a relatively short time period, so they all think Chrome is the big success story and it must be onto something good. So they imitate it.

 

OK, Mozilla releases Firefox 4, then 5 and what next.
I use Firefox 3.6.18 and everything works fine.

If I update to 4 or 5 or whatever, what happens to the compatibility of all the hundreds of independent programs we use when these new browser versions are installed ?

Do we get a super- duper Firefox and nothing else works ?

 

Personally I think Google will ruin their own browser eventually. We all know how experimental Google is, and these last couple of releases they've started adding in something else. The next release is supposed to have Skype-like features, and who knows what the future releases will bring. If they start treating Chrome like a laboratory, it's going to suffer. But anyway, yeah, it does all have to do with the sudden come up of Chrome.

 

"Enterprise IT unhappy with Firefox 4's quick demise" : https://www.computerworld.com/s/art...y_with_Firefox_4_s_quick_demise?taxonomyId=17

 

I'm going to guess . . . . "6"?

 

You can't please business anyway, if it's that big of a problem for them (actually they're just slow..it doesn't take 3 months to test and roll out new software even in the worst IT departments), then they should just stick to Internet Explorer. At some point businesses have to stop making excuses.

 

The active extensions (not programs) will work fine. Force install can make more work, especially on Firefox 4 compatible ones due to minor changes in Firefox 5.

You get a super-duper Firefox with virtually all popular add-ons compatible, along with plenty of others.

 

I must admit that it seems a bit disingenuous of Enterprise people to now say thay didn't know the release schedule earlier, because Mozilla did reveal their plans for this year. So maybe businesses shouldn't have prepared to deploy version 4.0 at all. But don't know if Mozilla made it clear that FF 4 would be abandoned (as appears) unsupported?

 

Thank you J_L. I was thinking more of all the personally selected programs we use like AV, FW, Sandboxie, NoScript, ABP and hundreds more goodies we admire. I am particularly concerned about Sandboxie, ZA and AVG 2011.

I assumed that the Firefox add-ons and extensions would be aligned OK.

Sandboxie is my primary worry, I have had issues before with Firefox updates. I cannot see Tzuk being able to keep up with such rapid and frequent updates.

 

Yep, I'm thinking the same thing myself..... Guess time will tell....

 

AV and FW aren't be affected by browser updates (except for browser specific components). Sandboxie, NoScript, and ABP works fine with the latest version. AVG LinkScanner should work with Firefox 5.

Sandboxie doesn't need to update that much, because Firefox version changes nowadays are relatively low like Chrome.

 

And the 4 > 5 transition period is not typical. It was short. The 5 > 6 will be the full six weeks.

 

I've never been competent enough to comment about the Sandboxie developer's ability. Aurora (Fx6-to-be) works under Sandboxie's supervision.