
Scripting News: Where I'm at with Firefox - apievangelist
http://scripting.com/stories/2011/06/26/whereImAtWithFirefox.html
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Macha
What was called from x.y to x.y+1 is now x to x+1. Did Mozilla continue
support for 3.5 for long after the 3.6 release? I don't see what the fuss is
unless you're equating version numbers to progress, which is the wrong thing
to do.

That said, they could throw a bone to enterprise and so on by copying the idea
of Long Term Support versions for those IT departments that are more used to
meaningful version numbers.

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peterbraden
At first I thought this article was a parody of the enterprise browser upgrade
rationale.

But then I realised it was serious. How can someone who works with web
technology not realise the downsides not upgrading browsers causes? I mean,
IE6...

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mestudent
I try every new firefox release for at least a week, and to be honest I
haven't seen an advantage of using it since chrome came out.

It is just way too slow[1], it may have better extensions better adblocking
and a regular ui but it just can't compete.

[1] Slow in both snappiness and perceived rendering compared to chrome,
firefox also still likes to crash or freeze on me which rarely happens with
chrome even though I run the dev channel.

~~~
oconnore
I haven't had a crash yet in FF5 or 4 (flash crashed several times but did not
bring down the browser). Also, I notice about 0 rendering delay.

~~~
hollerith
What about "terminal unresponsiveness" in which the browser stay very
unresponsive until you shut it down?

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oconnore
Not that either. Sorry for the short response, but I think that answers your
question. It works great! You should try it :)

~~~
hollerith
I've _been_ using it -- on Linux and on OS X. I'm guessing that if I got more
RAM, the "terminal unresponsiveness" would mostly go away. I've got only a gig
in my old Macbook.

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ColemanF
Interesting discussion, but why is there a picture of Joe Montana on Winer's
post?

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drivebyacct2
>I think Google is a troubled company and very large and very rich, and likely
to use their browser in power plays against their competitors, with little
regard for users.

I like to look for the best in Google, but I found this baseless assertion...
to be rather baseless, especially given (my perception) of the quality of
Chrome and what it has done for the web in the last two short years.

As a Chrome-convert, I enjoy watching people stray away from Firefox 3.6.x
only to go sprinting back when they're an inch out of their comfort zone. If
all you know is FF4, 5 and Aurora... I can see why auto-updating, cutting-edge
would be terrifying. Author, I invite you, download Chrome, get on the Dev
channel. You'll never have an extension that breaks, no modal dialog boxes on
every boot checking compatibility. Fast-updating doesn't have to mean
unstable... but I certainly understand why you feel that way.

Mozilla is in the process of converting to a nimbler and lighter development
and release cycle. They're not very good at it so far, in my opinion (I'm also
a jaded Linux user, though).

~~~
zobzu
Unfortunately you do sound like a Chrome dev or promoter.

Chrome's way ain't bad. Firefox way ain't bad, and it's their first iteration
of their new development and release strategy.

Firefox's extension incompatibility comes from something that is important to
understand:

Firefox can be 100.00% modified using extensions, including the start-up
mechanism, everything. Chrome cannot do that. Most Firefox extensions are
written that way, mostly because of Firefox's history (extensions were only
doable that way for a long time). The drawback is such control require browser
restart and compatibility check and there is NO possible way around that.

Firefox also supports on-the-fly extensions which do not require restart or
anything like that - like Chrome. However, like Chrome they also allow lesser
control and thus these are not very widely used, at least, yet.

Firefox nighties, Aurora, and beta are also far from unstable. It's rare for
nighties to ever break, and I've been using them for a decade. It never
happened to any other channel.

In fact, that's one strong point of Firefox vs Chrome. Chrome is not actually
very stable. It usually doesn't matter too much as tabs are per process and
can be easily reloaded or reopened when Chrome crashes so I find it mostly ok.
But the bottom line is that Chrome annoys me by crashing every now and then.
Firefox nearly NEVER crashes (once a year?).

I would however agree that Firefox is a lot faster and slicker on Windows than
any other platform, that said, it's not so bad on OSX and Linux. In comparison
Chrome is mostly identically good on these 3 platforms.

