

Mozilla Introduces Aurora, The Pre-Beta, Post-Nightly Firefox - thankuz
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/13/mozilla-aurora/

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51Cards
What happened to the term 'Alpha' ?

Congrats to the Mozilla team though for their ramp up in production speed.
Nice to see.

~~~
carussell
"This was generally rejected due to alpha having existing connotations. Aurora
could be crashier than an alpha. Also, it is better to talk about Aurora as a
separate entity rather than an alpha of Firefox (which is why the branding is
different)."
[http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/msg/8105...](http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/msg/81055a18fa8ddfe6)

~~~
cpeterso
> Aurora could be crashier than an alpha.

I think "beta" (even a "pre-beta") connotes more stability than "alpha". Pre-
beta sounds like a "beta rc1".

~~~
carussell
Okay, so there's no problem. Aurora isn't the name for a crashier-than-alpha
beta. Beta is still beta, and it _is_ more stable than aurora (the alpha).

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w1ntermute
Can't wait to see how stable this is. The Chrome dev channel has been
surprisingly stable for me (usable for day-to-day browsing).

~~~
azakai
Actually minefield (now called nightly) is usually stable enough, it's rare
that there is a serious problem. So Aurora will probably be ok in stability.

~~~
w1ntermute
What about extension compatibility?

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mbrubeck
Extensions will be automatically marked compatible with the new release,
unless there are known problems:
[http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/13/add-ons-review-
upd...](http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/13/add-ons-review-update-29/)

~~~
cpeterso
Only 1 of my 7 FF4 extensions were compatible with Aurora.

~~~
mbrubeck
The auto-updating process isn't up and running yet, though hopefully it will
be in six weeks (when Firefox 6 hits Aurora).

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PetrolMan
Those icons are actually pretty slick.

~~~
SpiralLab
Agreed. The "Minefield" (besides being a _terrible_ alpha/pre-release
codename) icon left a lot to be desired.

~~~
cpeterso
Mozilla nightly builds have always (AFAIK) been called Minefield. The name
discourages non-developers from installing it (unless they mistake Minefield
for a new version of Minesweep). :)

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blatherard
Here's a link to the Firefox Channels page, if you want to check out Aurora.
It's rather hard to navigate to from the techcrunch article.

<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/channel/>

------
jackolas
I don't know who named this but they had to be really removed from the browser
world to not know about Arora. <http://code.google.com/p/arora/>

~~~
carussell
<http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/aurora-concept-video-part-1> 2008.

<http://www.mozilla.org/rdf/doc/aurora.html> 1999.

------
ascendant
I give the Mozilla guys kudos for realizing they were starting to fall into
the same malaise that the IE team had slumped into and are actively working to
get back to a faster, more iterative development model.

~~~
asadotzler
Maybe you experienced a different history of the last decade than I did, but
in my history the IE team completely disappeared from 2001 until 2007.
Suggesting that the Firefox team has ever been anything like is just silly.

Yes, a year between major releases is kind of a long time today, but it's not
the better part of a decade and it's not "disappearing" either.

Given the choice between 1 release per year with (hypothetically) 12 new
features or 3 releases per year with 4 new features each, clearly the faster
releases are better for the Web and for users. But delivering 12 new features
a year in one lump rather than in three lumps is not a "slump" and can not
rightly be called "malaise" either.

The "pace" of _development_ has never been slow at Mozilla, only the pace of
"releases" and that's what we're fixing here.

~~~
ascendant
Well, I said they _started_ to. You're right, the Mozilla guys never stopped
developing but with Chrome coming out and seemingly running circles around
them I definitely felt like they were going the way of the dinosaur. I will
readily admit it was more perception than reality.

