Mozilla Introduces Aurora, The Pre-Beta, Post-Nightly Firefox

[thankuz]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/13/mozilla-aurora/

[51Cards]

What happened to the term 'Alpha' ?

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

[carussell → 51Cards]

"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...

[cpeterso → carussell]

> 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 → cpeterso]

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).

[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 → w1ntermute]

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 → azakai]

What about extension compatibility?

[mbrubeck → w1ntermute]

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...

[cpeterso → mbrubeck]

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

[mbrubeck → cpeterso]

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

[PetrolMan]

Those icons are actually pretty slick.

[r00fus → PetrolMan]

This is one area where I've long admired Firefox... and it's benefitted them for mainstream market-share penetration.

When they release something to even beta, it looks very interesting and exciting.

[SpiralLab → PetrolMan]

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

[cpeterso → SpiralLab]

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). :)

[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 → jackolas]

http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/aurora-concept-video-part-1 2008.

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

[jmathai → jackolas]

Maybe the same people who named a JS minifier "Closure" and a web browser "Chrome".

[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 → ascendant]

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 → asadotzler]

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.