Firefox 4 struggling to reach finishing line

Simon · Sep 23, 2010, 21:11:57

Mozilla may release an eighth beta of Firefox 4 before heading to Release Candidate, as the open-source developer struggles to get the new browser out of the door.

Mozilla released the first beta of Firefox 4 in early July, but has since added a flurry of new features - such as App Tabs and Panorama - in successive betas, increasing the complexity of the release.

The Mozilla release schedule has a seventh beta pencilled in for the second half of this month, although there's speculation that an eighth beta might be issued before a release candidate, which isn't due until the second half of October.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/361384/firefox-4-struggling-to-reach-finishing-line

Lance · Sep 23, 2010, 23:28:37

Quote from: Simon on Sep 23, 2010, 21:11:57
added a flurry of new features - such as App Tabs and Panorama - in successive betas, increasing the complexity of the release.

read: added a flurry of new problems - such as security holes - in sucessive betas, increasing the frustration of the user as it gets slower and needs to be patched every week.

Rik · Sep 24, 2010, 10:20:47

So, time to hang it up do you think, Lance?

Gary · Sep 24, 2010, 10:32:55

Considering the long slow process Microsoft take to develop a browser, and we do not hear about its need for patching as its not open source I think Mozilla do pretty well, the patches are not a great hassle, they get done fast, that's good enough for me right now, as far as measuring browser benchmarks thats not hugely important to me when it comes down to less that a second, Opera is a good browser but I dont get on with it it, never have got on with it and I doubt I will, Safari on my Mac I like but I prefer FF, Chrome, well that's Google so I will not use it. If I was using Windows 7 I think I would become a IE9 user tbh it looks robust has great features and Microsoft has produced a good product it seems, they learnt from the Browser wars.

As I said we do not know what happens behind closed doors with MS or how many patches it needs at any given time, IE6 had some that were never patched, at least FF is more visible and if that means a few more betas I am not worried, for me 3.6.10 works well, ok not as fast on the mac as Safari but tbh thats not an issue, its usability is good for my needs and I am quite happy with that. I'll use 4 when its finished baking and not before.

mrapoc · Sep 24, 2010, 20:55:29

Given up on FF long ago, hello superfast/lightweight google

zappaDPJ · Sep 25, 2010, 06:51:48

I always used IE for an in line spell-check plug-in and some essential development tools. When the spell-checker ceased working around a year ago I switch to FF and came across Firebug which I now use daily. Up until a month or two ago I found FF to be superb but recently it's become very unstable particularly when running multiple sessions with embedded content. I've switched to Chrome for browsing/spell-checking but still use FF for web development work.

I'm hoping IE9 will provide a single solution especially now it supports Mozilla/WebKit type effects via CSS3.

Gary · Sep 25, 2010, 09:59:40

Quote from: zappaDPJ on Sep 25, 2010, 06:51:48
I always used IE for an in line spell-check plug-in and some essential development tools. When the spell-checker ceased working around a year ago I switch to FF and came across Firebug which I now use daily. Up until a month or two ago I found FF to be superb but recently it's become very unstable particularly when running multiple sessions with embedded content. I've switched to Chrome for browsing/spell-checking but still use FF for web development work.

I'm hoping IE9 will provide a single solution especially now it supports Mozilla/WebKit type effects via CSS3.

I have not noticed that zap, maybe a platform thing, who knows. I think on Windows boxes IE9 will be great, for me on OSX I like FF and multiple tabs work fine, could it be a dodgy extension causing your issues? Safari is much faster on OSX than FF and now it has extension I can have adblock, I just like FF I guess. OSX has a built in spell checker across the system so no worries there, but I'll let the FF4 early adopters find out how it works first

zappaDPJ · Sep 25, 2010, 10:06:07

I did find one plug-in that was causing issues, the Foxit PDF reader. I've tried FF with all the plug-ins stripped out and it still locks up particularly if I'm watching something on Sky Player and browsing in a different session. Sky Player uses Silverlight so that might be the culprit.

Rik · Sep 25, 2010, 10:33:00

Switch to PDFxChange, Zap.

zappaDPJ · Sep 25, 2010, 11:08:21

I have done Rik

Rik · Sep 25, 2010, 11:15:01

I like it much more.

Gary · Sep 27, 2010, 13:09:23

Quote from: zappaDPJ on Sep 25, 2010, 10:06:07
I did find one plug-in that was causing issues, the Foxit PDF reader. I've tried FF with all the plug-ins stripped out and it still locks up particularly if I'm watching something on Sky Player and browsing in a different session. Sky Player uses Silverlight so that might be the culprit.

I don't use Silverlight as I have not met a site yet that uses it, I have a 1TB hard drive on my skybox so don't miss much, I wish more players just used HTML5 like YouTube is trying out now.