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Why is Firefox releasing major version number changes so often?

  • 1 reply
  • 298 have this problem
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  • Last reply by mascondante

dhinged
dhinged
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I just received Firefox 4 a few months ago, and now I'm getting prompted to update to Firefox 5, and I just read they are planning on releasing Firefox 6 in August. This is insanity! I am a developer and some of the add-ons I use are not compatible with Firefox 5 so I will not be upgrading. I don't see why Firefox needs a major version number upgrade every few months; Firefox 3 was around for years, and they simply made minor version number changes, which didn't always break my add-ons. It's also difficult to promise, "Oh yes, boss, we will be Firefox 3, 4, 5, and 6 compatible..."

I just received Firefox 4 a few months ago, and now I'm getting prompted to update to Firefox 5, and I just read they are planning on releasing Firefox 6 in August. This is insanity! I am a developer and some of the add-ons I use are not compatible with Firefox 5 so I will not be upgrading. I don't see why Firefox needs a major version number upgrade every few months; Firefox 3 was around for years, and they simply made minor version number changes, which didn't always break my add-ons. It's also difficult to promise, "Oh yes, boss, we will be Firefox 3, 4, 5, and 6 compatible..."

All Replies (1)

mascondante
mascondante
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Yeah now the beta is all the way up to Firefox 9. IE t00k 16 years to get to version 9. Firefox is almost there in 9 years. Do realize the project has been split into several channels for rapid development but I don't think the changes constitute going major revision happy like Firefox has done since 4.0. Especially when the original plan was once 4 was reached only minor work would be done to the browser.