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Mozilla The Internet

Firefox 1.1 Scrapped 482

Posted by Zonk from the doing-it-up-right dept.
An Anonymous Reader writes: "The Firefox team has decided to scrap the planned 1.1 release (already in Alpha 2) and instead release the final version as 1.5 due to the significant number of bug fixes and changes. The 1.5 feature complete beta is expected next month." From the article: "We are planning for a Firefox 2.0 and 3.0, but will divide the planned work over (at this point) three major Milestones, 1.5 (September 2005), 2.0 (unscheduled) and 3.0 (unscheduled). All major development work will be done on the Mozilla trunk, and these releases will coincide with Gecko version revs."
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Firefox 1.1 Scrapped More

Firefox 1.1 Scrapped

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  • First Prime Factorization Post (Score:3, Funny)

    by 2*2*3*75011 ( 900132 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:13PM (#13125155)
    1.1 = 11/(2*5)

    • Mod parent up (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MyLongNickName ( 822545 )
      This is more amusing than 99.9% (3*3*3*37/2*2*2*5*5*5) of all the trolls out there. I generally dislike trolls, but this guy is unique, and worth of at least a short-term boost in karma.
  • These Mozilla folks need to make up their minds...
    • Then again, I'm not really complaining about it. All the available extensions out there have got to be giving the Mozilla development team more to consider for the next stable releases. Consider, also, that the other (major) alternatives are broken and commercial (IE and Opera). Not that the latter is bad, but for such a fantastic browser to be completely free and have a wide range of extendability is something that must be accounted for. Then again, if they've already changed the release schedule once, wh
      • Not that I use it, but I feel I must point out that IE is free. Isnt that kind of why opera gets crushed? It's a commercial software package squashed between an awesome free package that you need to download, and a sub-par package that likely comes with your computer. P.S. I dont use opera either.

  • Great. (Score:2)

    by XanC ( 644172 )
    I was really looking forward to 1.1. Beta next month, and it's scheduled for release in (brace yourself): "??? 2005".

    • Re:Great. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Linus Torvaalds ( 876626 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:38PM (#13125497)

      it's scheduled for release in (brace yourself): "??? 2005".

      They must be planning to profit somehow.

    • I was really looking forward to any release with SVG compiled in and enabled, and not taking huge amounts of CPU to render.

      As it is now, to get SVG you have to manually configure it in and compile yourself (or add USE="mozsvg" on gentoo), and manually add a key svg.enabled=true in about:config.

  • Scrapped? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:14PM (#13125167)
    Wouldn't it be more appropriate and less alarmist to say that Firefox 1.1 will instead be called Firefox 1.5?

  • if you're gonna just throw it away... (Score:5, Funny)

    by idiotdevel ( 654397 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:14PM (#13125172)
    can i have it?

  • One small keystroke for a man... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Miros ( 734652 ) * on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:14PM (#13125175)
    One small keystroke for a man, one giant leap forward for verison obscurity.
    • One small keystroke for a man, one giant leap forward for version obscurity.

      At least they are not doing the asinine thing that Sun's marketing has done with Java, with first going from version 1.2 to "Java 2" and now "Java 5".

      • Or, say, what Microsoft did with Windows, going from version 3.11 to version 95.

        Or Xbox to Xbox 360, so as not to seem lesser than Playstation 2.

        Actually, they also did a big leap with Word, so they could synchronize Word for Windows with Word for Mac.

        Marketers always screw around with version numbers, hoping to make things seem "bigger, better, newer."

  • So shouldn't the headline be (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:15PM (#13125180)
    "Firefox 1.1 renamed"?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:16PM (#13125194)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • They really need to fix autoupdate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:16PM (#13125200)
    I was running 1.0.4 and just happened to notice the mozilla.org slashblurb about a new version. I checked and the new version was 1.0.6 which had major security updates, yet when I did Tools->Options->Advanced->Software update nothing was found (and this is simply a manual way to trigger the normal update mechanism). If the update software can't find a new version with major security updates then what good is it?

  • Version Numbers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hachey ( 809077 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:17PM (#13125207)
    I'm just glad we are out of the 0.X realm. That was really hurting Firefox's street cred to be below 1.0 --- I'm for the rapid growth of Firefox's version number. We gotta catch up IE7 and Opera 8.


    --
    Check out the Uncyclopedia.org [uncyclopedia.org]:
    The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing [uncyclopedia.org] and Pong! the Movie [uncyclopedia.org]!

  • The version number game (Score:3, Interesting)

    by riflemann ( 190895 ) <riflemann@@@bb...cactii...net> on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:17PM (#13125217)
    Interesting to see that FF has to play catcup on the version number game.

    Are people really that silly to think that the (soon to be released) IE7.0 is almost 6 versions "ahead" of FF?

    I guess this is a sacrifice we need to make to get some of the mum&dad market.

  • Seems to be bigger jumps (Score:4, Insightful)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:24PM (#13125288)
    It now looks like what was 1.1 will be 1.5, what was 1.5 will be 2.0 and what was 2.0 will be 3.0

    This makes some sense, a lot more work on what was 1.1 has taken place (mainly on the automatic update and enterprise deployment side) so it warrants a 1.5 designation.

    Whether 2.0 and 3.0 will be significantly different then we won't know until the time but as long as the product is good people will use it. I used it back in the 0.x days (before it was even called Firefox) and it still beat IE and the Mozilla suite in many ways. So whatever version numbering scheme they use is fine by me.

  • Can you read this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:26PM (#13125315) Journal
    I've spent the morning reading WONTFIX bugs on the Firefox text zoom issue. I'm feeling down on the browser just now.

    There is no good option for making text zoom permanent if you have bad eyes. You can kludge by zooming default fonts and then disabling everything else in CSS.

    The people working on Firefox are not interested in fixing this because "text zoom breaks page layouts." The fix that they've decided on, which may or may not come someday, is a page zoom feature that zooms everything. (Raise your hand if you love sideways scrolling.)

    I am amazed at the lack of consideration for people with bad eyes -- it's not a small number of people either. Mozilla composer bends over backwards to enforce alt tags for images, but when it comes to usability nobody cares.

    Maybe we'll start to see some consideration of this sort of thing once the average age of open source coders hits 50 and they find themselves having to squint more often.
    • Isn't there a firefox extension to do that? I read yesterday about that. SHouldn't be hard to find.
      • There probably is an extension. The one I was able to find hadn't been updated in some time and didn't work with the last few releases, but I didn't scour the extensions page. I could probably find something if I were interested in using this myself.

        Saying "that doesn't matter, it's fixed by an extension" is one of the big problems with Firefox. This is a basic usability issue. Is it going to be fixed in the browser itself, or will it get shuffled off into extension-land where it has to depend on some

        • Re:Can you read this? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:56PM (#13125708) Homepage
          Well, no, it's not a better option. For those who don't need the feature, it makes the browser bloated.

          What they need is to include these crucial extensions in the installer as optional packages. The firefox installer should come with a laundry-list of important extensions nicely bundled together and thoroughly documented so that a user can either a) just get the minimum or b) make it a point to grab the tools they need. It keeps the core browser light, but it means that people with specific (but common) wants/needs don't need to go hunting around the extension page.

          Simple packs like "Usability", "Internet Explorer Familiarity", "Web Developer", "Power User", "Multinational", etc. that bundle together commonly used relevant extensions would go a long way.

    • Re:Can you read this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:33PM (#13125416) Homepage Journal
      Just get Opera. For years (as in, since their Windows 3.1 days) they've supported a zoom feature that enlarges text, graphics, and even Flash animations. They also support CSS-based modifications that, with one or two mouse clicks, render a site easily readable by anyone with bad eyes, no tolerance for Comic Sans, and/or people who disagree with the decision to render a page in 7-point grey-on-white text [nynewsday.com].

      Firefox and its army of extension developers will eventually re-implement Opera, but in the meantime the real thing is much better.

    • Re:Can you read this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:36PM (#13125472)
      They do have a preference where you can set the minimum font size which would make things easy to read for you while not zooming text that's already big enough to read.

      Look in prefereces/options for fonts and there's a pref to set the minimum font size. It's not like it's a hidden pref or anything it's in the standard dialog
      • Yes, this is a great feature even for people with good eyes. I set my minimum to 10 and it really helps on a few pages where the author apparently runs in 640 x 480 and uses 7px fonts.
    • Thumbs down, Firefox.

    • There is no good option for making text zoom permanent if you have bad eyes.

      Have you tried specifying a CSS user stylesheet? According to the CSS specification, user styles are supposed to supercede any styles delivered by the content provider (excepting those flagged !important, which almost no one does)...
    • I feel I should point out that if you're running Windows, one of FF's abilities is to zoom the text or enlarge it simply by holding down ctrl and scrolling the mouse wheel (if you have one) to make text larger or smaller. It's not permanent, but it's alot simpler than having to use some additional plugin to make it work. It only takes a mere moment to get the text to the size you want.

      I haven't tested this on my Linux box, as it's primarily in command-line mode for about 95% of the time I'm using it.
    • Two questions:

      How hard is it to hold *ctrl* and roll the mouse wheel?

      And when was the last time you had your eyes examined? Consider bifocals; they blend the lines in the lenses nowadays, and can even optimize for your average distance to the monitor screen.

    • Re:Can you read this? (Score:3, Informative)

      by slapout ( 93640 )
      Try Opera. I don't know if you can make the zooming permanent, but the "text zoom" doesn't "break page layouts" in Opera.
  • ...they stopped new development on Firefox altogether and got Thunderbird a little more stable. Oh.....and they need to get that lightning calendar [mozilla.org] integration working, too. Then I could actually think about moving my organization over...

    • Re:I'd be happy if (Score:3, Informative)

      by linuxci ( 3530 )
      Different people work on Firefox than work on Thunderbird and lightning. Most of the developers work on whatever interests them or wherever their particular skills lie.

      People working on Firefox is not stopping those who want to work on other projects doing so (and Thunderbird is coming on well too, just a little bit more slowly than Firefox)

  • Alas, SVG (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BobGregg ( 89162 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:30PM (#13125369) Homepage
    The timing of this seems very unfortunate. With 1.1, we were likely only a month or so away from having real, native SVG support in a major browser - and likely *before* IE7 was released. That might have given SVG a chance to be noticed for real by the public in a way that hasn't happened yet; maybe even enough to put pressure on the IE team to actually implement it themselves.

    With the new delays, there's every chance that the IE7 betas will be out before SVG has a chance to become noticed by the general public. That just seems... unfortunate.

    • This is just a version number change. It'd be released the same time whether it is called 1.1, 1.5, 2.0, 8.0 or Mozilla XP

  • Slashdot should be more positive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linebackn ( 131821 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:33PM (#13125419)
    Does slashdot suddenly have something against Mozilla / Firefox? This reminds me of the "Mozilla suite discontinued" and the "Thunderbird (some version) canceled" stories. These could EASILY be re-worded to put a more positive spin on it.

    How about: Firefox leaps ahead to 1.5!

    Going on to describe: The vast number of improvements to Firefox has warranted a larger version increase, skipping over 1.1 the next release will be 1.5...

    Similarly the previous stories could have been "Mozilla.org focuses exclusively on Firefox" and "Thunderbird flies ahead to version (number)".

    Of course it didn't help the previous two were copied out of context from Mozillazine articles. Hmm... I don't see anything about this at all on Mozillazine yet.

    Anyway Slashdot should be trying to help Mozilla.org and Firefox, not trying to sensationalize every change.

  • Corporate deployments (Score:5, Interesting)

    by plazman30 ( 531348 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:34PM (#13125421) Homepage
    Having worked in a corporate infrastrucuture for far too long, I have to sadly say, that the biggest enterprise drawback to the use of FireFox is the lack of a Admin kit, that would allow you to customize which extensions you push out with Firefox.

    It would also be nice to have an MSI based installer for easy deployments via exisiting application deployment engines (AD, SMS, Zenworks, etc) and the ability to customize the broser via Group Policy.

    I know all of these only apply to the Windows world, but I think these kind of things would help Firefox in the long run.

    • Re:Corporate deployments (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here you have an unofficial MSI for firefox [mozillazine.org]. It also has an administrative template, so that'll ease a lot of the corporate deployment needs.

      BTW, if you didn't know, part of the 1.5 work is related to create an official MSI.

    • Re:Corporate deployments (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bogie ( 31020 )
      Posts like this bother me. They really do. Here is someone who for the sake of arguement really is someone in IT who works with large corporations and has the authority to roll Firefox out.

      One of the things he desperately needs to get Firefox out there is an MSI installer version.

      Any yet he couldn't be bothered to type "firefox msi" into google where he'd fine exactly what he is looking for. I know Firefox isn't perfect, but come on don't go putting up artifical barriers to it when a solution is so easily

      • Re:Corporate deployments (Score:5, Insightful)

        by plazman30 ( 531348 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @02:12PM (#13126849) Homepage
        Would you roll out IE 7 to 2000 desktops with a MSI created by someone other than Microsoft? I sure as hell wouldn't. And I am not going to push out an unofficial MSI of FireFox to that many seats.

        Corporate IT is all about ass covering, and you can't cover your ass with an unofficial MSI.

        • Re:Corporate deployments (Score:4, Insightful)

          by YU Nicks NE Way ( 129084 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @02:55PM (#13127410)
          Please, somebody mod the parent up. When a Fortune 500 company makes a major IT move, they spend months prepping for it, looking at edge cases. What if the node to which we're deploying is unreliably connected? What if we run out of disk half way through? Will the changes roll back if the moron user turns the box off during a dritical phase when it looks like nothing's happening? etc., etc., etc. They depend on the vendor having already tested the main execution path has been thoroughly tested.

          An untested and unofficial MSI? I don't think so

  • Is there any plan to ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by roubles ( 716740 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:36PM (#13125461)
    Is there any plan to start merging the most popular extensions into the browser itself ?

    I've noticed the biggest complaint people have with upgrades is that they render their extensions/themes incompatible.

    Also, it must be a pain for the extension authors to maintain extensions across so many different releases.

    If something is exteremely popular, maybe it should be part of the browser to begin with. Especially since so many people want it.

    Doing so will mitigate the upgrade issues, and they'll end up with a more functional browser.

    • Re:Is there any plan to ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Will2k_is_here ( 675262 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @01:00PM (#13125777)
      This is antithetical to Firefox's mission. Give the user a capable browser that contains no bloat (ie. stuff some users don't want).

      I looked at the 5 most popular extensions on mozilla's update site. The top 4 may be pretty popular but that's a bad idea since Mozilla would be guaranteed a lawsuit.

      The fifth is ForecastFox and a lot of people (myself included) don't want it in there.
  • I understand having odd systems for compilers/kernels because you stream.. but this is a webbrowser... how many people have more than 1 copy of firefox installed?

    Just increment the fucking revision count and be done with.

    Tom

  • Version-Number Junkies? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by One Childish N00b ( 780549 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:59PM (#13125745) Homepage
    Is this a jump to appease the version-number junkies? to jump 1/2 a version number closer to IE7 or Opera 8? What is this for, because regardless of how many bugfixes they've thrown in (yeah yeah, and changes, too) it wont warrant a leap to Firefox 1.5 - coming from a self-confessed version-number chaser (posting from a Deer Park Alpha nightly I downloaded hours ago) this just smacks of WinAmp's jump from 3 to 5 just to sound like they'd 'advanced'. What happened to the old system?

    (*).*.* is for rewrites or when the software reaches a seriously major milestone.
    *.(*).* is for major bugfixes and changes, like this release will have.
    *.*.(*) is for minor bugfixes.

    Now I understand the logic of PHBs preferring 'Firefox 1.5' to 'Firefox 1.1.34g' or whatever, but it's sad to see the the old system of version numbers for categorisation seems to have descended into a battle of "look, we have teh numborz!!!". Why not just call it Firefox 9 and get one over on MS and Opera in the number stakes?

    • Re:Version-Number Junkies? (Score:4, Informative)

      by BillyBlaze ( 746775 ) <tomfelker@gmail.com> on Thursday July 21, 2005 @02:48PM (#13127323)
      As I understand it, it's not at all a political move, it's certainly not just to have a higher number. As I understand it, the way Firefox development works is, there's the CVS HEAD, which I guess you could consider similar to the 2.5 kernel series back in the day - unstable and quickly changing. Every so often, they make a branch off the head that will become a stable release. These releases are kind of dead ends, but that allows them to be more stable and have more static APIs. So what this article actually means is, a while after the 1.0 fork, they started the 1.1 fork, but now they've decided that even the 1.1 fork is too far behind the head, and so they've opted to focus their stabilization efforts on the 1.5 fork, which already includes bugfixes that would otherwise have to be backported.

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