Mozilla Firefox 1.1 scraped; will be 1.5

I assume you mean "scrapped"...

I was suspecting this, since Asa in his "Ask Asa" nr 17 kept saying "the next major Firefox release", and not "Firefox 1.1".

:-)

Comment by David Naylor at July 21, 2005 12:52 PM | Permalink

I sortof feel this is a bit of a shame, since there won't be that many new user features in 1.1 (now 1.5). It might come across as bloating the version number just to increase PR downloads. (Which in a way wouldn't be the end of the world - everybody else does it, right?)

The main new features are basically

- New and much improved update system
- Draggable tabs
- Improved prefs (not really a feature)
- Improved download handling (not a very visible improvement for most people)
- Error pages instead of dialogs.
- FastBack (or whatever) (good, but almost invisible)
- Safari migration (useful)
- Improved Gecko (basically nothing to the "average" user)
- Sanitize, which IMNSHO really needs a new name - it sounds far too much like a toilet-associated feature. (Haven't thought of anything better myself though...)

Comment by David Naylor at July 21, 2005 01:19 PM | Permalink

*PR & downloads*

Comment by David Naylor at July 21, 2005 01:20 PM | Permalink

Well, I think the bumping of the version number is entirely justified.
And it doesn't surprise me not much, only a bit.

Yeah, I guess, when I think about it a little it isn't entirely unjustified, as I first felt.

Comment by David Naylor at July 21, 2005 02:34 PM | Permalink

As I say over in the Mozillazine forums, this is my guess on why they did it. Originally, the 1.1 release was designed to resync with the trunk (after the fiasco with more branch developement than was intended), and improve gnome/hig compliance. that was it. but now they added so many new features beyond their original plan, enough of their 1.5 goals have been met, that they think the higher version number is justified.

asa's blog just confirmed my previous post.

Fastback is *instantly* recognizable. If you've used Firefox 1.0.x, it might even be the first thing you notice.

Also, don't forget per-site user stylesheets! Those are pretty fun.

be carefull what you say as /. picked up the story and used "scrapped" which created some confusion as well as negative spin. after some reading, i understand the reasons for and support this decision.