Yet another delay hangs over release of Firefox 4

Mozilla is bracing itself for yet more beta releases and possibly another delay of its Firefox 4 browser. The open-source web tool outfit pushed out a 10th test build of Firefox 4 last week. It has now confirmed that two more betas will definitely follow before a Release Candidate version of the browser lands. "The current …

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news however, is that

there is a better alternative to Firefox 4 anyway.

www.opera.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn

You spend all day hitting F5, don't you, just waiting for your big moment. Then BANG, you hit us with another 'Opera is Great' spam comment.

And you know what, that NEVER gets tired. No siree, not even a little bit.

[Dan 55]

Ópera Mobile 10.1 on Symbian

Is that why it makes El Reg's server barf with a 400 error when you try to load a comments page meaning you have to copy the url and pop across to the Web app and paste it there to be able to see it?

Thank heavens for Opera being as pedantic over standards as Opera commentards are pedantic in this forum. It all goes to improve the user experience...

[Ammaross Danan]

In Response

As for Opera, at least FF4 displays the pages correctly, even if a handful of crap-code sites (yes, MS Hotmail) don't work 100%.

I think FF has a great model of heavily testing their releases and isn't willing to throw a beta/buggy build out in the wild posing as a release build. Too many software people do this just to make deadlines or even simply to make it to market before a competitor.

/mine's the one with a UML diagram in the pocket

[Anonymous Coward]

My goodness

I think I would use just about any other browser, if this is the effect that Opera has upon people. Scary stuff.

[majorursa]

And also...

And far better alternatives to Hotmail as well.

[Andy Farley]

I'm finding

it opens new windows instead of tabs - really annoying.

It still doesn't feel as fast as Chrome - but I'll stick with it, maybe it's the beta code.

[Phillipa Morrise]

works for me

Preferences>Tabs>Open new windows in a new tab instead ??

[Return To Sender]

habits, habits...

"... new windows instead of tabs"

Yeah, I thought it was doing that from right-clicks; until I finally noticed that "Open Link in New Window" and "Open Link in New Tab" on the right-click menu have swapped around (c/w FF3). Still trying to educate myself to stop making a small down & right move with the mouse when right-clicking a link.

Guess it just goes to show how ingrained some habits become.... old dog / new tricks etc.

[Studley]

Hotmail

"Hundreds of people... are struggling to read their emails via Microsoft's online web mail service."

This isn't browser-specific - millions of people have had the same problem for the past decade...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see Mozilla finally understanding why web standards matter.

"Being able to browse the web with Firefox means relying on third parties to maintain compatible code all the time," wrote Henri Sivonen, who is an independent contractor consulting for the Mozilla Corporation.

You write your code to the standards, and then if a site it not work, it's becase the site is not written to the standards.

This is why I use Opera, it's strict adherence to web standards is very important to me. If only more people worked it out, that if everyone used web standards compliant browsers, lazy web coders would HAVE to write and test to the same standards.

[DrXym]

Way to go AC

It must burn you up inside that people to use other browsers. That's about the only reason I can see that you leap on these threads with your general ignorance. The irony is that your harumping indignation does more to put people off using your precious browser than if you just kept your mouth shut.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK,

So tell Microsoft that

[Robert Carnegie]

Sounds like Microsoft can keep Firefox 4 in beta forever

Every time it's due for release, they can change something else and break it. "Oh dear, Hotmail now only works with Internet Explorer 13 and you view your e-mail as an H.264 video of your favourite television anchorman reading it to you. You can't have Jon Stewart, we don't like him, but you.can have Stephen Colbert. They say he's ironic, whetever -that- means! Then they laughed! Why did they laugh?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Conspiracy theory!

But it's a pretty good one.

Microsoft product obstructing the next release of Firefox. Isn't that a funny coincidence?

[mrobaer]

hrm.... really?

"The problem begins after clicking on an email to preview it or going into a different folder. When I do this, the page continually reloads," wrote one tester.

Well that's been happening with me for ages using version Firefox 3.6.13 while checking Hotmail. I don't remember exactly when it started, but I do remember it didn't happen immediately after a Firefox upgrade. I just took it for what it's worth, Microsoft messing more code up.

[DrXym]

Not necessarily

The problem these days is that most web 2.0 sites are a highly obfuscated mass of JS so Microsoft would be in the best position to assist trying to figure out what the problem is. They'd have the unobfuscated source on a dev box to test with. I wonder how far that help would extend. It may even be that it's a case that MS worked around a bug in FF3.6 and now their workaround is biting them in a functional FF4.x.

[stonedyak]

1 year release cycle is about average

Mozilla have only once managed to produce a major Firefox release in under a year (Firefox 2.0 back in 2006 took 11 months).

Firefox 3.6 was released in January last year, so they're about on track. Looking forward to using Firefox 4 as my main browser... should be well worth the wait.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use FF4 as my main browser

The only bug I've noticed is that flash windows seem not to scroll correctly.

[Lars]

Good

The release cycle is not important. Lots of good software is destroyed bye those who force release cycles for, typically Christmas or something or release just before or after the competing company.

Much better to release when the product is ready.

In this case MS seems to be the problem and not Mozilla, however.

[TC]

Wrong conclusion?

I am sure that the article did not state - Microsoft Hotmail is the only thing stopping Firefox going into RC / Release - just seems a few people have drawn that conclusion. Is there not only one conclusion to this story - Firefox is not ready for RC and has bugs remaining, some a fault of the program and others a fault or poor sites?

[amehaye]

Mozilla should change the release cycle

There is a nice presentation by the Google Chrome team regarding their release schedule: https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dg63dpc6_4d7vkk6ch

The main point is preventing the infamous death march which affects so many projects. Mozilla should take notes. I, for one, don't want their developers burning out.

[Jean-Luc]

Speaking of other browsers

Is it just me or is Safari on the iPad pretty braindead?

- Seems to crash often.

- Its rendering of Google newsgroups is atrocious.

- And it is pretty clueless at selecting text within a gmail message, always selects everything.

Not entirely sure, but it seems worse than the iPhone Safari. Of course, there's a bunch of webpages I would never have been looking at on an iPhone.

The world would be alright if I used Opera on the iFad. I just need to see the light and surely one of its fanbois will remind me about it.

p.s. Biggest thing I would like from FF4 is restraing in RAM hogging. Hah, likely.

[Flybert]

@hotmail ?!? .. really ?

there are still 100s using hotmail ? .. are these people having problems with their @aol accounts ?

please, is this 1999 or April 1 (?) .. people I know at microsoft don't even use hotmail ..

Firefox needs to load badly written pages from the makers of a crap browser served from the maker of crap webserver / mailserver software ?

<shakes head> .. really ?

[Mark Aggleton]

Waiting for the flames

I'm quite happy with IE9 - though El Reg pages are a bit odd at times

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotus 1-2-3

"Hotmail is not finished until it breaks every browser except Exploder"

Old habits die hard people.

Paris; coz she's a creature of habit

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is not about Opera

I know some people think that every browser thread should be, but, sorry... it isn't.

[Jim 59]

Opera

I have been a FF user since it was launched. Confounded by the Hotmail bug in FF 4b10, I tried Opera. The experience is enjoyable - functionality is about the same as FF, the UI is slick and the speed is refreshing.

Funny thing is though, Opera seems attract fanboys of a particularly silly and irksome kind. Regular fanboyism is a bit of fun - Linux vs Windows, iPhone vs Android - it's all good clean banter.

But you dare mention "Opera" in any forum, and every 13 year-old in the UK immediately logs to berate us, repeating the party line ad nauseum. It's becoming the worst "feature" of the Opera browser - it is used by jerks - who wants to be in that club?

[Doug Glass]

You noticed that too huh?

An endless supply of chuckles and of course the occasional belly laugh.

Paris because she has a belly and she laughs too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh ?

I'm using FF4B11 (yes FF4B11 - it's in the mozilla beta repos on OpenSuse ) and all seems to run pretty well and can log into Hotmail OK.

[Bilgepipe]

Memory

Have they fixed the memory leaks yet? Until it uses less than the 800Mb it regularly swallows up with five or six tabs open I don't consider FF to be out of beta.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that like

Waiting for Windows to stop blanking out all the icons on the desktop and then redrawing them all again slowly?

True, though, that (at least the Windows version of) FF is in severe danger of bloating itself out of existence.

But, remember, it isn't over until the fat lady sings, which is what happens in an ....

Oh! Sorry, I nearly said it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Memory

No memory leaks here (64bit Ubuntu), with 25+ tabs open. But now that you mention it, Chrome had a memory leak for months. I don't know if it's fixed because I've been successfully using FF4 for a few weeks.