State of FIREFOX development?

Alex

Diamond Member
Oct 26, 1999
6,995
0
0
A RC/build was released this morning but there's no official (or unofficial for that matter) changelog yet...

I assume it fixes the 2 critical flaws uncovered earlier this week... I've also heard it fixes numerous memory leaks too.

...Which brings me to the main question...:

What's been going on with firefox?

Ever since 1.0 all we've seen is mostly security holes fixed in every release. There's been no introduction of significant features or improvements. Just wondering what they have in store for us these days...
 

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
30,672
0
0
There's been no introduction of significant features or improvements

Good. With all of the available extensions I don't see what major features people could be looking for.
 

edmicman

Golden Member
May 30, 2001
1,682
0
0
Originally posted by: Nothinman
There's been no introduction of significant features or improvements

Good. With all of the available extensions I don't see what major features people could be looking for.

I think a lot of the extended tab functions should be merged in with the base install....from what I can tell, most of the tab browsing extensions just make changes that can be altered from the about:config file, but people shouldn't have to dig into the guts of things to get that functionality, and it would be nice to have that and a few misc other things added into the core installation.

Anyway....I would think hanging around the mozillazine forums would give an indication of new developments, etc., too.
 

Hadsus

Golden Member
Aug 14, 2003
1,135
0
76
I'm pretty satisfied with the features FF has now. There is only so much that a browser needs to do and with extensions and themes available you can personalize things to your choosing. The only thing I would add is an option to magnify like in Opera. Maybe it's available already in FF and I don't it. As far as integrated email and newsreading (like in Opera) I like to keep those functions separate and out of the browser. Hopefully Thunderbird will continue to improve, but, as it stands now, it's good enough to be my newsreader and email client.
 

CTho9305

Elite Member
Jul 26, 2000
9,214
1
81
Short version:
1.0.x will ONLY ever include high-importance fixes like security fixes, and crash fixes. In the x.y.z versioning, "z" changes are only going to contain security updates or crash fixes. "y" changes can include major changes, and no "x" change has happened yet (I don't count 0.9 -> 1.0).

Long version:
You don't seem to understand how product development works. Basically, the product has different "branches" - different copies of the code. People do active day-to-day development on the "trunk", and branches periodically split from the trunk. Take a look at this picture (note that it's horribly inaccurate). The basic idea is that all bugs (bugs, feature requests, etc) get fixed on trunk (the big line), but when they want to make a release, they need a stable snapshot of the code. Trunk often breaks - if you follow the nightly releases from trunk, sometimes you'll get a browser with no scrollbars, one that crashes when you hit the back button, etc. It's no good for doing releases from, and keeping it clean would severely hurt the rate of development.

At some point, when it's getting near the time to do a release, they "freeze" the tree for a while - which means that all changes require approval from the "drivers" (they control where the project is going). Only bugfixes, low-risk features or other high-importance patches can be checked in during this time. After a while, a copy of the code is made (a "branch"), and trunk is reopened for regular development. The branch continues to require approval for each change - the purpose of the branch is to provide a stable platform and be a place where new bugs are not introduced (on trunk, people add bugs with features, while on branches people are not supposed to not add features). Once the branch has become sufficiently stable, a release is made. In the future, that branch will only receive high-importance fixes (major crash bugs, security fixes, etc). The idea is to make sure no bugs are introduced in patch releases (i.e. Firefox 1.0.3).

In the case of Firefox, 1.0.x was released from the Firefox 1.0 branch, which is based on Gecko 1.7. Since Gecko 1.7 was frozen, a HUGE number of changes have been made; curently Gecko is at 1.8 beta2. Eventually, Gecko 1.8 will be stable, and Firefox 1.1 will branch. With Firefox 1.1, you'll see all the changes that are made up through ~June... big changes that happen after that will not likely make it into 1.1.
 

sourceninja

Diamond Member
Mar 8, 2005
8,805
65
91
If you want new features, you can also download the nightly's from mozilla's ftp server. They dont always work, but 1.1 is looking good.
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
I think it would be great if they stopped worrying about silly features and focused on cleaning up the code a bit. Something that big is bound to have plenty of bugs, might as well try and find a few instead of adding more.
 

rh71

No Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
52,844
1,049
126
make it use less memory too ... is the continuously growing RAM it takes the longer/more you browse considered a bug ? How come it doesn't recover memory when you close things ?
 

CTho9305

Elite Member
Jul 26, 2000
9,214
1
81
Originally posted by: rh71
make it use less memory too ... is the continuously growing RAM it takes the longer/more you browse considered a bug ? How come it doesn't recover memory when you close things ?
It's complicated. A lot of it isn't leaks. Things like blazingly fast back will probably only make this appear worse (since now, visiting a big page, then about:blank won't free the memory for the big page).
 

n0cmonkey

Elite Member
Jun 10, 2001
42,936
1
0
Originally posted by: rh71
make it use less memory too ... is the continuously growing RAM it takes the longer/more you browse considered a bug ? How come it doesn't recover memory when you close things ?

48 reports in bugzilla for the search term of "memory use" (without the quotes).