In order to make sure that the Firefox 1.5 release is of the highest quality, and to get some very widespread testing of our update system, we're inserting one additional beta into the schedule. If all goes well, we'll have wrapped up our Firefox 1.5 beta 1 by next week. After that, we'll take some time to respond to the feedback we get and ship a second beta sometime in the following three or four weeks. After that, we'll have our final release candidates and then Firefox 1.5.
If you know of any serious issues with update that should be taken care of before beta 1, please nominate those using the blocking1.8b4? flag in Bugzilla. If you know of serious bugs that don't impact our update system, consider nominating them for the second beta by setting the blocking1.8b5? flag. (I know those flags are a bit confusing -- they refer to the core Mozilla/Gecko code and not the Firefox application version. Just remember that 1.8b4 is Firefox 1.5 beta 1 and 1.8b5 is Firefox 1.5 beta 2.)
This does mean that our schedule will be pushed out a bit further but the added testing and bugfixing will help to ensure that Firefox 1.5 is of the highest possible quality and that all future updates and upgrades are easy and convenient for our tens of millions of users.
You can read more about the schedule specifics over at the developer news blog.
Posted by: Lawrence | August 30, 2005 9:50 PM
"the Firefox 15 release"
That supposed to be "1.5" ?
Thanx
-uQ
Posted by: uQ | August 30, 2005 10:53 PM
"Does this mean that those of us selecting "Check for Updates" from the "Help" menu, will be ungraded to Beta 1, 2, etc (as outlined in the developer news blog), when those versions become available?"
Unless i'm mistaken, Firefox 1.0.x users will only get an update when Firefox 1.5 will be released. After all, they did not get an update for Firefox 1.0.5 RC, only the final 1.0.5.
Posted by: Mathieu | August 31, 2005 4:01 AM
Mathieu, I think Lawrence (correct me if I'm wrong) meant upgrading from an Alpha build to a Beta build, or from Beta 1, to Beta 2. As for the answer, I don't know.
uQ - No, it's correct. By shipping with a version number of 15, people will think Firefox is more than twice as good as IE7 :) (I'm sure it's meant to say 1.5...)
Posted by: djc | August 31, 2005 4:24 AM
I've noticed in Firefox nightlies, loading many large images leaks a lot of ram, is this known?
Posted by: Sandra | August 31, 2005 4:39 AM
"I've noticed in Firefox nightlies, loading many large images leaks a lot of ram, is this known?"
I think so. The last bug was uber spammed with comments, so they lied that they had fixed the issue and people should to start a new one. Maybe one is already, but it leaks like hell anyway, especially when browsing e.g. DeviantArt and other graphics heavy sites.
Posted by: Jug | August 31, 2005 6:04 AM
That's good.
Posted by: Joe Anderson | August 31, 2005 6:44 AM
I've read today that in conversation between MS France and some newspaper IE7 release date leaked and that it will be launched in December.
If you postponed this release so long, I think that you should try to make it appear at near the same time, and as it may appear a bit later than you initially planned, add some not so hard features like polished Feedview integration which was planned and then removed.
Posted by: Ivan Icin | August 31, 2005 7:10 AM
djc said:
"Mathieu, I think Lawrence (correct me if I'm wrong) meant upgrading from an Alpha build to a Beta build, or from Beta 1, to Beta 2. As for the answer, I don't know."
Yes, that's correct: will the present Alpha users be upgraded to the beta when the beta is available? it seems that would be a natural state of affairs to me.
Thanks again :)
Lawrence
Ithaca, NY
Posted by: Lawrence | August 31, 2005 7:41 AM
"Yes, that's correct: will the present Alpha users be upgraded to the beta when the beta is available?"
Whoops, I should have read twice before posting. Sorry.
I have no idea of what will happen to alpha users. Many changes were made to the update system, even since alpha 2, so it is pretty a risky business, at least for me, to guess what will happen.
Posted by: Mathieu | August 31, 2005 2:46 PM
Are there any GUI bugs fixed?
See here...
Posted by: alex_t | August 31, 2005 3:05 PM
alex_t: #13 is blocking Beta 2 (I wrote the patch and Asa approved it). Several of the other issues have been fixed recently too, but not all of these are getting branch checkin. I'm going to make a personal effort to tackle the remaining issues on that page once focus returns to the trunk.
- Chris
Posted by: Chris C | August 31, 2005 3:22 PM
O.K, I just got e-mail reply from Asa, so my question is out of... h-m-m... question? Argh.... CAN'T... SENTENCE... PROPERLY... :-X
Posted by: alex_t | August 31, 2005 3:22 PM
To Chris C:
That's great! Thank you!
Posted by: alex_t | August 31, 2005 3:23 PM
Firefox leaks memory when browsing image- and JS-heavy sites, prime example being deviantART.com. Yesterday, FF went up to 1.3Gb of RAM after about 4 hours of browsing.
Will Firefox 1.5 finally support the soft hyphen, ­, CORRECTLY?
Posted by: Matthias 'moeffju' Bauer | September 1, 2005 5:55 PM
Greetings:
Does this mean that those of us selecting "Check for Updates" from the "Help" menu, will be ungraded to Beta 1, 2, etc (as outlined in the developer news blog), when those versions become available?
Many thanks,
Lawrence
Ithaca, NY