Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

So I take it that because of all the setbacks, we should start waiting for version 2, just like 1.1 was skipped to 1.5 :p - I guess WINE was in alpha for 11 or 12 years, heh.

Looking forward to the next release. The beta has been a huge step-up. Nice work.

I'm perfectly fine with waiting a little longer if that means that you're making the product more stable and secure. People complaining about missed release dates should stop and think if they'd seriously prefer to work with a buggy product prone to crashing and data insecurity just so they can get their hands on it sooner. Usually it's worth the wait... in the case of Firefox, it definately is. I know I'll be getting a top-quality browser when the waiting is over. This is also why I love id Software's philsophy "It's done when it's done". A lot of companies would do well with less strict deadlines.

Why don't you just release the RC? Sure, it needs some testing - that's why it will be labeled "RC1" and not "Release". We -- your loyal users -- will test it by using it.

Noam.

Noam, 'cos then it wouldn't genuinely be a candidate for release. At the moment it doesn't just need some testing, it needs some fixing.

Plese consider regarding these bugs:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=283214
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252371

I have to agree with Jerome. It's just common sense that rushing things makes for a bad outcome. Even if a deadline looming does make coding quite exhilerating sometimes, there's no excuse for allowing bugs - security holes especially - to creep into software through oversights caused by rushing to meet a release deadline. I can't think of any large projects that have actually hit their deadlines or been early. It's just how things seem to work. Relaxed deadlines are good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_candidate#Release_candidate

A "release candidate" is exactly what it sounds like. It should be something that has *no* known bugs that you aren't comfortable shipping with (obviously all software ships with some bugs, but a release candidate should have all the ones you intend to fix fixed). The goal is to put out the RC, have the testing community say "yup, looks good", and then only need to change the version string from "RC" to "Final" or whatever. If you plan to make changes to the software, it wasn't really a candidate for release.

(Sorry for the tangent, I'm employed as a software tester and people abusing terms like "release candidate" is a pet peeve :).

Better to release it a few days late than do what Netscape did.

I don't think that Asa et al should beat themselves to death trying to ship this week. It is not that the community has nothing to work with. FF 1.0.7 is a good production quality product, so IMHO another week or two is immaterial, unless:

1. There are some security exploits that are about to become public this week.
2. Corporates and various sponsors push hard for 1.5 for their own reasons.
3. Commitments made by the chief lizard wrangler.
4. Some obscure importance to the phrase "shipped in October"
5. Other factors that I am not aware of.

Hopefully you guys get it out by Firefox's aniversary. Firefox 1.0.X was nice but 1.5.x is better.

I agree: wait until the "RC" is your best shot at what you believe the "final release" will be.

Excuse me if this question is off topic, but I tried to "Check for updates..." today for both FF 1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5b. In each case I have received the message "A new version is available..." but when I try to upgrade have received the message that "The integrity of the update could not be verified (Contact your Administrator)".

In both cases I am subscribed to the "nightly" update channels thanks to Update Channel Selector. When switching to "default" channel or "beta" channel, I am told that no update is available.

I have also tried the trick of removing the files "active-update.xml" and "updates.xml" but where this has worked before, it does not now.

Might this be a result of the FF team working on RC1?

Yesterday I tried to update because of some problems caused by the previous update (strange menus), that didn't work, so I downloaded a nightly, reinstalled FF and that worked fine bringing me to my current build which is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051024 Firefox/1.5 - Build ID: 2005102404

So, I'm stumped. Thanks in advance for any comments you'd care to share,

Lawrence
Ithaca, NY

what does happen with users old/own searchplugins during update because of this blocker?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=306576

Lawrence, i have exactly the same problem.

why hasn't the update system been working? "there are no new updates available"

i still believe theres far too many regressions, another -rc should help to resolve some of them.

@Lawrenence & testboy: that was due to a server-side AUS issue (bug 313506). It's all fixed now, but you'll need to manually installl the latest nightly, since the update to 2005102322 was bad. :)

Hello, and thanks Rishi for your comment.

When you say I'll "need to manually install the latest nightly" ... is this a different process than manually selecting "Check for updates" from the Help menu ?

Again, if this is off topic please do feel free to send me a note using Lawrence111 at hot mail dot calm - I'd be most grateful.

Lawrence
Ithaca, NY

Manual install simply means downloading the nighly zip, deleting the two XML files you mentioned, and overwriting your existing program folder.

I had to do it as well.

In the roadmap is the release date 2 days after the lockdown date.
But you need (based on your experience) 4 or 5 days to test the release candidates. I expected (in this case) that also the release date in the roadmap should be 4 or 5 days after the lockdown date.

Agree with ff...why just hasn't the update system been working?