Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Im sure youre referring to techcrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/19/firefox-20-alpha-released/

I know, I hate him doing stupid things like that too! Reid (who he shamed for not mentioning a non-release) should have told him to not report it or something.

Now Slashdot thinks the same thing. At least there are a number of comments right near the top dispelling it... I tried to tag it with the word "wrong", too, not sure if it went through properly.

Are we really about to release an alpha where adding a bookmark silently fails (330052), bookmarking all tabs doesn't work (330929), and autocomplete is useless (330125, 330126)?

Why?

I hope the answer isn't "it's for extension developers", because right now it's much more "Firefox 1.5 with a few things broken" than a preview of how Firefox 2 will look for extension developers. Extension developers cannot yet see how their extensions will interact with the planned new Firefox features (or the planned extension manager changes) because those changes haven't happened yet.

While I'm being negative about this alpha: How will Firefox 2.0 decide whether to re-import bookmarks.html or use the bookmarks_history.sqlite in the profile? I hope it isn't the case that anyone who tries Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 now, returns to Firefox 1.5.0.x, and later updates to Firefox 2.0, will find months of bookmarks missing.

Jesse Ruderman: did you even READ the previous comments?

Leaks of this nature seem to be a "feature" of open source development.

Btw, kudos on the font-based UI of this blog! I would like to emulate it..

Reid: Jesse knows what he's talking about. The alpha isn't out, but it's scheduled for tomorrow (AFAIK), and all of those bugs he mentioned are probably going to be in it.

Which bug did the naming change land in?

From a quick look at Bonsai for MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH, it looks like the version number change was made in bug 308973, "Rebrand Firefox trunk and 1.8 branch builds to avoid confusion". Ironically, the change contributed to another kind of confusion.

What gets me is that idiots keep linking to the automated hourly Tinderbox instead of the much better
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla1.8/ (for 2.0a1) and http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla1.8.0/ (for 1.5.01) if they must link to nightly builds.

A couple of idiot examples are: http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=410 saying that 2.0a1 is for download since Mar.17 and http://www.cybernetnews.com/?p=394 (for saying 1.5.0.2 is out as soon as version changed) while link to tinderbox in both.

To give an idea of how many sites jumped the gun shortly after the Mozilla 1.8.0 Branch was changed from 1.5.0.1 to 1.5.0.2 they then thought it was released/out.
And to make matter worse they link to the Tinderbox, the worst of all links they could have used. See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=391322

It appears that I have been mentioned in the above post by Steve. I am the current author of cybernetnews.com and I thought I would mention my reasoning for the posts.

Software only gets better by having people test it and most people wait for an official release before they jump in on it. This is good thinking but people also need to test the software inbetween releases. I posted about the Tinderbox builds because I had used them and they ran smoothly without any noticible glitches in the new features. For that reason I posted links to the Tinderbox builds instead of the nightlies to ensure the users who came to my site that they would have a similar experience as to what I had. I didn't want to post a link to a nightly, have it change, and then have users complain because it screws EVERYTHING up.

Lastly, I didn't post with the Tinderbox builds and try to cover them up saying that they are the official release, but some people (such as SlashDot) took it that way. I clearly state in my postings that they are Tinderbox builds and they may not be what is officially released. I didn't mean to confuse people in any way and in one of my postings I even explained more about the Tinderbox builds.

I hope this clears some things up on my posting. My site has a strong focus on testing software before it is released so I try and give my users the information they need to test software.

----------
Ryan Wagner
CyberNet Technology News

I'm not referring to the alpha version but generally to Firefox. When I got Firefox 1.0, I was excited, cause it was THE Browser. Firefox 1.0.7 made it better. However Firefox 1.5 was really disappointing, there was nothing new/innovative features there for us to call it a version.

I really hope you guys are working on tons of cool and INNOVATIVE stuff for 2.0 and not just ripping stuff from IE7 and Opera. Give us the old Firefox.

*Sigh* I know I'm gonna get flamed here but I'm no hyprocrite.

All the best
~ CC [http://chronotron.wordpress.com]

I am hoping that this all gets cleared up soon. I am at a discontent with 1.5, and hope that 2.0 steps up to the plate and hits a homer. That said, what makes a tinderbox worse than a nightly? The tinderbox is constantly updated more than the nightly, so it allows for mass testing of fresh changes.

this one commented on you asa, :D
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060320-6416.html

@chris: I really hope you guys are working on tons of cool and INNOVATIVE stuff for 2.0 and not just ripping stuff from IE7 and Opera. Give us the old Firefox.

excuse me, what are you talking about.. ripping stuff from ie7 and opera?

Hi - I’m afraid I fell for the post on TechCrunch, and installed the Tinderbox build, thinking it would be alright.
But now I want to uninstall it, and the uninstaller (or lack of) is causing me much grief. What’s the best way of my getting rid of it, so that I can get back to using 1.5 in a proper complete way?

@sachin:
Just install Firefox 1.5 as usual and overwrite the current installation. Should be fine.
You may delete the file named 'bookmarks_history.sqlite' in your profile folder so that your bookmarks and history can be reimported when installing Firefox 2 later on.

THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL RELEASE! leave it to these idiot bloggers, and these idiot news resources to stir up dust about a none existant product.. now i'm mad at mozilla for making me wait! and not releasing unfinished products.. because these stupid bloggers don't know anything, and they are absolutely useless. stop posting and let Asa, and Mozilla do all the talking.

@ashle, you need to get some sleep or something. i agree this is not the official release but it is available to download official release or not, it's stable.

@asa, i know this is not the right place report feature request/bug reports but, I think that when firefox ships with tabs not shown by default is not the best move, because the user doesn't know of middle clicking, right clicking>open link in new tab, they will simply see firefox with no tabs, questions pop up, especially if they are "totally" new to tab browsing.

Ok the 2.0a1 is Officially out now.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/

Note this part:
Bon Echo Alpha 1 is a developer preview release of our next generation Firefox browser and it is being made available for testing purposes only. Bon Echo Alpha 1 is intended for web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox 1.x should not use Bon Echo Alpha 1.

Ok. Sorry if if it caused any inconveniences.