For almost two years now, the monster programmers that make up the Gecko team have been hard at work overhauling the guts of the Firefox browser. That overhaul has included major changes like dropping the platform-specific GFX layers and replacing them with Cairo and Thebes, re-writing Layout's reflow mechanism and how we do intrinsic width calculation, building a new SQLite-based storage layer, designing and coding an off-line infrastructure for web apps, migration to Cocoa widgets on Mac with native appearance for form controls, adding more CSS2 features and bringing Gecko into compliance with ACID2, designing and implementing animated PNG support, building in the FUEL Javascript library for extension developers, updating the threading model, adding new SVG features, implemented cycle collection in XPCOM, adding HttpOnly cookie support, lots and lots of bug fixes, and more.
All of this great work has, as heaving lifting often does, destabilized the trunk nightly builds some and caused some performance regressions. It hasn't been horrible, but there also weren't a lot of compelling reasons that I thought made the instability worth it. That's starting to change as the new Firefox features built on all that great back-end work start to land and mature.
If you read this blog, you're probably just the kind of person that should be considering moving to the trunk and giving these new bits a whirl. If you're on Mac, you'll definitely appreciate the new native appearance of form controls -- I know I do. And regardless of what kind of computer you're on, I think you'll find the trunk to be an exciting place with some cool changes. You can literally watch Firefox 3 taking shape. So don't delay, download a trunk nightly and get on the testing train!
Posted by: a | May 25, 2007 9:04 PM
a, I've had no difficulty moving from Firefox 2 to the trunk. Historically, moving forward in releases is a lot safer than moving backwards.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | May 25, 2007 9:18 PM
No, thank you, I'll wait for Firefox 3 Alpha 3 with full-tested FUEL 0.2.
Posted by: Mithgol the Webmaster | May 25, 2007 10:06 PM
Sorry, I meant Firefox 3 Alpha 5, but mistyped.
Posted by: Mithgol the Webmaster | May 25, 2007 10:09 PM
lol, you realize that the point of testing alphas is that you're the one doing the "fully-testing", right? There's no way that FUEL 0.2 will be fully-tested when it ships with GPa5.
Posted by: RyanVM | May 27, 2007 5:30 AM
For years I've run trunk with app.update.channel in channel-prefs.js set to nightly, so I get a nightly update each day. It usually works OK. I lose compatibility with some extensions and every time I have a problem I have to remember to disable extensions and retry (the Nightly Tester Tools extension is invaluable for this), but on the whole it's fine and it's cool to be surprised by a brand-new feature. Usually when I have a major problem it's already discussed in Firefox Builds on forums.mozillazine.org and frequently there's a respin available fixing the problem.
So you have to put a little extra care and effort in to day-to-day browsing, but it Works For Me.
Posted by: skierpage | May 27, 2007 12:46 PM
Are you going to replace the "Firefox 2" button in your sidebar with a "Firefox trunk" button? :)
Posted by: Jesse Ruderman | May 27, 2007 4:42 PM
There's no melamine in *this* dogfood!
Posted by: Jesse Ruderman | May 27, 2007 8:55 PM
Nice one, Jesse.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | May 29, 2007 9:06 PM
If you're on Mac, you'll definitely appreciate the new native appearance of form controls -- I know I do.
That alone is enough to sell me. (The radio buttons were especially ugly.) Thanks!
Posted by: Ryan Bergeman | May 30, 2007 10:44 AM
Just a note, If you haven't tried a nighly before, don't install ontop of firefox/use your default profile, make a new profile, and make sure you run the nightlys from that profile and not your 'production/default profile', I've learned my lesson. :P