No New Firefox Before the End of the Year
Mozilla had long been promising version Firefox 3.6 by the end of this year. According to their website, that goal has now been pushed back to early 2010. Also, version 4.0, which promises to be a major update, has been pushed back to late 2010 or early 2011. This is leaving some Mozilla fans with a case of the grumpies. However, they need to remember that all good things are worth waiting for.
Didn’t we learn any lessons from Windows Vista? Didn’t we all witness first-hand what happens when a company rushes a product out the door before it’s truly ready to be on the market? If the folks at Mozilla feel they need more time to deliver a solid product, then I say we give it to them and stop griping about it!
The big new feature in version 3.6 is incorporation of the Personas plug-in that lets people easily customize the browser’s appearance, though behind the scenes there’s also been work to speed up the browser’s launch time, improve security, and make some other changes. There have already been five beta versions released, but we’ve yet to see the release candidate. An RC signals to the masses that a final version is nearly ready.
There is a lot of competition in the browser wars these days, and releasing newer and better versions is always under a time-crunch. However, I repeat again that I’d rather wait a little longer for a high-quality product. I don’t want to see the Firefox team lose credibility by releasing something that won’t go over well.
What browser do you use, and why? What makes it better than others in your mind? If you’re a Firefox fan, are you happy to wait a bit longer for the new versions?
9 Comments
Arenlor
December 29th, 2009
at 5:09pm
I’m using the Beta, and I’ve yet to encounter any bugs. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. It is a bit faster than 3.5 I must say.
Mike
December 29th, 2009
at 5:10pm
Right now FF 3.5.6 works perfectly fine and I can wait for 3.6 until next year. And I really appreciate the ad-ons that block all the ads and flash gizmos. What a pain they can be.
Manda (psp365 / mandasjewelry)
December 29th, 2009
at 6:21pm
I agree they should be more like apple and only release an application when it’s perfected. We would have more happy people that way. It’s worth the wait rather than screwing up what’s already working great and making it more buggy before it’s ready.
Danielle
December 29th, 2009
at 8:04pm
I admit it; I’m a google addict and as such the only browser I use is Chrome. It’s super quick when launching and does exactly what it’s supposed to do. I still have the occasional “oh snap” and “dns errors” and have to refresh the page to get the site to come in but my browser experience has improved over the past few months. I know Chrome doesn’t have all of the plugins/extensions but to be honest when I was using firefox all I installed was the weather extension and that was it. Almost all websites appear great in Chrome and Chrome is rapidly gaining acceptance throughout the internet.
Patrick Berg
December 30th, 2009
at 7:17am
Being a Mac user, I’m not overly thrilled with FireFox. It’s slow and clunky, at least from my experience, on the Mac. I would rather run Safari as it’s smooth and quick.
That said, I do keep a copy of FireFox around for once-in-a-blue-moon use when a site doesn’t like Safari.
YOGESH PAWAR
December 30th, 2009
at 1:11pm
yes we have all seen the disaster’s of vista fortunately i have the same old window’s xp for now so i have time to think aobut changing to new window’s & yes… I’ll be happy to wait as i am a Firefox user and the plug-ins makes them really so special it’s a good decision mozilla has taken
Zach
December 30th, 2009
at 7:46pm
I use Google Chrome because of its fast start-up time, stability, and simplicity.
Shock2k8 (Will be known as Shock2k10 in 2010)
December 31st, 2009
at 9:44am
I never use anything but Firefox unless I am forced to use Internet Explorer which makes me really angry when it happens. Firefox Firefox Firefox Firefox!!!!
Jason Anderson
January 7th, 2010
at 6:18pm
I use Chrome now. I gave up on FireFox on OS X. It loads slow. Runs slow. Quits super slow, if at all. And it’s a clusterfreak of a UI. Chrome actually feels like a Mac product on OS X and a Windows product on Windows. Not a Windows product badly ported to OS X like FireFox.