Since its founding in 2004, Mozilla
released new versions of Firefox infrequently, often waiting until a
list of features and UI (user interface) updates were completed. Bug
fixes and security updates were released as needed between major
updates.
Recently, that all changed. Firefox
started to lose market share to Google's Chrome browser. Google has
followed a policy of rapid version release to catchup with other
browsers. They have done so and in fact many people predict that they
will even surpass Microsoft's Internet Explorer very soon.
In an effort to stop their market loss
or even to recapture lost ground, Firefox decided that their only
option was to adopt the rapid release strategy. Within a year, they
went from version 5 to version 12 (which was released today). This is
a very stupid move in my opinion.
This is stupid for two major reasons:
it hurts developers and destroys the mystery.
When a company released a new version
every six weeks or so, it's hard for extension developers to keep up.
Because of the rapid release, several of the extensions I use are
disabled because they are not compatible with the newest version.
Some of the better extensions are written by hobbyists who don't
always have the time to write the two or three lines of code need to
update the extension. And when they do. The get it updated a new
version of Firefox is released. What a pain!
My favorite part about the early
versions of Firefox was waiting expectantly to get the new versions
to see what the new features were like. Between the first 3 or 4
versions, there were major interface changes. Each version had a
different look and feel. Not so with the new versions, there is
nothing to really differentiate them for each other.
In the end, there is really nothing
that Mozilla can do to stop Chrome from taking their market share.
Google has the biggest advertisement system in the world. Eventually
they will convert the whole world to Chrome. It is inevitable.
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