Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

I think the release strategy is taking a very wrong turn lately.

Surely, FF 4.0 took far too long. It should have been released much
earlier, even if that had meant with less new features, and possibly
with less addons being ready for it.

But now releasing a new major version every few weeks (with potential
major UI changes! and potential addon breakage!) is completely
overdoing it in the other direction. I consider this even worse (and
I'm in general a curious user. And I have to support only a few
friends/relatives. Who are using FF just for fun, not for productive
work. Imagine how an admin might feel!)

And as for the new features: I have stopped reading the "what's new"
with FF 6.0. It just happens too often, and there is too little new
per release to make reading it fun. So when new features happen, I
will probably even take longer to notice and use them.

In my opinion, the distinction between feature updates (which I'm
looking forward to, which I want to explore, but which may break the
way things have been working before) and security updates (which just
happen) is something FF had been doing *better* than the other
browsers, it was one of the reasons I liked it. And I also liked the
concise version numbering scheme (not like i.e. IE 8, where I never
understand on what security level the browser currently is). Removing
this version numbers is just throwing away another asset.

I'm against hiding the version number from the user because there
*are* different versions of FF in the wild and it *does* matter which
one he is using. It is always bad to hide information from the user
that directly affect him.

I want to know what version I'm using:
 * when I read about a security exploit, I want to know whether I'm
affected by it or not (and how long I have been affected)
 * when I report a bug, I want to be able to say in what version that
has happened
 * when I try to reproduce a bug, I want to know in what version it
has happened and what version I'm using
 * when I develop web pages (I sometimes do) and a user reports a bug,
I want to be able to use the same browser in the same version as he
has used, if necessary

I want to be able to decide *when* I want to do a feature update:
I like feature updates and I will always eventually do them, but only
when I have time for it.

I want to be able to get notice when a security update has happened:
 * when something suddenly works that before hasn't, I want to know if
the error is just random or if it's at least possible that it has been
fixed
 * when some new error show up, I want to know what changes might be
responsible for this

Firefox had been the only browser to satisfy all three wishes. Seems,
now it's becoming even worse than Chrome :-(