Re: Removing Firefox Version Number

Eliot wrote:
> Asa,
>
> There can be no doubt but that there have
> been compatibility problems as late as this year between major
> versions of Firefox, most notably with 32->64bit plug-ins.

Which bugs are you referring to here?

> Now it seems you propose to lump all of these changes together in a
> way that the user will not be able to distinguish, i.e., repeating
> Microsoft's mistakes.  The result will be higher risks of
> incompatibilities, either between web sites or plug-ins.

You're off topic for this discussion. The decision to move to a rapid 
release cadence and to ship features along with security updates was 
made at the beginning of the year and was made at the highest levels of 
Mozilla -- not because "Asa thought it was a good idea."

> There IS probably evidence going the other way on this, most
> particularly Apple's experience with iOS and app updates.  After all,
> who knows what version their apps are running.  But that is
> considerably different than the underlying platform.  I will bet
> people know what version of iOS their iPhone/iPad runs.

As I said, the time for arguing that point was in the first couple of 
months of the Year. Firefox has already transitioned to the new release 
model and today ships its second update through that model.

This discussion is supposed to be about where in the product the version 
number does or does not show. It currently is shown in About->Firefox 
and About->Troubleshooting. The proposal that's coming from the UX team 
and which I, as Firefox's Product Manager, support, and on which this 
discussion is supposed to be focused, is to remove the version number 
from the About dialog and only surface it in the Troubleshooting window. 
If you have input on that, I'm interested. If you want to re-hash the 
rapid release cadence, I suggest you go to the .planning group and read 
the archives from the last 8 months for the various threads on the new 
development process and if you have something new to add then post there.

- A