Re: Thoughts on Bug 678775

On Aug 19, 12:19 am, David Tenser <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> This is a valid point -- I'd love to know how we would provide
> sufficient information to satisfy the above user question without
> providing the version number. Would we e.g. say which channel
> (Aurora/Nightly/Beta/Stable) the user is using instead, and hope that
> the tech press start to talk about channels rather than version numbers?


T = time the article is published
T + 4 weeks = a reader finds the article and wonders if he already
uses that improvement

A channel name isn't sufficient to derive the version number.
You need to know {T, channel-name}.

Having both is still not sufficient to derive the version number.
The reader must be able to find a reference table like
  https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar
and need to look it up.

This is already sufficiently complicated, but we can complicate if
further:
T = time the article is written
T + 1 day = branch date, aurora moves to beta, etc.
T + 2 days = article gets published

If all you have is the channel name, you don't know if the author is
talking about the older aurora or the newer aurora.

Version numbers are the solution.

Let's have a look at the pingback to Mozilla's announcement of Firefox
6 (which carefully avoids to mention the version number):
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/08/16/new-tools-in-mozilla-firefox-help-developers-drive-the-web-forward/

Currently there are 32 pingbacks. Most of the headlines include
"Firefox 6". I clicked each of the ones that don't. Every single one
(that isn't simply a copy or a link) either mentions the version
number in the text, or the URL contains "firefox-6", or contains a
screenshot of the about box showing version number 6.

Kai