News - Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 now available

[HEXUS]

A week after Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 squashed 190 bugs, Beta 3 arrives with another 80 fixes.

Read more.

[miniyazz]

The ability to run scripts asynchronously - do I hear multi-CPU-support?

[aidanjt]

Actually, nope, it looks like they've decoupled javascript parsing from gecko rendering.

[cheesemp]

Actually, nope, it looks like they've decoupled javascript parsing from gecko rendering.

As someone who has done a fair bit of web development that sounds very scary.

Wonder what web apps this will break?

[aidanjt]

Theoretically, it shouldn't break anything, since javascript<->gecko interactions should now be asynchronous. But knowing mozilla (and given that they chose a 3rd *beta* release to add significant new features), they'll probably break a crapload of stuff.

[Funkstar]

(and given that they chose a 3rd *beta* release to add significant new features)

Do they have Release Candidates as well as Betas? I know of a few projects that do this. They will add back end functionality in the Betas, but not the RCs.

[aidanjt]

I think they do. But normally -dev and -alpha is the place for making major changes to software, -beta generally means it's 'ready' but could do with some bug squashing and minor UI/visual/defaults tweaking, -rc is 'ready', shouldn't be bugs but some may have escaped our notice.

[Funkstar]

It's all about how that project defines the different development stages. There are no hard and fast rules

[aidanjt]

It's all about how that project defines the different development stages. There are no hard and fast rules

True, my comments were a rough generalisation. However, 'beta' stage (and being a few weeks away from RC) is an idiotic point to be making critical architectural changes to your code base, no matter how you look at it.