News - Firefox 8 released, what's new?

[HEXUS]

Mozilla launches latest version of its web browser.

Read more.

[blokeinkent]

Hmm. I've updated to 8 and I don't see anything 'Twitter' nor options regarding tabs on demand under options :/

[Brewster0101]

Seems only like Yesterday Firefox 3 was released!

[Allen]

To be fair, 3 was a fair while ago. 4 however was only released in March this year, 5 in June, 6 in August and 7 in September. I don't recall using Firefox since v4 and am stunned they are already on 8!

[Saracen]

To be fair, 3 was a fair while ago. 4 however was only released in March this year, 5 in June, 6 in August and 7 in September. I don't recall using Firefox since v4 and am stunned they are already on 8!

They're not, really. They're just playing silly beggars with the numbering system, IMHO.

[Allen]

Aye, looks like minor releases but they are playing "catch up" with the IE versions maybe to make it look like they are not behind?

[Fraz]

Whoever is in charge of Firefox these days needs a good cuff around the ears, I reckon.

[Output]

Hmm. I've updated to 8 and I don't see anything 'Twitter' nor options regarding tabs on demand under options :/

Judging from this tweet, it seems that for some odd reason it doesn't include the British English builds of Firefox (for the Twitter addition anyway).

Though the "tabs on demand" does seem to be missing in it as well, so it makes you wonder why and if it means that any bug fixes are mistakenly being left out too. I would assume not, but there are only a few small differences between US English and British English, so it seems very odd that anything other than a few words would be affected and/or missing.

[kingpotnoodle]

Differences between US and proper English are quite a few, it's mostly in the spelling, where they are too lazy to put u in things like colour, flavour etc. I imagine it takes someone a few days to scour the dictionary and with the tight schedule it looks like languages will be bled in slowly.

[Nelviticus]

This versioning system is nuts, not only is it going to sound stupid in a few years but every time the major version number goes up lots of add-ons suddenly don't work any more. The only reason for this is that add-ons have a 'maxmimum version number' embedded in them - the add-on could still work perfectly fine, it's just that unless the developer releases a new version with an updated 'max version number' it gets disabled.

I'm getting sick of having to manually edit the manifest files of add-ons that work perfectly well but just aren't actively updated any more.

[Biscuit]

i only installed 7 the other day... this is insane. Have they decided to not bother at all with revisions of releases when the changes are minor. They could do something really radical and call it... 7.1

As Allen said it seems they are playing catchup with IE/Chrome on numbers. Would love it if someone could explain why they feel the need?

[aidanjt]

i only installed 7 the other day... this is insane. Have they decided to not bother at all with revisions of releases when the changes are minor. They could do something really radical and call it... 7.1

That's nothing, FF5 was literally a bugfix release for FF4, zero features were added. Not sure about 5->6 but I imagine it's much of the same.

As Allen said it seems they are playing catchup with IE/Chrome on numbers. Would love it if someone could explain why they feel the need?

Marketing/e-peen comparison. OOoo, their version number is bigger than ours, we need a version number that big too! BIGGER EVEN!! Then users will flock to us, because, you know, we're not losing ground because our software is buggy, bloated, and generally inferior. The latest in a long line of Mozilla ineptness.

[Pancake]

I hate this, it just plays havoc with all my addons! if they keep doing this i may well switch to chrome

[fwibbler]

Yeah, its getting really silly isn't it.
I guess I really should upgrade from 3.6.24 at some point...