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catsidheMozilla: you fucked up. Stop it.
No, really. It might sound cool to update your major version every couple of months, it might even make it seem like you're accomplishing something, but all you're doing is breaking stuff.
For a start, you've broken plugins. Most of the plugin writers had one basic assumption: things won't break within a major release, but nothing is guaranteed from one major release to another.
If a plugin works on Firefox 3.5.2, then it will probably work on 3.5.2.1 and 3.5.5, but 4.0 isn't guaranteed.
To this end, they use the functionality you thoughtfully provided to the add-on system to enforce this. It's not perfect, because it would disable a plugin on upgrade which would actually work perfectly well, but it worked well enough.
And now, thanks to every release being a major revision, it does not. Indeed, you were forced to add a plugin which turns off that behaviour just so that your wonderful "every release is a major release" schedule doesn't break every single add-on every time you update.
Did you forget that the add-ons were a major part of the attraction to FF? Maybe if you spent less time fucking up the primary attraction to FF, and put more effort into using these super hyper mega major releases to do something about the god-damned memory bloat, you might not be pissing us off so much.
And the latest thing to inspire ire was when I upgraded Thunderbird, and not only did half a dozen add-ons break, (including the google calendar provider for Lighting), but you've arbitrarily remapped one of the keyboard shortcuts. The add-on situation was (relatively) easily fixed, even if I was doing it while working on restoring the somewhat urgent service restoration which happened at almost the same moment as I clicked "Yes, I'm an idiot, upgrade me". But the keyboard remapping is not so easy to undo.
It used to be that if I wanted to retrieve new messages on all accounts, I typed [command]+[shift]+t on the Mac I have as my workstation (another rant, for another day). Which was sub-optimal, because in other Mozilla products this is the command "reopen last closed tab". Well, I can understand wanting across-suite consistency. And Thunderbird has tabs up the wazoo now. But really, Thunderbird has had the [command]+[shift]+t for "retrieve all" for a very long time. And in what universe is "reopening a closed email window" a more common operation than "get my new mail"? Common enough to break a decade-long finger macro for it? And not even a preferences setting to put it back?
Seriously, guys: stop breaking everything. It was progressive and edgy for about half an hour. Now it's just pissing off people for no good reason.
And fix the memory bloat.
No, really. It might sound cool to update your major version every couple of months, it might even make it seem like you're accomplishing something, but all you're doing is breaking stuff.
For a start, you've broken plugins. Most of the plugin writers had one basic assumption: things won't break within a major release, but nothing is guaranteed from one major release to another.
If a plugin works on Firefox 3.5.2, then it will probably work on 3.5.2.1 and 3.5.5, but 4.0 isn't guaranteed.
To this end, they use the functionality you thoughtfully provided to the add-on system to enforce this. It's not perfect, because it would disable a plugin on upgrade which would actually work perfectly well, but it worked well enough.
And now, thanks to every release being a major revision, it does not. Indeed, you were forced to add a plugin which turns off that behaviour just so that your wonderful "every release is a major release" schedule doesn't break every single add-on every time you update.
Did you forget that the add-ons were a major part of the attraction to FF? Maybe if you spent less time fucking up the primary attraction to FF, and put more effort into using these super hyper mega major releases to do something about the god-damned memory bloat, you might not be pissing us off so much.
And the latest thing to inspire ire was when I upgraded Thunderbird, and not only did half a dozen add-ons break, (including the google calendar provider for Lighting), but you've arbitrarily remapped one of the keyboard shortcuts. The add-on situation was (relatively) easily fixed, even if I was doing it while working on restoring the somewhat urgent service restoration which happened at almost the same moment as I clicked "Yes, I'm an idiot, upgrade me". But the keyboard remapping is not so easy to undo.
It used to be that if I wanted to retrieve new messages on all accounts, I typed [command]+[shift]+t on the Mac I have as my workstation (another rant, for another day). Which was sub-optimal, because in other Mozilla products this is the command "reopen last closed tab". Well, I can understand wanting across-suite consistency. And Thunderbird has tabs up the wazoo now. But really, Thunderbird has had the [command]+[shift]+t for "retrieve all" for a very long time. And in what universe is "reopening a closed email window" a more common operation than "get my new mail"? Common enough to break a decade-long finger macro for it? And not even a preferences setting to put it back?
Seriously, guys: stop breaking everything. It was progressive and edgy for about half an hour. Now it's just pissing off people for no good reason.
And fix the memory bloat.