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Mozilla Slows Pace of Firefox 9 Upgrades


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Firefox 9 has yet to be completely offered as an update to all users, according to notes from a company meeting.

Mozilla dramatically slowed the update pace of Firefox 9, the browser it shipped late last month.

The company also said it may repeat the slowdown in the future.

Firefox 9, which Mozilla released Dec. 20, has yet to be completely "unthrottled," or offered as an update to all users, according to notes from a company meeting last week.

Like other software vendors, including Microsoft and Apple, Mozilla can offer upgrades to a fraction of its users rather than to everyone at once. The practice is designed to ensure that download servers aren't overwhelmed, and to prevent bugs -- if there are any in the update -- from reaching all users.

Firefox 8, the edition that launched Nov. 8, 2011, accounted for 40 percent of all versions of Mozilla's browser five days after its release, and broke the 50 percent mark 18 days after it shipped, according to usage statistics from Irish metrics firm StatCounter. Meanwhile, Firefox 9 accounted for just 7 percent of all editions of Firefox five days after its debut and required 24 days to reach 50 percent.

The slowdown was related to several bugs in Firefox 9 that Mozilla developers have investigated, including one mentioned last week in a status meeting that blocks some users running Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, from playing Netflix content.

While Mozilla issued Firefox 9.0.1 a day after shipping Firefox 9 -- the former removed code that caused some Mac, Linux and Windows browsers to crash -- it has not released a version 9.0.2 to patch any of the bugs that prompted it to throttle the upgrade process.

Firefox 9's slow upgrade appears to conflict with Mozilla's rapid-release schedule that ships a new version every six weeks. Mozilla, which debuted the speedier pace last summer, has touted it as a way to get new features into users' hands faster, and security updates to them on a regular timetable.

Mozilla said it may use a slower-upgrade process for future editions.

In notes for a meeting held Jan. 3 , the company said, "Probably going to do something similar for releases in the future as well."

Mozilla did not answer questions about how the throttling seemed at odds with its rapid-release tempo -- and with plans to offer a silent updating mechanism later this year -- but a spokeswoman pointed out a line the company added to the release notes for Firefox 9. "We manage and monitor the rate of automatic updates to ensure a smooth release. Users can always manually check for updates from the About Firefox window to see whether they are up to date," the release notes stated.

Firefox 10 is slated to ship two weeks from today, on Jan. 31.

The impact of Mozilla's "throttling" of Firefox 9's upgrade becomes clear when compared to Firefox 8's uptake in its first 10 days. (Data: StatCounter.)

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I'm using firefox 12 x64... What are they talking about? I get a new version every night! :D

lol. If it wasn't for addons (breaking), I've would have already switched to nightly. :)

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I'm using firefox 12 x64... What are they talking about? I get a new version every night! :D

lol. If it wasn't for addons (breaking), I've would have already switched to nightly. :)

Dude, just use the addon compatibility reporter :)

It'll let you test what works and what doesn't.

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Dude, just use the addon compatibility reporter :)

It'll let you test what works and what doesn't.

I know. :D I'm the biggest publiciser of it. :P

Thing is, I think addons like IDM, etc. will break and cause problems. Compatibility is not an issue here. :)

So tell me, does IDM, Adblock+ and Ghostery work fine? If so, I can switch. :)

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I know. :D I'm the biggest publiciser of it. :P

Thing is, I think addons like IDM, etc. will break and cause problems. Compatibility is not an issue here. :)

So tell me, does IDM, Adblock+ and Ghostery work fine? If so, I can switch. :)

I use IDM, Adblock+, Flash Video Downloader, auto pager, right to click, and undo closed tabs as addons.

I don't know what Ghostery is.

All the addons I mentioned are working fine with the latest nightly.

If you'd prefer, opera x64 is working ok too.

i just don't see why it's so hard to move chrome to x64... :/

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I see. Thanks for the info. :)

Ghostery.

So, how does the nightly updates thing work? It gets updated every night? And how big is the download every time there's an update?

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I'm running both concurrently; the V10 and V12, as well. Have not found the V12 of much use, due to it's incompatibility with RoboForm. :(

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DKT27 your suppose to scroll-down and read add-ons version info. As you see you can even use Ghostery development builds and official vers. is marked as compatible as-well but that takes up-to 4 weeks to update automatically, cause Mozilla needs to review and analyze stuff before forcing updates to appear. ADB has dev. builds at https://adblockplus....ds/adblockplus/

Nightly builds since vers. 12 download updates itself in background. With vers. 13 updates will force install in background instead waiting for browser launch. There's Aurora channel as-well if Nightly introduces too many inconveniences.

Updates are usually 2-4mb, if you have fast network then it doesn't affect browsing at all. Updates are released 5pm if your at +02 timezone. Yours in India should be +05.30 so 10.30pm or in the morning it's good time to close browser and reopen to get it updated. You can change in options to open tabs so nothing gets lost. also enable option to load tabs only when selected, helps to speedup browser opening time and computer resource usage.

Also people who use Facebook should start using FBPurity restlessness extension, it has good newsfeed sorting options.

Have fun! http://nightly.mozilla.org/ and remember to make a new profile or you may start to blame Nightly for problems which are actually because of incompatibility to modify old Firefox profile. Idk if they made auto cleaning or how it works to merge different browsers profiles and other stuff.

I just don't see why it's so hard to move chrome to x64... :/

It's easy yes, but would confuse people too much and Chrome doesn't care about speeding stuff for 64bit if they are fastest anyways in benchmarks atm, Lets hope IE10 gets 64bit as default instead disabling stuff and forcing to use 32bit one. Well Chrome developers just need another computer to make builds, shouldn't be hard to keep 32bit version stuff, or maybe they are afraid of causing security issues. If they did start making 64bit vers. then maybe Flash 64bit non IE bugs would be fixed quicker. Cause there's quite a lot of issues in recent Flash 10.2 beta, no one cares about fixing 64bit Flash bugs before final version is out :( been forever so.

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Really thanks for info. Appreciate the insides. :)

I want nightly for it's x64 executable and raw speed. However, I don't feel making new profile, it's just too much of a hassle IMO.

However, I haven't decided against it. Thanks to your help, I'll look into it. So tell me, it can be installed besides stable right? How about beta instead?

I'll set Firefox to alert me when the update is available, as I'm writing forum posts whole day and can't afford to lose what I've written. :P

About IE. M$ loves fooling people. The x64 version of IE9 has IE8's javascript and other backend engines. It just releases the x64 for nominal purpose and to fool the world that it's the first main browser to release x64 version. I doubt that if even has html5.

Edit: Almost forgot. I have to benchmark it before moving on. :)

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Mozilla should had started with version 12 IMO with slow pace for cafes,schools etc, not make vers. 10 as IE, too many bugs and no auto updates.

I don't feel making new profile, it's just too much of a hassle IMO.

Use sync feature to get your data saved? Well hopefully all works fine, just need to clear cache if you move from Nightly back to older version or some webpages will look terrible. To run two different Firefox same time, try reading this forum post http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2249039

Maybe it's possible to copy your profile data if search for bookmarks, passwords, settings in user folder area if don't like sync feature.

64bit is faster at decoding images (loads pages quicker on some computers) but java-script isn't optimized much at all to be faster than on 32bit atm so idk which benchmarks it can win. People use 64bit Nightly to try if everything works or not and to be more happy of this opportunity to use it XD

I think 64bit Nightly still lacks update service, and when they make similar update progress as with Chrome then it doesn't mean it will make a restart itself. No reason to force people. So keep auto update enabled, no need to worry that you would loose stuff.

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Sorry for late reply. Been very busy last few days. The Sync advice is very good and useful (and I'll surely use it), but I'm concerned addons, I guess I should try CLEO addon again.

At the moment, I don't have enough time, but I'll do the proceedings as soon as possible. Thanks to your help it would be smoother than I thought or worried about :)

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