Firefox beta 7.0 available

[jim]

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

[Anupam]

Thanks Jim ...

There are reports that Firefox 7 has improved hugely on memory usage. So, I am looking forward to that release.

[bo.elam]

Thank you Jim, I think I ll give this one a ride(sandboxed),
during the weekend.

Bo

[Anupam]

Firefox 7 in now in beta 3... i.e. Firefox 7 beta 3 is available.

[Anupam]

Firefox 7 release seems to be getting closer.

Firefox 7 beta 4 is available.

[Sope]

A few days ago a friend of mine upgraded from Firefox v5 to v6 and immediately started having problems with the browser hanging to the extent it was virtually unusable. After struggling to fix it I decided to try an overwrite install with v7 which seems to have worked a treat!

[Anupam]

How is the performance of version 7 Sope? I am excited about this release of 7 because of huge improvements in memory usage.

Strange that upgrading to version 6 caused problems. Wondering what could have caused that.

[Sope]

Originally Posted by Anupam

How is the performance of version 7 Sope? I am excited about this release of 7 because of huge improvements in memory usage.

Strange that upgrading to version 6 caused problems. Wondering what could have caused that.

I only helped by making the decision to install it really. I didn't give it a thorough try out, just left him to get on with it. As far as my friend is concerned, it's working the same as before which is what he wanted.

Searching the net actually turned up a significant number of users who had experienced the same problem but most appeared to decide that the best solution was to change to another browser until Firefox was fixed

[Anupam]

Thanks Sope .

Well, I find it interesting how users have had problem with Firefox 6. I will try to search on Google myself, and see what problems they faced, and what might have caused it.

[Anupam]

This rapid release cycle of Firefox has made a community lead leave Mozilla. He was not an employee, but a volunteer, but still, he claims to be a community lead.

He says that with the rapid release cycle, the bugs submitted by the user are not being addressed, and the developers are not able to tell which bugs are critical, and which are not.

Details on this article :

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392056,00.asp

I will say that I agree with the guy. Since Firefox 4 has been released, I still encounter error, while cleaning the Firefox from "Clear Recent History". Version 7 is about to be released, and this bug has not been solved yet. I have seen a report for it in the Mozilla Firefox bug list, but this not being solved tells you that indeed, several other bugs submitted by user might not be getting solved.

I too am not in favor of this rapid development cycle. I feel that Mozilla have not taken the right decisions, in an attempt to compete with Chrome. Instead of being trend-setters, they are now just being trend-followers, and it will do them more harm than good.

Its good though, that they are still delivering stable products. But, I don't know how long they can be lucky, before something happens, which will drive users away from them. Lets hope it does not come to anything like that.