Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1
May. 17th, 2008 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roadrunnertwiceIt's Firefox, it's fresh, and it's basically done. ("RC1" means that if nothing comes up during the shake-out period, this is the actual file that will be released as "Firefox 3." Something will probably come up. I still consider it solid enough to upgrade the parents.)
Back in the dim and distant past, on the eve of Firefox 1's release, there was a roadmap for three future versions of the app. Version 1.1 was to be a touch-up release, which made fixes and updated the Gecko engine while keeping the features and look mostly the same. 1.5 would be a medium-grade update, using the same engine as 1.1 but adding a nice pile of new features. And then there was Firefox 2.0, the major, revolutionary release. It would be built on a version of Gecko that didn't exist yet and have features that weren't possible without it, with an entirely new graphics layer, an undreamt-of speed boost, and a whole lot of things the developers had wanted all along but couldn't get.
Ultimately, for various reasons, the version numbers were all pushed forward a notch: 1.1 became 1.5, etc. But the reason I bring up those old-ass (2004?) numbering predictions is that this release -- Firefox 3 -- is what became of that original, grail-like vision of "2.0." The last two releases were both evolutionary: visible improvements, but fairly pedestrian ones. This is the version that, right from the start, was intended to be The New Hotness.
It is.
Back in the dim and distant past, on the eve of Firefox 1's release, there was a roadmap for three future versions of the app. Version 1.1 was to be a touch-up release, which made fixes and updated the Gecko engine while keeping the features and look mostly the same. 1.5 would be a medium-grade update, using the same engine as 1.1 but adding a nice pile of new features. And then there was Firefox 2.0, the major, revolutionary release. It would be built on a version of Gecko that didn't exist yet and have features that weren't possible without it, with an entirely new graphics layer, an undreamt-of speed boost, and a whole lot of things the developers had wanted all along but couldn't get.
Ultimately, for various reasons, the version numbers were all pushed forward a notch: 1.1 became 1.5, etc. But the reason I bring up those old-ass (2004?) numbering predictions is that this release -- Firefox 3 -- is what became of that original, grail-like vision of "2.0." The last two releases were both evolutionary: visible improvements, but fairly pedestrian ones. This is the version that, right from the start, was intended to be The New Hotness.
It is.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-18 11:57 pm (UTC)