> Chrome 14 should be stable in about 8-10 weeks. Firefox 8 won't be stable until 14-16 weeks from now.
This almost-gripe is such a beautiful illustration of how far we've come in upping the pace of browser tech innovation. Thank you Mozilla (for this round).
While I agree with the general point you're making, the "thank you mozilla" should be "thank you google", since they are the ones who got mozilla to make that change.
They forced pretty much everyone in the browser area to play catch up with them to stay relevant, and the results are really awesome (and not just in release cycle speed).
That is a brilliant idea. Not just for the reason you mentioned, but also in communicating with non-geeks.
"Oh, you're using IE from August 27, 2001? That's a little bit out of date. Because browsers update so fast, we can only support browsers released within the last 2 years." :-)
It's incredible the sound and fury generated by version numbers. Ubuntu is almost there if they would just drop the rather silly animal names and stick with 10.04, 10.10, 11.4, 11.10 et cetera. Also having such a easy to remember and unique string makes searching for support and technical questions nice.
Ubuntu's animal names make it easier to search for support and technical questions-- "maverick", "natty", and "lucid" are all much more likely to be associated with Ubuntu than numbers like 10.10.
The article said the "dev" channel of Chrome, which is equivalent to Firefox's nightly build, so they are about equal. It just happens that the current nightly channel of Chrome might be released earlier.
It's not the same thing. How is Firefox 7 version called then? What about 6? Does Firefox have 4 modes instead of 3, like Chrome (dev, beta, stable)? Firefox's "dev" mode might be equivalent to "Chromium" mode for Chrome, in which case I suppose Chrome also has 4 modes, but their dev modes are still not equal to each other.
The point was that Chrome 13 will become stable in 2-3 weeks from now (an Chrome 14 - beta), and then in another 6 weeks Chrome 14 will become stable. While Firefox 6 will become stable in 3-4 weeks, then another 6 weeks for FF 7, and then another 6 weeks for FF8, before it becomes stable. You do the math.
"it’s worth noting that Firefox 8 is as fast or faster than the latest Dev Channel build of Chrome 14. Chrome’s WebGL implementation is still faster, but with Azure, Firefox’s 2D performance is actually better than Chrome. JavaScript performance is also virtually identical."
I continue to be confused be what I interpret as "version number envy". Are people really that impressed by version 14 vs version 7? If FF7 is awesome, Chrome 14 must be x2 awesome! Is Firefox development "behind" because of version numbers? I'm most surprised that Mozilla seems to take this so seriously. Are the numbers anything other than a marketing / PR game? Any reason either side couldn't arbitrarily jump to version 100 and TOTALLY CRUSH the competition?
This is not about marketing. I'm travelling and typing this on a phone right now, so I'll just link to a reply from the last time this misunderstanding appeared: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2679813
Chrome 14 should be stable in about 8-10 weeks. Firefox 8 won't be stable until 14-16 weeks from now. That's around the time Chrome 15 will be out.