Mozilla Rebrands Firefox 3.1 as Firefox 3.5
Earlier this week, the Mozilla Foundation has issued a security and stability update for their browser, mainly Firefox 3.0.7. Earlier still, the Mozilla Foundation announced that the upcoming Firefox 3.1 will move to Beta 4; now they are proposing that the version number be modified from 3.1 to 3.5. It must be said that Firefox 3.1 Beta 3, which Mike Shaver said will be released in a week’s time (that was at the end of February) has been scheduled for the 12th of March. On the Firefox 3.0 front, version 3.0.8 has been scheduled for release sometime this April.
Vice President of Engineering with Mozilla, Mike Shaver comments: “We’re proposing to change the version number of Shiretoko from 3.1 to 3.5. The increase in scope represented by TraceMonkey and Private Browsing, plus the sheer volume of work that's gone into everything from video and layout to places and the plugin service make it a larger increment than we believe is reasonable to label ".1". 3.5 will help set expectations better about the amount of awesome that's packed into Shiretoko, and we expect uptake help from that as well. It's important to note that 3.5 represents a better labeling of our *current* scope, and not an indication that we intend to significantly increase this release's scope any further.”
The Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 we mentioned above, the Beta version that we’ll get in less than a week will be the last one to carry the “3.1” tag. Starting with the 4th Beta version, which has already been implemented in the browser’s development process, the software will be called Firefox 3.5 (Beta 4).
Despite what Mike Shaver said about this Mozilla Firefox version rebranding, there is one little snag. Mike Beltzner, product lead, has come out to say that this is not a final decision. In the end we might just see Firefox 3.1 Beta 4 and not Firefox 3.5 Beta 4.
In related Firefox news, a Secunia report presents the fact that Firefox fixes security vulnerabilities faster than any other browser provider, but at the same time Firefox has the biggest amount of vulnerabilities, compared to all other browsers put together – details here.
UPDATE: The official name is Firefox 3.5, codename Shiretoko.
Vice President of Engineering with Mozilla, Mike Shaver comments: “We’re proposing to change the version number of Shiretoko from 3.1 to 3.5. The increase in scope represented by TraceMonkey and Private Browsing, plus the sheer volume of work that's gone into everything from video and layout to places and the plugin service make it a larger increment than we believe is reasonable to label ".1". 3.5 will help set expectations better about the amount of awesome that's packed into Shiretoko, and we expect uptake help from that as well. It's important to note that 3.5 represents a better labeling of our *current* scope, and not an indication that we intend to significantly increase this release's scope any further.”
The Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 we mentioned above, the Beta version that we’ll get in less than a week will be the last one to carry the “3.1” tag. Starting with the 4th Beta version, which has already been implemented in the browser’s development process, the software will be called Firefox 3.5 (Beta 4).
Despite what Mike Shaver said about this Mozilla Firefox version rebranding, there is one little snag. Mike Beltzner, product lead, has come out to say that this is not a final decision. In the end we might just see Firefox 3.1 Beta 4 and not Firefox 3.5 Beta 4.
In related Firefox news, a Secunia report presents the fact that Firefox fixes security vulnerabilities faster than any other browser provider, but at the same time Firefox has the biggest amount of vulnerabilities, compared to all other browsers put together – details here.
UPDATE: The official name is Firefox 3.5, codename Shiretoko.
