Mozilla pushed out Firefox 2.0.0.10 on Tuesday which fixed three highly rated security vulnerabilities, but a rather critical bug slipped through their test routines. The issue lies in the canvas.drawImage which is used by some extensions and websites to display images. An example of this can be seen here where a line graph is supposed to appear on the left side using the source image as the background. In Firefox 2.0.0.10 you won’t see anything there.
Why is this such a big deal? Extensions such as FoxSaver and Fotofox use that property for displaying images, and without it the extensions will appear to be flawed. FoxSaver even warns users on the site not to upgrade to Firefox 2.0.0.10 if they want the extension to work as expected.
To correct the issue Mozilla is rushing a new release of Firefox, version 2.0.0.11, which could be out as soon as tomorrow. The Release Candidate is already available for those who want to get the fixed build a little early.
So this means that we will have had two versions of Firefox released within days of each other. How often has this happened before? The closest back-to-back releases prior to this was between Firefox 1.0.5 and 1.0.6 which was a period of just one week, and in Firefox 2 the closest release period was between 2.0.0.5 and 2.0.0.6 which was about two weeks:
- 2.0.0.0 – October 24, 2006
- 2.0.0.1 – December 19, 2006
- 2.0.0.2 – February 23, 2007
- 2.0.0.3 – March 20, 2007
- 2.0.0.4 – May 30, 2007
- 2.0.0.5 – July 17, 2007
- 2.0.0.6 – July 30, 2007
- 2.0.0.7 – September 18, 2007
- 2.0.0.8 – October 18, 2007
- 2.0.0.9 – November 1, 2007
- 2.0.0.10 – November 27, 2007
- 2.0.0.11 – Tomorrow?
Needless to say it is not a common occurrence to have two releases just days apart. We’ll keep you updated on the official release in our Daily Downloads.
[via Mozilla Links]
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Tags: Firefox, Pre-Release, Software, Downloads, Firefox Extensions, Mozilla
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I think it is a bit obnoxious that there were two releases within a few days of each other. I went on to my computer and thought to myself, “Didn’t I just update this.” The problem is I use up to three computers a day between work, school and my home.
Hi, don’t take this personally but i’ve already heard what you’re saying from a lot of peoples. It looks to me reading your post that it’s annoying to get so much updates… I generally keep myself quiet and just let peoples talk, but your blog seems to be gaining attention right now, so here’s:
1 – I don’t know what operating system you use, but on mine these updates are made automagically, everything get updated whenever there’s a new security update. Note that i mentioned it’s a security update, not just an usual update.
2 – don’t you prefer to get two version of an application if the next one fix a problem? and don’t you prefer to get that update as early as possible? A lot of people seems to think it’s a shame to publish an application, but i prefer someone saying: “i’ve got it wrong this time, here’s a correction” than: “wait next month we’re doing updates on the interface”.
3- if you ask yourself: “what are those people that post an update the next day… Couldn’t they be more professional?” If by professional you read a paying software company that make four updates a year for no bug fixes but just for SELLING updates, i can understand you feel disappointed…
GO FIREFOX! GO!
I totally echo with previous comment. Firefox is the only browser I know that really takes the stability and security issues very seriously.
Nobody’s perfect. It takes a lot of guts to accept ones mistakes and adopt the corrective measures immediately. I know of no other company that is constantly making security improvements into its software. Mozilla is one of the few leaders in this excellence attitude.
The Internet is like a minefield, full of explosives everywhere. We need a company like Mozilla to take care of the bugs for us before our computers get infected.
I’d rather have many updates than none. Sure,that means there are many errors, but it also shows that they are constantly trying to fix them.
Look at IE and it’s countless bugs….few updates here and there.
i think opera has a better track record at fixing bugs.
check secunia
They could have just left the issue alone though, so I guess we should be grateful that they are fixing it so fast.
Yes, I absolutely prefer having something that works the way I expect it to, but this is probably something that shouldn’t have slipped by their testers to begin with.
When it comes to security related bugs Opera is really good about fixing them rapidly, normally faster than Mozilla. I do think that Opera’s testing process is a little better than Mozilla’s because they haven’t done such frequent releases like this.
Well the more important thing is that the bug is going to be fixed in the next release. They realised they made a mistake and now they are taking steps to correct that.