I have full confidence in Mozilla’s ability to stay on schedule but I think a release date of next week for Firefox 3 Alpha 1 might be out of the picture. They haven’t announced anything officially right now but the time is approaching quickly and the latest nightly builds have been giving me some trouble. For instance, for the last few weeks my back button hasn’t worked on my mouse which can easily become frustrating when you’re used to clicking it so often. I know that it is a nightly build and it isn’t supposed to be perfect (nor do I expect it to be) but if they are targeting a milestone release they need to make sure it is somewhat usable for people.
Mozilla should be having a meeting later today to discuss the progress of Firefox 3 and I’m sure there will be some mention whether they will be ready to ship Alpha 1 next week. The meeting notes from last week are non existent so I’m not sure what went on there but the meeting notes for today have already been started. Hopefully more details (currently at just 5-lines) are added to the status report.
In other news Mozilla has also begun work on Firefox 2.0.0.1 and is currently available as a nightly build. Next week they will be making a Release Candidate available and the expected release date is December 14th. At that time they will also be shipping Firefox 1.5.0.9 as an upgrade for 1.5 users. With those releases they also hope to squash some of the bugs that currently reside in Vista:
- Updater.exe is not signed [Link]
- Default Application on Vista not working [Link]
- Use new APIs in Vista to register file and protocol handlers (installer) [Link]
- Resetting IE as the default browser after setting Firefox as the default browser breaks opening urls without IE running [Link]
- Setting the app as the OS default is broken on Vista [Link]
- Add default values for file handlers if they don’t have a default value [Link]
- nsPostUpdateWin.js fails to update registry keys / log files after an update has been applied. [Link]
I can’t wait to see the improvements made for Vista in Firefox 2.0.0.1 and I am crossing my fingers they will be able to fit most of them in. Mozilla has setup a lot of target release dates now lets see how close they can come to them. 
and i can’t wait to get an update option from 1.5x to 2.0
it’s pretty lame it hasn’t been done till now.
but i am counting on u to ship out a portable version for the 3.0
no pressure
p.s. congrats on the new design. it’s growing on on me, although i am not sure about the new logo. but a wise man once said it takes different strokes to rule the world or something.
You could just download Firefox 2 and install it over Firefox 1.5 and it will automatically upgrade it.
I have actually been talking with John Haller, the creator of Firefox Portable, and I’m hoping to be able to start providing nightly releases here and there of Firefox 3 in a portable fashion.
Glad you like the new release and hopefully you’ll warm up to the new logo!
Well, this should prove to be interesting. I am a bit shocked we are going to Firefox 1.5.0.9, but then I recall 1.5.0.5 was only out a couple days.
Tonight’s nightly put me 2.0.0.1pre and also said several of my extensions were no longer compatible.
i didn’t get something incompatible, but my [diigo.com] extension seems to crash the browser when i try to bookmark a new page.
the rest (and i have quite a few) works fine.
Afaik, two Minefield branches — Latest-Trunk and Experimental — will be merged in this first official Alpha. So, we will get something like Firefox 2 with Gecko 1.9a1 engine.
Btw, Gecko 1.9 already passed the [webstandards.org] (standard compliance) test!
I was all my extensions that were not compatible with 2.0 in the first place. They still function just displays a message in the add-ons manager.
I don’t get it, I’ve tested some of the Fx3 nightlies and I can’t tell the difference between Fx3 and Fx2. How can they release a milestone without any new features? I saw that list a while back of brainstorm Fx enhancements, and they all seemed excellent. When will they put them into effect?
Download the [users.blueprintit.co.uk]~dave/web/firefox/nightly/. It will override the compatibility check, and your extensions still should work.
It’s been passing for a long time now…
They enabled some of the enhancements a couple of months back, but when they switched over to the FFX2 theme, they temporarily disabled all of the new features. However, the browser is still more standards compliant than FFX2, and some of the features will be re-enabled when Alpha 1 comes out.
I have the Nightly Tester Tools. The extensions were never disabled, I just get a warning on each nightly that they are not compatible.
They enabled some of the enhancements a couple of months back, but when they switched over to the FFX2 theme, they temporarily disabled all of the new features. However, the browser is still more standards compliant than FFX2, and some of the features will be re-enabled when Alpha 1 comes out.
Hmm, yes I remember they had the places going months back, but for now that’s off. If they’re planning on having a milestone anytime soon they should have some of the new features enabled in advance!