Mozilla won't delay Firefox releases (but some features may be delayed)
Mozilla won't change the schedule of Firefox releases for the moment according to a schedule update published on the official Mozilla Wiki website.
Several browser makers, software developers and hardware manufacturers announced recently the postponing of planned releases. Google for example decided to skip Chrome 82 and Microsoft announced that it would focus on delivering security updates for its Windows operating systems only and skip non-security updates for the time being.
It was not clear up until now if Mozilla would also delay the release of new Firefox versions; this changed yesterday when Mozilla confirmed that the current Covid-19 pandemic won't impact the Firefox release schedule.
Firefox Stable will continue to be updated every four weeks. Mozilla changed the flexible Firefox release schedule to a fixed four-week cycle recently. The next Firefox Stable release will therefore be released on April 7, 2020 as planned.
Mozilla notes that feature developments may be slowed down because of the current situation; while this won't impact the release schedule, it could mean that planned features may be moved to a later release date. The organization plans to review planned features and delay some of the non-critical changes based on that review.
sticking with the published release schedule for the moment
expect feature development to slow down though
reviewing planned features for breaking potential, and delaying some changes
Mozilla re-enabled the security protocols TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in Firefox already this month, which it disabled in the Firefox 74 release previously, as some government sites relied on these protocols exclusively. Firefox users who tried to access these sites could not any longer because Firefox support for these outdated protocols ended with the release of Firefox 74 originally.
Mozilla (and other browser makers) will still disable TLS 1.0 and 1.1 in browsers eventually but the current situation made it necessary to re-enable the protocols. (via Sören)
TLS 1 & TLS 1.1 won’t be deprecation along with HTTP, because some government sites (atleast from early 2000s or 2017-present) are still belong with https with tls 1.0 & 1.1 for many 2 decades or more. Firefox doesn’t killing TLS old version and HTTP, because features are not sure to be removed.
Hi, Martin, I think it would be good a post about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/fptgrr/copperhead_is_making_bogus_legal_threats_to/
Yeah, security and stability over new features. We don’t need this obsession with pushing out features when we don’t have a pandemic on our hands. I think Microsoft is also doing similar with Windows although we will probably see 2004 still get pushed out. Because you know, it’s Microsoft.
Firefox 74 on Linux Mint 19.3 and a slower response and more visible mouse pointer to pinwheel waiting so what’s going on with that. Plus the about:config shuffle is in full force what with settings being depreciated and obfuscated to reward the big Ad patron’s deep pockets and prevent FF from being a viable chrome(Google variant) alternative. So maybe FF has begun to bloat up on the telemetry at the cost of performance and really Mozilla needs to become less under Google’s influence by mandate if necessary.
During this time would actually be an opportunity to bring back Firefox Hello,
FF76 promises VA-API Wayland acceleration for all codecs (finally) on Linux. Hope that doesn’t get delayed.
Probably are delaying because they laid of 70 people and have had almost 50 more quit, including tons of high ranking ones
> Every new release makes the browser worse.
How exactly is Firefox 74 worse than Firefox 73?
firefox78 my guess will really ber the last for awhile , they’ll just keep on with Nightly, i dont think the Beta channel will get much Love.
I really liked Quantum from versions 57 to 60 ESR. v68 ESR could be tamed, but since there was a file/save issue that affected Windows 8x, I jettisoned it and went to Pale Moon, using the Photonic theme. I’ll ride that out now. I was a big supporter of Quantum, but now, I don’t really know where they’re headed with the project. we all speculate, but there must be a reason they are deprecating features and we just don’t see the big picture. Oh well.
firefox with only next addons: eff privacy badger, ublock origin and the network settings put in dns over http with cloudflare and nothing problems.
My bank force their users to have at least one of the two latest releases of the “main” browsers, Firefox is one of them. I have had nothing but problems since they started with that, even if i have changed several items in ABOUT:CONFIG to shut down unwanted stuff in it. Still they suddenly pop up anyway… I even block that ping file and update file (in installation folder) in my firewall. I don’t trust any of these files at all.
First it took me a while to figure out why Firefox did start in private browsing every time it started. Now i know though. My latest headache is that almost every time i start my browser it tells me that the addons were successfully installed. How the F do i stop that ?
I have 3 operatingsystems on my computer and two of them still use the older Firefox 52.9.x ESR – they works great out of the box even if there are some settings to do in ABOUT:CONFIG if it is installed from scratch. Now i just backup the profiles and re-use them.
Most Firefox users would probably like them to delay the new releases. Every new release makes the browser worse. They remove features you do want, add features you don’t want, mess up the user interface, add more telemetry. Then you have to search around to find out how to disable the junk they’ve added, and in many instances you find it can’t be disabled. Firefox used to be great, but now it’s like they’re trying to reduce their user base to zero.
“They remove features you do want, add features you don’t want, mess up the user interface, add more telemetry.”
We’ve been saying that for years.
I wonder if this “Moonchild” is fake, considering that the original said that he doesn’t want to spend time arguing with random people on the internet.
Agreed, Firefox has just been getting worse and worse with time. It used to be my favorite browser. Come 2008, Chrome launches and takes the browser world by storm – nothing compares to its speed, at the same time Firefox barely drags itself on the floor in terms of speed. To make matters worse in 2011 Firefox 4.0 became the most bloated garbage of a browser I’ve seen – even the UI struggled to be responsive and it took many years to improve, but at that point it was too late, I already took my business elsewhere.
From that point on, Firefox always dragged behind Chrome and Chromium-forks in terms of speed and web-compatibility, now it’s even worse:
– it’s not faster
– it’s not more compatible (in fact it’s less compatible) with websites
– it lacks even more of its features that made Firefox the king of browsers in the period 2003-2010.
Nowadays there is no reason to use Firefox other than to pat yourself on the back while you wear your tinfoil hat and congratulating yourself for living with delusions that Firefox protects your privacy when in fact they live off Google’s money by selling the users’ data to Google.
If Google stops paying Mozilla, Mozilla will file for bankruptcy and Firefox will disappear for good. xD
@Weilan,then stick to using a slow bloated spy software in Chrome.For years it was marketed as the fastest.Now it isn’t because other browsers have caught up & even surpassed it for speed.Chrome is now lagging not to mention you’re tracked as hell in it.It is a nightmare for hoarding and collecting user data,but hey all the Chrome sheeples don’t care.
What I don’t get is…IMO, How can FF reconcile loading so many “user un-friendly” updates and releases yet, only have currently 8.68 of the market share…
https://www.netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222019-03%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-02%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%2C%22plotKeys%22%3A%5B%7B%22browser%22%3A%22Firefox%22%7D%5D%7D
Soon IE will beat Firefox!
> – it’s not faster
Weren’t Rust/Servo/e10/Quantum Firefox’ saviors? ;D
@Samanto Hermes,
maybe Mozilla said those were their saviors, but no matter what good intentions (debatable) they have, nothing can save their browser from stupid and irreversible decisions. At least up to version 65, it was possible to reverse some changes thanks to the powerful XUL platform, which allowed for the UI to be customized, but I think I’m actually wrong and they disabled that in a previous version, because they were really bothered by the fact that people developed an extension that allowed you to modify the position of UI elements in order to emulate the UI layout of pre 4.x Firefox, I bet they got really riled up that people disliked their UI design so much that they want as far as to develop add-ons to reverse this. xD
As for Rust and the other shenanigans with quirky names, those are just marketing tactics. I remember reading about Rust as early as 2012 and I was actually excited by the prospect of Firefox becoming snappier and faster, little did I know, it was just a marketing gimmick that didn’t hold any merit whatsoever.
If anything, browsers nowadays, no exception, haven’t gotten faster, it’s our PCs that have gotten faster and thus allowing the bloated browsers to run without being slow. I used to have an old PC until summer 2019 and I had it since around 2011 with little to no upgrades and I must be honest, on that PC I really saw a lot of browsers becoming slower and more bloated, as well as websites, like YouTube.
That’s one thing I hate the most about marketing – be it games, programs, browsers, they all love to lie how it has gotten faster when they tweaked here and fiddled there, but it’s actually own new and faster PCs that make it all happen. Because our PCs are so fast now, nothing can really cause them to struggle, and when it does, you know it’s piss poor optimization. For example, the new Age of Empires II Definitive Edition, which is essentially the old 700MB game from 1999, but with expanded graphical capabilities to now be a 32GB install, actually takes like 20 seconds to boot on my new PC and the old game boots instantaneously. And all it’s loading is 2D sprites, nothing special, Grand Theft Auto V boots almost as fast and that’s one heavy game with a very detailed vast open world and tons of scripted content. And in this case, you can tell that AoE2DE is poorly optimized and they rely solely on people’s powerful PCs for their bloated game to run fine. Same goes with Android – if you somehow manage to install Android 11 on an Android device from 2010, that device will probably self-combust due to how bloated the new versions of Android are compared to the initial ones – they only run fast on a fast hardware with plenty of space and cache, but if you install Android 1 onto some brand new flagship like Samsung Galaxy S20, it will never slow down, not even for a millisecond.
“it could mean that planned features may be moved to a later release date”
Good news.