back to article Mozilla abandons experimental Aurora Firefox channel

Mozilla is killing the channel it introduced for developers to test experimental new features in Firefox and keep pace with Chrome. The Aurora channel will stop receiving new code releases from 18 April, Mozilla has said. New code will revert to the established Firefox Nightly builds from where it will land in beta builds of …

  1. davidp231

    May as well just brand it a skin for Chrome.

  2. Fatman

    Six week release cycles...

    I have never understood the driving force behind such a tight release schedule; nor the whole number version bumps that accompany it. IMHO it must have come from some marketing weasel that felt that Firefox is 'old' if it did not bump its version number every time a new release is shit out. You know - mimic Chrome.

    What else is pointless is the useless UI changes that get made (again, IMHO `marketing weasel` inspired) that show up; while long standing bugs get ignored.

    I have said this before:

    `Mozilla fix your goddamn code first, then worry about the fucking UI.`

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Six week release cycles...

      To be honest, apart from the jump to Australis, I haven't noticed any majorly significant UI changes, useless or otherwise.

    2. Notas Badoff
      Happy

      Re: Six week release cycles... (Yay!)

      The argument for fast cycling is well-served by example of the new CSS Grid feature. Even the industry was amazed that all the browsers ('cept Edge of course) implemented Grid support within one month of the specification becoming a recommendation. Instead of the usual uncertainty "when will we be able to use it?", support was turned on "in an instant" and was available last month! Poof! ('cept MS of course).

      Apart from the other, visible missteps by the browser developers, supporting progress quickly on standards is very very nice.

      BTW: I suspect the browser people laid appropriate emphasis on getting CSS Grid out there partly from embarrassment over how badly CSS Flexbox faired. Not all standards are equally useful. :-(

    3. Updraft102

      Re: Six week release cycles...

      Or better yet, don't ever worry about the UI, if the only motivation is "it will look more like Chrome." Copying Chrome has become a bizarre fetish for the Mozilla devs, and I wish they'd get over it soon. Imagine if the current devs had been in control of Mozilla when they were fighting the corporate hegemony of Microsoft during the '00s... "Hey, let's get rid of the tabbed browsing! IE6 doesn't have it, and it has 95% of the market, so obviously, IE6 is what people want!"

      Back then, Mozilla just worried about making the best browser they could. Providing a quality alternative to IE was the goal, and the devs did their best to exceed IE's expectations, to make Firefox more customizable, more usable... better.

      Now, though, they seem to be doing the opposite. They are slowly dismantling everything about FF that is an advantage over Chrome. They're doing away with Firefox's powerful addon library and replacing it with the much less useful Chrome addons. The addon library is just about the only reason left to use Firefox anymore, and no other browser has anything close to the customizability Firefox has from those addons. But Chrome doesn't have such powerful addons, so that must mean Firefox shouldn't either. Naturally.

      It takes several addons to undo all of the silly stuff Mozilla has changed about FF... Classic Theme Restorer is one of the top addons, and I wouldn't use FF without it. That, of course, will be one of the thousands of addons that will not work anymore after Firefox's suicide. It will have to be Pale Moon, Seamonkey, or the ESR version of Firefox, but with so many addon devs abandoning their projects as the drop dead date draws near, it's still not an ideal solution.

      I don't know why, but it seems that all software hits a point where its devs decide to abandon what got them to where they are and to flip the bird to all of their loyal customers. Microsoft's doing it too...

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Six week release cycles...

      Yup... trouble *is*, they don't listen or give a fuck.

  3. m0rt

    "feature-rich"

    *hangs head*

  4. Mage Silver badge
    Big Brother

    You ever listen Mozilla?

    IGNORE the Chrome Koolaid / spyware.

    Stop frigging with the GUI. Put it back to matching the native GUI style chosen by user. Kill the Awesome bar. Why should I have to change About:config to stop it doing stupid guessing and searching?

    Fix the bugs: Print Selection is still brain dead

    Fix Privacy: Make 3rd party cookie disabled by default. Expose all the privacy settings in Preferences, not just page info. Forget about "Pocket" but have javascript whitelists and domain blacklists. Share less browser info.

    1. TonyJ

      Re: You ever listen Mozilla?

      "...IGNORE the Chrome Koolaid / spyware.

      Stop frigging with the GUI. Put it back to matching the native GUI style chosen by user. Kill the Awesome bar. Why should I have to change About:config to stop it doing stupid guessing and searching?

      Fix the bugs: Print Selection is still brain dead

      Fix Privacy: Make 3rd party cookie disabled by default. Expose all the privacy settings in Preferences, not just page info. Forget about "Pocket" but have javascript whitelists and domain blacklists. Share less browser info..."

      Agree with all of that.

      And how about things like making it manageable in an Enterprise natively. Offer some support outside of forums. Some of us are forced by the old tech our customers use to deploy this.

      Only in 52 did they start to actually use the Windows certificate store so every time a cert is rekeyed, for example, it's a goddamn repackage.

      And then that means you have redeploy to users who have to have their FF profile blown away or they don't get the changes.

      Make it possible to lock down elements like the developer tools. Your average Joe and Jill user don't need them.

      You want more penetration? Stop ignoring the big potential customers - y'know, the SME's up.

    2. Mark 85

      Re: You ever listen Mozilla?

      I think you forgot one... how about making it usable again? Open more than a couple of windows and it bogs. Generally, if I open more than 3, I have to shutdown and restart it if I expect to get any performance back.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: You ever listen Mozilla?

        of course they don't listen ...

      2. ShortStuff

        Re: You ever listen Mozilla?

        Exactly, fix the memory hog tabs that don't release their memory usage after being closed. Put tabs in their own process and address space like Opera. If one tab freezes, don't let it affect the others (use threads/processes properly).

  5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    train model?

    What's train model? Something to play with instead of doing their jobs?

    1. m0rt
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Firefox seems to be winding down...

    ...which is a shame, because I hate Chrome with a passion. Firefox is the last major alternative left.

  7. Delbert Grady

    Mozilla Firefox Predictions:

    "Firefox was slammed for being increasingly slow and buggy,

    never mind lagging behind Chrome for features."

    what features ? some kind of sandboxing maybe.. oh and more spyware and bloat than FF.

    features .. er no. not really. when FF came with the Fisher-Price interface i knew the writing was on the wall for Firefox, the thin end of a wedge so tospeak. It's said, that they want to re-write the code as it's getting old, complicated (thus buggy) and hard to maintain. Okay. i get that, i have coded. The trouble is that Mozilla will inevitably make Firefox crap then, (if they don't rename it too) with a code re-write which will likely kill off most or all of the extensions and other things (power) users need to do to make Firefox how it *should* be, you know, like being able to config it.. i remember the days when every update added stability, security and speed.... only joking.

    in no particular order, here's the prediction: (remember where you read it first)

    We will be stuck with crappy swoopy more extreme UI fail, wasting more screen real-estate, bigger empty space on swoopy tabs, and no extensions or any way to change the UI.

    More bloat. more social media integration.

    Toolbar will ship, by default, with even fewer buttons, maybe a back button, maybe a home button if you're real lucky, there may be some additional buttons you can add, but not as many.

    defaults.. they will be set at the most ridiculous, privacy invasive, info sharing it's possible to have.

    Even more controls will be hidden away.

    will be slower, buggier and less configurable.

    extensions will get less access to the browser, and will be less useful.writing addons will be harder.

    desktop Firefox will get an 'app store'

    people will hate the new UI

    some users will complain, Many users leave

    Mozilla doesn't listen

    Firefox dies.

    Mozilla incorrectly thinks it's because other browsers were better, instead

    of realizing they screwed it up.

    Firefox becomes regarded just as Netscape Navigator is.

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