Firefox and its stupid big version numbers.

[baratron]

Firefox 6.0 is pissing me off because it seems to have lost my old default setting of "please save all my tabs when I quit Firefox" - and I can't even find that setting any more in the Preferences! I generally work with a ridiculous number of windows and tabs on the screen, often more than 50 tabs open at once. Losing my entire session when I have to close Firefox for some reason such as Flash needing to update again or yet another stupid Microsoft Office update is just TOO MUCH.

Anyone know how to fix this? I'm sure one of you does :)

I also think it's stupid the way Firefox is now updating the big number every couple of weeks - going from 4.0 to 5.0 to 6.0 instead of 4.0 to 4.1 to 4.2, but that's another rant in itself, and I don't pretend to be savvy in the ways of software numbering.

An actual post with CONTENT will follow tomorrow, when I will have hopefully recovered from my minor cold-let and no longer have a brain full of snot ;)

Comments

[mjl]

They decided that the prompt to save on closing was usually the wrong time for people to make the decision, and it would be better for people to make the choice when starting...

Firefox saves your session by default, so you can get your previous session back by choosing "Restore previous session" from the history menu (or history submenu from the Firefox button). You can make it restore every time using the preferences, as lovingboth said.

As for the version numbering (not that I imagine you really wanted to know)... With the rapid release thing they're doing now (release every 6 weeks, and whatever stuff is ready to be released that day gets released), the 4.1, 4.2 would be tricky, because it leaves the question of when to go to 5.0. They don't plan or know in advance what features are going to be in which release until very shortly before it happens. Deciding to make a particular version a major version jump would require having a debate shortly before each release to decide how to number it, which firstly means everyone spending time debating whether to make the major version jump or not on that release, and also means the numbering might go 4.2 -> 4.3alpha -> 4.3beta -> 5.0. Given that each release is date based rather than feature based, what they could have done instead of 5, 6, 7 would be 2011.1, 2011.2, 2011.3 and flip the major number with the calendar year, which might be slightly more meaningful than just counting on from the previous scheme...