Still using the Mozilla Suite? Then please upgrade to Mozilla 1.8a4 if you haven’t already, and you are the sort of person who uses alphas.
Download numbers:
- 1.8a1 – 146,673
- 1.8a2 – 104,974
- 1.8a3 – 88,122
- 1.8a4 – 40,026
If these get any worse, we will start to suffer from not getting enough Talkback data. (Talkback’s up and running again now, BTW – thanks to all the Oracle DBAs who volunteered.)
I suspect the decline is a combination of interest in Firefox, “alpha exhaustion”, and the lack of promotion (e.g. on www.mozilla.org). So this is an attempt to fix that last point :-)
yep, sounds like that could be a pretty big problem, an unfortunate side-effect of firefox’s popularity. i myself rarely use the mozilla suite since i find it to be bloated and slow compared to firefox, but i do use it on rare occasions that i want a change of pace. the interest in firefox and lack of promotion on the mozilla site are probably one in the same, but you did bring up some really good points. hopefully firefox’s popularity wont cause the mozilla suite to go into hibernation of sorts, but your numbers show that it will be inevetable if the trend continues.
No, it’s not (only) because of FireFox. I myself use Mozilla, but haven’t tried 1.8a because I don’t see enough changes to risk migrating to an alpha release. I am a programmer and I don’t understand what part of the new stuff is, so… And aside from the improved pop-up blocker, I don’t care anyway.
I agree with alex — the delta from 1.7 to 1.8 is small enough that the risk (of something screwing up) overweighs the (new feature) benefits.
I expect the number of downloads will rise when a beta comes out.
I’m the type of person that downloads alpha’s. However, Mozilla 1.7 is rock solid. It’s one of two reaons. Either the majority of crashers have been squashed or because I upgraded to 1GB of ram between 1.6 and 1.7
Since I haven’t had issues with 1.7 haven’t taken the plung to 1.8 alpha. Although I read the new features and some are interesting.
I was on 1.7.2 for a very long time, relative to my former upgrade schedule. But that extreme stability ruined me for testing alphas. Unexplained crashes, needing to create a new profile on 1.8a3 install (dunno why), and a general feeling that the Suite has been abandoned made me finally decide to try out Firefox/Thunderbird in combo. Contrary to popular claims, I find Firefox slow to start up, and I wish I could use “turbo mode” with it like in the suite. Same with Thunderbird, though as an email client it’s more palatable for me to give it time starting up.
I think when there’s (eventually) a beta or final of 1.8, I’ll try reconstituting a suite profile and go back. I prefer the integration, frankly. That’s the long and short of it.
I can’t use Mozilla anymore (too bloated UI). I’m waiting for the merging of aviary branch with the trunk to try some Firefox trunk builds.
I like Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 3
It’s definitely Firefox and the extremely large number of alphas you’ve had. How many people will download Yet Another Alpha when the previous one works fine? Reevaluate the blockers, fix only *the most serious ones* (I have serious doubts there are as many as it seems right now), and get 1.8 out.
After 1.0, you really need to start using Firefox for major testing, because it’s the only way you’ll get enough users.
Jeff, the blocker to a 1.8 release is Firefox. It’s been that way for months, with the 1.8 release schedule being tailored to make sure it releases after Firefox 1.0 … and as Firefox takes longer, so, naturally, does 1.8.
It just might be worth trying to make a very low-key 1.8 release, then. If done properly, the news networks shouldn’t pick up on it very much. (In hindsight this delay could have been predicted, however, after just a cursory review of projected release dates for Firebird/Firefox releases as compared to actual release dates.)
So there really aren’t many blockers now, then? My mindset with respect to the status of 1.8 is still stuck somewhere in the 1.8a1-1.8a2ish era, when I heard numerous comments suggesting that developers very much needed another alpha release to iron out bugs. Regardless, there still have to be a few big bugs left if Gerv posts that testers are needed.
the problem (imo) was the early branching, but that is done and passed…
That said, I would download 1.8a4 if I wasnt already building my nightlies myself…though 1 user wont mangle your stats that much ;-)
By Firefox being a blocker, we also mean in terms of time available from key contributors such as release engineers and drivers. We’re not just looking at the press angle, important though that is.
I thought this was what MF wanted, people to stop downloading and using the suite, so they could concentrate on FireFox/Thunderbird.
As I understand when FF 1.0 is out the main activity will be again focused on trunk and then we will see some new features.
I do not use the FF since I hate the tabs and the keyboard shortcuts has changed.
I use both mozilla suite (1.8a3 now, promised I’ll update tonight to 1.8a4 ;) ) and Firefox.
I am thinking of moving to the standalone apps but unlike most people not because of firefox but because of thunderbid that I like very much. Currently, I mainly use firefox as a RSS aggreegator thanks to Sage, but I’m not sure I’ll switch to firefox soon (if ever) it is a very nice browser and its UI is a great improvement over the suite’s but it also lacks lots of features, especially the advanced text-zoom (with 10% steps), currently Firefox’s text zoom is copied on Netscape 4’s text-zoom, that is to say crap.
Not putting Firefox down…but where is the link to download 1.8a4 on mozilla’s site? It is virtually impossible for me to find (I think I ended up browsing the FTP tree to get it last time; and mozillazine was updated at some point to link to it). So basically mozilla’s promotion is non-existent. That would be one of my votes on why no one is doaloading it.
modok: you are right – and that’s the reason for this blog post :-)
Gerv: Doh! And english is my first language :)
I do hope that someone updates mozilla.org to at least provide a link to alphas/betas in the suites product page. Two clicks from the top-level is better than not being there at all…
One other thing I just realised: Mozilla 1.8 is in alpha release for 5 months now. People tend to loose their patience once in a while, you know…
>modok: you are right – and that’s the reason for this blog post :-)
A blog post as replacement for a normal link on the front or product page, you must be kidding. If mozilla wants feedback for a alpha release, one should clearly state it on the website. But my understanding is that the underpromoting of the suite is not a accident but general politic. And the high download rates show that this politic does work and really increases the gecko strings out there. So thats the price. ( If mozilla could manage to deliver a nonstatic build that combines ff, th, chatzilla + composer into a single download with one gecko engine nobody would notice that the suite has gone and probably even care about it)
You might also notice that we don’t invite people for testing anymore at our front/productpage just a small link developer/tester releases on the 1.7.3 page. Mozilla makes it look like the products are so finished that they dont need that hard testing anymore. We probably should also do so, why should you download a nonworking product and be the beta tester. If something goes 1.0 it should have the polish. So what we get is what we asked for.
The question that I see behind this problem, is how do we get enough QA and feedback now that we devote our frontpage to the download counts (which solves the most urgent and difficult problem: the distribution).
That’s not what I said. I said it was an attempt to go some way towards fixing the situation. Obviously it’s not as high-profile – I don’t get 4 million hits a day ;-)
Exactly what goes on the front page is an ongoing political issue, as you note. Exactly how we promote our products while still reaching out to developers and testers is not yet a solved problem. :-|
Bernd, I will notice it. Firefox is MSIE follow-up (shortcuts, menus) with Gecko inside, Mozilla Suite is Netscape follow-up. I can’t use Firefox, because I used just Mosaic, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla in my life.
Gerv, ZIP builds contains compreg.dat file, so TalkBack doesn’t start after crash. Installer buils take program associations for images. So installing every day from installer is pain and deleting compreg.dat every day is pain too.
In every case, it looks like Foundation is culprit =)
Adam: doesn’t the installer give you an option of not stealing the image associations? If not, that’s a bug. As, presumably, is the compreg.dat thing. Please file them :-)
Gerv: compreg.dat issue is bug 253750. I was wrong with installer stealing image association – Mozilla probably still steals file association when you set it as default browser, see bug 131106.