In reply to a post by Pipexer:

It's only been out 5 minutes! What a joke.

I agree.

It does seem they just want a higher version number.

Mozilla, a global, nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Web better, today released a new version of Mozilla Firefox for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. The new version of Firefox comes on the heels of the wildly successful release of Firefox 4, which had more than 200 million downloads on Windows, Mac and Linux and millions of downloads in the Android Market.

Mozilla�s shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster.

The latest version of Firefox includes more than 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements that make it easier to discover and use all of the innovative features in Firefox. This release adds support for more modern Web technologies that make it easier for developers to build amazing Firefox Add-ons, Web applications and websites.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

That's mainly because all the extensions for chrome are just glorified webpages. Addons in firefox are significantly more capable. Fwiw, most extensions do still work if you just tweak the install rdf version number. I think mozilla force addon devs to only include compatibility up to the current version in the rdf.

I got a couple of chrome extensions and they are not glorified web pages and even if they are., that is not the point. the point is that extensions from one FF may not work with another version and that can get annoying.

Having worked with 5.0 for a while I find that it is an improvement over 4.0.xxx which would take about a minute to recover if multiple tabs were open and accessed later. That was an improvement over 3.6..xx which had to be closed down and terminated through task manager before able to restart the program.

Having read some less then complimentary reports about FF4, I have decided to do my usual thing: wait for them to pick out the bugs and have stable version....
....and so I probably won't ever update my FF 3.18 !
Regards,
Martin

The 5.0 upgrade took no time at all for me, and no difference to my browsing experience. It feels more like 4.x

Use the "Add-On Compatability Reporter" add-on and you can force implementation of "incompatible" add-ons. I have been running FF5 since the first beta was launched a few weeks ago and only have issues with a couple of add-ons. Most that are marked as only compatible up to FF4 work fine on FF5.

In reply to a post by AEP:

I guess the question is why they have dropped support for 4 but continue support for 3. Was 4 such a disaster that they want to forget it or is the 5 moniker just a marketing rebranded of 4.1?

Version 4 updates have historically always had issues - DOS 4 (every PC manufacturer ignored it, except for Toshiba), dBase 4 (again ignored in favour of earlier version), iPhone 4 (antenna problems), I could go on...

Be interesteing to see how long Thunderbird 4 lasts before moving to 5, or even, how long it takes to get to TB4

It's just a version number. Who cares? Chrome is on version 12 already.

In reply to a post by joconnell:

In reply to a post by AEP:

I guess the question is why they have dropped support for 4 but continue support for 3. Was 4 such a disaster that they want to forget it or is the 5 moniker just a marketing rebranded of 4.1?

Version 4 updates have historically always had issues - DOS 4 (every PC manufacturer ignored it, except for Toshiba), dBase 4 (again ignored in favour of earlier version), iPhone 4 (antenna problems), I could go on...

Be interesteing to see how long Thunderbird 4 lasts before moving to 5, or even, how long it takes to get to TB4

Thunderbird 4 will be retired when it starts leaking.