problems with firefox rapid release development

I’m starting to get annoyed with the firefox rapid release development cycle.

I’ve known about it for a few months now, and when I first heard about it, it seemed like a good idea.

But then, as I’ve gone through version 4, then 5, and now v6.0, I’m finding more and more add-ons are breaking…

Back when I evaluated all the major browsers, looking for one that I would adopt as my main browser, the main reason I chose firefox was that it had a large number of add-ons, which allowed me to do things that no other browser (including firefox), could do out of the box.

Now, about half of my plugins are disabled, as they are incompatible, and firefox is becoming increasingly annoying to use… it feels like useful aspects are “falling off”.

The version numbering means that firefox no longer needs to support older version… so more effort can go into future development.

Thats great in theory, and users probably don’t care about having firefox V26.0 in 5 years time, but they do care about usability and stability.

For me, firefox is losing useability, and if it gets any worse, I’ll need to have another look around, and see what I can switch to.

The last time I looked, I remember:

Chrome didn’t have all the functionality I wanted (and virtually no plugins to add that functionality).IE lost a lot of the configurability that I wanted (I think its a lot better now)Opera had some compatibility issues.Maxthon and various others had a whole range of issues.

I even tried firefox on my android phone for a while, but eventually decided that the speed of the built-in android browser overshadowed any benefit of using firefox sync, and the nicer firefox UI.