Standards Make Rapid Software Releases Workable 97
jfruhlinger writes "There was a bit of a kerfuffle when the Mozilla Foundation's community coordinator brushed aside concerns from enterprises that Mozilla's rapid release schedule clashed with organizations' need to carefully vet software upgrades. One thing that could bridge the gap between these worldviews is a widespread adoption of open standards. After all, if IE 6 dealt with web pages in a standard way, it wouldn't have been so painful to keep it around as long as it lurked on many corporate desktops."
Version numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Version numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
But, the whole point is that they don't have to do this. The complaints that people "stop bitching about version numbers" is missing the point. *Even if* that is a valid view, Mozilla still has *no reason* to do it. It is pissing people off for absolutely no added benefit.
So, If the browser functions to "standards", ..... (Score:3, Insightful)
.... anyway, what the hell do they change from version to version?
If they tell you "Changes are not *dangerous*, because we stick to standards", then that is bullshit. If a change is "not at all dangerous" then it is also "not at all necessary", since it would imply the change does not change anything. What I have seen in 15 years in IT is that even some pretty minor thing that changed in a software product can bring your work flow to a halt. And you can lose business for hours or days.
Missing the point... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, implementing standards in *theory* should mean the browser choice doesn't matter. The problem is the difference between theory and practice. You think you write in standards, but you only validate that in one browser, you may accidentally not be standards compliant. Conversely, you may fairly be totally standards compliant, but a browser defect results in your site not behaving correctly. Or a standard could be sufficiently vague as to have multiple implementations vary in behavior without being able to point at any particular one as non-compliant.
All this is ignoring that things like browser crashes, memory exhaustion, and security issues are critical issues to worry about that generally have no bearing on standards compliance.
If standards meant the choice and version of a browser wouldn't matter, then why would there be a choice of browser and version in the first place?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Version numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
But the people complaining don't want Firefox 4.1, they want Firefox 4.0.1 - aka fixes for security holes and other serious bugs, but with minimal chance of incompatibility
That's exactly it. The whole version numbering thing is a complete red herring. The point is that with such a rapid release cycle, and with the failure to distinguish between bug fixes and new feature releases/UI changes, it is no longer possible to aim at a stable, secure, standardised browser platform within an organisation if you rely on Firefox as your browser.