Mozilla Firefox 4, aproape gata

După o foarte lungă şi lentă perioadă de dezvoltare, următoarea versiune majoră a popularului browser Mozilla Firefox este aproape gata. Conform mesajului lui Damon Sicore, Senior Director of Platform Engineering, în acest moment mai există 160 de probleme majore care trebuie rezolvate înaintea trecerii la stadiul Release Candidate, ceea ce Mozilla numeşte „hard blockers”. Prima versiune Release Candidate este preconizata pentru luna februarie şi, dacă totul va merge cum trebuie, tot în aceasta luna vom avea şansa să vedem versiunea finală pentru Firefox 4.0.
Devenit de curând cel mai popular browser în Europa, deși la nivel global adopția lui a stagnat, Firefox nu a mai avut parte de un upgrade major de la versiunea 3.5, lansată în iunie 2009. Noua viitoare versiune va aduce o interfaţă nouă, accelerare hardware Direct2D, salturi de performanță vizibile şi multe alte îmbunătăţiri, după cum am prezentat şi noi acum ceva vreme.

Team,
We’ve worked tremendously hard on Firefox 4, and it’s time to ship it. I’m seeing the same burst of excitement and activity that we’ve seen in the endgame of every release. Over the past several days, component leads have again reduced their blockers by identifying hard blockers and those we can live without. We’ve around 160 hard blockers remaining, and historically it has taken us six weeks to reach RC once we have 100 blockers left. We must press hard now.
To Finish:
1) We have to reach Release Candidate status as quickly as possible, ideally finishing the hard blockers by the beginning of February and shipping final before the end of February. We’ll need your help to balance these targets against the need to build a high quality product.
2) Bug counts demand another beta. We’ll drive the beta bugs to zero and ship another beta. If we can’t get them to zero in reasonable time, we’ll repeat, deliberately. It depends on how quickly we can drive down the list of hard blockers that need beta feedback. This is our top development priority, since it pushes the rest of our schedule.
3) We need *everyone* to help in testing. Specifically: Do not disable Flash, Silverlight, or other major plugins as we need as many people testing these as possible. Windows users: We need to know if you are affected by hardware acceleration causing crashes or other issues. Don’t just assume that someone else has filed a bug already. Make sure. Ask someone if you don’t know how. This is very important.
MOST IMPORTANT: We must ship the best possible product we can. If a blocker needs more time, tell release drivers and component leads immediately. If you disagree with a blocking call, say so loudly. Do not be timid. This is your product, we need you to own it.
I know you’re all tired and stressed. You all do incredible work every day, and you’ve built an amazing product. Stay focused. Be nice to each other. Firefox 4 is gonna kick ass, and you should be fiercely proud of it.
All my best,
Damon