Firebug 1.8.2

[Jan Honza Odvarko]

http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/08/31/firebug-1-8-2/

Honza

[Astara]

Ya know, there are ALOT of people still using 3.x (just upgraded to 3.6.21)...

You don't hear as much from them as they generally aren't in the forefront of FF development...BUT, one shouldn't assume that such is due to them being non-techies or not interested...  Some are overloaded with too many other things and have stuck with the more stable (according to crash statisitics) series because they don't want to devote alot of time to figuring out how to upgrade or replace their 100+ extensions..(among other reasons)...)...

It SURE would be nice to have those bug fixes -- even feature adds available -- as 3.x is still stuck
with the Firebug-1.7.2 version...

I'm just sayin'.... ;-)..

[Jan Honza Odvarko]

I see the point, but unfortunately our resources are limited and we
can't support
all versions of Firebug/Firefox.

Honza

[Astara]

Yes, but you are choosing to support 4-8.    6-8 are < .03% users, with FF5 @ 53.74%, and 2nd place FF3.6 @ a hair over 30%.



Supporting at least the 2nd largest user base doesn't seem unreasonable...

Choosing versions comprising < 1% of the user base while not being able to support well over a quarter of your existing your base doesn't
seem like the best resource trade-off.  But, I understand wanting to have FB available on the bleeding edge.

It's not a small number of users @3.6, but the 2nd largest group, though ...  were you aware of the numbers?

(graph is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox).

[dmccunney]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Astara <astara...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ya know, there are ALOT of people still using 3.x (just upgraded to
> 3.6.21)...
>
> You don't hear as much from them as they generally aren't in the forefront
> of FF development...BUT, one shouldn't assume that such is due to them being
> non-techies or not interested...  Some are overloaded with too many other
> things and have stuck with the more stable (according to crash statisitics)
> series because they don't want to devote alot of time to figuring out how to
> upgrade or replace their 100+ extensions..(among other reasons)...)...

I migrated from FF 3.6 to 4. I have 100+ extensions. I lost
precisely two where FF changed things under the hood the the extension
used. One was no longer developed/supported in any case, and I found
another that offered the same functionality that worked. The others
author planned a fix but was waiting for the dust to settle and an
actual FF4 release to occur so he wasn't shooting at a moving target.

Everything else worked, and has continued to work in FF 5, 6, 7 beta,
Aurora, and Nightly. All I had to do was turn off addon compatibility
checking, which I did by installing Addons Compatibility Reporter.

See https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

Do yourself a favor, do likewise, and upgrade.
_____
Dennis

[kontur]

On 1 syys, 13:54, Astara <astara.ath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, but you are choosing to support 4-8.    6-8 are < .03% users, with FF5
> @ 53.74%, and 2nd place FF3.6 @ a hair over 30%.
>
> Supporting at least the 2nd largest user base doesn't seem unreasonable...
>
> Choosing versions comprising < 1% of the user base while not being able to
> support well over a quarter of your existing your base doesn't
> seem like the best resource trade-off.  But, I understand wanting to have FB
> available on the bleeding edge.

Firebug is first and foremost a development tool. Linking a general
firefox usage statistic is not overly useful - developers should be
aware of and using an up to date browser.
FF 3.6 came out (thanks for you link) december 2008 - if you regularly
perform tasks with FB it can be assumed you also update your browser
at least once every 3 years.

[alfonsoml]

So you don't have the time to upgrade your browser, and instead you
want that other people devote their time to support the version that
you've chosen to stay with?

Just for how long should they stay supporting it?

And when you finally decide to upgrade, I think that you'll expect a
fully supported and polished version of Firebug that doesn't have any
problem with the current version of Firefox. Just because it's easy to
double the number of hours in each day and even fix back the Firefox
bugs that caused the problems or limitations in Firebug

I instead would rather see a shift to support even Aurora, as that's
the version that will be released in 3 months and it's better to find
bugs as soon as possible to fix regressions in Firefox.

[Sebo]

Alfonso is right. We can't keep the support for old versions of
Firefox, because we simply don't have time to do so. For implementing
new features we would always need to have a fallback for old versions,
that don't support them.
You can read about which versions of Firefox the different Firebug
versions support at http://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#Compatibility.

Alfonso, please note, that the latest development version of Firebug
(currently 1.9.0a1) is always supporting the latest version of Firefox
(currently 9.0a1).

Sebastian

[alfonsoml]

Yes, I was wrong about the support with the alphas, it might be just
my memory or a mixup with something else.
Keep up with these nice updates :-)
The only thing that I would ask is that unless there's something
really important about the upgrade, not opening the "what's new" tab
on first launch would be better.

On 9 sep, 07:57, Sebo <sebastianzart...@gmx.de> wrote:
> Alfonso is right. We can't keep the support for old versions of
> Firefox, because we simply don't have time to do so. For implementing
> new features we would always need to have a fallback for old versions,
> that don't support them.
> You can read about which versions of Firefox the different Firebug

> versions support athttp://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/FAQ#Compatibility.

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:29 PM, alfonsoml <aml...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I instead would rather see a shift to support even Aurora, as that's
> the version that will be released in 3 months and it's better to find
> bugs as soon as possible to fix regressions in Firefox.

To a large extent, it does. IIRC, it was mentioned that Firebug
development was done against the Aurora branch.
_____
Dennis

[Astara]

(3rd attempt @ post...).

alfonsoml wrote:

So you don't have the time to upgrade your browser, and instead you
want that other people devote their time to support the version that
you've chosen to stay with?
 

---
   Just because 30% of the people haven't upgraded... not just me...  Are you trying
to make me feel like I'm somehow all alone in not upgrading just yet?

Just for how long should they stay supporting it?
 

----
   It depends, but usually when the user base gets down below some fractional value
like 1/3, 1/4, 1/5... depends on the product and how it is used.

   Also depends on how well the old product works or if it crashes or has features that
just are broken.

And when you finally decide to upgrade, I think that you'll expect a
fully supported and polished version of Firebug that doesn't have any
problem with the current version of Firefox.

----
   I don't have that now, so why would I expect it when I upgrade?  Usually I expect
a downgrade in quality when I upgrade.  Developers tend to focus on new features
and new stuff, while not devoting enough time to maintenance or fixing of problems --
in general,   I dread upgrades because of the focus on new features, that usually bring
a host of new bugs (this is 'in general' not specific to firebug).  It's rare that a new
release brings an upgrade in quality without some increase in new features that also bring
New bugs (security patches usually excluded from that count, though not always).

I instead would rather see a shift to support even Aurora, as that's
the version that will be released in 3 months and it's better to find
bugs as soon as possible to fix regressions in Firefox.
 

----
   It is very troublesome for you to indicate how incompatible Aurora is with previous versions.

That's the problem all extension developers are facing right now.  FF is a fast moving target with
such widely incompatible features sets that extension developers find it impossible to support
browsers released only yesturday!!! (3.6.22 was released yesterday, not in 2008, get with the
program!)...  I'm not asking for support for 3.6.0 -- just currently used browsers by more than 20%
of the people, (arbitrary)...  But 3.6.x was cut off with it's last update back when it till had over a
50% market share!... (June).  That was it's last bug fix.  Not asking for new features, but you focused,
in your last few announcements about how many bugs you fixed.

I'm not asking for full new version support in the prior versions -- just the bug fixes that you've been
focusing on of late, as I often get hangs and panels that don't function well or at all in some cases, yet
they claim no incompatibility.

So let me rephrase my request/statement to be specific about bug-fixes, not about feature additions.

That way you can focus on new features for the new browsers, but keep bug fixes maintained for the currently top 75-80% of the user base.

[Astara]

-------- Original Message --------

From:	- Fri Sep 09 13:44:26 2011
Message-ID:	<4E6A69BF.4070601(at)tlinx(dot)org>
Date:	Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:32:15 -0700
From:	Astara (la_walsh) <firebug(at)tlinx(dot)org>
User-Agent:	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.24) Gecko/20100228 Thunderbird/2.0.0.24 Mnenhy/0.7.6.666
Subject:	Fwd: [firebug] Re: Firebug 1.8.2

alfonsoml wrote:
> So you don't have the time to upgrade your browser, and instead you
> want that other people devote their time to support the version that
> you've chosen to stay with?
>   

---
   Just because 30% of the people haven't upgraded... not just me...  
Are you trying
to make me feel like I'm somehow all alone in not upgrading just yet?

> Just for how long should they stay supporting it?
>   

----
   It depends, but usually when the user base gets down below some
fractional value like 1/3, 1/4, 1/5... depends on the product and 
how it is used.

   Also depends on how well the old product works or if it crashes or 
has features that
just are broken.

> And when you finally decide to upgrade, I think that you'll expect a
> fully supported and polished version of Firebug that doesn't have any
> problem with the current version of Firefox.

----
   I don't have that now, so why would I expect it when I upgrade? 
Usually I expect a downgrade in quality when I upgrade.  Developers
tend to focus on new features and new stuff, while not devoting 
enough time to maintenance or fixing of problems -- in general,  
I dread upgrades because of the focus on new features, that usually bring
a host of new bugs (this is 'in general' not specific to firebug). 
It's rare that a new release brings an upgrade in quality without 
some increase in new features that also bring New bugs (security 
patches usually excluded from that count, though not always).

> I instead would rather see a shift to support even Aurora, as that's
> the version that will be released in 3 months and it's better to find
> bugs as soon as possible to fix regressions in Firefox.
>   

[alfonsoml]

>    Just because 30% of the people haven't upgraded... not just me...  
> Are you trying
> to make me feel like I'm somehow all alone in not upgrading just yet?
> > Just for how long should they stay supporting it?
>
> ----
>    It depends, but usually when the user base gets down below some
> fractional value like 1/3, 1/4, 1/5... depends on the product and
> how it is used.

1/3 is 33%, so according to the stats that you're using it might be
the time to stop caring about that version.

>
>    Also depends on how well the old product works or if it crashes or
> has features that
> just are broken.

I don't remember Firebug ever crashing when I used older versions. You
might try to start with a new profile.

> Usually I expect a downgrade in quality when I upgrade.

Ok, here's your real problem.
The rest of the world expects improvements when they do any upgrade,
and so they prefer to move forward and report if there's any new
problem because the reality is that usually there are no new problems
and instead new features and bug fixes.

> > I instead would rather see a shift to support even Aurora, as that's
> > the version that will be released in 3 months and it's better to find
> > bugs as soon as possible to fix regressions in Firefox.
>
> ----
>    It is very troublesome for you to indicate how incompatible Aurora
> is with previous versions.

As other people have pointed out, the development of Firebug is tested
on Aurora, and you're readying too much in my words

[Chris Baker]

If you are a developer and you're using a 3 year old browser to work,
I humbly suggest you are doing it wrong. I keep a computer around with
FF 3.x to check my work, but there is absolutely no reason, as a web
developer who spends all working hours on the internet, to refuse the
updates to your browser. You're missing all new HTML 5 specification
implementations, for starters.... you guys are morally equivalent to
people who still use IE 6! Come on... update your software. As a
technical person, should know better.

/2 cents

[Astara]

alfonsoml wrote:
>> Just because 30% of the people haven't upgraded... not just me... Are you trying
>> to make me feel like I'm somehow all alone in not upgrading just yet?
>>
>>> Just for how long should they stay supporting it?
>>>
>> ----
>> It depends, but usually when the user base gets down below some
>> fractional value like 1/3, 1/4, 1/5... depends on the product and
>> how it is used.
>>
>
> 1/3 is 33%, so according to the stats that you're using it might be
> the time to stop caring about that version.
>

If you were to take least compatible option -- sure....that is why I
included
the fraction, some people really don't care about compatibility.
... and then...

>
>> Also depends on how well the old product works or if it crashes or
>> has features that just are broken.
>>
> I don't remember Firebug ever crashing when I used older versions. You
> might try to start with a new profile.
>

----
I have...the features are still broken...I have, for example, a
'Resource Panel' that keeps
saying it isn't active, click to activate and nothing happens.

>
>
>> Usually I expect a downgrade in quality when I upgrade.
>>
>
> Ok, here's your real problem.
> The rest of the world expects improvements when they do any upgrade,
> and so they prefer to move forward and report if there's any new
> problem because the reality is that usually there are no new problems
> and instead new features and bug fixes.
>

---
I know of no software engineers that expect an improvement in
quality when new features
are introduced. It goes contrary to everything known about software
-- you introduce new
features/code, it will also introduce new bugs -- and very often in
previously working code due to
unforeseen interactions. Your reality view "usually no new problems"
is a fantasy.

Note -- Very simple...a new problem with version 1.8.2 (or some prior
version) is it no longer
worked with FF 3.x series -- killing compat for 1/3 the users...of
course for you, that's
'no problem'... If you define away everything that's a problem, as
'not a problem', then of course
you won't have problems, that's a very distorted definition to be
using.

>
>> ----
>> It is very troublesome for you to indicate how incompatible Aurora
>> is with previous versions.
>>
>
> As other people have pointed out, the development of Firebug is tested
> on Aurora, and you're readying too much in my words
>

---
Not at all...if Aurora was very compatible with previous versions,
there's be no need to force older
versions into incompatibility in extensions.

IMO, you are not focusing on the product as a whole, but the versions
with the newest features, while
ignoring products that are still 'new', but ARE in bug-fix only mode
(i.e. not delivering new features).


I don't really want to strongly argue about this, as I intend to
upgrade as soon as other things
on my plate calm down enough (but that's been the case for months)...

I don't want to paint myself into any corner trying to claim one
version is 'better' than another.

It's just that I noticed most of the stuff in the past 2 releases was
bug fixes only -- it was my desire that those
bug fixes be ported into the maintenance release versions of FF that
are still widely in use.



-A

[fir...@tlinx.org]

alfonsoml wrote:
> So you don't have the time to upgrade your browser, and instead you
> want that other people devote their time to support the version that
> you've chosen to stay with?
>

---

Just because 30% of the people haven't upgraded... not just me...
Are you trying
to make me feel like I'm somehow all alone in not upgrading just yet?

> Just for how long should they stay supporting it?
>

----
It depends, but usually when the user base gets down below some
fractional value like 1/3, 1/4, 1/5... depends on the product and
how it is used.

Also depends on how well the old product works or if it crashes or
has features that
just are broken.

> And when you finally decide to upgrade, I think that you'll expect a
> fully supported and polished version of Firebug that doesn't have any
> problem with the current version of Firefox.

----
I don't have that now, so why would I expect it when I upgrade?
Usually I expect a downgrade in quality when I upgrade. Developers
tend to focus on new features and new stuff, while not devoting
enough time to maintenance or fixing of problems -- in general,
I dread upgrades because of the focus on new features, that usually
bring
a host of new bugs (this is 'in general' not specific to firebug).
It's rare that a new release brings an upgrade in quality without
some increase in new features that also bring New bugs (security
patches usually excluded from that count, though not always).

> I instead would rather see a shift to support even Aurora, as that's
> the version that will be released in 3 months and it's better to find
> bugs as soon as possible to fix regressions in Firefox.
>

----
It is very troublesome for you to indicate how incompatible Aurora
is with previous versions.

[Astara (la walsh)]

` Chris Baker wrote:
> If you are a developer and you're using a 3 year old browser to work,
> I humbly suggest you are doing it wrong. I keep a computer around with
> FF 3.x to check my work, but there is absolutely no reason, as a web
> developer who spends all working hours on the internet, to refuse the
> updates to your browser. You're missing all new HTML 5 specification
> implementations, for starters.... you guys are morally equivalent to
> people who still use IE 6! Come on... update your software. As a
> technical person, should know better.
>

---

But I'm NOT developing FF 4-7...

I use FB to figure out why web pages I'm visiting today don't work...

Sometimes they look for other browsers (more rare these days), or they
expect me to have 3rd party cookies enabled, or they expect my machine
to have no firewall, or to permit access to all
scripts/sites w/no control...

These are unrealistic expectations in my environment. But they are used
to dealing with the masses who don't secure their machines and come to
expect such in order for their sites to function. So I have to use FB
to break into the code at a certain point to see why it is failing and
how to work around it --- sometimes by allowing more permissions, or
sometimes by blocking other pieces of code ... or occasionally (if it
important enough), by writing some custom css or js rules that execute
on that site.

My browser isn't 3 years old, it was downloaded last week -- new version
3.6.21 or 22?
But to expect me to debug websites that don't work with 3.x using a 6.x
or 7.x browser is
unrealistic. What type of developer would do something that lame?

It is RARE, that I encounter a website that will only work with a newer
browser, it's usually something much more mundane, like 'expectations of
no security', that are at the root.

[Scott M. Sanders]

Weird, it's like real users still use "old" browsers and encounter bugs that need fixed.

[Astara (la walsh)]

Scott M. Sanders wrote:
> Weird, it's like real users still use "old" browsers and encounter
> bugs that need fixed.

*snicker*