So, has anybody upgraded to Firefox 6 yet? Does it offer any real improvements?
I can’t believe they already went to a major version when 5 was released so quickly after 4. Are they trying to rocket-up the version number to be in better competition with IE 9 and Chrome 46 (or whatever it’s at now) 
They’ve committed themselves to a much faster development cycle to keep up with Chrome (according to this article), but to be honest, it just annoys me, as I’m just settling into version 5 with add-ons just getting up to speed. The new JavaScript Scratchpad editor looks interesting, though. I will just update it on my virtual machine to have a play with it, but not touch it for a while in my normal environment.
I know this sounds bad, but I didn’t even know ff5 was out. After convincing myself to not look at all the Chrome processes I kind of forgot about FF.
OMG how do you call yourself a developer then?
I look at code all day at work which is 99.99% our intranet, so I just need to worry about IE 8 and soon 9.
I haven’t left v4 yet because I am waiting for UPEK to update their add-ons. I use a biometric fingerprint reader for security on my mobile devices. They’re rather slow to catch up and update their add-ons to the newer versions. Heck, they may never catch up at the rate that FF is going to be releasing major versions.
They pushed v5 out really fast because of v4’s issues. I haven’t had any problems, but some ppl are plagued by constant browser crashes with v4.
It’s ironic - they released v4 with enormous fanfare (live stream party, download counter, etc.) but they squeaked the next 2 major versions out when everybody was at lunch.
That is a bit of a worry, and must be a pain in the neck for add-on developers. At least FF doesn’t auto update like Chrome.
It is indeed annoying. Even more annoying when you realize that 9 out of 10 add-ons will probably just work if the developer takes a few seconds to change the maxVersion in the manifest file and re-publish their plugin (you can also do this yourself btw, see Editing an add-on to change its compatibility - MozillaZine Knowledge Base)
Chrome doesn’t have this restriction, and overall the chrome extension system is a lot better than Firefox’s add-on system. At least when viewed from an extension/add-on developer’s point of view
It is a pain that a simple manifest file can throw an add on out of compatibility. I have to keep hacking the Delicious add on manifest since they’re in development limbo.
Is it always really that simple? I have a password manager, for example, and the developer has to scramble for days/weeks to update its addon every time there’s an upgrade. I’m sure it’s more than just changing a number.
I imagine it depends on the add on, but in the case of the Delicious add on, it a works like a charm.
Yes, it’s really that simple. If the code is valid under the new version (i.e. doesn’t use stuff that doesn’t exist in the newer firefox version any more), changing the number is really all that it takes; the number is all that’s keeping firefox from installing it.
If the code is not valid under the new version, this method still works but obviously the add-on will not
I just upgraded to Firefox 6 and when I try to open the Add-ons page it just hangs forever. I tried closing Firefox and re-opening it to no avail.
Sometimes a restart of the machine is in order. Try that and see what happens.
Heh yep, I installed v4 a few days after the big launch, just in case of oopsies. I haven’t touched FF since.
That is new no? I remember doing that for an add on and set it to version 12, and it still worked – but this was v3.x.x.x
So I decided to pull the trigger on my home machine after I learned that the Delicious add-on is back in action after Yahoo sold it. It’s being maintained again.
v6 doesn’t add anything overly earth-shattering. It supposed to be much faster ala Chrome, but Chrome still has it beat.
After installation I loaded up my iGoogle home page which has a newsfeed from PCWorld. Here is the first article in the list:
Firefox 7 Beta Puts Priority on Performance | PCWorld
As for Firefox 8, it just appeared in Mozilla’s Nightly channel, but already reports are suggesting that it’s as much as 20 percent faster than Firefox 5 on pretty much every metric, putting it on par with Chrome 14.
That sounds cool - I look forward to seeing that next week when they release v8 
…and how much of a memory hog is it?
A good question. I must admit I run a lot of RAM so I don’t usually have to worry about that too often though.
Anyone have trouble getting Firebug 1.8 to work in Firefox 6? Well I found that I actually had to install firebug from the Firefox Add-On Menu rather than go to Firebug.
If you are running FF 6, and go to Firebug and download the latest firebug-1.8.0.xpi, it will attempt to install it, and then tell you it is not compatible! However, hit Ctrl-Shift-A and open Add-Ons, and get firebug from there, it suddenly works? Very odd, eh?
Thanks for the tip, TacoBeans, and welcome to SitePoint. I still haven’t upgraded, because I don’t trust upgrades. I like to wait a bit and let all the problems get sorted first.