Sometimes Mr. Noobie needs to listen to his own advice
I’ve preached to my customers many times over the past two years to stay as far away as possible from any software labeled as “beta”. For those of you who haven’t heard my speech, installing beta software is like doing free user testing for a company, with no support whatsoever. That’s because beta software is really not-ready-for-prime-time software and slapping a beta tag on it releases the company from any liability that may incur from a user installing the software.
So why was I so tempted when Firefox 3, Beta 4 was released? Why couldn’t I leave well enough alone with my stable, albeit memory-leaking, Firefox version 2? I’m not sure I know the answer but I can tell you the end result.
The end result is that I have fewer memory leaks in the beta version. That’s the good news. Unfortunately the good news comes bundled with the following bad news:
- The Google toolbar plugin is not supported and therefore can’t be used
- My Google calendar no longer fills the full width of my monitor
- My CinemaNow plugin is not supported and therefore can’t be used
- Copying and pasting text from Firefox to another application occasionally causes all kinds of erratic behavior
Which brings me to my last point, or perhaps more of another plea from Mr. Noobie. Since I am not going to go through the hassle of uninstalling Firefox 3, Beta 4 and re-installing Firefox 2 along with all of my associated plugins (another wonderful reason to stay away from beta software), I will kindly ask Mozilla to speed along beta 4 testing as quickly as possible. This is one techie who will be installing the final production version of Firefox 3 the day it is released.
2 comments for this blog post so far...
March 25, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Erik Deckers
I used to work for a software company that did several beta releases before a final release, so I know the temptation of getting people to do our testing. In fact, part of what I did was to entice people to do the beta testing.
However, knowing how many bugs are in beta software, and even x.0 releases, I won’t touch a new piece of software until they’re at least at x.1 or higher.
And what is this memory leak in Firefox 2? I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced it.
March 25, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Patric Welch
@Erik The memory leak in Firefox 2 occurs when you leave the browser open with multiple tabs for an extended period of time. It reaches a certain point and then completely crashes. This is supposed to be fixed in version 3 as well as a big performance gain in speed in the browser.
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