sure. this is the reason for a new release number. if you have a plugin compatible only with release 6, don't upgrade to 7.

the reason the "media" goes nuts about 12 vs. 13 is because they're uneducated morons. they don't understand what the number means. they're stuck on a particular meaning for those numbers which has absolutely nothing to do with what they actually represent.

the average user doesn't need to know anything but "firefox". in fact it doesn't even bother to inform you that it upgraded anymore. it'll just install the next time you restart the browser.

the new feature introduced in release 13 is the new tab page which provides thumbnail previews of your most often used pages when you create a new tab.

you can:

- drag and drop to organize the thumbnails
- open in a new tab, or click as usual to use the current one
- add or remove thumbnails and refresh them
- enable/disable the new tab page in the upper-right corner

release 12 included several features, probably the most significant on the UI side being the 'inspect element' source code viewer.

i'm sorry, but as far as i can see these are major new features deserving of new releases.

if you want to look into the development branches you'll see 14, 15, 16 coming soon too.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkcompatib ility/

http://www.reaper.fm/download-old.php?ver=4x

Have a look at the v4.0 changelog at the bottom. I certainly wouldn't call that 'pretty close to zero differences'.

Yeah, it's almost exactly the same

Anyways, now this thread has turned into a reaper thread

when i look at the 4.x feature list, i don't see a single change that affects me. try to find a single feature that i would notice as a new user. it can't be something buried under five other features that you'd only rarely use. nothing like:

"MIDI: fixed MIDI pools when opening multiple copies of the same project in different project tabs"

who would ever notice this? do you normally open several copies of the same project?

they're good bug fixes sure, but why haven't they fixed the UI for menu customization yet? it's a flat list rather than a hierarchy. this is a very simple change that wouldn't take more than a couple hours to do. minimal effort required, most would be in adding the missing data to the menu items as some of them don't yet have group information in the name.

i'd rather if they focused on the basic foundational features which would make reaper something i'd consider paying for and using. of course they'd rather fix obscure bugs for some reason. oh well.

i'm quite familiar with this because i was downloading every 'beta' release between the last 3.x and 4.x. i was hoping for a specific set of features and i posted on the reaper forum about them.

it turned out there was so little support for the most basic features i just gave up. in fact most people on the reaper forums were enraged that i'd even mention these changes at all.

the only people who supported my suggestions were well known, helpful people on the forum that regularly posted useful information or made intelligent feature requests.

all the "user x" replies tended to dismiss my requests as useless.

so i've given up on even looking at reaper again until these things are implemented. take a look at the basic interface and try to make a list of the ten most simple, small changes that would make the biggest difference. i bet all of my suggestions will be in that list.

how this applies to firefox though:

- firefox has almost full menu customization
the only thing missing here is something you need to really go into the databases and do some programming to change. custom items for the menu, not just customizing the layout of the existing ones. this would be a great feature to work a little more on, for example the ability to add a [+] button on a menu which would show/hide that menu. not a great idea, but i'm sure there are a ton of other simple features that would be really useful.

- firefox has extensive support for bookmarks/favorites, feeds, groups...
the interface for customizing this stuff is still a little difficult to use. for example when you go into the "library" dialog by clicking "bookmarks -> show all bookmarks" why do you see bookmarks toolbar, then bookmarks menu with another version of bookmarks toolbar? are these the same thing or different? turns out they're actually different and stored in different databases but in the UI there is no abstraction layer to combine them into one item. this can be super confusing at times.

- firefox always had view source, but relied on plugins for more advanced functions
this has now been incorporated into the core in release 12

- firefox has had tabs for a long time, but never supported the feature of page previews
there is now a new tab page feature in release 13, but it would also be nice to view tabs in a ps3 or iphone style rather than along the usual tab bar. it would also be useful to group tabs into different levels, for example a 'kvr' group containing all kvr tabs.

notice these are all really core features that affect everyone. other than maybe view source which is sort of a dev tool, most of the biggest features associated with firefox releases are UI, ordinary user, often used core features.

my suggestions here are kind of obvious and the size of the team working on firefox makes it pretty certain they've already thought of that. in fact they've thought of a ton more if you want to look into what is being worked on now.

they are facing similar problems though - there are still a lot of even more foundational functions that could be improved before tacking on extra UI glitter like tab previews. let's just hope it doesn't get to be "reaperfied" where a release includes bug fixes for features you've never heard of.

This is automated actually. I get a message that FF 13 is available. If I accept the update, it warns me of what will no longer work - at which point I often decline to proceed.

For me it was significant.

I bought Reaper 3.6 and tested two years ago - and found, not quite ready yet.

Then in march 2012 I look again at 4.21 and that made me ditch Sonar permanently.

If it was things happening between 3.6->3.99 I can't tell though. I did no scientific research exactly what happended where - but found what I needed and it was smooth to use. No awkward solutions - just smooth operation to everything I needed.

The point is really - just an incremental decimal number on each release is silly - and not explanatory.

Now Firefox 14 is available
Now Firefox 15 is available
Now Firefox 16 is available
Now Firefox 17 is available
Now Firefox 18 is available
Now Firefox 19 is available

What does it tell you about significance of changes - nothing?
It may just as well be a minor bugfix.

Hierarchtical versioning is much more useful - for the purpose of the many.

I reverted to FF 3.6 yesterday. The last I had as full installer.

Since on FF 5.0 I did a check for update and expected to be able to say yes/no somewhere first - no it started download immediately - which I aborted. Then later just starting FF 5 again it just flashed "Installed security update 12 successfully" and that was it. Software taking over my computer - I have no say anymore. Now version said Firefox 12.0. Update history said Firefox 5.0 and then Firefox 12.0.

So don't tell me this isn't major version updates. I think they should go back to the principles everybody understand and embrace.

using release.major.minor.bugfix gets a lot of complaint too.

(xhip, my software uses this format. current version is 0.7.0.0, but it's simply labelled "0.7")

the problem with x.xx is that picking numbers is 100% subjective. you can come up with a rule like "we add 0.05 for each minor feature" but not only is it subjective what you pick as a 'minor feature' but you might be rolling over from 1.89 which would become 1.94 - this looks like a major feature with 0.04 added on. so this numbering scheme is ridiculous. (this is the consensus you'll find if you look into it.)

the idea with simply counting releases is that you apply simple rules. "a release must include at least one major feature." now bug fixes are applied as minor revisions / security updates and minor features are collected until they're considered major as a whole, or collect until they happen to be released together with one major feature when it appears.

what is the problem with this scheme? can you come up with one drawback? there are no drawbacks. you've never bothered to think it through.

plus, although i mentioned xhip uses the rel.maj.min.rev format in the last years i've decided not to release anything but major feature versions anyway. so it's become identical to the 'release' format. i've actually created a list of features for a "final" version which will be called "1.0.0.0", but i think after this i'll just continue with the 'release' system instead as it makes far more sense. next you'll see xhip 2, then 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. bug fix releases will be extended with a letter, a-z. i hope i never need to make 26 bug fix releases between versions and if i ever do i'll need to re-think whether i should actually be programming or not after my apparent head injury.

That this thread came about, that some(me) start wondering what is going on is not a drawback.

You are completely alone in the industry with this approach - that is the major drawback.

A major version update is a very common condition that now users have to pay something again. That is the most used approach and use of major version.

Minor version updates are often free - and updates in the third fourth number are certainly free for everything I came across in software.

That A.b.c.d format does not tell everything about an update is no problem. It's a much better approach to tell users what happend.

At the end of the year it's probably Firefox 46.0 - good luck with that. I'm sticking with 3.6.

so you're saying you don't want html5 support or any of the other new features?

you've still failed to come up with any drawback of the new versioning system. alone in the industry? last time i checked every piece of major software is now using this.

which version of windows do you have? 7 or 8?

what about osx? are you still on version 11?

internet explorer?

photoshop?

flash?

msvc?

what about the latest nvidia geforce driver? 301.42?

the list goes on. you are completely insane and clearly delusional. that is the drawback.

the solution to the problem as you describe it is one of the following:

- the release versioning combined with bothering to check the release documentation.
- a four-part version number combined with bothering to check the release documentation.

there is really no difference. either way you're forced to bother to read the "what's new?".

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/13.0/releasenotes/

What you are referring to is actually major version updates!!!
You were previously stating Firefox was not a major version update.

How is going to be?

Windows does not come with a major version update every month.
And neither of the other software mentione either.

It's years in between!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really don't get your reasoning over this.
Good luck confusing everybody - every month - with major version updates on Firefox.

Gotta try and ignore the bait

Use palemoon.
It's firefox, but it's better optimised, doesn't have all the bloat, and updates on less frequent basis:
http://www.palemoon.org

I'm worried about using non-official versions of browsers because of security, etc. I do a lot of transactions online.