I’ve seen people talking about this lately - namely in the Firefox and Chrome browsers (IE still seems to be sticking to more traditional version releases), they are pumping up the version number just about every other day now. My Chrome is on version 19+ and Firefox is on 12.0, when just a few months ago it was 3.6. At this rate, we will be on version eleventy-billion by next week.
What is the rationale behind it all? Is it supposed to be “better” somehow?
Firefox 74.3: Now with over 93 transistors!
Ah, I forgot about the transistors. It all makes sense now.
In short: Your Chrome version number means nothing, they up it every time they add a new feature, and you’re not really supposed to pay attention since it updates itself without supervision and doesn’t even tell you (at least if you’re on Windows). Your Firefox version number means nothing, because they are following in Chrome’s footsteps as much as they can and thus have borrowed their version numbering scheme. (And lately, they’ve also borrowed the ability to handle PDFs without Acrobat, which is seriously a nice little improvement.)
Google has decided you’re not supposed to pay any attention to version numbers anymore so they are incrementing them for their own amusement. It really doesn’t matter.
The basic idea is, they want to get interesting stuff out to people faster, except for Microsoft, which still kinda hopes the big scary Internet thing might go away before it makes Office less profitable than it was in 2002.
The underlying reason is that the Web is where a large number of computer users spend their time, and they really, really want to do everything from their browser. Modern browsers aren’t quite up to that, but I presume both the Mozilla Foundation and Google have roadmaps to get there, and they’re both trying to follow them as fast as possible to make it happen. Microsoft, as I mentioned, really wants Office and all of their non-Web-based applications to remain profitable, so it has less reason to invest in the Web right now.
But that doesn’t explain why they’re changing the major number, instead of the minor number. Which wouldn’t matter, except that plug-ins check the major number for compatibility, then claim they’re broken if it’s too high.
AIUI, they’re getting this problem fixed now, but why did they put us through this when they could have just followed the usual numbering convention?
Chrome seems to have started the trend. Firefox then started copying Chrome, I think because it made Firefox look like it was lagging. (look, Chrome is up to version 400 and Firefox is only at version 3, Firefox must be way behind!)
The end result of it is that version numbers are now meaningless. You used to be able to tell when major changes or features were added. Now, every tiny change is a major version rev.
I personally find it extremely annoying. If I had a lot more free time I would make my own browser and give it a version number of 4 billion and 7 and increase the revision by a billion every month. That would show them.
Start at 4 billion and go DOWN by a random number between 1 million and 2 million every thirteen days. That will screw up the validation on everyone’s software and a rumor will start that The Rapture will begin when the software reaches zero.
I’m going to go write my own browser. With blackjack! And hookers!
Are there a lot of hookers who are also trained in browser software design? (And how does their hourly charge compare?)
Actually, thinking about it, it might be an improvement over some people I’ve had to work with!
Meanwhile, Apple’s OS X numbering system has gone the opposite way.
I don’t think he meant that the hookers design the browser. They’re a feature.
The reason it was at 3.6 a few months ago would be that you hadn’t updated it to the latest version since at least March 2011. But it is true that the rate of version number increase for latest versions has sped up.
Sounds perfect! Except for the browser. Any way you could do without it?
Here are a couple blog posts related to Chrome’s constant updating.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/go-that-way-really-fast.html
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-infinite-version.html
When I saw the subject line, the first thing that came to mind is Apples’s moronic lack of version numbers*, using instead names of big felines. The wonderful thing about numbers is that you learn their order at a very young age. Is Jaguar newer than Lion? Not immediately clear. This is the sort of cutesiness that Apple does that drive me up the wall.
Running Chrome. According to the ‘About Chrome’ dialog, I am running version 18.0.1025.162 m
AND, it is updating itself in the background without my prior knowledge.
So, if I were to check on that version number, let’s say, next week sometime, I’d get a different number.
That author seems enamored of the version number iterations.
I suppose if the versioning had instead been more like what’s below, that would have sucked, and Chrome would have been a much less agile browser.
For some types of software a versioning system makes sense but for a browser for an end user (not corporate), is there really much value in the old style version numbering system?
It seems like the primary value is for tracking down bugs, but for most users it seems irrelevant if the software is being continuously updated.
Firefox uses the major version to check whether extensions are compatible with the new version of the browser. Gratuitously incrementing the version number can and has arbitrarily broken functionality for end-users.