Mozilla Firebird - Beta Fatigue

by Charles Miller on June 1, 2003

I downloaded and installed Mozilla Firebird, the new direction for Mozilla browsing. Here were my impressions:

  1. Looks nice
  2. Seems quick
  3. Renders well
  4. Page-up and page-down often refuse to work
  5. Application freezes for up to a minute, randomly
  6. Dialogs (such as HTTP Basic Auth) can refuse to close, forcing you to quit the app

I'm suffering from horrendous Mozilla beta-fatigue. I've been supporting the browser, using it regularly since the single-digit milestone releases (Well, M9 anyway). It had a blissful year or two of useability and stability, and then... another radical change of direction lands us in beta-country again. I can't take it any more. Sure, I use the Safari beta on my iMac, but Safari's beta-ness expresses itself in missing functionality (most of which I would never use anyway), and rendering quirks. Not annoying freezes and dialog boxes that won't close.

I understand that the move away from the application suite was necessary, but this time I'm not playing. Wake me up when it's 1.0, I'll be sticking with the old stable branch, or browsing on my Mac until then.

Previously: Impossible Performance Art

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