Mozilla Castrates Firefox 4

By | September 1, 2010 | 8 Comments

Mozilla Castrates Firefox 4It appears that in order to meet a set release deadline (that is Octobers or November of 2010), the final build of Firefox 4 web browser will be a cut down version.

The very first feature to be removed is “Account Manager”.

What does it do?
According to Dan Mills, it allows users to create new web page accounts with randomly generated passwords (optional) and login/out of them with a single click. Web developers could integrate such feature easily, within 15 minutes or more/less.

Anything else?
Yes, if Firefox 4 requires any additional stripping, potential candidates are: silent updates, Inspector and Web Console. All other features are safe, so far.


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Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Foo

    Citations?
    I’m on 4.0b6pre and Beta 5 is planned as the feature freeze checkpoint, so I’m not really surprised about something as experimental and currently “abstract” as the Account Manager not coming in Fx4. Beta 5 is in QA at the moment.

    Web developers could integrate such feature easily, within 15 minutes or more/less.

    Only if there’s already some form of account back-end, mind you.  :-)
     
    One would think that silent updates should require a workaround for the lack of required privileges on Windows to be implemented.

    • nobody

      i think that firefox only needed to switch to chrome-like install method (put everything update-able in users ‘my documents’ area) to have silent installs
       
      but on the other hand, firefox releases are not so frequent and i like that last bit of control i have over my browser.
       
      chrome is too much.. auto

      • Foo

        Sounds like that would mean less security as any program could modify the files.
         
        If I recall correctly automagic ‘silent’ updates in Firefox are only meant for back-end changes, things the user wouldn’t really notice in any direct way.

  • monty

    Account Manager – sounds like something that spammers would appreciate

    • Foo

      Sounds like you haven’t read anything more about it beyond the name itself.

  • http://www.rizzif.com/ Francesco Rizzi

    This seems to support the news above: http://blog.mozilla.com/meeting-notes/archives/369

    • Foo

      Thanks. =)

  • daddly

    it is good ff taking time , they may be want to launch safest and most stable ff yet …. but I doubt it ,  they may release a security fix after 1 month of release , I am very confident about it …..

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