Why Firefox 3.1 can wait

The FOSS community is rejoicing another release of FF - 3.1beta. Mozilla released FF3.1beta on tuesday. I was one of those beta-ers last time around during FF3 release. I even did countdown to the release. I even got my own download certificate :). However, I don't want to eager myself to it this time. Here is why its different this time.

Firstly, its not a major release, meaning nothing changed BIG! If at all, The only thing that will get me motivated is the CTRL+Tab feature. But my existing Tab-Mix Plus plugin gives a tab list that is adequate. A 3D preview is nice to have but not so much to hurry to.

All the goodies are unused, The geocoding, Video, Audio, HTML5 and CSS3 support have nothing to offer until there are some REAL websites that start utilizing them. Especially the Geocoding, As much as it sounds cool, until it becomes a standard - it would be another browser specific dumb-a$$-nerdy feature I would refrain myself as a webmaster. The others follow the same rationale.

The much boasted JIT javascript is not enabled by default. WHAT? Why? I think 3.0 has a huge performance improvement from 2.0 that I only doubt this is going to matter for an end user. Would I like to try this out? Yeah sure! But it can wait until my Ubuntu auto updater hits the new update!

Mozilla needs to start a different approach for distributing betas. The default beta should always be an independent zip or tar file. Like one of those Portable Apps. This will make me go out there and check it out. Right out of box, No - doubt, fear or uncertainty. You know what I mean..

Finally, I was more interested in the private browsing to come. I am disappointed it dint make it in this beta. I will wait. So will the betas :)