"There are no plans to adjust the version number. It will remain in its current place in the about window, and we are going to continue with the current numbering scheme," Alex Faaborg, principal designer on Firefox, wrote in a recent Google Groups post.Faaborg attributed the Firefox browser number controversy to the openness of the Mozilla process. "An attribute of working entirely in the open is that we sometimes create significant confusion as we discuss design work that is in progress," he wrote. "However the bright side is that there is never a shortage of feedback."Mozilla recently switched to a more Google-esque rapid release schedule. In recent years, Mozilla has waited about a year between major upgrades of its browser; between Firefox 3 and Firefox 4, for example. This year, however, Mozilla has already released Mozilla 4, 5, and 6.Earlier this month, Asa Dotzler, Firefox product manager, posted a note on Bugzilla that suggested future versions of Firefox would "drop the version and simply tell [users] they're on the latest [version] or not."In a later statement, Dotzler said the move to pull version numbers is "the long term goal, [but] this change isn't happening overnight."Faaborg said the whole issue was due to "miscommunication inside the UX team [because] someone on the UX team requested this change, which is why Asa filed it," he wrote. "I really appreciate Asa giving us the authority and deferring to our decision, but in this case we didn't have the design sorted out enough ahead of time and we basically set him up. Had this actually been a practical joke that the UX team was trying to play on Asa, it would have been perfectly executed. That's what I mean when I say significant confusion."That being said, Faaborg later said that phrasing it as a "decision to preserve [version numbers] is a bit too strong, basically we aren't changing the scheme right now (like, this week)."Oddly, this is something that got people quite worked up, with some on the Google Groups thread pushing quite hard for the version numbers to remain. Whether or not they will stay forever or are phased out down the line, a Mozilla spokesperson said that users will always be able to find it in the Help>Troubleshooting menu.For more, see PCMag's full review of Firefox 6 and the slideshow above.
