There will always be people who want to live right on the bleeding edge when it comes to trying out the latest software and seeing how it performs on their system. Of course, there are people who are not as adventurous as they worry about bugs disrupting their daily routine or breaking some of the features they have come to rely upon. Having said that, a good number of people who use Firefox tend to be more technically savvy so they may have a slightly higher appetite to try the latest and greatest.
Anyway, there is a good compromise when it comes to Firefox in the form of “Aurora” builds. These Aurora builds differ from the nightly builds (which as expected are built nightly) in that nightly builds are compiled irrespective of the state of the code (i.e. things could be working, partially working, unreliable or just completely broken) whilst the Aurora builds will be less prone to having problems but not as stable as public beta releases or final releases.
The upside to this is that Mozilla can potentially get more people to test out Firefox whilst in the development phases whilst helping to minimise inconvenience to those willing to give pre-release software a go. Mozilla is also hoping to keep people hooked into Aurora releases with shorter development cycles to keep up the pace with the likes of Google Chrome which constantly and quietly updates its browser.
If you’re keen to give the Aurora builds a go, you can check it out at the Mozilla Firefox channel news page.
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