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why did they even make firefox 4, if they coming out with firefox 5 right away? what was the purpose of it? And i've read there won't even be any updates to 4.

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None.................. – slotishtype Jun 24 '11 at 15:49
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Why does it bother you? Mozilla presumably changed their release cycle to somewhat resemble Chrome's (they are updating major versions all the time and you wouldn't even notice). "There won't even be any updates to 4" - where does it say that? Apart from that, why would you want to stick with an older version? And above all that, what's the real problem you are having? – slhck Jun 24 '11 at 15:52
slhck is correct. also note there is no reason to tag any operating system version. Your question about Firefox doesn't relate to Windows 7 or OSX. – edusysadmin Jun 24 '11 at 15:57
Can I vote to reopen this? (I may be a bit biased because I just wrote up an answer ;-).) But I think this is a genuine question that can be answered -- see for instance my answer below. – Jo Liss Jun 24 '11 at 16:02
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This is a terrible question because it's way too subjective and doesn't actually address a real QUESTION, but for what it's worth I totally agree with you. 4 barely just came out, I don't think incrementing numbers this fast serves any purpose. – Shinrai Jun 24 '11 at 16:06
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closed as not constructive by slhck, ultrasawblade, zm15, Kyle, Wuffers Jun 24 '11 at 15:59

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There seem to be two reasons for the quick release of Firefox 5:

First, Firefox seems to be shifting to a more frequent release schedule ("Release early, release often").

Second, in some ways it's just a matter of version numbering. They could have named Firefox 5 "Firefox 4.1" instead (like they did with 3.1 and 3.5), and you probably wouldn't be as surprised at the quick release.

Chrome has been rapidly bumping its version numbers, so perhaps the folks at Mozilla are just trying to keep up with the version race for marketing reasons. See also for instance this article.

P.S. Here is a timeline of Firefox releases in case anyone is interested.

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+1, well summarized. – slhck Jun 24 '11 at 16:00
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