Just days after the latest release of Firefox 1.0.5, Mozilla Foundation is going to release Firefox 1.0.6 as early as next week. This is due to the API changes in 1.0.5 unintentionally broke some extensions, which have caused some incompatibility between the browser and web-based applications. That’s why some of your old extensions cannot be used in the new Firefox 1.0.5. A test builds of Firefox 1.0.6 has already been released for developers to test.

Quoted:
“It’s a very small percentage of Firefox users that are affected by this directly, but there is a growing number of people building applications, content and extensions that rely on the [browser] platform,” Mozilla’s director of engineering, Chris Hofmann said.

Firefox browser makes wide use of extensions as a way for developers to add functionality ranging from toolbars to specialized search features, so even though the affected user group is still small, the developers still work their best to patch the flaws. Kudos to them !!

Wondering why Mozilla Foundation updates their software so frequently? There are several good reasons.

By the way, the delay in providing the security-oriented update beyond the English version has upset some developers representing the localized version, who complained on Mozilla blogs about a lack of clear communication from the Mozilla Foundation during the updating process too.

Anyway, please note that another better alternative offered by Mozilla Foundation for email client like Outlook Express, Thunderbird, will also be updated to Version 1.0.6 in order to fix the API flaw at the same time.