All the downvotes here kinda got me legit angry. Incurious fools and jokers.

It's not a complete answer, but it's partially because the development of Chrome and Firefox have always been highly competitive resulting in them both adopting rapid release cycles around the same time in the early 2010's.

I haven't read too much into the topic, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was as much a marketing decision as well as a developer one. Similar to how Microsoft didn't want to release an XBox 2 in competition with a PlayStation 3.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Development

These are just the Wikipedia links, but there is interesting discussion of development history to be had, here.

Not so sure about that... Looking at that page he seems pretty racist, homophobic, and sexist.

Literally the same reason why Ford sells 150s and 250s and Volvo sells 70s and 90s: They are different products and don't base the version numbers on their competitor.

This update makes it much easier to add custom search engines in Firefox. You can now right-click in a search field on a supported website and select “Add Search Engine” to add it. You can edit the name and assign a keyboard.

Am I misremembering things, didn't this feature exist already in the past?

This update makes it much easier to add custom search engines in Firefox. You can now right-click in a search field on a supported website and select “Add Search Engine” to add it. You can edit the name and assign a keyboard.

Am I misremembering things, didn't this feature exist already in the past?

just boring flags that do nothing everywhere.

i know the cool ones are somewhere over there though.

Why is Firefox 4 or 3 versions ahead of Chromium versions (Edge, Chrome)?

Maybe the old feature was keyword bookmarks, not sure.

Sort of. I believe search engine providers actually have to create an extension to be listed in the setting.

Incurious fools

I haven’t read too much into the topic

sigh...

I haven’t read too much into the topic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was as much a marketing decision as well as a developer one.

Version numbering has no implications on development. Firefox released just as frequently before, just that they didn't increase the major version that often.

That's my disclaimer that my research on the topic was less than exhaustive when I posted it at midnight, smartasscool guy. I then when on to offer a legitimate, if simple answer with sources that I linked. I see now the error of my ways in trying to provider a sincere answer to a question instead of posting the same tired dunk as everyone else.

I have learned the error of my ways and will carry this lesson with me into the future as we build this Lemmy community.

smartass

I can sit on ice cream and tell you the flavour.

Sincerely though - I was just being an ass. I didn't intend any actual offense. I Apologize. And I am not one of those downvotes.

I believe browser.profiles.enabled is a cool one you can enable now which isn't on by default (But will be eventually)

This update makes it much easier to add custom search engines in Firefox. You can now right-click in a search field on a supported website and select “Add Search Engine” to add it. You can edit the name and assign a keyboard.

Am I misremembering things, didn't this feature exist already in the past?

Version numbering has no implications on development.

I understand that, so then why change it?

Firefox released just as frequently before, just that they didn’t increase the major version that often.

This does not appear to be true.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/qw856/what_gives_with_the_firefox_rapid_development/
• https://mitchellbaker.net/2011/08/rapid-release-process/

That blog post has an aura of marketing speak around it.

Version numbering has no implication on development and doesn't even need to align internally and publicly, so somewhere a conscious decision was made to do it this way for "reasons". I conjecture those reasons are at least partially due to marketing. Is this not fair?