With traditional (aka standard, normal, common, sensible) software version numbering, moving from version 43 to version 44 would normally signal big changes and (hopefully) improvements. This is no longer the case with Mozilla’s version numbering scheme for Firefox.

Case in point is Firefox 44.0, made available by Mozilla on January 26. According to the release notes, there are no major new features. A few bugs were fixed, including about twelve security issues. Many of the changes are related to encryption and video handling. Several improvements to the developer tools also made it into this release.

In other words, there’s really nothing in this release that makes it worthy of a major new version number (44). How is Mozilla making these decisions? Your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, of course – and despite assurances from Mozilla – this release, somehow worthy of a major new version number, was not even announced by Mozilla. At least not anywhere I looked. I discoverd the new version because of (yet again) a post on the US-CERT site.