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Firefox 2.x now alerts you to the availability of Firefox 3, however it is a siren song that can run you up against some sharp and IE style rocks in compatibility. Don’t upgrade until you understand these significant issues with Firefox 3.

You cannot easily run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 at the same time, without significant and non-intuitive playing around with profiles. What are the Mozilla developers thinking? Web developers have to test their web pages with multiple browsers - who does not know this?  What makes web developers howl about every new version of Internet Explorer? Let you users decide how many installations they want to run at one time.

Firefox 3 deactivates incompatible Firefox 2 compatible plug-ins, and does not offer any sort of emulation mode. This would be a non-issue if you could run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 on the same computer without the hoop jumping. It was only after installing Firefox 3 that I discovered it deactivated the wonderful Addthis bookmarking tool. I use this tool many times a day because it allows me to not only bookmark pages using DIGG, Google Bookmarks and other services, but also to easily link a page to my Twitter profile. Nothing Firefox 3 adds replaces this, and its more important to me than the upgrade.

Why didn’t I visit the Mozilla user other community forums first? Because this is my first disappointment with Mozilla.

As of this date, the forums are packed with unhappy upgraders looking to downgrade to Firefox 2.  If you are considering upgrading - read the firefox forums first.

Mirye Software Publishing is moving to a new release format for Runtime Revolution, modeling it on a highly successful issue format. This method includes the standard updates to the base software, but also extended benefits to customers that are eligible for software updates. Our first release in this format is Issue 808: What to Do With Your Summer.

Benefits of Mirye Runtime Revolution Issue Format

The new release format offers the following benefits:

• Additional, Permanent Benefits. These are benefits that customers receive regardless of when they are announced. With this first issue, Studio and Enterprise customers receive Valentina for Revolution 3.1 ADK Advanced, the ultra fast database toolkit for Revolution.
• Limited, Timed Benefits. These benefits are only available if you download them within the limited time. With this first issue, Media, Studio and Enterprise customers receive the Business as Unusual Volume 1 collection of 20 royalty free soundtracks.
• News and Articles. With each release, there will be news, articles and tips offered to help enhance your use of Revolution.
• Special Offers. You can get special member offers for other, or third party products that will enhance your use of Revolution.

The Why Behind Mirye Runtime Revolution Format Change

Mirye Runtime Revolution is a professional tool for creating and deploying cross platform applications on all major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. In many respects, it overlaps and competes with the likes of Adobe Director, REAL Software REALbasic, MS Visual Basic, Java and even Adobe Flash or Microsoft’s .net framework.

Mirye Runtime Revolution overlaps with REALbasic, Java and .net framework in that it can deploy to multiple operating systems using mostly the same code base. But that simply describes features in the last step of a work flow pipeline - not the entire pipeline of a release.

Designers that have experience with Adobe Director, Flash or Microsoft’s new Expression more likely to recognize the pipeline, because these products also excel in aggregating combinations of audio, video and graphics assets. These are elements that are usually developed by someone else and upstream in the workflow pipeline.

Teams though can share more than just assets - but the knowledge of how to best exploit the use of those assets at each point in the work flow.

This brings us back to the format change and the question: Is Mirye Runtime Revolution only a deployment technology, or does it encompass the aggregated assets and knowledge? Even if you are a weekend developer and you wear all the hats of artist, layout designer, sound technician and coder, an additional benefit at any point in your work flow pipeline provides benefits to the entire project.

This brings us back to our new issues format. By providing ongoing knowledge and benefits in an magazine-like issue format - expanded beyond a software only update - a release can deliver benefits that are more timely, and benefit your entire work flow.