What actually breaks in a new Firefox update? [closed]

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With Firefox and its new "release every 6 weeks" strategy it seems that a large group of people are angered by this because they say "it updates too fast". However the next sentence is "I moved to Chrome" which has an even faster release cycle...

This makes me wonder, what breaks in Firefox that doesn't break in Chrome? Chrome seems to have an update every day yet people don't complain. Chrome seems to of somehow been made into a stable target even with a very rapid release cycle

Whats the cause?

• Does the API change substantially between every release breaking most addons? How does chrome deal with this problem? Does its API never change?
• Is the Addon Compatibility Check too strict causing addons to be disabled when they really should work? Does Chrome even have an Addon compatibility check?
• Are addon developers too conservative in their version compatibility definitions?
• Is it simply because Firefox tells you when its updating vs Chrome which just randomly updates (arguably a worse idea)?
• Are people just using ancient addons that haven't been updated in years and blaming Mozilla? How does Chrome not have this issue?

Please, add any reasons you can think of if they aren't listed here.

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Before this question is closed I'll try to add some facts. Firefox doesn't have an API as such - the browser is built using the same technologies as what an add-on would use so add-ons can theoretically change almost anything. And almost any change to Firefox could break some add-on out there. This is obviously a problem and the reason why the add-on SDK was created - a limited API for simple add-ons (very much like what Chrome has). At the moment, not too many add-ons use it however.

The "compatibility check" is based on what is specified in the add-on metadata. Chrome has a similar compatibility check. The important difference is that Chrome doesn't force you to specify compatibility boundaries (that's not a problem given how simple their API is). Firefox add-ons that want to be accepted on addons.mozilla.org however have to specify a maxVersion and use a version number that is already released. It can be easily updated later if no compatibility issues with the newer versions are found but most add-on authors don't do it.

Starting with Firefox 6 (I think) addons.mozilla.org does some automated compatibility checks based on the change list. maxVersion for add-ons that are found compatible with the latest Beta is increased automatically. This actually works pretty well, there are no problems with the majority of popular add-ons (and they notify the authors when they do find problems). Now there are lots of add-ons that aren't popular and those sometimes do very questionable things - so those often aren't quite as lucky. But people use those as well, that's why you hear so many complains.

The new release cycle actually has advantages for add-on authors: there is a fixed schedule and you know that you have 18 weeks before a particular change hits a release build. Theoretically, that's plenty of time to do testing. Practically however many add-ons are pretty much abandoned and changes are only made if a sufficient number of users complains. I'm pretty sure that it is similar with Chrome add-ons but its specifics (no explicit compatibility boundaries) make the issue less obvious.