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Firefox to Drop Pre-Windows 2000 Support
cyclomedia writes "While more and more platforms are getting (or aiming for) Firefox ports, the trunk itself seems to be going the other way. In an effort to clean up the API calls used and reduce the codesize a patch was posted at Bugzilla removing support from pre-W2k versions of Windows. There's a fiery discussion going on over at the Mozillazine forums about this after a counter bug was filed. The official position appears to be that Firefox 3.0 will maintain this un-compatibility, but developers are, obviously, free to work on a separate Win 98 compatible 'port.'"
MS has basically stopped supporting pre-2000 so why shouldn't firefox? Anyone using their computer to browse the web with firefox should probably make sure they have 2000 or better just to keep the nasties out of their system.
Deciding on when to drop compatibility can be a tough problem. I think a good policy would be to drop support for an OS when support from that OS has been dropped by the vendor. In Windows' case I believe the majority of home users are on XP while the majority of office users are on XP or 2000. So it would seem reasonable to drop support for the older OSs.
The last version of Firefox to support 98 and earlier should be kept up for easy download.
Developers: We can use your help.
It seems to me that the developers of Firefox have fallen down the same pothole-filled path that Microsoft has - forget about your past, focus only on the future. As an guy who does quite a bit of home-based computer repair, I see a lot of people who are NOT using Windows XP and are using older versions of Windows (pre-2000 - I use W2K myself). What's happening to Firefox is that it's getting splintered apart slowly. I wouldn't be suprised to have four or five distinct versions of FF in the next few years (note I'm not saying ports, but distinct versions).
Firefox is already much slower-loading that it used to be a few years ago, loaded with a lot of things that probably aren't really necessary. Not all of us require the latest and greatest thing to do what we need to do and I feel that the developers of FF have lost touch of that, being driven by feature creep and "keeping up with the neighbors" mentality.
Your email has been returned due to insufficent voltage.
why there is no abstraction layer for previous version of windows. so for examples if something uses new features of windows xp/2000/2003 there would be a sandbox application in windows 9x which simulates the possibilities of the higher system
No one is saying throw it away. But to expect an application to support your legacy junk is unreasonable. You can still use Firefox, you just won't be able to upgrade after a certain point.
If you want to keep running your old hardware on your almost 10 year old OS, go ahead, but don't keep everyone else back that wants to move forward by demanding FF to support you.
I NEED MUH FIREFOXEN!
There's no logic bomb that says that NEXT YEAR when FF 3.0 is realeased, FF 2.0.x suddenly stop running on Win98.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Windows Millenium can barely be considered as an Operating System.
How skewed can you get?? W3Schools is not a good representation of the people out on the web. The only people that will go to this site are those that are savy (like /.ers); your average everyday person (many of which still run 98) will not visit this site, and their numbers will not be reflective in the total.
My company's statistics list 98 and below ranging from 12%-20%. On a daily basis. Again, ours is skewed to the non-technical user. But its not 2.1%.
Your best bet is to use statistics from major portals, Yahoo, MSN, Google, etc, ones that will give a good random sampling rather than a random sampling of a specific demographic.
Firefox 3.0 is a long way away, and there's still Firefox 2.0 along with its security releases through Firefox 3.0's early lifetime as well. By the time 3.0 is absolutely necessary, the pre-2K computers could have already upgraded to Ubuntu.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
What's wrong with this? Does anyone care if Firefox runs on 7 year old Linux distributions? No. Do Mac users care if an application still runs on OS 9? No. There is no reason why anyone should be running anything less than Win 2k. If they are, they certainly shouldn't expect to be able to run the latest and greatest of software. If they are OK with an OS older than 2000, they should be OK running a browser version stuck in 2006. I say clean up the code and drop legacy support. Don't make Microsoft's mistake.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I should post anonymously to avoid horrible embarrassment. My home computer was bought in '99, (550 mhz), and while intended for useful work, it was also an awesome gaming rig at the time, it came preloaded with Win98 SE. While still my main machine, it's only regularly used for web browsing now. XP would slow the thing down, and I have no desire to purchase/pirate 2k. The only stability problems I've had were due to a stick of memory going bad (so it has even less RAM than when I bought it in '99). That said, I don't care about this announcement. I understand my setup is outdated, and I don't expect any software to support it. I have no desire to upgrade my machine, or rather, any desire to upgrade is outweighed by the cost of a new machine. I have only two reasons I would need a bleeding edge computer. The first is to play PC games, but I've moved to consoles for my gaming needs simply because it's cheaper (I can't justify $200 every 1-2 year just to play new games). The other is do work on my home machine but I'm not interested in doing any work during my off hours (the main app I need to run often slows my 1ghz work machine to a crawl). For web browsing/paying bills, my setup is more than adequate.
Sounds like a candidate for LInux (without KDE or Gnome).
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I think one way of looking at this, maybe a pragmatic way, is as a resources issue, sort of along two different lines. First, is maintaining the backwards compatibility burdensome to FF devs? Gotta balance the advantage of Win9x support with the burden of keeping it to those who actually produce and maintain FF -- might those resources be better devoted to keeping FF as good as it is? Second, does the expanded codebase and unwieldy coding impact the usership -- either by performance reductions, bloat, or whatever? So you'd have to also balance this concern with the benefits of Win9x compatibility. I mean, I know one goal of FF is to keep the install package small; Win9x compatibility can't be good for that. Not being so hot on the technical aspects, I can only speculate about the performance impact, but if there is one, I would think it's silly to hold back the vast majority of users to accommodate a qiuckly vanishing minority. Especially when you've got an app that's on the move, like FF.
Maybe it is mean to Win9x people, but I think that FF has to (a) be well-coded; and (b) efficient, to maintain its level of competition. I think those are edges it has over IE7, and I'd hate to see it squandered on less than 3% of users...and note, that figure is only going in one direction: it's not as if we'll see an explosion in Win98 users sometime.
Or maybe I'm still running 98 because it does everything I need and other than Doom 3 (which my PC won't run any way), I've not found any reason to update. Maybe you've got a spare £100 to waste on an OS, but as a student I don't have this sort of spare money laying around.
And no I can't switch to Linux untill I get a new modem since mines a Winmodem. Which again costs money.. So that leaves me using 98 happily or using my DS to play pictochat alone. Which do I pick now?
I like muppets.
If you want to use an eight year old OS, that's fine, but you are pretty much running in legacy mode. You can keep what you've got until your computer breaks, including the current version of FireFox, but any new capabilities that get added to your computer at this point should be regarded as a bit of good fortune. In order to expect to get new free features, you should have a platform based not in the past but in the present with everybody else. It's a simple economy of scale thing for the friendly hackers who give us all such nice presents.
The problem isn't forced upgrades (which don't exist), but rather the lack of browser fixes that will probably result from Win9x support being dropped from the mainstream FireFox tree.
:-)
Unlike most applications, a web browser actually interfaces with things on the internet, so it is far more likely to be compromised than my old copy of Visio or Comptons Encyclopedia.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Also this new theme messes up html ordered lists such as the one above.
I demand backwards compatability for my 386 w/ 16 MB ram and running Windows 3.1... but I may never find it.
Back then MSIE didn't even exist yet, I originally had to use WinSOCKS to get on the Internet with my 2400 baud modem and then use text only browsers.