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Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 End of Life
vm writes "According to Mozilla and other sources, Firefox 2 and Gecko 1.8 will soon be left behind some time in mid-December. The end result: no future security or stability updates. This will affect Thunderbird 2, SeaMonkey 1.1, Camino 1.5, and any other projects based on Gecko 1.8. So, if you haven't already upgraded, there's no time like the present."
How will this afect all the software that have forked from these versions?
Time for the Gentoo Portage people to mark Firfox 3 as stable!
damn, i was really looking to downgrade my software, too.
"they didn't know it was impossible, so they did it!" - Mark Twain
Thunderbird 2 is effected by this, but afaik there is no Thunderbird 3.
Is this is a death sentence for the project?
alas, the first time i tried cutting to ff3 on the linux side of my home pc (dual-booter) it was a nightmare.. constantly crashing/hanging, etc. it's wasn't the prereleases either.. it was 3.0 or 3.0.1. bad enough i actually reverted back to 2. i was just thinking of taking another stab at movin' on up.. just hope it's more solid and not as painful.
-r
-'fester
See the mozilla.dev.planning thread in which the Firefox 2 EOL was first discussed. Yes, just dropping support altogether would cause problems for products like SeaMonkey, Thunderbird e.a. (which haven't yet shipped a version based on 1.9), and that's why that won't happen. Firefox 2 might be unsupported, but necessary security fixes will continue to be identified and backported to the Mozilla 1.8.1 branch, so that those products can continue to release security updates for a while until after their next versions have shipped (hopefully by the end of Q1 2009).
This is kind of a concern, Mac OS X 10.3 is still alive and well out there. Somewhere along the line they cut 10.3.9 from the supported OSes for FF3, so now its 10.4 and up only. Now while I don't expect the 2.x branch to have any security compromising problems, the establishment dogs who's only job it is to demand that every possible security thing is addressed will start grousing. And FF has been he only alternative for an up to date browser.
Then. In any case it's not nice to be forced to upgrade to version 3 and have support immediately cut off for version 2. I'd like to be able to stay with the old version for half a year or so, I like my mail profile and I don't like data loss bugs.
This is one of the reasons Firefox fails to gain market share. A new release comes out and 6 months later the previous one is abandoned. No enterprise can accept this.
The summary indicates that Thunderbird 2 will not be supported after the mid-December EOL. However, on the Thunderbird site, there's no mention of this and there's no version past 2.0.0.17 available for download.
Will Thunderbird be affected or is the summary mistaken?
Our sysadming at work refuses to install FF3, largely because of the large number of support libraries that he would also need to install/update. I guess I can understand to some extent that some things are certified for our CAD software vendors to support things, but it feels uncomfortable to move into a situation lacking security updates in any part of the system.
I currently own an iBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.3.9 and using Firefox 2 to browse the web. Since Firefox 3 recquires Mac OS X 10.4 or later, either I have to buy a newer verson of Mac OS X, use an "unsecured" version of Firefox or use another browser.
Life sucks :/
"So, if you haven't already upgraded, there's no time like the present."
That's why one should upgrade to [insert commercial software here] version before it's too late.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
The fact that it will not have any security upgrades won't stop people from using it.
Of course, most people who uses it knows better, but I've installed quite a lot of "red internets" to some computer iliterates some time ago, and don't trust them to click on the "upgrade" button, without the urge to call me...
Time to get that shirt?
I am somewhat disappointed, but time marches on. I had been using FireFox 2 up until last week before finally "upgrading" to FireFox 3; honestly there are not many detectable differences (and all the extensions I use still work fine). My one and only complaint is the "Awesome Bar". Some people love it; other hate it. I hate it. It's not enough to make me stop using it, but I really wish I could get the old Address Bar back.
phew!
thank god i'm safe, my 1.8 install isn't being chopped.
liqbase
So that, for example, someone else can maintain security fixes etc.
Last time I tried Firefox 3 a couple months ago, the bookmarking system was intolerably slow. Bookmarking a single page took 10-20+ seconds. Many of the convenient addons that I take for granted as part of the Firefox browsing experience, weren't available or weren't functionally equivalent to the Firefox 2 versions. Newer isn't always better. I had to switch back to Firefox 2, because it just works.
Here's hoping for an independent project to keep up security patches on Firefox 2.
If people aren't upgrading besides technical reasons (E.g. OS X 10.3.x situation), they must have reasons to hate/decline the FF 3. While I am never into Firefox too much, shouldn't Mozilla organisation listen to them, ask them what makes them stay in 2.x and try to fix the issues?
This is a bit like MS thing, sorry. As their "We shipped Vista, death to XP" days before they ultimately figured the issues and they released SP1 and hurrying Windows 7 now. Even MS postpones death of XP every month or so.
What bothers me is not the Firefox 3.x only release schedule. Not asking people what stops them from upgrading to 3.x is the real deal.
Until I can admin multiple devices with self-signed certificates, Firefox 3 can kiss my rosy red ass. I guess I'll be stuck using IE.
i would update but i really really really hate the way firefox 3 deals with your history in the address bar. i don't want random links i click on to show up here. i only want links i type in or paste in, nothing else.
when i last used 3 it would only save 4 or 5 links i typed, the rest being junk i clicked on. oh and some of the stuff would remain, forever. had to uninstall to reset the issue until it happened agian.
so looks like either IE or opera if mozilla wants to do things that way.
Golly, maybe we should release Thunderbird 3 *before* discontinuing support for 2.
You know. Just a thought.
Seamonkey 2.0 is not yet even in beta (there are alpha releases available). The previous versions of Seamonkey (1.1.*) are based on Gecko 1.8. There are plans to get Seamonkey 2.0 into beta "Real Soon Now" but that probably won't be until Firefox 3.1 goes gold.
A bit of a shame since Seamonkey is the logical inheritor of the the old Netscape feature set and look-and-feel, but done right (and with far fewer bugs). It even has a WYSIWYG HTML editor that works much like the old Netscape editor, except that it very rarely (if ever) crashes - Unlike Netscape, in which it was always a gamble whether you'd be able to get anything done in the composer before Netscape crashed and you'd lose all your work.
Yeah, it's open to the criticism of being a prime example of the Swiss Army knife approach to software design - but in fact it does many of these things quite well, often better than specialized applications. For example, although there are a few other open source WYSIWYG HTML editors out there, virtually all of the others have died on the vine at this point.
Does anyone know of FF3 extensions that... - let me zoom in/out of text only, like in FF2? - prevents the url bar from showing everyone standing behind me what sites I've been visiting?
I shall affect change in society to the effect of removing grammar Nazi's from affecting my viewing experience on the most effective communication medium humans have ever been able to effectively build, while not affecting change in my viewing experiences on the most effective porn distribution system humans have ever created; a system so great one girl can effectively affect my body to the effect of things you do not need to hear, all while effectively not knowing of my not so effective existence.
There, proofread that grammar Nazi!
nooooo! I'm still hooked on 2.0 for Google Browser Sync (only supports 2.0, development has stopped.) Why can't another browser incorporate such a feature?!
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
The last firefox 'security update' I installed completely wrecked it, making it crash on startup. Now it only runs in safe mode. I hope they never realise any more of these 'improvements'.
A good chunk of my Selenium tests don't work with FF3, as of a couple of revisions ago. (I understand that this is due to security being tightened, so I doubt that it's going to work now unless a bug has crept back in.)
So at least one of my machines is going to have to stay FF2 for some time yet.
I'm using FF 3.0.3 right now. On the view menu, there is a "Zoom" sub-menu. When I zoom in, the web page gets zoomed, but not the UI. The URL bar doesn't change size at all. If you want a literal "zoom text only" where graphics don't get zoomed with the text, that too is an option on the "Zoom" sub-menu.
I have to ask, have you even tried FF3 before concluding that there was no zoom feature?
http://www.greengoblin.co.uk/blogger/thunderbird3.JPG
I tried 3.0 when it first came out and uninstalled it in 2 days because I couldn't switch tabs. The tabs switched, but the window content didn't repaint, to be exact - so you could switch tabs, and not know you did it. the only way to repaint it was to scroll the window down and back up. A similar thing happened if you loaded a page as it reflowed - the old screen elements didn't erase, and you ended up with the reflowed elements overdrawing each other, leading to a huge drawing mess...
It's probably fixed... I should try the latest updates and see.
Anyone know if they have fixed the bug where history is saved to a file on every page visit.
I got really annoyed when I found FF 3 was hitting disk constantly, and I have been forced to run it in a ramdisk (which I suppose is good for privacy since my cookies are two months old).
Haven't upgraded to FF 4.0 but when I use the new Firefox 3 on my mac laptop it uses constant 10% CPU with no windows open... it can go up to as much as 30% if I have a lot of tabs open and the battery life is noticably less when using FF3 on my mac.
Why are they ending support before only the 5th revision of 3.0? I think some of the awesome features of FF3 have a little way to before I would call it stable.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I am sure linux distros will continue to patch security issues for quite some time in FF2 (one of the nice things about having long release dates in Debian).
My wife's windows XP machine runs FF2 just fine. FF3 pins her CPU, both cores, and takes forever to render.
It just doesn't make sense for her to use FF3 for anything.
the establishment dogs who's only job it is to demand that every possible security thing is addressed will start grousing. And FF has been he only alternative for an up to date browser.
Well, at least FireFox is opensource. Source is accessible to anyone.
If there are enough establishment dogs, they can band together and either hire developers or even code themselves if they have enough developers among their ranks, and continue either backporting security fixes to the 2.x branch or adapt the 3.x branch to run on Mac OS X 10.3
Nobody is going to stop them from doing that - it's the whole point of free/libre opensource software.
Only the whineboys need to stop bitching and start to do something about it. (Or suck it up and upgrade their OS).
Same reflexion also goes for dinosaurs running antediluvian (DOS-based) Win9x OS and whose support got dropped out of official Mozilla too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The Linux versions of the ASUS eee are still stuck on Firefox 2. It's a pain to upgrade to FF 3 as you have to put in a newer GTK 2+ and all. Silly Asus.