Firefox 3.6 Support Ends April 2012

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla for some time after switching to the rapid release process talked about releasing Extended Support Releases that would give companies and organizations some breathing space in the race to test and deploy new browser versions. With the first ESR release (which will be Firefox 10), comes the Firefox 3.6 end of life announcement. Firefox 3.6 users will receive update notifications in April to update the browser to the latest stable version by then."

Comments

Group Policy

[DCTech]

companies and organizations some breathing space in the race to test and deploy new browser versions

I doubt this hardly matters to companies. The thing is, they *cant* deploy Firefox as it is. There is no group policy like with IE, and recently with Chrome. You can distribute it easily within your company. This is what Firefox has always lacked and I don't understand why they have been so ignorant about it. Yes, it does nothing to home users, but it's required for companies.

Re:Group Policy

[i.r.id10t]

Actually, it matters for anyone doing stuff complicated (usually needlessly) on the web that has to support something other than Microsoft... like learning management systems.

Re:Group Policy

[Billly Gates]

You can put it in an image and have the imaged version check for updates on its own servers. Infact I worked for a school district who did this for 30,000 machines

Re:Group Policy

[DarkOx]

Right because it was so hard to script out the installer, and copy pre-crafted config file to the right place Actually if anything that ties corporate users more to a specific version because they have to actually invest some time into building their own deployment package which is certain to be somewhat version dependent.

If you IT staff can't "deploy" Firefox they are worthless. I can completely understand them not wanting to chase the latest version, preferring to just replace the executable installer package with one that just has the security fixes in it but none of the new math. So all their pre-rolled configs and installation scripts don't have to change.

 

Re:Group Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

FrontMotion offers a customized version of Firefox (FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition) that supports lockdown via Group Policy. My company has been using it for years, and it meets our needs perfectly.

Re:Group Policy

[steelfood]

That's where you're wrong. Many organizations use group policy, but it's certainly not mandatory for a product like a web browser. If that were true, programs like 7zip and textpad wouldn't be used in an enterprise environment either, and that's clearly untrue (especially among engineers and programmers).

This is because most policy objectives can be enforced at a higher level. For example, blacklists integrated into the hardware firewall take care of most of the filtering for major companies. Smaller companies have software firewalls that do feature group policy support to do the same.

Firefox has long been touted as a safer alternative to IE, even and especially in the corporate environment where one infected computer can spread to the entire LAN.

So this does have an impact, as much as them moving to a rapid-release cycle that bumps releases irrespective of the amount of changes by a whole version number. Corporations are sensitive to Firefox's development and release cycles, even if it's marginal for most companies that deploy Firefox.

And they're going to all be unhappy about this news. I'm certain once Mozilla ends support for FIrefox 3.6, all of the sysadmins burned by advocating switching their company's web browser to Firefox will voluntarily, if not forced to, write off all Mozilla products as enterprise-appropriate in perpetuity.

In fact, you can even argue that it's a black mark on all non-enterprise open-source software. Firefox is very visible, and closely associated with both free as in beer and free as in speech. Many places are risk-sensitive, and this kind of behavior can make PHBs think open source, especially open source that does not come with contracted support, is too risky for deployment in an enterprise.

Re:Group Policy

[Richard_at_work]

Fine, script the installer.

Now update the home screen, and add new bookmarks to already deployed installs.

That's where GPO carries on and your solution ends.

Re:Group Policy

[Millennium]

One step at a time, man. Getting them back to a semi-reasonable release and maintenance schedule is probably going to have to be enough for now. MCSE-friendly installation can come later, and this has to happen first anyway.

Re:Group Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

You did see the ESR part where the reason why they'd EoL 3.6 is because they're doing a version that doesn't get a major rev every six weeks, right?

Re:Group Policy

[hairyfeet]

Firefox has to run as admin to update, strike one. It doesn't have low rights mode like chrome and IE, strike two. Its crazy release schedule means zero testing before deployment, strike three and you're outta there!

As someone who used FF before it was even called FF and the suite before that i hated to see it go but go it had to as its performance has been getting worse it seems as far as CPU spiking and RAM leaking, extensions were breaking everywhere and the final straw was that XSS bug that allowed malware writers to spam yahoo mail accounts from FF. If you got a bunch of spam emails from friends with Yahoo accounts, all consisting of a single word or sentence and a driveby malware link? that was the FF XSS bug. With low rights mode its damned near impossible to pull crap like that since the browser runs even lower than a user it simply can't get the permissions to do a lot of nastiness. Low rights mode was released with vista in 2007 BTW and here it is 2012 and Firefox STILL doesn't have it. But hey they have personas right?

I truly hope the FF devs will stop going Goatse at their users and get back to their original mission statement which was to build a small, fast, and light browser with good security because I do miss NoScript although I don't know if its really needed with low rights mode and sandboxing. But if you think IT are "worthless" for not deploying a less securable browser that requires admin rights to install and isn't easy at all to set up GPOs that can't be trivially bypassed by the user? Then I'd personally hate to see what the admins are like you'd consider competent, probably the type that just gives everyone admin rights and cleans up after the messes.

Re:Group Policy

[tokul]

If you got a bunch of spam emails from friends with Yahoo accounts, all consisting of a single word or sentence and a driveby malware link? that was the FF XSS bug.

So lack of proper sanitizing in webmail or other yahoo part has nothing to do with that.

Re:Group Policy

[Dagger2]

Firefox has to run as admin to update

True for now.

It doesn't have low rights mode like chrome and IE

True.

Its crazy release schedule means zero testing before deployment

Well, other than the six weeks it's in "Beta" (i.e. release candidate) where the intent is to make no changes, and the six weeks it's in "Aurora" (i.e. beta), where only bug fixes are made. And the extra twelve weeks it's in certify/deploy state in the ESR proposal. But other than that.

extensions were breaking everywhere

Extensions rarely break with the new "major releases are now minor releases" model. As of Fx10, it will even stop claiming they're broken too.

and the final straw was that XSS bug that allowed malware writers to spam yahoo mail accounts from FF ... With low rights mode its damned near impossible to pull crap like that

OK, I'm not sure which bug you're referring to, but generally running the browser in a low-rights mode doesn't prevent XSS bugs, because XSS bugs happen inside the browser itself.

that requires admin rights to install

Wait, install? You said "update" earlier. But OK... I believe it installs fine as a non-admin user if you opt to install it to a directory the user has write permission to, which is what Chrome does by default. Firefox Portable certainly works fine as a non-admin user (updates included!), and that's just a wrapper around a vanilla Firefox.

and isn't easy at all to set up GPOs that can't be trivially bypassed by the user

True, as far as I know. Though if you're allowing the browser to be installed without admin rights, the user could presumably just overwrite it with a version that doesn't obey GPOs, so either this applies to Chrome too or you in fact don't actually want non-admin users to be able to install the browser.

I dislike the new release schedule as much as the next guy, but I'd prefer it if you disliked it for reasons that were true, or at least not getting fixed before 3.6's EoL.

Re:Group Policy

[Culture20]

Have they fixed the Mac OSX version's silent upgrade issue where it tries to open a GUI on the screen (thus failing when you SSH into a machine and try to update it)?

Re:Group Policy

[Culture20]

FrontMotion offers a customized version of Firefox (FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition) that supports lockdown via Group Policy. My company has been using it for years, and it meets our needs perfectly.

That's nice. There are guys in Chinese software bazaars that offer customized versions of Microsoft products that use different installers. I trust them just as much.

Re:Group Policy

[complete loony]

Create a corporate intranet home page with all the links you think every employee needs. Put it on an easily remembered machine name like http://intranet./ What more do you seriously need?

Re:Group Policy

[Nimey]

FF doesn't need admin privs to auto-update. What it needs is for the Users group to have read/write/modify privileges to the Firefox install directory.

The only thing that doesn't get you is updating the version number in Add/Remove Programs; the user will see the version increment, but I won't if I log on as myself.

Re:Group Policy

[Richard_at_work]

Thanks. That shows that you haven't administrated a decent sized corporate network.

Re:Group Policy

[thetoadwarrior]

Luckily Firefox is open source so someone has taken care of that. http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/

Any IT department capable of using Google can easily find it.

Re:Group Policy

[UnknownSoldier]

> As someone who used FF before it was even called FF and the suite before that i hated to see it go but go it had to as its performance has been getting worse it seems as far as CPU spiking and RAM leaking,

Same. Firebird user here. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#Early_versions)

FF is a PIG. It has become the bloated pig that replaced the original pig Netscape Navigator, er, Communicator.

* I'm tired of extensions breaking because dev's can't plan ahead and stabilize the API design.
* I'm tired of it sucking up 1+ GB of RAM*, even hours after you've closed the dam tabs.
* I'm tired of a bookmark dialog box I can't fucking resize. This _used_ to be in the one of the native versions, then it got removed. You needed a plugin to restore functionality??
I* 'm tired of the arrow keys not working properly in Tools, Page Info, Media on a Win XP + Win7 box. (Oddly enough arrow keys works in OSX 10.6 with FF 8 !?)

Frankly, FF jumped the shark with 3.x. They don't give a shit about _usability_ instead focusing on "flash in the pan" that no one gives a rat's ass about. Oooh, I can theme the browser. Big Fucking Deal -- Stop hogging my screen real estate and changing how it looks from version to version without giving me an option to go back to the old screen layout OR show me a dynamic web page showing the UI transition from the old style to the new style!

If it wasn't for NoScript + AdBlock I'd switch to another browser but what good alternatives are there that have my favorite extensions already written??

* I'm doing a test on my new rig -- I have a hunch that the fucking memory leaks are due to flash videos so I'm not bothering with flash AT ALL. We'll see how it goes...

Re:Group Policy

[hairyfeet]

If you are on windows you should try Comodo Dragon which has ABP and I would argue with the combination of its default settings which has the browser and ONLY the browser use the comodo Secure DNS malware site filtering along with low rights mode NoScript isn't really needed. There is NotScript if you want to replicate similar functionality but frankly i tried to get a win 7 install using Dragon infected for shits and giggles and while a few nasty sites could crash the browser not a single one managed to infect the system which i confirmed with several offline and online scans. Its a HELL of a lot faster than FF is now and unlike FF which sucks balls on AMD chips Dragon is completely CPU agnostic, there is even a checkbox on first install that will make a portable version and install it to your thumbdrive. Its really nice, give it a spin. it'll even import all your FF bookmarks, passwords, etc if you ask it to so switching is trivial.

I agree though that FF nuked the fridge after version 3, in my case i believe the nuking occurred after versions 3.0.x which were the last versions that seemed to be truly CPU agnostic and weren't Ziggy Piggies when it came to CPU and RAM usage. Like I said i tried the latest and greatest on my EEE E-350 netbook and watching as a good 40 minutes of battery went down the shitter thanks to FF hogging the CPU. On my XP box I have AnVir Task Manager and just typing in a text box I can watch the CPU jump all over the place from FF. Seriously typing in a textbox causes huge spikes in CPU usage? WTF? But I have to support a WIDE range of customers, from late model P4 office boxes and first gen netbooks to the latest AMD multicores and frankly FF is just unsuitable for purpose anymore. it was the complaints from customers about how their machines would "jerk and hang" when going to common sites like Gmail and FB that told me if I didn't want them going back to IE i had better get on it and find a new browser and after testing more than a half a dozen, from Kmeleon to Opera I found the Dragon has the best mix of security and performance for me and my customers. I just recently installed it on a customers Xmas prezzie from her BF which is an AMD C Series netbook and even with an APU that is only 1GHz the Dragon is snappy and lets her use FB while running her IM without any lagging and while getting over 5 hours on a battery. That for me speaks volumes and is why FF is no longer in my standard install package.

Re:Group Policy

[complete loony]

I've been an employee of a decent sized corporate network. There's nothing stopping you having an intranet page that the browser auto logs into using single sign-on, that shows different content to different users, or redirects users to more specific pages based on their roles.

There's nothing stopping you from putting a bunch of internet shortcuts in a folder (perhaps in the start menu) that launch in the users default browser.

Heck most of what group policy does is set registry entries. So commission a simple, tiny app that reads registry entries and generates a html-like page full of links and pretty pictures for the user to click on.

Just because IE does things in a specific way doesn't mean that the problem can't be solved using any number of different methods that give very similar end results.

If you don't think these solutions are adequate, explain your requirements in more detail. Note that "I can't add bookmarks via group policy" is not a requirement, it's an implementation issue.

Re:Group Policy

[smash]

Because that is easy to roll out to my existing 500 PCs /sarcasm. No group policy support = no way it is getting deployed on most corporate networks.

Re:Group Policy

[smash]

OK. How about I want to roll out changes to the security settings? Sure, i can go hunt down the registry settings and hack together a login script or something to do it, or i could just use IE9 (which is good enough) and the same tools (GPOs) as the rest of the software on the network and not spend my time fucking about writing and documenting custom solutions and wasting company time.

If firefox want market share, they need to make life easy for people. Sure, you COULD deploy and manage firefox by screwing around with custom one-off solutions, or you could just follow the path of least resistance and run IE. And contrary to popular /. groupthink, plenty of enterprises do this in the real world without major security problems. If you make appropriate use of security zones then you can make recent version os IE relatively secure.

Re:Group Policy

[smash]

Here here. I ran firefox since it was called Phoenix and in recent years they've simply lost the plot.

Re:Group Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish the Micro-shills wouldn't speak in tired marketspeak anymore. Relevancy dropping by the minute.

Re:Group Policy

[smash]

text editors and archiving programs are vastly different (as far as requirement for settings deployment goes) from internet facing applications such as web browsers and you know it. Hardware firewalls, packet inspection, etc only works when the machine is on the corporate LAN, and when laptops leave and go home with users, all bets are OFF. Laptops account for 90% of our machinese these days, and I suspect we're not alone.

This is where policy comes into play, and mozilla currently has no elegant way of enforcing this.

Re:Group Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's right, it would takes minutes to deploy favourites, browser settings, zone settings and the like using GPOs and IE but scripting installers and the like for FireFox would takes or days trying to find the settings, learn the formats, compile together the sources of information all over the web to do it. We don't have that sort of time. It really sucks, I want to deploy FireFox but I just don't have the time and Mozilla does nothing to save my time in that regard, they don't care. For the record, only the workstations at our company are Windows, everything else is Linux. We even deploy Samba4 for our AD.

Re:Group Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you IT staff can't "deploy" Firefox they are worthless. I can completely understand them not wanting to chase the latest version, preferring to just replace the executable installer package with one that just has the security fixes in it but none of the new math. So all their pre-rolled configs and installation scripts don't have to change.

I'm always amused by people that make statements such as this, condemning an entire department that they know nothing at all about, based on limited and vague information.

But, your assumption suggests a lack of knowledge, on your own part, about Group Policy and its workings. You see, Group Policy Objects(GPO) are far more than just a deployment mechanism. While GPO does indeed provide mass deployment services based on users, machines, organizational units and so forth, it also provides ongoing management services. Options like changing the individual settings and configuration options on one, all or subsets of installations. The ability to turn on and off features of the software based on user, machine OU, etc. The option to remove the software as easily as it was deployed. These and other benefits of GPO make it FAR more powerful than just a deployment tool.

I'll go a step further and say that as a network engineer that has used Linux exclusively as his desktop for the past 11 years, as well as countless Linux servers and appliances; anyone that suggests that Microsoft Windows does not provide the best and most seamless system from an overall integration and management perspective is either willfully ignorant or has no experience in the matter. What the likes of Puppet are starting to provide for Linux servers, Microsoft has been offering for entire global enterprises for a decade or more.

Now, for those that wish to use Firefox and GPO, I point you to Frontmotion who provide a GPO enabled MSI package of Firefox. There are both paid and free offerings that work very well.

But, I agree, this is something that Firefox should have made a priority years ago and is just one more of a fast growing list of reasons to leave Firefox.

Re:Group Policy

[smash]

It makes it easy to spot those who have administered a multinational corporate WAN, and those who haven't....

10th post!

[Anonymous Coward]

firefox version number ftw!

rapid-release

[alphatel]

For those who think "Wow, that's 6 versions ago", consider it was released just two years ago.

Re:rapid-release

[Anonymous Coward]

They're releasing less versions now then they did during 3.x if you look at the total quantity of updates rather then the version number.

Re:rapid-release

[imbusy]

Wow, that's over two years ago

Re:rapid-release

[Synerg1y]

Yea, the versioning makes it look likes its something from the 90s considering firefox is on 9 now I think, but ya, firefox's versioning system is still non-intuitive and according to the dev team everybody has to live w it.

Re:rapid-release

[Billly Gates]

Hell

There are some who are whining IE 6 is no longer supported after 10 years and refuse to upgrade. I guess its assumed the web hasnt changed at all on 10 years so why update?

Re:rapid-release

[million_monkeys]

So should we expect that six weeks later firefox 4 support ends? followed six weeks later by the end of firefox 5 support? etc...? etc...?

Re:rapid-release

[icebraining]

Why? Firefox 4 wasn't released six weeks after 3.6.

Re:rapid-release

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we expect trolls to move on?

Use something else and STFU. Anyone who can effect a change to the way releases and version numbers are managed is not going to do so because you've posted the SAME SHIT on Slashdot hundreds of times. It ain't Burger King, bitches. You can't have it your way even if you post the same shit a thousand more times. Get over it, see a grief counselor, and use something else.

Re:rapid-release

[Anonymous Coward]

The 3.x series got a lot of bug fixes. Since 4.0 they haven't really cared about bug fixes (one, max two per major release), only about getting a lot of features out of the door as fast as possible.

Corporate users need the bug fixes asap (especially the security related ones), but the major releases require months of testing - and by the time that's done, there's been one or two new major releases.

And PowerPC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean FF 10 will support PowerPC?
(probably not)

One less supported browser for my old PPC boxes...

Re:And PowerPC?

[Amorymeltzer]

Only those Operating Systems, or versions thereof, supported by the version of Firefox the ESR is based upon will be supported through the life of that release.

I still have no idea. FF 3.6 isn't drawn connected to anybody so I assume it means based off of FF 10 so... no?

--posted using FF 3.6--

Re:And PowerPC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use the Camino browser?

http://caminobrowser.com

Re:And PowerPC?

[SiMac]

Because Camino is still based on Mozilla 1.9.2, which is the base of Firefox 3.6 and will probably be EOLed along with it. TenFourFox is a port of Firefox 9 to PPC. It should work.

Re:And PowerPC?

[Elbart]

One less supported browser for my old PPC boxes...

And nothing of value was lost.

Re:And PowerPC?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really, why would that be?
I know they're getting old now, but the build quality on Apple's pre-Intel PowerBooks is better than anything else I've had, ever.
I've still got my 1998 PB1400 in everyday use (although not using FF because of the RAM usage), as well as a G4 PowerMac and a very nice 12" PBook. Sadly TenFourFox isn't an option because I switched to Linux some time ago :-(.

Re:And PowerPC?

[Nimey]

Why would it? FF4 and later don't support it.

Someone else is doing TenFourFox, a port: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

Thunderbird

[Anonymous Coward]

Not bothered about Firefox frequent updates but thoroughly dislike Thunderbird getting updated so fast so looking forward to this ESR release.

Data depends on it being stable, while firefox can be downgraded if not stable with nothing major lost.

p.s. Darn another abbreviation that forces you to repeat the last word.

Re:Thunderbird

[Lennie]

It is called RAS syndrome (short for "redundant acronym syndrome syndrome"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

Then end of firefox for me

[sinij]

I am using 3.6 and when they stop supporting it, I plan to stop using Firefox. The only reason I am using it in a first place is NoScript, otherwise I would have moved to Chrome ages ago. NoScript allows me to be sloppy with updating hosts killfile, it is by no means mandatory.

Re:Then end of firefox for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally agree. I also love the Firefox tools like Web Developer and Firebug, which is why I've held on to it for this long. If 3.6 starts looking obsolete, and ESR 10 remains as much a joke as FF4+, it's off to Chrome I go. It may not have tools as mature as Firefox for webdev, but it is a far better browser than recent FF releases.

quoting original document

[Luckyo]

The ESR is specifically targeted at groups looking to deploy it within a managed environment. It is not intended for use by individuals, nor as a method to mitigate compatibility issues with addons or other software. Mozilla will strongly discourage public (re)distribution of Mozilla-branded versions of the ESR.

They essentially admit that the problem is major enough for people to want to get this "corporate world only" release, and they actually want to prevent people from getting it as much as possible. Disgusting.

Re:quoting original document

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they admit that people are stupid enough to want a long term release for a product that gets improved with every new version, and they discourage them from using it because it would be dumb as fuck. The ESR version is for enterprises who need time to test (because apparently 6 weeks wasn't enough for you slackers), not for people who are mentally challenged and unable to report bugs in Firefox so that they are fixed, and instead prefer whining about it on Slashdot.

Re:quoting original document

[Anc]

Yes, because they believe it is not in people's best interest. All the common problems caused by rapid release schedule are being worked on and will be fixed very soon - silent updates, add-ons compatible by default etc. Disgusting? Chill out.

With the first ESR release

[Shikaku]

With the first ESR release (which will be Firefox 10), comes the Firefox 3.6 end of life announcement.

ESR stands for extended support release. Which means it will lag behind in updates to the main version but be updated only for security/stability reasons, just like Firefox 3.6.

This is what people were asking for right...? A stable version of Firefox that will be updated about every year instead of every 6 weeks?

And Noscript already works on the latest Firefox.

Re: With the first ESR release

[steelfood]

I don't think there's an ESR for Firefox 3.6. It sounds like ESR is only a backport of security and stability fixes for supported browser versions, which, once 3.6 has been phased out, starts at 4.

Re: With the first ESR release

[bipbop]

Er, 4 hasn't been supported for a while. Nor 5. Nor 6. Nor 7. 8 was EOLed on December 20, and 9 will be EOLed on Jan 31.

There are no backported security or stability fixes for 4-8. To put it in Mozilla's terms, 5 is the security/stability release for 4, 6 is the security/stability release for 5, and so on.

According to TFA, the first ESR will be 10, not 4.

FTFY: NotScript

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Use NotScript: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/odjhifogjcknibkahlpidmdajjpkkcfn

There you go, FTFY, now you can move to Chrome.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[sinij]

Thank you! RIP Firefox, killed by version bloat.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[dpilot]

Going to Chrome because of version bloat on Firefox seems a trifle funny. There may be reasons to go to Chrome, but protesting version bloat isn't one of them.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[steelfood]

Well, Chrome does a whole host of things better than Firefox. Stability and memory usage are key. GP was probably weighing whether the stability and memory usage is worth not having control of what Javascript runs and what doesn't.

GP obviously considered being able to control Javascript more important than the stability and memory usage. Since GP just found out there actually is a Javascript filter addon for both browsers, the favor has swung to Chrome, considering Firefox has no answer for the memory usage at all and its solution for stability is weaker than Chrome's.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[DarkTempes]

My copy of Firefox 3.6.x has comparable memory usage to Chrome when you actually add up what all the Chrome child processes use.
And the only memory I've seen in a long time are add-on related (Firebug I'm looking at you).

And I honestly can't think of the last time Chrome or Firefox crashed on me. Maybe once in the last 6 months due to flash?
Chrome handles Flash crashes slightly better but they still happen.
For me, Chrome's real selling points are the better javascript engine and a smoother GUI (it definitely handles rogue processor hogging tabs better; webkit > gecko/XUL).
For me, Chrome's detractors are that it's less customizable/extensible (its versions of adblock/firebug/noscript/etc are still inferior to their Firefox brethren).

Of course, that's only my anecdotal evidence.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[revealingheart]

You'll have to provide sources for Firefox's alleged instability. Here's a link to Mozilla's Firefox crash statistics. If you can link to a report about Chrome's stability, it would be very useful.

As for memory, Mozilla have been working on reducing memory in Firefox with the MemShrink project. Nicholas Nethercote's blog has the latest reports on improvements to the upcoming versions. Even then, it's been established before in testing that Chrome is a relative heavyweight when it comes to memory.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Memory and the new GUI were the main two reasons that I hear from people who're still using 3.6.

Memory use was admittedly bad. 4.0 was almost unusable for any length of time. It's gotten gradually better, though. 8 was really pretty good, and as of 9, I think I'd finally say that memory use is a non-issue. If that's what was keeping you away from the newer versions, I'd say it's time to give it another shot.

As far as the new GUI goes, there were basically 4 changes. (1) Tabs on top, which can be easily reverted from the View - Toolbars menu. (2) The status bar is gone, although it can be brought back (it's called the Add-on Bar); there's not much use for it however because link URLs are shown at the bottom regardless of whether or not the status bar is visible. (3) The skin has one universal menu when you turn the Menu Bar off, which it is by default; pressing Alt temporarily shows the menus, or you can turn them back on (they did, however, move some options around - e.g. there's a new Web Developer submenu which they moved a number of things into). (4) The Awesome bar. Yes, it's different. No, you can't really make it behave like the old Location Bar did. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. You can set it to suggest both History and Bookmarks, or just one of them, or nothing. Personally, I like being able to search history directly from the location bar.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[tlhIngan]

Going to Chrome because of version bloat on Firefox seems a trifle funny. There may be reasons to go to Chrome, but protesting version bloat isn't one of them.

Chrome makes it so you don't care what version you use.

Updates are applied transparently in the background (no admin needed), which happen when you start the browser. Extensions stay working and AREN'T version-dependent. (Firefox is supposed to have a stable extension API so new versions don't break extensions, but...).

And no funky UI changes that keep tweaking the way stuff acts.

And when will they add low integrity mode support that IE and Chrome have, and the ability to do no-admin updates.

I'm lucky in that migrating to the rapid release is possible now I figured out al lthe crap - using the new profile manager (a separate download, but it's stable now), which extensions are required to keep a "traditional" look and feel (and how to move stuff like NoScript back t othe bottom-right corner) and what extensions are outdated and what the new extensions to use are. But it's a huge PITA.

And requiring admin means I basically have to physically go into my parent's computer periodically and update firefox. Bleh. (They don't have passwords, so RDP doesn't work, and RDP'ing into the admin account does a force-logoff for them (can't figure out how to get around this - I have fast user switching on and it's win7 enterprise...)).

Considering the past holiday season was the call to "upgrade and update your parent's browser"...

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[Anonymous Coward]

now I figured out al lthe crap - using the new profile manager (a separate download, but it's stable now), which extensions are required to keep a "traditional" look and feel (and how to move stuff like NoScript back t othe bottom-right corner) and what extensions are outdated and what the new extensions to use are. But it's a huge PITA.

Please share your knowledge.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[afidel]

Let's see, ~2.5 crashes per 100 active daily users, convert that to crashes per year for an average user and you get 8-9 crashes a year. I've been on Chrome for about 14 months and I have yet to crash it, the closest I have come is an extension that was consuming 100% cpu on load which meant I had to kill the Chrome process and clear out that extensions folder.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[afidel]

If you want no-admin required FF updates you can use portable firefox. Install in once and then just run updates as normal. A nice bonus is that it keeps everything under one directory so moving to a new PC is copying a folder over and adding a desktop link, much more convenient than the old way of moving FF profiles (I haven't tried the sync feature of 4+).

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[Anonymous Coward]

How about TeamViewer instead of RDC? It Just Works (for me at least).

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[Lord Crc]

And no funky UI changes that keep tweaking the way stuff acts.

Funny, because that's exactly why I ditched Chrome and went back to FF. They changed and removed functionality several times in the year I used it exclusively. And extensions couldn't access the relevant data to replace the lost functionality. Finally grew tired of this and the lack of cache settings, and I've been using FF again since.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[Skuto]

The crashes aren't uniformly distributed. Far from it. If you hit a problem case, it'll crash 10 times a day. If you don't, it'll run for months without an issue.

As you already observed, extensions are the main problem makers, and that's true for all browsers.

Re:FTFY: NotScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to mention my favorite new feature - tab groups, A.K.A. the built-in Boss Key for FF (Ctrl-`).

(home computer) I usually have my facebook, e-mail, and miscellaneous other tabs in one group; all my Slashdot tabs in another group for quick access without cluttering the window; and last, an internet radio station in its own tab group to keep it out of the way.

At work, I have Slashdot in one tab group and the intranet site on the other.

Hmmmm . . .

[smooth wombat]

Looks like I may have to try out Fx 4 and see how things go.

3.6 is a very nice browser. Never had any problems using it or with memory usage.

*Sigh* Why is it when I find something that just does what I want, the manufacturer has to discontinue it and replace it with something a whole lot crappier?

Re:Hmmmm . . .

[Merk42]

Looks like I may have to try out Fx 4 and see how things go.

You mean Firefox 9.0.1, right? Firefox 4 isn't supported anymore.

Re:Hmmmm . . .

[metalgamer84]

More like FF9. FF4 was so 2011...literally.

Re:Hmmmm . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happened to
3.7.x
3.8.x
3.9.x
there's plenty of numbers before we "must" move to version 4.
(seriously)

Anyway, i guess someone forks 3.6 into something awesome.

Re:Hmmmm . . .

[Skuto]

Everyone knows the next version after 3.6 is called 2012.

Re:Hmmmm . . .

[smooth wombat]

I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.
An elephant's faithful, er, no, wait. Wrong place.

But I did mean what I said.

Attorneys can't update.

[crankyspice]

Sigh. As one of the Righthaven tools[1] found out the hard way ... the CM/ECF system used by all Federal District Courts has been tested to work with FF 3.5; from extensive personal experience it also works fine with FF 3.6. It does not work at all with FF 4.0+ (in that you can't use FF to upload PDFs, which is all you'd use the Electronic Case Filing system for (document retrieval is done through PACER, though they overlap).

For some stupid reason, ECF specifies an ACCEPT parameter of “image/*” for the PDF upload forms, which of course is incorrect (PDFs are MIME type “application/pdf” per IANA; see also, e.g., RFC 3778).

As of FF 4.0 (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Element/input), that 'accept' parameter is honored and FF filters the file selector box to only permit image filetypes to be uploaded. End result? #massivefail

Yes, ECF is broken. But try getting not one, but 89, Federal bureaucracies to fix their tech in a timely fashion... (Each district court runs its own ECF system.)

Sigh.

[1] Declaration of Shawn A. Mangano, Esq., Righthaven LLC v. Democratic Underground, LLC, No. 10-cv-01356-RLH-GWF, docket entry 127-1 (Dist. Of Nevada, June 29, 2011)

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[Billly Gates]

Use IE. IE is tollerable at version 9 and is the most supported intranet browser which is only updated annually. Not sexy like Chrome, but you run a business and cant be bothered by constant upgrades.

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like I need to find lawyers offices and sell them a mess-with-the-headers proxy for $400 to fix this problem.

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[_0xd0ad]

I'm really unimpressed with any lawyer who couldn't figure out how to change the filter to "All Files" so that they could find the PDF. Yes, it works fine. Yes, I whipped up an HTML test page and I tried it.

I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume that you, being a geek lawyer, either knew this or could have figured it out, and it's just the Righthaven tools who apparently don't know how computers work.

Of course, a FF extension to change the accept parameter of <input type="file"/> elements would be even slicker.

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[Culture20]

My bet is ECF requires IE < 8

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[sjames]

It's not reasonable to hold Firefox/Mozilla responsible for other people's broken and steaming piles. They were nice enough to give everyone several YEARS to figure it out and do the right thing. The three toed sloth is slow, but at least it moves.

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[crankyspice]

Use IE. IE is tollerable at version 9 and is the most supported intranet browser which is only updated annually.

Not exactly a workable solution on my Macintosh and Linux workstations, but, thanks for the suggestion.

Except, MSIE is only supported up to version 8: "CM/ECF has been tested and works correctly with Firefox 3.5, and Internet Explorer 7 and 8." https://ecf.cacd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[crankyspice]

I'm really unimpressed with any lawyer who couldn't figure out how to change the filter to "All Files" so that they could find the PDF.

And I'm really unimpressed with any geek who couldn't figure out how to respond to an ex parte application to strike a portion of the proceedings for a technical violation of Local Rule 37-2.3... Or, let me put it another way. Russ Frackman (who I know) brought down Napster, one of the most prominent technology cases in that field. He did so while not knowing how to use email. (His secretary printed incoming email; he read it and dictated responses, which she took down in shorthand to email out from her desk a few moments later.) You can be an excellent lawyer and not know the nuances of software you're using.

Speaking of which, where exactly do I "change the filter to 'All Files'"? There's no combo-box control for that in the Mac versions of Firefox I use on a daily basis. If it's buried more deeply than that, yeah, I can probably find it, but that's not what I get paid for, anymore. Likewise finding (and hoping it (a) works and (b) is maintained) or writing (and maintaining) a FF extension. Could I? Almost certainly. Should I? Not anymore.

Re:Attorneys can't update.

[_0xd0ad]

Mac

Oh. Well, that's not your browser's fault at all. That's your operating system's fault. Macs "just work" like that. "User-friendly"... that's the word for when they hide options you don't need, right?

Under Windows, file types are simple extensions to the filename, not hidden away in some metadata tag. The Windows OS' file picker dialog looks like this. I'm pretty sure just about anyone could figure out how to look for something other than image files in that file picker. It's the box that says "Files of type", and "Image Files", so pardon my incredulity at anyone's inability to do so.

Perhaps I should apologize. I forgot that there was an operating system that actually won't let you specify or change which type of file you want to browse for in its file picker dialog. Anyway, revisit that page and open the Web Console (should be in the Web Developer menu) and try pasting this into the bar, after the > prompt.

for(var i=document.getElementsByTagName("input"),n=0,t=0;n<i.length;n++)if(i[n].type=="file"){i[n].accept="*";t++;};t;

(Basically: For each <input> tag with type="file", set accept="*" and increment counter t. Return the counter.)

When you hit Return it should appear in the top pane. Beneath it should be the # of file upload elements it found on the page. Then see if the file upload box works properly.

If that works (which it should), then create a bookmark with the following "Location". Clicking the bookmark should fix it on any such page you find in the future:

javascript:for(var i=document.getElementsByTagName("input"),n=0;n<i.length;n++)if(i[n].type=="file")i[n].accept="*";void(0);

ESR == upgrades that matter

[Dracos]

Finally, we know for sure which "major versions" are worthwhile: 10, 17, 24...

PPC Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

My small business runs PPC Macs on OS 10.4. We cannot upgrade to 10.5 because of certain software dependencies which would cost too much to fix. What are IT people like me supposed to do now that the only remaining browser that was any good on our machines is going away?

Re:PPC Mac

[Merk42]

Realize that as part of running a business you might have to upgrade software/hardware at least once in seven years.

You could also try Camino

Re:PPC Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that's why you're still a small business.

Re:PPC Mac

[SiMac]

You can use TenFourFox, which is synched with official Firefox releases and even contains a PPC JIT. But you might want to get rid of those machines sometime soon...

Re:PPC Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying to get the money to replace them for a long time. The problem is the workflow management software I inherited, which won't run on 10.5 or higher. This is a newspaper which until a month ago was still using a 1970's era camera and dark room. Change does not come easily here.

Re:PPC Mac

[Elbart]

Adapt or die.

Re:PPC Mac

[Ash-Fox]

My small business runs PPC Macs on OS 10.4. We cannot upgrade to 10.5 because of certain software dependencies which would cost too much to fix. What are IT people like me supposed to do now that the only remaining browser that was any good on our machines is going away?

Upgrade and virtualize the stuff that cannot or is too costly to migrate.

FF3.6 is starting to look like IE6

[expert464]

People being forced to hold on to an outdated version of a browser because specific sites (add-ons) won't work with newer versions.

Re:FF3.6 is starting to look like IE6

[0123456]

People being forced to hold on to an outdated version of a browser because specific sites (add-ons) won't work with newer versions.

Except FF3.6 doesn't suck.

Re:FF3.6 is starting to look like IE6

[expert464]

Except FF3.6 doesn't suck.

Say that again 11 years past it's release date in 2020 and we'll have a fair comparison.

Re:FF3.6 is starting to look like IE6

[ralphdaugherty]

Hopefully FF3.6 finds a reliable home to serve out installs and source code if desired. I like it just the way it is.

Re:FF3.6 is starting to look like IE6

[Skuto]

Except FF3.6 doesn't suck.

It has known memory leaks that are fixed in more recent versions (some big ones in 4.0 already). And people always complain it uses a lot of memory. *sigh*

My support for Firefox ended 2011

[syousef]

I wouldn't recommend Firefox to anyone anymore. Mozilla really screwed the pooch. Unwillingness to fix long standing bugs. Blaming extensions for bugs when they created the extension system that allowed them. Forced changes with no option to configure sensible defaults (AWFUL bar, status bar changes etc). UI constantly changing for the sake of change. Lack of willingness to listen to users. Version numbering madness. Extensions breaking with every release. Screw that. I'm writing this on Firefox 3.6. I've tried 4, 5, and 7 and they aren't worth the effort so I'm ditching the browser the moment I can't use 3.6.

To Mozilla: Thank you for providing such a wonderful browser. FUCK YOU for fucking it up so badly. Yes, it's free, but that doesn't mean you can get me hooked on a good product then ruin it without me having strong feelings about it.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[Luckyo]

I think the main reason for emotional response like yours (and mine, which largely mirrors yours) is because many of us in IT actively advocated firefox as a replacement for IE in corporate world, and actually got it pushed through. Which is one of the biggest reasons why firefox took off, people like using the same browser at home and at work.

And then, they essentially gave everyone in corporate IT a very public finger, especially when you have to explain to your bosses why firefox cannot be supported anymore and you have to switch to something else if that was your primary browser in the company. Not only do you end up feeling used, but your reputation (and potentially career) get stained.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is the only major browser (well maybe Opera too) that still runs on Windows 2000. So I will continue to use it.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[SiMac]

Did you see the link above that says "Extended Support Releases"? What exactly is wrong with that proposal?

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[hairyfeet]

For those that would like a nice cross platform browser and don't mind going off the beaten path a bit, may i make a suggestion? try QTWeb which is just what you think it is, a browser made with the QT framework and Webkit rendering engine. It works in Windows, OSX, and Linux, runs quite well from a thumbstick and is pretty nice and zippy.

I agree with everything you posted BTW and would only add the thing that finally broke me was how bad later releases ran on AMD CPUs. I don't know if they are using the Intel Cripple Compiler or what but the performance difference between AMD and Intel CPUs when it came to FF was pretty startling, with my losing a good 30-40 minutes on the battery using FF on my E-350 compared to using Comodo Dragon or QTWeb, both of which seem to be CPU agnostic. On the older AMD CPUs like my Sempron nettop FF slams the CPU to the point it is unsuitable for purpose yet both Dragon and QTWeb give the 1.8GHz Sempron new life and make it an excellent low power nettop. if I would have stayed with FF I'd have had to shitcan the box and built something more powerful which when we are talking about a fricking web browser is pretty crazy.

To the FF devs, what did you do when you switched from 3.0.x to later versions? Because whatever you did you need to undo it. 3.0.x was just fine on any AMD or Intel chip, the 3.5 and 3.6 branches were okay but not great with the spiking starting, and 4 and everything after was just shite on a crusty roll. The latest version is a little better but when you are talking about going from a 100% CPU spike for nearly 2 minutes to a 98% CPU spike for a minute that still isn't really good and makes the machine unusable until FF quits slamming the chip. Now when i can take the exact same system and under Dragon be using a good 40% less CPU, or get better performance from QTWeb when its on a thumbstick than I do from your browser when its natively installed? then to steal a line from an old K's Choice song "Something's Wrong". But I recommend Dragon and QTWeb and install both on new builds whereas I used to install FF before doing anything else. FF is just too power hungry and the performance simply isn't there which i think is a damned shame, it was truly a great browser before all this craziness.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[WrongSizeGlass]

Did you see the link above that says "Extended Support Releases"? What exactly is wrong with that proposal?

The problem is it starts with version 10. Those of us who have avoided the "version number race" aren't using 4, 5, 6 ... 10 for a reason. ESR for version 10 really offers us nothing. The ESR roadmap in the article already goes up to version 24 (which should be out by Christmas at this rate). And who knows how long they'll "extend" it for? Their roadmap shows version 10 supported until version 17, which will be a shorter duration than 3.6 was supported.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[habig]

I agree with everything you posted BTW and would only add the thing that finally broke me was how bad later releases ran on AMD CPUs. I don't know if they are using the Intel Cripple Compiler or what but the performance difference between AMD and Intel CPUs when it came to FF was pretty startling, with my losing a good 30-40 minutes on the battery using FF on my E-350 compared to using Comodo Dragon or QTWeb, both of which seem to be CPU agnostic.

Interesting... The older machine I've had the most problems with newer FFs has an old AMD chip. I'd figured it for memory footprint till I dropped in a couple more GB, hadn't considered the CPU.

But, it's not the Intel compiler, as the problem is worst on Fedora, which builds the binaries themselves using gcc.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[Luckyo]

"Too little, far too late".

They already took the PR hit, and they already hit their supporters in corporate world. The damage is done. Half-assed damage control (which is what these ESRs are) is not going to bring firefox back to corporate world, nor remove the huge stain from reputation of both FF itself and IT professionals who were pushing for firefox acceptance in their workplace.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[afidel]

Yes, and supporting a release for 6-12 months is no support at ALL. Seriously the other day people were (incorrectly) calling out MS for only supporting an OS for 10 years but you're giving Mozilla a pass on possibly less than 12 months? No, I need a browser that will have security fixes for at LEAST 3 years, but prefer 5. When we upgrade a major piece of software like our ERP platform or content management system it takes 6-12 months to do full regression testing, with FF we would now be out of support by the time we were ready to go to production.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[AbRASiON]

I apologise for not modding you up to +5 where you belong, why you're at -1 is beyond me. I blew my points on this guy replying to you http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2605870&cid=38600372 who has a point but this is my own fault for not surfing at -1

Someone please mod this guy up, because he's right on the fucking money.
(3.6 user here also, I have no idea where to go from here, I think chrome is ugly as fuck, newer version of FF are a joke and I'm not going to IE, ... I'm kind of stuck)

(Edit, yes I know my points go to waste but someone NEEDS to mod you up)

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[hairyfeet]

Maybe they are just writing code that doesn't run well on anything but Intel? Or are using intel based profiling during testing? Because i can tell you that I compared a first gen 1.7GHz Pentium 4 to a 3GHz AMD Athlon and it was pretty startling at least to me how badly FF favors the Intel CPU. Loading the same pages in both machines i noticed the memory spiking was MUCH more dramatic on an AMD CPU, and its CPU footprint was just insane.

As i said this 1.8GHz Sempron i'm typing on makes a wonderfully low powered nettop for the shop, lets me download drivers and check my mail without skipping a beat or ever hitting above 60% CPU on Dragon or QTWeb and that is during SD videos, but FF will slam the CPU to 100% for up to a minute launching a new tab and give it up when it comes to SD video as with FF it jerks so damned badly its better to download the video and run it than it is to attempt to watch in FF. And it isn't that QTWeb or Dragon are passing off to the GPU either as this unit has a truly ancient TNT Vanta 32Mb card I slapped in there just so i could run my 1600x900 LCD at native resolution so it simply doesn't have the horse to be offloading squat. hell i don't even think the old Vanta had support for MPEG 2 acceleration back then.

So I don't know what they did to it but FF is like night and day when it comes to AMD VS Intel CPUs, which considering i became an AMD only shop after the compiler rigging and OEM bribing came out makes FF unusable for me. Why would I want a browser that runs like you tied a boat anchor to it if its run on anything but Genuine Intel? Maybe someone ought to try switching their CPUID to Genuine Intel and comparing the performance to see if its some sort of intel based profiling on the part of FF because it certainly don't like AMD CPUs.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[ifiwereasculptor]

I'm assuming you run Windows. I have noticed something along those lines. The same version of Firefox works beautifully on my AMD when I use Linux, but when I boot to Windows 7 and try to use Firefox, it craps all over my desktop. It tends to crash, freeze and memory and CPU usage spike all the time. Now that I read your comment, I'm thinking it could very well be the compiler used. Firefox for Windows is compiled on either Microsoft's compiler or ICC, if I recall correctly. On the other hand, IceWeasel is obviously compiled with GCC by the good folks of Debian. And Peacekeeper reports very different scores for my browsers: Firefox 9.0.1 has 1076 points while IceWeasel 9.0.1 gets 1814. IceWeasel scores a bit lower on Canvas, which is probably fglrx's fault (it tends to suck), but nevertheless wins by a ridiculous wide margin. Intel has resorted to this sort of foul play in the (recent) past, so it's not tinfoil hat territory I'm navigating here.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[ifiwereasculptor]

I have just blamed the compiler for it a few posts down, then read your post. Funnily enough, IceWeasel runs extremely well on my AMD machine, while the Windows version sucks. Fedora never did like my system, it seems, and I recall F15 taking about half a minute to launch Firefox. It did behave erratically, but no more than KDE, so I can't really blame Firefox for its hiccups on Fedora with any degree of certainty.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[smash]

They've never bothered fixing enterprise affecting bugs. DHCP WPAD (because DNS based WPAD is more open to hijack), for example, simply DOES NOT WORK, and the bug has been open since at least 2006. I filed the same bug with chromium and it was fixed in dev within 3 months.

Seriously, a patch was even submitted for this in 2006, and it still doesn't work.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[smash]

Exactly. Most companies SOE is based on a 3-5 year support lifetime (which is when hardware will be refreshed). Providing support for a critical component of that for only 6-12 months is taking the piss.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[hairyfeet]

Correct and on both XP and Win 7 FF is like a bad joke. If its the Intel Cripple compiler this should give everyone the evidence that Intel ties a boat anchor to any code compiled on their compiler that is run on AMD processors because when you see an old non HT P4 stomp an Athlon X2 you know something stinks. Since I don't run Linux I'll have to take your word for it but it really doesn't surprise me as i found that most of the other browsers like Dragon, QTWeb, Safari, Opera, and Chromium are pretty much CPU agnostic but FF should come with a "For Intel processors ONLY!" warning because its pretty much unusable on AMD chips, at least from what I saw.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[Skuto]

Some minimal research would have shown that Firefox releases for Windows are compiled with MSVC 2010 in PGO mode. Not the Intel Compiler. There is absolutely nothing in Firefox that cares what brand your CPUs is. It runs even on ARM.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[hairyfeet]

Then how do YOU explain why a 1.7Ghz P4 without HT will stomp an Athlon X2 when it comes to page load, memory usage, CPU usage, on the same pages when the ONLY difference in the systems is the CPU? I'm really tired of FF fanbois waving their flags and sticking their fingers in their ears. How many years have we been complaining about the memory leaks only to get told by the devs "They don't exist, you're crazy' right up until they said "We fixed the leak BTW LOL!"?

If you don't believe me break out a stopwatch and use Chrome's built in memory tool which will show you REAL memory and CPU load and try it yourself why don't you? you'll find that a 5 year old Intel chip will stomp a brand new AMD chip and if you believe that is factually true I have a bridge to nowhere you might be interested in. if they aren't using the Intel Cripple compiler than i bet they are using Intel profiles on their builds because as it is now FF is unsuitable for purpose on AMD chips!

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[jonadab]

Umm, how about the fact that version 10 is not even released yet (as of early 2012), and meanwhile support for the last version that any sane person would call stable officially ended in late 2008.

Support for long-term stable releases, which _don't_ have major show-stopping bugs (especially data-loss bugs) is supposed to overlap by quite a bit, to give people time, _after_ the new long-term stable version comes out, to plan upgrades ahead of time.

The overlap -- the amount of time each long-term stable release is still supported with security updates AFTER the next long-term stable release comes out -- is twelve months for Debian, twelve months for Ubuntu LTS releases, longer for Apple products, and MUCH longer for anything that comes out of Redmond.

Even if we are exceedingly generous and call Firefox 3.6 a "stable release" (which stretches the definition of the term rather thin, but similar stretches have been made for some other vendors' releases at various times, so okay), it would be expected to receive security updates for a year or so AFTER the next long-term stable release is, you know, actually _released_ (not merely preemptively announced as being in early alpha or whatever Firefox 10's status officially is this afternoon).

More to the point, if we're talking about what has already happened, Firefox 3.6 came out more than a year AFTER support for 2.0 was discontinued, not a year or so BEFORE as would be expected.

Even 3.0, which was about as stable as the Lebanese government, was released a mere six months before support for 2.0 ended, and no sane network administrator would have considered deploying 3.0 in any case.

Re:My support for Firefox ended 2011

[pandronic]

3 to 5 years? Are you crazy? This is why we had this mess with IE6 - because of companies and people that were too lazy or too incompetent to make a browser agnostic standard compliant solution.

it takes 6-12 months to do full regression testing

Are you shitting me?

Just on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that this only applies to Windows

System requirements

[sirdude]

It's interesting looking at how the minimum requirements for 3.6 and 9 compare. In just under 2 years, the recommended hardware for FF has effectively quadrupled in Windows. Macs have odd changes and Linux doesn't warrant minimum/recommended requirements.

Looking at the recommended requirements from a different angle, you need at most a 12 year old system to run FF on Windows and a 6 year old system for Macintosh. Linux's restrictions are solely software dependencies.

Weird.

Re:System requirements

[bipbop]

That IS weird, considering they've rolled out only minor updates and UI problems since 3.6. I'm puzzled that the requirements would have changed at all.

Re:System requirements

[0123456]

That IS weird, considering they've rolled out only minor updates and UI problems since 3.6. I'm puzzled that the requirements would have changed at all.

I believe you'll find the new randomly-positioned status bar takes a lot more RAM and CPU than the old one because it has to continually work out which part of the screen you're trying to read and then ensure it always pops up on top of it.

Re:System requirements

[BZ]

I believe the 3.6 requirements just hadn't been updated in a few years and were more or less totally bogus. When 4 shipped, the requirements were updated to reflect reality.

Re:System requirements

[Anonymous Coward]

FF 9.0.1 works just fine on my Pentium III in Windows 2000.

Makes sense

[Tuan121]

Why support version 3.6 when the current is 9.0.1?

*cough*

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are not going to fix any bugs (even security ones) in 9.0.1 when 10.0 is out - which is going to be at least a month before 9.0.1 is approved for corporate roll-out. And since a browser which won't get any fixes won't be approved anyway, 3.6 is going to be the last approved Firefox version for a long time.

The alternative being a switch to IE8, or staying on Firefox 3.6 until IE9 is approved.

Greeaaat

[wiedzmin]

I can think of at least half a dozen enterprise applications (Avaya UCM, TripWire Enterprise, Juniper Netscreen WebUI, etc) off the top of my head, latest versions of which require Firefox 3.6 to run (with disclaimers, warnings, broken functionality an all). They sort of work with FF9, sometimes, and absolutely don't with IE. This is going to suck.

Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know if debian will have a backport of a more recent version for squeeze (stable)? They currently have 3.5.16. http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceweasel

Re:Debian?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind, found this: http://mozilla.debian.net/ .. not sure why this is not on the official backports repo.

Byob and Wpkg

[gQuigs]

They just relaunched Build your own browser, (byob.mozilla.com), which should help customize the settings. (I haven't tried it yet as we customized it manually)

We deploy with WPKG and find it works quite well. Not all companies use the MSI deployment tools...

Concept Of Browser Support Unclear On The Concept

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Firefox 3.0.6. If I'm shopping for a video card online and the web site doesn't work, then I go find another web site that does.

Why support Mozilla?

[Caerdwyn]

Someone tell me why any enterprise should ever donate Mozilla a single penny of support ever again? Mozilla has aggressively and loudly snubbed enterprise users (after having courted them), has refused to listen to anything other than their politically-driven BS, and have told people to change their way of dealing with upgrades just to accommodate Mozilla. Looks like an abrupt about-face after those "evil corporations" stopped contributing. So when's the next ideologically-motivated "fuck you" change coming?

It's very disappointing. I worked at Netscape back in the 1994-1996 timeframe, and I knew some of the people who did very well in the Netscape IPO then went on to Mozilla. They've apparently changed. I guess it's okay to be enterprise-hostile after the enterprises have landed them a huge paycheck...

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[SiMac]

Someone tell me why any enterprise should ever donate Mozilla a single penny of support ever again? Mozilla has aggressively and loudly snubbed enterprise users (after having courted them), has refused to listen to anything other than their politically-driven BS, and have told people to change their way of dealing with upgrades just to accommodate Mozilla.

Mozilla created Extended Support Releases specifically to accommodate enterprise users. In what way did they "refuse to listen"?

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[Billly Gates]

Yeah 6 months late and most businesses have downgraded back to IE 7. I advise all corporate customers to use IE instead. Still no one outside of slashdot even knows this port exists. Asa even told corporate users that if it wants security fixes for 3.6 and 4.0, that 5.0 was THE security fix. Mozilla itself has publically stated it does have not the resources for QA and security fixes for older releases let alone new ones. FF has over 6k bugs and is updating its rendering engine rather than focusing on fixing them. They are closing security holes thankfully but still not acceptable in the enterprise. No I.T. worker wants to answer 900 calls saying that the corporate add-on for proxy settings broke as FF auto updated etc.

IE is what I recommend now. Sigh. Maybe not IE 7, but at least IE 8 and IE 9 are ok. IE 9 is a much better browser for corporations if they have upgraded to Wiindows 7 already. This year most will be migrating thankfully so this will be an option. The only corporations who have used Firefox were those who were stuck on IE 6 and had the brains to realize it was a liability for employees to use the internet with it so both are included.

With IE 9 they can use just one browser that is supported by GPO and MS. Mozilla had a multi personality disorder. Many in management listen but Asa comes out with press releases telling users to fsck themselves and please go use IE instead (yes he actually stated that in slashdot). Either way it is poor management and leadership and that is not something you want to bet yourself with in the enterprise.

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[Anonymous Coward]

You feel the corporations are entitled, without contributing. They are not.

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[SiMac]

Yeah 6 months late and most businesses have downgraded back to IE 7.

Is Firefox being updated too quickly or too slowly? Firefox 3.6 is still supported, and will be until April 2012, apprently. Besides misinformation, I don't see why a business would downgrade to IE.

Asa even told corporate users that if it wants security fixes for 3.6 and 4.0, that 5.0 was THE security fix.

3.6 is still receiving security updates, and it will until April 2012. There have been several 3.6.x point releases since the 4.0 release. I don't think anyone ever said it wouldn't receive security updates.

No I.T. worker wants to answer 900 calls saying that the corporate add-on for proxy settings broke as FF auto updated etc.

Why in God's name would you do this? What is wrong with setting the system proxy settings? What is wrong with a PAC file?

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[Billly Gates]

Mozilla didn't re-enact the enterprise working group until August of last year. At that point it was too late. Just read the comments from slashdotters using FF at work?

Corporations listening to ASA in press releases from zdnet (which owns PCMag and various other I.T. magazines) made corporations want to go back to MS. Microsoft responded by a written letter of assurance promising 10 years of obsolete browser support. Many corporate clients have downgraded based on Asa's big mouth and the constant change.The letter made IE look like a much better choice not to mention IE 9 is tolerable and is current with the other latest generation browsers. FF 3.6 has last decades javascript compiler which is an order of magnitudes slower than even IE 9s.

You can't change a proxy setting via a GPO. You can with an image but employees do not want to have their desktops re-imaged for something so silly as an updated PAC file. This not an option either if you have hundreds of employees as it would require physically going in each desktop to boot from the LAN to do this. Still running FF 4.0 (an example) is not actively supported and has no security fixes. This makes corporations uneasy. They are in the business of making widgets and doing all the processes of making a widget and selling it. Not upgrading browsers.

I used to love FF and be a big advocate. If I were the CIO or CEO of Mozilla I would fire Asa and hire a new marketing team to brand FF enterprise edition with GPO offer a letter of support and name it after a year like FF 2012 edition based on a particular version of FF like like version 10 etc. With the 300 million from Google and more from Bing they now have the money to do the QA that people like. I bet many slashdotters would prefer such as myself. The quality of FF is not too my liking anymore.

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[Caerdwyn]

My point is that corporations, not home users, are the ones paying the Mozilla Foundation's bills and payroll, and were slapped in the face for their troubles. Just how many FireFox logo polo-shirts and coffee mugs do you think it would take to run the Mozilla Foundation? Have you ever been in their headquarters and seen how they are spending other people's money? I have. Really really nice place and location. Have you first-hand heard and seen their attitude toward the people who ultimately are the ones funding their paychecks? I have. The "Occupy" people would be proud of those sneers.

Corporations are abandoning Mozilla both as users and contributors because Mozilla abandoned them and made a big show of it, and Mozilla is only doing an about-face because a significant portion of their userbase AND contribution stream AND developer community became offended by their antics. Their market share is plummeting for a reason, and they're getting in bed with that great social-justice bastion Microsoft because they've managed to piss off just about everyone else. Too little, too late, credibility gone. You talk about entitlement... well, Mozilla is not entitled to contributions, users, developer support or trust. All of those have to be earned, not granted for free... a concept which goes right over a bunch of people's heads here on Slashdot. Case in point.

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[smash]

What is wrong with a PAC file? Well, if your users take their PCs home, then the intranet based PAC file is not accessible. So they need to fuck around with configuration. Oh, just use WPAD you say? Well, firefox's implementation of WPAD is BROKEN, and the DHCP configuration method does not work. Just use DNS based WPAD? No, there are good reasons not to do that. Safari works with DHCP based WPAD. As does IE. As does new versions of chromium (maybe chrome now, haven't checked). Firefox has a bug report for this that had a patch submitted back in 2006. It still doesn't work, last I checked (mid 2011).

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[Skuto]

My point is that corporations, not home users, are the ones paying the Mozilla Foundation's bills and payroll

Nope. Absolutely not. Mozilla is payed for by users who run the browser and click Google ads. Some of these run Firefox because that's what their corporation gives them. If you look at adoption numbers, 3.6 is now down to 4%. So the people who pay Mozilla are overwhelmingly home users, or corporations that didn't have any problem with updating it.

It seems to be that 4% that makes a lot of noise and demands that everything else is held up while they get their act together. That isn't going to happen. But apparently that 4% is big enough to make the ESR versions.

Re:Why support Mozilla?

[Skuto]

I worked at Netscape back in the 1994-1996 timeframe, and I knew some of the people who did very well in the Netscape IPO then went on to Mozilla. They've apparently changed. I guess it's okay to be enterprise-hostile after the enterprises have landed them a huge paycheck...

I don't get your argument. Mozilla isn't Netscape. I'm guessing the people that went from one to the other did so because they cared about the product, not because they subscribed to the corporate philosophy. The income structure of Mozilla in 2011 has little or nothing to do with what the one of Netscape in 1995 was!

Mozilla Unclear on the Concept

[rubycodez]

They're talking about x weeks after y weeks....what business need is z YEARS, with z>=2, with only bug fixes and security updates. This pandering to out of control bloat, bugs, eye candy and gee-whiz nonsense needs to stop. Business and many people like myself want a stable, secure, predictable, and useful browser, not a petri dish for every brain fart a mozilla developer has.

Re:Mozilla Unclear on the Concept

[Elbart]

Nice rant.

Re:Mozilla Unclear on the Concept

[Anonymous Coward]

true, though

Re:Mozilla Unclear on the Concept

[Billly Gates]

At the same time competition is updating rapidly and finally maturing. This is a return to the 1990s. Corporations got used to the great recession and slow 2000s and do not want to go back.

Corporations need to budge and update anually at least. MS has it correct in that IE will now be updated every year. Mozilla needs to slow down as well. I think anual updates are reasonable for both parties as long as radical changes are not introduced. Chrome renders pretty much the same unlike IE. With IE being so different with the bugs and logic in the rendering engines of different releases made employers freak out about browsers.

What a shame. It should never be like this and hopefully in the future newer browsers will simply add more features or performance rather than break shit. I think the browser 2.0 wars will do this. FF is the oddball in its addons.

Re:Mozilla Unclear on the Concept

[complete loony]

Did you guys complain this much about the transition from FF2 to FF3? Firefox development has never been slow, they've always had teams of people working on big changes that are slated for the "next release", and other changes that are too big for that version and need to be delayed further. The problem was that they were trying to get too many features into the next release, which made it harder to test them all. IMHO the jump from FF3.6 to FF10 will be about the same magnitude of changes as the jumps from FF2 to FF3 was, and in about the same time frame.

Re:Mozilla Unclear on the Concept

[rubycodez]

1990s??!! Let me tell you about serious corporate applications for most the 1990s, they mostly weren't on a PC. Those that were, like the spreadsheet and word processing, didn't change every year.

Firefox has sold out

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 3.6 was the last of the good versions of Firefox, back when it was the little browser that took on the big bad IE. Now it is sucking Chrome's cock while getting it up the ass from IE while Opera films it and Safari faps to it.

A billion dollars from Google, and yet they can't even keep their extentions stable unless you lie about being "compatible" and they ignore the massive pile of complaints covering everything from user interface changes to ignoring enterprises to not testing on low memory systems like netbooks and wonder why there so many memory complaints.

I'm a Chrome user now, and I'm not ever going back. Firefox is the abusive ex who keeps claiming he's changed every six weeks, but if you go back he will beat you up again.

Re:Firefox has sold out

[Billly Gates]

Firefox 3.x has been having problems for awhile. FF 3.6 is most certainly not good, but rather tolerable compared to IE 7/8 if you have 2 gigs of ram, plus 4 core CPU. Chome and IE 9 came out killing it in addition to FF 4.0.

I occasionally used IE 8 just to see how it compared to FF 3.5 and was shocked to see it snappier in all but javascript intensive apps like Google Maps. Firefox 1.x was GREAT!

Actually FF was not great, but better than IE 6 in comparison. Now Chrome comes and is better. Firefox 2.x was more bloated but had some new features. FF 3.x was mediocre. IE and Chrome kept getting better. FF 3.6 is very SLOW on old machines and AJAX JQuery oriented sites. 4.0 mixed with poor management were both the final straws that spelled the doom of FF. IE 9 came out too which is the first good IE browser since 6. Yes IE 6 was good in 2001 as much as we hate it today.

just one thing I hate about FF

[epine]

In all the versions I've used, FF offers you an upgrade without first checking how many of your existing extensions won't come along for the ride. After one bad experience, I decided no upgrade was preferable to a negative upgrade, on the suspicion that one or more of my plug-ins would bonk.

The simple technical advisory function was MIA.

Re:just one thing I hate about FF

[dissy]

Plugins are the only thing keeping me on Firefox 3.6 still.'
Very few of the plugins I rely on work on Firefox 4 or newer.

Now that Mozilla is purposely breaking plugins every few weeks with their major number changes, the path ahead is pretty clear:
Either stay with firefox and spend a day every month finding close-but-not-quite replacement plugins for the rest of time, or simply do this once during my switch to Chrome.

I also tried spending some time getting Firefox 4 deployed on the domain at work, only for them to release 5 a month later and once again break every last plugin I had installed except AdBlock.
We quickly yanked that package back out and are currently recommending Chrome as an alternate to IE (Which is unfortunately still needed for Intranet use)
I've just been delaying that switch personally, since FF 3.6 actually works for my needs and I have been happy with it.

It was bad enough when Mozilla was simply PUSHING me away, but now they plan to yank the floor out from under me as well.

Screw you mozilla. Say hi to Netscape in hell once you finish sending your own browser there.

Firefox 3 is still better in some areas

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, no Firefox newer than 3.x has a resizeable Save Bookmarks window.

Newer FFs have regressed in this area because Mozilla's policy is "If you want that window to be resizeable, write an extension to do it". Unfortunately nobody ever wrote such an extension so we've ended up with less functionality than in 3.x.

Another example of FF regression is bookmarks lookup speed. It used to be instantaneous in 3.x, which used a single XML file to store bookmarks. Now that FF uses SQLite, it's hundreds of times slower --- almost unusable when you have thousands of bookmarks, whereas FF3 doesn't blink an eyelid under these circumstances.

There's lots of good stuff in newer FFs of course, but it hasn't all been progress. In a few areas it has regressed dreadfully.

Re:Firefox 3 is still better in some areas

[Billly Gates]

Speed? Go google Peackemaker benchmarks and run it compare it to IE 9 and Chrome?

Hell, even IE 9 is 20x faster than FF 3.6 in javascript benchmarks

! Its javascript compiler is outdated compared to the JIT ones in current generation browsers. With AJAX everywhere I would not want to run FF 3.6 anymore.

It is obsolete and last decade in terms of technology. I hate the UI of Chrome and the quality of the new FF, but Chrome and IE 9 are much better for Google apps like their maps program.

Tired of being their beta tester

[linebackn]

It's good they have finally picked a release for long term support. I don't give a shit that they say it this is not for individuals, I'll be sticking with 10 if it is LTS in any way, and that is what I will encourage others to use.

I am tired of being what amounts to their beta tester. And it irks me that anyone would use the public at large in that way.

Just hope they are serious about this. In the past most of their "enterprise" efforts have just been talk.

So....

[kehren77]

So I should probably think about updating all the machines I have running Firefox 2.0.0.20?

We have a bunch of older Mac running 10.3.9 that can't even update to Firefox 3.6 because it requires 10.4.

I thought the whole point of Firefox was that it was supposed to have lower system requirements than IE.

Re:So....

[Elbart]

I thought the whole point of Firefox was that it was supposed to have lower system requirements than IE.

Who said that?

Mozilla is responsible for IE6's long reign.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozil;a was originally supposed to be released in 2000 as "Netscape 6", but it was bloated and slow, then it took them four years to go through Seamonkey/ Pheonix / Firebird before Firefox was released in 2004. If they got their chops right they would of released Firefox in 2000 and added GPO/MSI support then before IE could take a foothold. But no, they didn't and let IE 6 ruin things.

It was actually Safari that was the first viable non IE browser (mainly in part due to Steve Jobs getting booed for IE in 1997). Opera doesn't count because it was shareware/adware until too late.

Re:Mozilla is responsible for IE6's long reign.

[Billly Gates]

Quite the opposite.

I will be always thankfully for Mozilla to free us. GPO didn't matter as corporations in 2005 drank the MS coolaide and wanted to bet on the winner which was IE 6. It had 90% marketshare so why use this freeware firebird thingie!?

GPO became popular just a few years ago as active directory was just starting to take off in 2005. FF is what opened the web and so did Apple's IPhone. Mozilla had decent management until both the CIO and CEO left early last year and ASA kind of took over.

What about sync?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Firefox 3.6 sync extension is not available.

Maybe....

[c0lo]

... just maybe the Redhat/CentOS guys will decide for a newer version in their repos.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

[CyDharttha]

I wonder what version Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will move to? It's still on FF 3.6. There's just over a year of support left for the desktop LTS version.

Re:Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

[Nimey]

I could see them maintaining their own patches for it. They did that with previous LTSes (definitely 6.06) once the bundled version of Firefox had gone EOL.

Re:Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover that's precisely the idea behind Ubuntu LTS, Ubuntu developers are the ones supposed to follow advisories and backport security fixes to EOLed software versions.

Re:Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

[CyDharttha]

Got my answer this morning on the mailing list:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynx/ReleaseNotes/FirefoxRapidReleaseMigration

'Starting on January 17, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10 users will be migrated to the latest Firefox version...'

Re:Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

[Anonymous Coward]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynx/ReleaseNotes/FirefoxRapidReleaseMigration

Re:Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon? Ubuntu's been shoving new version down LTS throat.
I mistakenly applied all updates awhile back on 10.4.3 and now
have FF4, although Synaptic wants to install 5.

Re:Concept Of Browser Support Unclear On The Conce

[Elbart]

Ok.

Firefox offers support?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

For what?

On the 24th to be exact.

[antdude]

April 24th, 2012. :)

Simple solution

[RStonR]

Create a fork and cash in millions.

Seriously, Mozilla has something like 30% marketshare and IIRC Google gave them 300 Million. So they only manage to gain 3% (= 1/10 of Firefox users) with a conservative stable version, then that would be 30 million. Surely that would be worth the trouble.

Is nobody in the community smelling the money?

what took so long?

[Lawrence_Bird]

I'm on 12 already.. get off the short bus people!

News to me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... Support ends? I didn't think Firefox 3.6 had even been released yet! I could have swore that just the other day they released Firefox 3...
Seriously. At this rate, I probably can't even count on Firefox 29.7 being supported until the end of this year!

We're dropping Firefox

[Skapare]

The upgrade rate is too fast to keep up with. By the time Firefox gets out through stable distributions it's already 2 or 3 versions old. IE isn't even this bad. And if it were not for the fact that we actually do run Linux on most of our desktops, I would give IE serious consideration now. Firefox and Mozilla has been a serious let-down. Chrome or Opera looks like where we might be going.

Re:We're dropping Firefox

[Ash-Fox]

The upgrade rate is too fast to keep up with.

Why are you running software on such slow computers that it takes weeks to install a version of Firefox? Surely you can run something a bit more modern?

Re:We're dropping Firefox

[Skuto]

By the time Firefox gets out through stable distributions it's already 2 or 3 versions old. IE isn't even this bad

Of course it is. A new Windows install will always get Internet Explorer updates.

popup vs iframe

[Anonymous Coward]

My complaint (well, one of them) is the automatic conversion of every popup window to an iframe.

Some of them were popups for good reason, once the popup is up, I can grab it and move it out of the way, since I need to know whats behind it.

Can anyone help with this issue?

Re:popup vs iframe

[Anonymous Coward]

See if this works. If it does, bookmark it.

window.open("data:text/html;charset=utf-8,<base href=\""+String(window.location).substring(0,String(window.location).length-String(window.location).split("/").pop().length)+"\"/>"+document.body.innerHTML.split("%").join("%25").split("&").join("%26").split("#").join("%23"));

Once you get an alert that you need to see what's behind, hit Ctrl-Shift-K to open the script console and paste that in. It should open a new window with all the content from the old window. Once you find what you want to find, close the new window and you're back to the one with the popup.

To bookmark it, create a new bookmark and put "javascript:" before the code.

Why upgrade?

[J_Darnley]

Tell me again why I should upgrade Firefox in April. Will it suddenly cease to run on my PC? Will version 9 (or whichever number we have by then) start to look and behave like 3.6 does?

I think it is a good thing I got into paranoia mode early, it will save me from the waves of exploits aimed at 3.6 when I continue to use it.

Now they just have to change numbering . . .

[SEE]

. . . to something more in line with expectations. For the ESR patches, number them 10.0.1, 10.0.2, etc, while the mainline goes 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, etc. until the new ESR (currently planned to be 17) gets version 11.

3.6 is the last release for PowerPC macs

[manu0601]

3.6.x is the last supported release for PowerPC-based macs. Models from 2005 do have the horsepower to surf today Internet, but they will get unusable because of the lack of software.

Re:3.6 is the last release for PowerPC macs

[Ash-Fox]

If I recall correctly, a PowerPC-based mac can still run Linux distributions.

Re:3.6 is the last release for PowerPC macs

[Skuto]

There is community support for those through TenFourFox, but eventually they won't be able to keep up with the development pace, as supporting PowerPC macs is not effort-free.

Well then....

[smash]

It looks like Firefox 3.6 is going to become the IE6 of the 201Xs.

Dropping support for what works.

[Anonymous Coward]

Along with quite a few others I'm forced to remain with 3.6 because v6 and higher fail to recognize, install or update extensions and add-ons. This is a problem that Mozilla has failed to address beyond suggesting workarounds that do not work or that are not accurately documented.

But being aware that EOL for 3.6 was coming very soon I am switching to something else that isn't just a newer version of fail like Chrome.

Re:Dropping support for what works.

[Skuto]

This is a problem that Mozilla has failed to address

Because it's not actually their problem. They can't update every add-on or extension ever written to the newer versions themselves. Many of them aren't even open source.

If you installed crappy extensions onto the base product, it is not the problem of the base product if they don't work.

Upgrade to the latest stable version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone explain to me what "stable" means, in the context of a full version release every month or two? How is this "stable"?

Or is it "stable" in the sense of containing what's in stables: lots of horsesh*t?

                mark, who upgrades via yum