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Chrome Will End XP Support in 2015; Firefox Has No Plans To Stop
Billly Gates writes "Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP in 2014. Fortunately for its users who want to keep browsing the web, Google is continuing to support Chrome until at least 2015. Firefox has no current plans to end support for XP. Hopefully this will delay the dreaded XPopacalypse — the idea that a major virus/worm/trojan will take down millions of systems that haven't been issued security patches. When these browsers finally do end XP support, does it mean webmasters will need to write seperate versions of CSS and JavaScript for older versions if the user base refuses to leave Windows XP (as happened with IE6)?"
Update: 10/29 17:31 GMT by S : Changed headline and summary to reflect that Mozilla doesn't have plans to drop XP support any time soon.
They'll take my XP when they put me in the ground. Warning: this post may contain traces of levity.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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The article says they have no plans to end support for XP, how in the world did the summary end up saying exactly the opposite?
Or is now even blatant lying ok as long as it might work as clickbait?
The linked article, posted 20 hours ago, actually says
Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."
and basically the same for Chrome.
I only use Windows for dual booting when I need Windows for some reason, which is rare, but XP was a solid and decent version of the Windows family. I'd have kept it if it weren't being sunsetted. I now have Windows 8 on my other partition. I hate the interface, passionately, but luckily I don't have to use it often. I felt like I had to move to 8 just to have software support.
Sad to see it go. It was the first decent OS Microsoft made.
The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
From the fine article:
Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Only an idiot would run a browser on an OS with unpatched vulnerabilities. Windows XP will not get any security issues fixed after April 2014. If you ignore those simple facts, you deserve becoming a part of a botnet, sending your passwords and credit card numbers to the botmaster.
I thought i read not too long ago on /. that Chrome support would outlast Microsoft's support?
Article: "Both Mozilla and Google said they WILL continue to support XP"
Slashdot: "OMFG NOBODY WIL SUPPRT XP NE MOAR"
Seriously timothy, Fuck you.
The first link says that Mozilla plans to continue supporting Firefox on XP; it gives no end date, so they presumably mean indefinitely (though practically probably not much longer than a few years--for example, they supported Windows 2000 until Firefox 12 in April 2012, a bit over 2 years after its EOL; on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if they went a bit longer with XP given its larger user base). The second link says Google plans to continue Chrome support on XP into at least 2015. Neither one of these links talks about Firefox or Chrome ending support for Windows XP. In fact, both mention the exact opposite, at least for the foreseeable future, so I'm really wondering where the author of this summary got this information.
R.Mo
As of April 8th, 2014, Microsoft is ending all support for their 12 year old operating system. We can't continue to support legacy systems because people refuse to upgrade. There has been THREE full OS versions that have come out since XP. There are people still using Windows 98 and Windows ME, doesn't mean we still provide support for them.
No need, the linked article says they're going to keep on supporting it.
(In a huge headline font...)
No sig today...
The reason Firefox and Chrome will continue to support XP is because they want to support Windows Server 2003, which has an End-of-Life of 14-Jul-2015. Since Win2003 (and XP Pro x64) use the NT 5.2 kernel and they don't want to lose that marketshare, by default supporting it on the NT 5.1 kernel (e.g. XP 32-bit) would be a trivial affair. That's why they chose "at least 2015"...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
As soon as Micr$oft comes up with a better version, we'll start using it.
Lousy goddamned Fisher-Price tabletized piece of crap. This is a real big-boy computer I use to get real work done on, not some damn device for consuming BookFace and MeToobe videos. Plus there's no signed W7 driver for the lab control interface card. Mabel II would be very unhappy if that stopped working.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Web Developers have learnt from the past, there will never be a supported code that will be dependant on a specific version again.
Cross-compatibility and Browser Independence is a main focus that hasn't been in the past. Most websites are not locked into a particular browser, so there are more options if things go pear-shaped in a particular browser. If for example Firefox drops XP support and there is a bug with the old version, the customer can change to Chrome until another solution is put in place.
IE6 was the exception, because it was too difficult in many codebases to update it for compatibility beyond IE6 in the short term, for time(=money) reasons. As soon as the codebases were updated (or the solution replaced) to work beyond IE6, IE6 was kicked right out the door. IE6 didn't stay king because so many people loved that browser so much that they didn't want to change, it was because they HAD to keep using it for some reason. It is not uncommon for companies still relying on IE6 to have Firefox installed for general web browsing and IE6 only for the specific app they need. You can bet your ass they have retirement plans on how to eventually get off IE6 (& now also XP) altogether.
Unsupported code (eg: unmaintained websites) that won't work with new versions - Yes that is inevitable.
Supported code - No.
If it is a supported codebase - The web developer's solution would be to update it to work with the new version, not make it work with the old. If that means that it will break compatibility with the old version, then so be it, it is industry practice not to support unsupported software.
It's worth pointing out that Mozilla & Google are not supporting XP - They are supporting their browsers. If there is a problem in XP, they are not going to help you with it.
It will adversely affect the virtual machine I use to watch Netflix. That's about it... I have a legal license for XP and run it in a VM. I no longer have a valid license for 7, and would not touch 8 with a 10-foot pole, even if you paid me to do it. But I still need something modern to support Windows XP, because that's how I access Netflix from my desktop PC.
Admittedly, with the number of devices I have with native Netflix clients (tablet, phone, smart TV, game consoles, etc.), that will become less of a problem, but I do still find time/reason to watch it on the desktop, and the Linux-native attempts do not work very well in my experience.
I now have Windows 8 on my other partition. I hate the interface, passionately
You'll probably hate Classic Shell less. It adds a proper Start Menu to Windows 8, which you can configure to look like Windows 9x, Windows XP, or Windows 7.
They replaced the entire OS because the kernel stack was a tangled mess of spagetti that had numerous dependencies that made absolutely no sense. It was an unholy merger of Win9x and WinNT/2k with bells and wistles added throughout it's life (and three service packs).
Just goes to show that the Win32 API is stable compared to say, MacOS X. Even though Mozilla dropped support for 10.4 and 10.5 PowerPC, the TenFourFox project keeps up with Mozilla's changes. Whats missing from Win32 in XP/2K3 that would force Mozilla to drop support in the future? OS X had big changes to font handling in 10.5 and higher, plus that big architecture change.
No. Firefox is 32-bit because it has to support NPAPI plugins, which are mostly (if not all) 32-bit DLLs, and Windows can't load a 32-bit DLL into a 64-bit process.
Puppy Linux is excellent on older hardware and fast on more recent boxes.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Funny, when XP launched the Slashdot consensus was that it was 'goddamned Fischer-Price crap' for consumers who didn't care about the lack of signed drivers for (your favorite obscure ISA card here), and real big boy computers ran Linux, UNIX, or Win2k if you really needed Microsoft software.
0 1 - just my two bits
does this mean will not have to worry about upgrading to a new version of Firefox every other fortnight and having it break all the add-ons
sounds good to me
btw I just upgraded to FF 25 on my Win7 box and had to fiddle with Foxtab a lot to get it going again
there was no mention during the upgrade process that Foxtab was incompatible
Was published early August, so there may have been some changes and press releases and announcements since then, no? I would imagine AV companies will support whoever pays, especially the annual plans.
It's been over a decade, guys.
Windows XP was still being sold on new PCs until two or three years ago, guy. Those PCs are still perfectly capable of doing most things that most of their users want to do. Why should they dump them just because Microsoft won't support its products?
I've found WinXP running in a VM the sanest way to connect to the VPNs of various clients that I work with. Many VPN clients attempt to take over the entire network stack and direct all your traffic through their VPN which creates havoc with accessing company servers.
With WinXP I can clone a VM for different clients. I tried this with Windows7 and ran into activiation nightmares. Possibly not strictly legal, but I refuse to fork out cash just because different VPN clients won't play nicely with each other on the same instance.
On other platforms, this is solved by nspluginwrapper, which runs the plugin as a separate process and just sends events and screen contents between them. Given that most web browsers now do something similar for security and stability (so a plugin can't crash the browser and a security problem in the plugin is isolated), it's not likely to be a significant issue.
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Most manufacturers would give their eye teeth to have a product that their customers love as much as our users love Wincows XP. It does everything that our people need done, it is stable and secure and simple and they know it well. As tech support I know it well, too; on XP I don't have to search for "Where did Microsoft put the device drivers THIS TIME!"
But the problem that Microsoft faces is that they hire programmers, and programmers are change agents. If the program really does the job well, nobody will ever buy a new version. So they have to artificially destroy Windows XP in order to sell newer versions. Trojans, viruses, malware are all allies of Microsoft.
Sort of like getting a new wife every eight years, whether you want one or not.
Everyone talks like the patch treadmill is absolutely necessary. It's not. The only reason this treadmill is marched by IT depts is to protect their jobs from the logical fallacies of management. The proof is the false assumption that the system's secure once the latest patches are installed, coupled with the rash of new patches the following week. Windows is fundamentally insecure. Hell, just about every OS is insecure if setup incorrectly no matter how many vendor patches are applied. If you're going to use an OS in a networked environment, just accept that, and when planned for accordingly, it's not the biggest issue in the world. Everyone posting here should know how to mitigate risks like this by now, patches or no patches.
Since when does an OSS community abandon an entire segment of the population just because Microsoft makes a commercial decision? I hope there's a fork and some group continues to support XP.
Just upgrade to Linux Mint or some other Linux distribution. It should world on old hardware.
Just saying it like it are.
Ham shack? 73? And you don't see the cosmic significance?