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Zero Day

Ryan Naraine, Emil Protalinski and Dancho Danchev

'End of life' beckons for Firefox 2

By | October 29, 2008, 8:32am PDT

Summary: If you have not yet upgraded to Firefox 3, keep in mind that Mozilla is very close to pulling the plug on support for older versions of the browser. Support for Firefox 2, which includes security and stability patches, is scheduled to end six months after Firefox 3 shipped (June 17, 2008), which puts the end-of-life [...]

'End of life' beckons for Firefox 2If you have not yet upgraded to Firefox 3, keep in mind that Mozilla is very close to pulling the plug on support for older versions of the browser.

Support for Firefox 2, which includes security and stability patches, is scheduled to end six months after Firefox 3 shipped (June 17, 2008), which puts the end-of-life date in the mid-December range.


[ SEE: Talking Firefox security with Mozilla’s Window Snyder ]

Mozilla has not yet set a final date for Firefox 2 end-of-life activity but the open source group has started discussing the “requirements or issues” that would force a deadline extension.  The current plan is for the next Firefox 2 patch to the final update of that version.

According to Mozilla’s Mike Beltzner, only about one-third of Firefox users are running older versions of the browser.

  • Presently 2/3rds of our users are using Firefox 3, with more than 50% accepting the first major upgrade offer back in late August. We’re looking through Hendrix and other sources to understand why people didn’t want to upgrade and ensure that those bugs have been fixed.

Firefox 3 is considered a major security improvement over Firefox 2 because of the addition of an anti-malware blocker and improved Web forgery warnings.

ALSO SEE: Browser Wars 2.0: Firefox scrambles to add ‘private mode’ browsing

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Topics

Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues.

Disclosure

Ryan Naraine

The most important disclosure is of my employment with Kaspersky Lab as a member of the global research and analysis team. Kaspersky Lab is a global company specializing in anti-malware and secure content management technologies. I do not own stocks or other investments in any technology company.

Biography

Ryan Naraine

Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues. He is currently security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab, an anti-malware company with operations around the globe. He is taking a leadership role in developing the company's online community initiative around secure content management technologies.

Prior to joining Kaspersky Lab, Ryan was Editor-at-Large/Security at eWEEK, leading the magazine's and Web site's coverage of Internet and computer security issues and managing the popular SecurityWatch blog, covering the daily threats, vulnerabilities and IT security technologies. He also covered IT security, hacker attacks and secure content management topics for Jupiter Media's internetnetnews.com.

Ryan can be reached at naraine SHIFT 2 gmail.com. For daily updates on Ryan's activities, follow him on Twitter.

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RE: 'End of life' beckons for Firefox 2
birumut Updated - 5th May 2011
Well done! Thank you very much for professional templates and community edition
seslisohbet seslichat
0 Votes
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For the adventurous...
no_zd_user_name 29th Oct 2008
Give Minefield a spin.

I've been using it with Adblock, Noscript, Ubiquity just fine for a good week now.

It's definitely a keeper.
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Add-ons for FF3; not all FF2's working yet
djlewis@... 29th Oct 2008
My favorite -- and some indispensable -- add-ons do not yet work in FF3!! Please get on the stick with the developers.
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Which extensions are those?
jrf2027@... 30th Oct 2008
Just curious...which extensions don't work with FF3? I use some mainstream ones and some not-so-mainstream ones, they all work with FF3.
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Which Extensions??
THX 1138 30th Oct 2008
If you browse the Mozilla site for add ons, you will easily find those that say "Does not work on FF 3, use on FF2 or lower". This is on about 20% or more. They are updating regularly, but there are still quite a few good ones that are incompatible.
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Non-3 Extensions
MyBrainHurts@... 17th Dec 2008
For me, the T-Mobile minutes addon is a nice feature, and it is apparently unlikely to be upgraded to 3.0 FF.

Art
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I've spent a LOT of time setting up my FF2 with themes and addons that I feel are indispensable.

FF3 is a complete new install. That means I start all over again and I DON'T like this! You remind me of Microsoft.

FF3 should follow the same format as your updates or addons. I should be able to select "Upgrade" and then restart. All themes, addons, etc. follow along and I'm done.

The last time I checked, The Alumina theme and "Fireshot Pro" (I bought the $19.00 upgrade), "Smartwhois" "1Click Weather" and other addons I use aren't compatible w/FF3x!

If this is incorrect, then you've done a sad job of informing us.

This is why I'm not upgrading.
0 Votes
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FF 3 not ready at all
tech_walker 30th Oct 2008
3.1 beta is a little better, FF2 is still way more stable. Opera looking better all the time, as is IE8.
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RE: 'End of life' beckons for Firefox 2
BBaker7958 30th Oct 2008
My FF 3.03 update has never been. Crashed from the get go and cannot find a reason why since they have no tech support at all. Was working just fine till that update now crashes as soon as it trys to start??????

BBaker7958
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I installed FF 3 fine, but my online banking site doesn't support Firefox. Version 2 worked fine; 3 tanked the site and was full of errors. I had to uninstall it and go back to the previous version in order to do pay my bills and stuff. I refuse to use that horrible excuse for a browser, IE. Complained to the bank, but lord only knows how long it would take them to do something. They only support IE. So until 3 works like 2, I'm stuck with 2.
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RE: 'End of life' beckons for Firefox 2
jimhokom@... 31st Oct 2008
I have a network with old iMacs run on OSX 10.3.9 no firewire ports can't be further upgraded it WILL be a problem I think if FF 3 insn't backward compatable with those Macs probably have to swich to Opera
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RE: 'End of life' beckons for Firefox 2
jimhokom@... 31st Oct 2008
It will be a problem if Firefox 3 continues to be not backwards compatible with OSX panther which is as far as several of my iMacs without FireWire ports can be upgraded. Probably have to switch over to Opera
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Older computers
mystic100 1st Nov 2008
I have a couple of older computers that run 98SE. They don't really have the power to run anything newer. FF3 only runs on Windows 2000 and up. I do use FF3 on the computers that run 2000 & XP.
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That's too bad because Firefox 3 does not work right on several of my contacts. It will not open another window that is asked for even though I have unblocked popups. A switch to Chrome cured this problem. Also, Firefox 3 will not honor the setting to open a link in a new window. In addition, the color tabs disappear and reappear, and disappear.
Maybe Firefox just does not work well on a 64 bit system. So far, Chrome has taken care of all these problems.
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RE: 'End of life' beckons for Firefox 2
birumut Updated - 5th May 2011
Well done! Thank you very much for professional templates and community edition
seslisohbet seslichat

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