14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox 4 and the subsequent deluge of releases has been too much to swallow for some people who stuck with their tried and tested Firefox 3.6. To some it was a problem of add-on compatibility, for others things simply moved too fast.
Whatever the reason, all these users need to start thinking about life after Firefox 3.6, or rather life after Mozilla drops support for Firefox 3.6.
The group has said that Firefox 3.6 will only get a few more updates and has now decided that Firefox 3.6.28, which landed on March 13th, will be the last.
Come April 24th, users will be urged to update to the latest Firefox at the time. Enterprise users have the option of switching to the Extended Support Release, Firefox 10, which will be maintained with security update for a year.
"After two years of regular updates, we’ll end our support for Firefox 3.6 on April 24th," Mozilla explained.
"In the years since Firefox 3.6, we’ve made incredible improvements to Firefox, including phenomenal HTML5 capabilities, Firefox Sync, faster JavaScript performance, support for the Do Not Track header, and an easier, quieter update process," it said.
Firefox 3.6 proved a rather longevive release, mostly because Mozilla switched to the rapid release cycle with Firefox 4 and beyond. In the meantime, any problem that kept them from updating should be fixed.
Add-ons that haven't been updated in the last year and don't work with newer Firefox version will never work and likely have been abandoned. The update system has also been streamlined and will continue to be improved so it will be lesser hassle to keep up with releases.
At the same time, enterprise users who need a version they can push to all of the computers in their organizations have Firefox ESR to work with. Dropping Firefox 3.6 will enable Mozilla to focus resources, aka people's time, to current Firefox versions.