Firefox 4.0’s Love for XP Is a Drawback for the Web

Users worldwide have been able to download Firefox 4.0 Final since March 21st, 2011 as Softpedia readers know very well, but Mozilla only officially launched the browser today (1.9 million downloads already at the time of this article). Unlike Internet Explorer 9, released to web on March 15, Firefox 4.0 also comes with support for Windows XP. IE9 RTW only plays nice with Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7. The reason for this was explained time and again by Microsoft.

The software giant’s latest iteration of IE sports hardware acceleration as one of the core features illustrative of the evolution from IE8.

Full hardware acceleration, as the IE team calls it, which requires the latest and best in graphics technology, namely DirectX 11, available exclusively in Windows 7 and in Vista SP2.

Microsoft did not backport DX11 beyond Vista SP2, and as such, there’s no IE9 RTW support for Windows XP. Nor will it there ever be.

Unlike its predecessors, IE9 cannot be crucified for holding the web back. There’s support for HTML5, CSS3, SVG, etc. And there’s hardware acceleration to help Cloud applications leverage the power of the GPU in order to make them feel like desktop apps.

But the IE team had to sacrifice support for XP users in order to help the web move forward. And while there are those that criticize the company for this decision, I applaud Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer, and his team for the move.

XP is a decade-old operating system. It might have been good enough five years go, but it’s no longer the case today. It’s a nightmare for me to use XP on test machines whenever I need to, after years of running Windows 7.

In my perspective, XP users need some tough love that will nudge them along, and get them to upgrade their OS to a more recent release of Windows.

I have seen complaints from XP customers about IE9’s support options, with rival browser makers capitalizing on the situation by touting their own support for the obsolete platform.

Even browser vendors that are otherwise committed to pushing the web forward all of a sudden found a dire responsibility to their XP user base, at the expense of the web.

The way I see it, continuing to support an operating system that will expire completely in just three years is hurting users more than not supporting XP.

But in the end, this is not about end users. I don’t doubt it that XP users are glad that Firefox 4.0 works for them and less so that IE9 doesn’t.

However, I wouldn’t trust decisions with an impact on the evolution of the web to come from end users, with some of them needing help from their IT-savvy friends just to install a browser. Would you?

It should be a top priority to support web developers when it comes down to building applications designed to take advantage of hardware acceleration in a consistent manner across all modern browsers.

After all, it is they that are tasked with offering next generation web experiences to end users.

The handicapped hardware acceleration experiences that Firefox 4.0 offers on XP are no good, not for end users or for developers.

XP users running Firefox 4.0 won’t be able to enjoy fully hardware accelerated applications, simply because DirectX 9.x is not capable of delivering them. It lacks crucial API components such as Direct2D and DirectWrite that are only available in DirectX 11.

Had the IE team offered IE9 for XP, it could only enable the same inferior hardware accelerated experiences.

What’s even worse is that developers will need to work even more now to have their projects adapted to browsers still running on XP.

Instead of investing their time, talent, energy, etc. into pushing web experiences to the next level, they’ll have to waste them on ensuring that projects deliver an inferior experience for browsers that still support XP.

“The developer community has been vocal that they want to push the web forward. The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on and a browser running on a ten year old operating system tethers the web to the past. The time has come to stop focusing on lowest common denominator, and to really push what’s possible with innovations like full hardware acceleration. Customers can tell the difference when they see it,” a Microsoft spokesperson told me.

What’s the point of supporting hardware acceleration if you go and shoot yourself, the users and developers in the foot so all have to limp when using web apps?

Firefox 4.0 Final for Windows is available for download here.

Firefox 4.0 Final for Linux is available for download here.

Firefox 4.0 Final for Mac is available for download here.

Windows Internet Explorer 9 RTW for Windows 7 64-bit edition, Windows 7 SP1 64-bit edition, Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit edition and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit edition is available for download here.