Mozilla will drop support for v3.0 after the release of v3.0.19

Mar 17, 2010 15:52 GMT  ·  By

Firefox 3.0 will not live to see its two-year anniversary while fully supported by Mozilla. This is because, at the end of this month, Firefox 3.0 will get its last security and stability update, ever. Plans are to stop refreshing the successor of v3.5 after the last update, for the open source browser version drops in March 2010. The end of support means that users of version 3.0 will be forced to upgrade to more recent releases of the browser, or be stuck with a release that no longer evolves and that will represent a security liability.

“There will be no more updates for Firefox 3.0.x,” Mozilla confirmed on March 16th. At this point in time, the last Firefox 3.0 update is cooking. Candidate releases of Firefox 3.0.19 are currently available for download, and the nightly builds will be followed by the fully fledged update, the last of its kind, which is planned for availability by the end of this month.

In this regard, March will be the only month when Mozilla will offer updates for Firefox 3.0, 3.5 and 3.6. In parallel with Firefox 3.0.19, Firefox 3.5.9 and Firefox 3.6.2 are also being developed. According to current plans, Mozilla will offer all updates concomitantly to end users.

Recently, users of Firefox 3.5.x and Firefox 3.0.x started seeing updates to Firefox 3.6 being served automatically to them. Mozilla is, of course, attempting to get as many users off of 3.0.x and onto 3.6 before it cuts support entirely. Of course, plans could change. Firefox 3.0 was initially headed for an early grave at the end of 2009, but end of support was postponed because Firefox 3.6 was finalized a little later than planned.

Mozilla is also working on the next major version of Firefox, with a new release in the baking oven, Firefox 3.7 Alpha 3 or the Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3. Firefox 3.0 was released in June 2008.

Testers can download Candidates for Firefox 3.6.2, Firefox 3.5.9 and Firefox 3.0.19.

Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2/ Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 2 for Windows is available here.
Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2/ Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 2 for Mac OS X is available here.
Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2/ Mozilla Developer Preview of Gecko 1.9.3 Alpha 2 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.6 Final for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Final for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Final for Linux is available for download here.