The new edition of Firefox browser will no longer offer users support for Windows 98 and Millennium operating systems. Mozilla's decision follows a Microsoft's refusal to patch a critical vulnerability discovered in its Win98 and ME, and an announcement from the same company that it will cease all future support for the two operating systems which it regards as being obsolete.

As a consequence, Firefox 2.0, scheduled for an August release and Firefox 3.0 that will follow this version in 2007 will kill the two OS rejected by Microsoft.

The decision draw criticism from users who claim that Mozilla offers support for operating systems that account only for a small share of the market and that renouncing to offer support for Win98 and ME is not the best solution.

"The key point is that after July 11th, 2006, Microsoft will no longer be providing even critical security updates for any of the Win 9x family," said Gervase Markham, Mozilla developer. "I argue that continuing to support these operating systems in a browser or other Internet-facing product after vendor security support ceases is actually irresponsible, because it gives users the idea that they can continue to safely use those operating systems for surfing the Internet."

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