14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has signed Firefox 2.0's death sentence. The predecessor of Firefox 3.0 has approximately six more months of life left, after which Mozilla will focus entirely on version 3.0 and above. In fact, Firefox 2.0 will not live to see 2009, and will be buried by versions 3.0 and 3.1 of the open source browser. It's nothing more than common practice for Mozilla to kill off older variants of Firefox within six months after the new releases ship, and v2.0 makes no exception to this rule. Since Firefox 3.0 was launched on June 17, 2008, Firefox 2.0 will be terminated by mid-December 2008.
"Firefox 2.0.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until mid-December, 2008. All users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3," advised Samuel Sidler, Quality Assurance Engineer at Mozilla. Firefox 3.0 will be the main agent deployed by Mozilla to wipe out Firefox 2.0. Mike Beltzner, User Experience Lead, revealed that discussions are in place whether Firefox 3.0.1 will be rolled out as a major update to all Firefox 2.0 users.
However, version 2.0 of the open source browser might end up to see the final build of Firefox 3.1, the successor of Firefox 3.0. According to Mozilla, plans for the next iteration of Firefox involve delivering the gold build of Firefox 3.1 by the end of this year. But for the time being, Firefox 2.0 is available for download alongside Firefox 3.0, and Mozilla has just released a security and stability update for the browser.
"As part of Mozilla Corporation's ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.15 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 2.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting 'Check for Updates?' from the Help menu," Sidler stated.
Firefox 2.0.0.15 is designed to fix no less than 12 vulnerabilities. A total of five security flaws have been labeled with a severity rating of Critical, four pose a High level of risk to end users, while two are just Moderate and the remaining one is considered only a superficial issue.
Firefox 3.0 can be downloaded from here.
Firefox 2.0.0.15 for Windows is available for download here. Firefox 2.0.0.15 for Linux is available for download here. Firefox 2.0.0.15 for Mac OS X is available for download here.