Mozilla Plans to Kill Firefox 3.5 and Force Upgrades to New Browser Version

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld May 16, 2011 6:20 am


Mozilla plans to push 12 million users of the aged Firefox 3.5 to a newer version next month by taking the unprecedented step of automatically upgrading their browser.

Firefox 3.5, which debuted in mid-2009 , is already on life-support: Mozilla gave users their last version 3.5 security patches three weeks ago.

But in June, Mozilla will use another strategy to make Firefox 3.5 "being dead," as one page on the company's site said.

While it will continue to "dangle the carrot" of Firefox 4 to those users -- Mozilla started offering an upgrade to Firefox 4 to people running Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 last week -- it will "force 3.6 on 3.5 stragglers not choosing to update to Firefox 4 or 3.6 (give them the stick)," wrote Christian Legnitto, the Firefox release manager, in a message posted to a developer mailing list .

Later, Legnitto said his choice of the word "force" was ill-advised, and noted that only Firefox 3.5 users who had left the default automatic updates setting enabled would be moved to Firefox 3.6 automatically.

That step is a first for Mozilla, as Legnitto acknowledged in an explanation.

"We are treating the automatic update checkbox enabled as a 'Yes, I want Mozilla to keep me updated,'" Legnitto wrote. "Previously as a courtesy we had people opt-in between major versions due to the potential jarring nature of the update. We feel the difference between 3.5 and 3.6 is not severe and with 3.5 reaching end-of-life 3.6 is the security update for 3.5 users."

Mozilla would prefer that the estimated 12 million Firefox 3.5 users upgrade to the much newer Firefox 4 instead, but will settle for migrating them to Firefox 3.6 , the version that launched in January 2010.

On June 21, the day Firefox 5 is supposed to ship , Mozilla will automatically push Firefox 3.6.18 -- a standard security update -- if the company resolves a few remaining bugs. If those bugs don't get fixed by then, the auto-update will hit Firefox 3.5 users some time later.

Before that, however, Mozilla will rev up the warnings to Firefox 3.5 users that they're running a now-unsupported browser .

According to a detailed planning document on Mozilla's site, beginning Tuesday Firefox 3.5 users will see a message on the default Google search home page that reads , "Your version of Firefox is no longer protected against online attacks. Get the upgrade -- it's fast and it's free!"

Mozilla has already told Firefox 3.5 users that they're running an out-of-date browser .

Firefox 3.5 users can avoid the message and June's auto-update by downloading and installing Firefox 4.0.1 , which runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux .

[DemonGeminiX]

You don't have to decide, we've already decided for you.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I can see their point, as well as any other software vendor out there. I have no idea why people want to hold onto old versions of things and then expect the vendor to continue with updates and upgrades.

FF has had two new versions since 3.5 and yet people still haven't upgraded?

[beowulf]

and microsoft do it any different?

for one i was glad to upgrade to ff4.....shall give it while for 5 to settle down before i install it tho, once it comes out

but then anything is better than IE

[Teh One Who Knocks]

for one i was glad to upgrade to ff4.....

Same here....I've been running FF4.x since the beta and I've loved it. I always upgrade my software.

[beowulf]

i always give them a few months to iron out some of the bugs first

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I usually do too....FF4 was the first beta release I ever installed

[Godfather]

I still haven't upgraded to 4... I have it at work and prefer 3.5 still (but then again, at work I can't fiddle around with things too much lest I confuse my boss )

[Teh One Who Knocks]

I still haven't upgraded to 4... I have it at work and prefer 3.5 still (but then again, at work I can't fiddle around with things too much lest I confuse my boss )

Dude, I know exactly what that's like. My boss is a moron when it comes to technology. I have upgraded every PC here at the shop to be running Win7...except his. He's still got a machine running XP because I am afraid of the learning curve of having to explain everything to him. As it is, he still has trouble using XP and it's been out for what, 20 years now?