Firefox 3.5 To Be Killed Off Soon

By | May 16, 2011 | 7 Comments

Firefox 3.5 To Be Killed Off SoonFirefox 3.5, currently boasting 12 million users according to Mozilla, will be updated to a newer version next month through an automatic upgrade. Makes sense that Mozilla wants to upgrade its users, for Firefox 3.5 received its last security patch approximately three weeks ago.

Mozilla started offering an upgrade to Firefox 4 to people running Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 last week. According to Christian Legnitto, the Firefox release manager, Mozilla will force 3.6 on 3.5 stragglers not choosing to update to Firefox 4 or 3.6. However, Legnitto later said that his choice of the word “force” was poor, 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.

As this is a first for Mozilla, Legnitto had the following to say:

We are treating the automatic update checkbox enabled as a ‘Yes, I want Mozilla to keep me updated.’ 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.

The update to Firefox 3.6.18 is supposed to arrive on the 21st of June, the very same day Firefox 5 is supposed to ship. If a few remaining bugs are not terminated by then, however, Firefox 3.5 users will get to enjoy their browser a tiny bit longer. Mozilla has already begun sending out warnings and will increase these in frequency until that date.

Why not get Firefox 4 now?


About (Author Profile)


Being passionate about software, Armin joined FavBrowser.com in early 2011 and has been actively writing ever since. Having accepted the challenge, he also enjoys watching anime, indulging in good books, staying fit and healthy, and trying new things.

  • Alexei Demchouk

    Makes sense to me. Most other browser vendors ONLY support the most recent versions, anyway.

  • Guest

    Mozilla really need to support only the latest version and push autoupdates asap to all users, just like Chrome! Supporting outdated versions is just a waste of resources.

    • Armin

      I suppose resources are “diluted” in a similar sense to what Microsoft was saying, except in this case they are wasted on older versions of the browser instead of on compatibility with multiple operating systems.

    • Anonymous

       I think Firefox 5 will include a new update process.

  • FForever

    When so many FF extensions are still broken with FF version 4, it is a di%$ move for a lot of users.. 

    • Armin

      Try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

  • Armin

    Heck, my university still has Firefox 3.0 installed on all the computers. Students can update Firefox themselves, but still…

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