Mozilla: We Support 10 Year Old OS

By | March 22, 2011 | 7 Comments

Mozilla: We Support 10 Year Old OSHate the web browser.

Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla’s director of Firefox web browser has criticized Microsoft for abandoning a 10 year old Windows XP operating system and releasing IE9 for Windows 7/Vista only.

He said:

For me, the most interesting thing is not the quibbling about what browser [boasts] full hardware acceleration. What surprises me the most is that acceleration is not available for Windows XP.


In order to enable hardware acceleration for all three operating systems, Mozilla had to do twice the work, according to Johnathan Nightingale.

Ryan Gavin, the senior director of Internet Explorer had to say the following:

We knew we didn’t want to optimize for the lowest common denominator, you need a modern operating system. It’s ten years old. That’s not what developers need to move the Web forward.

What do you think about Microsoft’s decision to drop Windows XP support? Is it justified?


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • http://www.facebook.com/puermayr Michael Pürmayr

    I personally understand Microsofts decision. Just to clarify: I am not an IE user and I won’t become one with IE9. I am perfectly happy with Opera.

    Just…. winXP is (as mentioned) 10 years old. Microsoft wants people to use the more modern and much more safe win7 instead, so they release IE9 as an incentive to upgrade. For me (personally) IE8 does the job. It does not do it very well, it does not do it fast either, but the job gets done.

    As the market share of winXP is already going down quite fast and win8 to be expected for new year I really hope we are not going to end up with IE8 as being the new IE6. This is the worst possible scenario and in my eyes it is not that likely.Also because most of the “normal” (as in “widely used”) stuff works flawlessly in IE8. For the modern stuff you will have to do workarounds, but they won’t be as dramatic as for IE6 I think.

    As a web developer, I am looking at a bright future opening up :)

  • http://reviewsmyfavourite.blogspot.com Girish Mony

    There are two point of view I could say about this. As a browser point of view they are losing many users by ignoring windows xp and in the os point of view, this decision gives them the free publicity for their new windows 7. Windows 7 became the new buzz word. Even I am more curious now!!!!!!!!

  • Canna

    Well, nobody is ever going to pay for an OS upgrade JUST because of they want to use the latest version of stupid IE. Even though it can now be considered a proper browser, like IE6 could, in many respects, when it first came out, it’s still nowhere good enough to be a real match for Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

  • dXm99

    Isn’t that some kind of hypocrisy… Saying that 10 year old browser (IE6) is bad and should be killed and then later saying that Microsoft is bad because IE9 will not support 10 years old OS. I guess that from Mozzila point of view anything what MS do is baaad

    • Quest

      The 1st release was almost 10 years old, but the SP2 can be considered as a new OS. This is why the Longhorn is delayed. Anyway, MS support Xp 2014 (as i know) STFU. IE9 doesn’t worth a new OS (i mean a lot of money).

      • Quest

        My english is a piece of shit too as you can, but i hope u are not dumbass, so got the point. If not: You can go to hell!

  • Anonymous

    God Mozilla! Suck a **** already

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