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07 October 2011, 16:54

Mozilla attempts and abandons Firefox 3.6 upgrade

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Firefox logo Mozilla recently began another campaign to encourage Firefox 3.6 users to upgrade to version 7. However, the advertised update has now been postponed according to Firefox release manager Christian Legnitto, who said that the team need to ensure that their "server capacity is sufficient for release". Just yesterday Mozilla had reported that Firefox Sync, which is used to keep information including passwords and bookmarks synchronised, has also been suffering server overload.

The release cycle of Firefox has greatly shortened over the past year, starting with Firefox version 5.0 in June being released only three months after version 4, but the "rapid release cycle" has proven problematic for enterprise deployments of the browser. Large companies do not wish to upgrade because of the cost and time associated with updating internal add-ons and compatibility testing for thousands of users. Less mature versions of Firefox also pose a security vulnerability; the 3.6 branch has received over twenty updates since its release in January 2010, giving administrators little incentive to upgrade to later versions. Mozilla is not forcing users to upgrade, nor are they ending support for FireFox 3.6, as confirmed by Legnitto who stated: "The advertised update has no bearing on support levels. It does not mean Firefox 3.6 is end-of-life."

According to both w3 and StatCounter, Firefox 3.6 is still the second most-used version of the browser. Mozilla has not yet decided when support for Firefox 3.6 will cease and will continue to support the 3.6 branch for the immediate future. According to Legnitto's original announcement, Firefox version 3.6.24 is due for release on November 8th. Users who wish to upgrade to Firefox 7 should visit getfirefox.com.

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(djwm)

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