Firefox drops support for FF4; encourages users to upgrade to FF5

[Force Flow]

Mozilla just released Firefox 5 on Tuesday, and will not be releasing any more updates (security or otherwise) for Firefox 4 (even though there are a handful of unpatched security flaws), and instead encourages users on Firefox 4 to upgrade to Firefox 5 as soon as possible.

However, Firefox 3.6 will still be supported for the time being (how long exactly is currently undetermined).

Mozilla retires Firefox 4 from security support - Computerworld

[ralph.m]

That's bizarre. I've never seen a version number come and go so quickly. Strange to assign it to Purgatory so quickly.

[Force Flow]

Indeed. I wonder what some organizations will do, since they would have to go through the testing process all over again with FF5. I know of a few organizations in my area which were considering upgrading from 3.6 since FF4 had been out in the wild for a few months. Now...who knows.

[logic_earth]

Firefox 5 is pretty much Firefox 4 they could have just versioned it 4.1. Only a few under the hood changes were made nothing dramatic.

[ScallioXTX]

Sounds to me like they've switched to Chrome's rapid release schedule because that's "hip" nowadays. What they don't seem to have taken into account though is that when packing FF add-ons, the author needs to supply in which browser version it will work (it's in the install.rdf which is packed in the .xpi file). That means that developers will also have to test new releases very quickly and update their add-on or otherwise it won't install in the latest and greatest version.
My guess is that some developers will actually do that, but most will just put a very high version number as maxVersion in that file and hope for the best (I know I would).
Chrome doesn't have this problem, because there is no such thing as a max version in the install meta data (manifest.json) of chrome extensions (indeed, it's arguable whether that's a good or a bad thing).

[Force Flow]

Does the max version tag need to be included to begin with? Can it be left blank?

[Stomme poes]

I just got an update from 3.6.17 to 3.6.18.

When my plugins work, like WebVisum, in newer versions of FF then maybe I'll consider upgrading.

Srsly ppl wtf?

[Immerse]

Firefox 5 is pretty much Firefox 4 they could have just versioned it 4.1. Only a few under the hood changes were made nothing dramatic.

Yeah.

But it's the cool thing to do, release a new version every couple of months. I mean, Chrome is on version 12 or something now. Just think, in a couple of years we'll have Firefox 143, at which point they'll stop support for Firefox 142