Mozilla Plans to Nudge Firefox 2.0 Users to Upgrade

by Lisa Hoover - Aug. 20, 2008Comments (10)

If you've been on the fence about upgrading to Firefox 3.0, Mozilla is planning to give you a little nudge. Sometime within the next week, people using Firefox 2.0.0.16 will see a request to upgrade and though you'll have the option to decline, it's likely Firefox will ask again anyway.

Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, tells Computerworld's Gregg Keizer that although Mozilla appreciates user choice, "we're also pretty ardent that Firefox 3.0 is a good product." He adds that users will most likely be offered a second change to upgrade after "several weeks."

Since I've opted to leave 2.0.0.16 on one of my computers, I'll be interested to see how often I get a nag screen. I've frequently considered upgrading but I'm still waiting for some of my plugins and extensions to play well with 3.0. Also, while I trust Mozilla's products, I wanted to make sure I had at least one super-stable browser at my fingertips in case 3.0 ran into any unexpected issues.

I'm happy to report that I've had virtually no problems with Firefox 3.0, and I'm even growing a bit fond of the AwesomeBar. Surely I'm not the only one who still keeps version 2.0.0.16 around as a backup, though. What about you? If you haven't upgraded yet, why not? Will you now?


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10 Comments
 

Lisa, yeah, lots of people are still using Firefox 2.0.x and will continue to use it on one of their machines or as a back-up even after getting Firefox 3. That's completely reasonable... For a while.

It's Mozilla's practice to end of life the previous release about six months after the debut of the current release. That means that December will be the window when Mozilla will support, with security and stability updates, Firefox 2 is closing fast.

The good news is that does give users the option to stick with 2 for a while after 3 was released. Up until now, we haven't even "told them" about Firefox 3 with Firefox's Update mechanism. That's what's about to happen and we hope that will being the large migration from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 so that when we reach the end of Firefox 2 support, most people are already on Firefox 3.

You won't be nagged repeatedly by this first update offer. If you say no, it goes away. There will probably be an additional offer or two before the end of the year but no persistent nagging.

Finally, this is pretty much just like we did it with the transition from Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 2 last time around so it's not a new thing and we think, from that experience, that it's a pretty user friendly path to keeping all the Firefox users safe and secure and up to date with best possible Firefox.

- A

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oops, meant to say

"That means that the window where Mozilla will support Firefox 2 with security and stability updates is closing fast."

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It is strange to force this update while Firefox 3 has serious problems.

Thanks for the efforts to the developers :).

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This is a good news for developers, but bad solution for end users.

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I still have Windows 98 on an old but still working fine box. I cannot upgrade as Firefox 3 does not run on Win9x.

I do hope that Firefox will not abandon users like me too soon (but it probably will anyway). I would hate to have switch to Opera...

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Firefox has many problems with printing web pages, regardless of which version you take. If you want to print web pages decently, in most cases you have to take the Internet Explorer.

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My aunt is running SuSE9.2 on a desktop machine. Still being on Firefox (1.5?) we recently tried to upgrade it to firefox3, but this seemed impossible due to unresolvable library problems. Firefox 2 however installed flawless. The upgrade was necessary for hotmail, which is also trying to force users to upgrade browsers.

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I won't upgrade until I have to, because in many aspects Firefox 2 is better than Firefox 3. For instance, when you're typing in a web address and the list drops down with similar web addresses that you've been to before, this feature works much faster on Firefox 2 than Firefox 3.

Also, there are many web pages where Firefox 3 slows way down and takes a dump and freezes for a few seconds before rendering the page again. This doesn't happen with Firefox 2, so for now, it's the superior product.

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Going to 3.0 wiped out one computers bookmarks never to return. And it changed the way bookmarks are handled on the tool bar.

with my dyslexia I can drop and drag a folder to the toolbar and leav it sit for future reference and use and with 3.0 if you don't use it you lose it and you can't drag and drop like 2.0

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I use 2.0, and made backups so I will CONTINUE to use 2.0. Is Mozilla trying to become Microsoft with FORCED change?I have add-ons, themes that are 2.0 compatible that won't work with 3. There is always safari and other good browsers out there if this continues.


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