Mozilla ends support for Firefox 1.5

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Browser Tips

Mozilla ends support for Firefox 1.5

by Brad Linder Apr 23rd 2007

Just six months after Firefox 2.0 was released, Mozilla is ending support for Firefox 1.5. And you thought Microsoft was short shrifting customers by phasing out Windows XP by the end of this year. At least Microsoft offer support and updates for about 5 years.

April 24th is the last day Firefox 1.5 will be officially supported. The developers have moved to a consumer-oriented model with a short product lifespan and regular browser upgrades. While this isn't great for corporate users who are slow to implement updates, it's worked pretty well in terms of keeping Firefox on the cutting edge.

About 40% of Firefox users are still running version 1.5.0.x, so this might be a good time to upgrade.

Update: It looks like Mozilla will support Firefox until mid-May, but is encouraging everyone to upgrade to Firefox 2 now.

Tags: firefox, support

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Thomas said 10:44PM on 4-23-2007

I think there is a huge difference between a $100+ operating system and a free web browser. The Firefox upgrade is easy and safe. Just do it. :)

Eleventeen said 10:44PM on 4-23-2007

Completely agree with Thomas...this isn't Mozilla leaving people out in the cold...there's no disadvantages to upgrading from 1.5 to 2.0 now, almost every one of the major extensions that was missing 2.0 support was either been updated or supplanted by a new extension.

itanshi said 10:45PM on 4-23-2007

Mass Extension Downloader might not ever be updated or supplanted, but feel free to correct me.

x1101 said 8:12AM on 4-24-2007

what about linux users who's distros do not support FF2.0? I know that fedora core 6 doesn't, and won't ever, officially support FF2.0?

Gardiner Westbound said 8:14AM on 4-24-2007

I see this at least two or three times a week, "Firefox.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Mozilla may be moving a little too quickly bringing out new releases. There are a couple of major unresolved issues with FF 2.0, including locking up and shutting down for no apparent reason, that FF 1.5 and previous versions did not have.

I find myself using IE Explorer more and am thinking of switching to Opera.

Ytoabn said 8:14AM on 4-24-2007

You bet your ass there are unresolved problems.

I'm unable to run Firefox 2.0 on my computer without the connection slowing down like crazy. I went through every FAQ and forum I could find and couldn't fix it so I downgraded to 1.5

If Firefox cuts me off I'm just going to have to use Opera from now on.

johnnyg0 said 8:53AM on 4-24-2007

I just hope someday someone will update the extension that let us save webpage as MHT for Firefox2 (single file containing everything).

Victor Agreda, Jr. said 10:12AM on 4-24-2007

Boy I do miss FF 1.5. I've spoken to over a dozen Mac users, and nearly all are seeing FF 2 crash on a regular basis. I refuse to upgrade it on the machines I maintain at work for that reason alone (but none of those are running extensions).

Michael said 10:23AM on 4-24-2007

No problems here, I'm a Web Developer and I use FF for all the extensions that make my life and job easier, Opera and IE just don't have the extendability like FF. But if I did not need the extensions then Opera might be my alternative, it's a great everyday browser. Also, I run FF 2.0 on a Mac with OS X 10.4 and a Windows box (for testing only) with XP as well as another laptop with Ubuntu 6, all with no problems. So cutting off 1.5 for me is a non-issue.

Paim said 11:42AM on 4-24-2007

@Gardiner, I get the same problem, but only lately, it's pissing me off....I use Opera more and more

sennawcf1 said 2:08PM on 4-24-2007

I have stopped using FF completely. IE7 is very nice and I prefer it. Sorry to offend FF users. Opera is my only other choice. I have had too many problems with FF to conisder it usable.

David said 3:17PM on 4-24-2007

I've been using Firefox for over a year with VERY few problems.I only get the "FF has encountered a problem" error occasionally,ALWAYS involving a page made to be viewed in IE 7 or earlier versions.As far as speed,IE7 runs about 5 times slower on my PC than Firefox,on a DSL connection.I tried Opera since there's som much buzz about it,and found it nearly unusable much of the time,since MANY websites still aren't viewable properly in Opera.And to echo Thomas and Eleventeen's comments,the upgrade to 2.0 is very simple,and any extensions you really need have been upgraded,so I don't see the problem.MOZILLA ROCKS,period.

David said 6:21PM on 4-26-2007

One thing I should add to my comment above: I have found that some FF THEMES will slow the browser down considerably,especially ones with a lot of flashy crap like "PimpZilla".If you're using one of those and you find FF slow,try another theme,uninstall the slow one and it usually speeds up immediately.Just a tip.

Greg said 10:57PM on 4-26-2007

I'm running FF 2.0.0.5 on OS X 10.4.9 with maybe a crash every two weeks of browser uptime. Usually 30+ tabs opened, all saved after an infrequent crash. So no real problems with FF 2 for me.

Kenny said 9:02AM on 5-11-2007

Thomas was correct when he said that you can't compare a pay OS with a free browser vis-à-vis to continuing support. I find that this article is exagerating a bit suggesting that it's a big problem that FF1.5 suppport is going to stop.
What is troubling here is that so many of you are reporting crashes for FF 2.0.
For my part, I have 2.0 and have never noticed any particular problems with crashes. But there's probably a good reason for this: I made Opera my default browser.
Opera is now at version 9.20, and it's come a LOONG way since 6 or 7 (if those were the last ones you tried). Page rendering is virtually perfect these days in Opera (although this is a bit of a non-issue; all browsers have diffuculty with some pages. This is not the fault of the browser, but of the webpage's author, who never learned what 'interoperability' means.) Opera is fast, secure, outragously customizable, and, since I've been in the 9.x versions, it hasn't crashed on me. At all. Never.
http://www.opera.com
Ciao!
Kenny

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