Mozilla aggressively asks older Firefox users to update
By Mozilla's lights, Firefox 3.6 has been a runaway success. The publisher of the open-source browser says that more than 100 million users have downloaded Firefox 3.6 since its launch in the middle of January. However, not all Firefox users have upgraded from Firefox 3 or Firefox 3.5, and Mozilla wants to change that.
Users of older versions of Firefox will start seeing this pop-up, asking them to upgrade.
(Credit: Mozilla)As of Thursday, users of older Firefox versions will start seeing a pop-up encouraging them to upgrade. The window will come with three choices: Ask Later, No Thanks, or Get the New Version. The pop-up will appear after 60 seconds of keyboard inactivity, which Mozilla called a courtesy toward users and their workflows. Selecting "Ask Later" will defer the window for 24 hours. If a user has chosen No Thanks but decides later to upgrade Firefox, running the "Check for Updates" option from the Help menu will bring up the upgrade window.
One reason that many users cite for not upgrading Firefox is a legitimate concern about add-on forward compatibility. In the press release announcing the push, Mozilla stated that more than 90 percent of Firefox add-ons are compatible with Firefox 3.6. Users can also try to force older add-ons to be compatible by using the MR Tech Toolkit or Nightly Tester Tools add-ons, which add a "force compatibility" option to the add-on context menu, but these tricks also decrease the stability of the browser.
If you use an older version of Firefox, tell us why and which version in the comments below.
Seth peers into the deep, dark corners of software so that you don't have to. He has yet to suffer a single nightmare about OS/2. You can follow him on Twitter. 
They should be labelled "Compatibility unverified" or something, not "incompatible".
They have a compatibility box on the right side of the page that gives you known data from users, but still allows you to download and install the plugin if you choose.
Eg. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-album/
And usually, it's a simple fix of writing the builds that the extension is allowed on to include 3.6 or higher..... not really 'tough' to do.
(The compatibility override used to work, but I can't persuade it to work these days...)
Mozilla needs to encourage add-on developers to tinker actively "at the nightlies level" and stay ahead of the game. All too often, with betas or RCs, I've had to back off for want of essential add-ons such as Web Developer, FireFTP, and ColorZilla.
you just need to use the compatibility override correctly.. try this and tell me if it doesnt work ;)
extensions.checkCompatibility.3.7a
and make it true
dont forget the ".3.7a" or it wont work .
Plus, since I upgraded to the latest FF 64 bit version for Win 7 about a month or so ago it hasn't crashed yet.
Maybe it's a hardware thing?
I'd love to know whether this problem has been fixed, but don't want to test it myself since the last time I did, I lost Javascript on my office computer (only in firefox - very strange).
Many developers also don't want to go through the hassle of installing a new version of Firefox and maintaining multiple copies. That's one of the reasons why we package Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 as well as Firefox 3.7 Alpha 3 Pre Nightly builds for portable use. Being portable, they're self-contained, so they won't mess with your standard Firefox install. They even run from the desktop:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test
Steve Jobs is correct; flash is crap, yet for the next 5 to 10 years it's here to stay!
if there is a problem it would be with the developer of the flash app/script
also what would you use other then flash for your web-based arcade games/videos....?
It would destroy his app store and control of his crappy handheld devices.
- by geognerd March 11, 2010 7:08 PM PST
- One of my computers is running 3.5.x and the others are running 3.0.x. As an end user, I don't see any difference in speed or stability between 3.5 and 3.0. With each new version of Firefox, there is some change or new feature that I don't like, so I cling to old versions as long as I can. One extension I use in 3.0 is incompatible with 3.5, so I had to find an alternative. For me, 3.0 just plain works, so there is no incentive for me to update to 3.5 or 3.6. I'll dump 3.0 whenever they finally end support. Looks like the final update will be 3.0.19 on March 30th. Then I'll update to 3.5.
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