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Mozilla retires Firefox 4 from the security support and releases Firefox 5 June 22, 2011 With the release of Mozilla Firefox 5 on June 21, 2011, its predecessor Mozilla Firefox 4 came to its end. Mozilla Firefox 4 was retired from security support just three months after its launch. It was mentioned in the new browser’s release that mozilla 4 had generated susceptibility for its failure to make the browser secure for use, due to some technical faults and bugs. It was therefore, termed to be in its EOL (End Of Life) phase and needed retirement from its services. This news has shocked the users, as it is for the first time a browser has lived for such a short period. Those already using mozilla firefox 4 are furious and worried about what to do next. As for the add-on features of mozilla, commonly known as AMO, it is not an easy job to use all the add-on features with the upgraded version of a browser. Although, mozilla has claimed that the new version is compatible with most of the AMOs, they have not given any clue about those that are not supported by the new version. This has generated a huge controversy and dissatisfaction among the computer experts and common users of mozilla. According to Christian Legnitto, the Firefox release manager, as stated in his message written on May 25 “Firefox 5 will be the security update for Firefox 4,” As prior to this, only one security update was performed by mozilla to treat the flaws in mozilla firefox 4, this new version was claimed to be the next security update. Unlike Google, which automatically updates its browsers in the background while upgrading to the new version, mozilla has not yet started the conduct of automatic updates. However, it has modified its upgrade system. With firefox 4, mozilla has provided the provision to upgrade the browser to the new version with its pop-out approach. A mild testing to check this approach was done on the same day. When opening the firefox 4 browser, a pop-up appeared which read, “A security and stability update for Firefox is available. It is strongly suggested that you apply this update for Firefox as soon as possible.” The default action set for this pop-up was “Update Firefox”. However, the users could opt out by clicking “Ask Later” or closing the pop-up. Though, mozilla is trying to convince its customers to upgrade to firefox 5 with its upgrade facilities, the users are not fully satisfied with this approach. It seems mozilla has to work more on prompting its users to upgrade their firefox 4 browser to firefox 5. |
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