Firefox ending support on WinXP - What browser to move to?

I was never unhappy with Firefox, nor with WinXP.
Just got the notice below that Firefox is not to be supported on XP.
What's the best alternative browser (I'm keeping XP)?

-----

Firefox is ending support for Windows XP and Vista

Firefox security updates for XP and Vista users will continue until
September 2017, although new features will not be offered. In mid-2017, a
final support end date will be announced based on the number of users still
on Windows XP and Vista. Will switching to a different browser keep me
protected? Unfortunately not. Most browsers (such as Google Chrome and
Microsoft Internet Explorer) have already ended support for Windows XP and
Windows Vista. If you want to keep your Firefox up to date, with all the
latest features and updates, you'll need to upgrade your computer's
operating system. Upgrade to a Windows version that Microsoft still
supports, such as Windows 7, 8 or 10. Windows versions that are not
supported by Microsoft are unreliable and unsafe to use, which also makes
it difficult to maintain Firefox on those versions. For planning purposes,
enterprises using Firefox should consider September 2017 as the support end
date for Windows XP and Vista.

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:41:29 +0000 (UTC), Lionel Muller
wrote:

I was never unhappy with Firefox, nor with WinXP.
Just got the notice below that Firefox is not to be supported on XP.
What's the best alternative browser (I'm keeping XP)?

Just carry on using an older version, with plenty of
about:config edits and a few selected privacy addons. Avoid anything
Oracle, Adobe or M$ as extensions.
Newer versions of Firefox leak as much personal info and are
as vulnerable to hacks as Win 7 and up. All the most modern browsers
are hacked in hours at the hackfests.(note - the browsers in the
contests are standard issues and not "protected" by anything other
than the OS and sometimes an AV)
When the push comes to the shove, go Linux (but avoid
systemd).
[]'s

-----

Firefox is ending support for Windows XP and Vista

Firefox security updates for XP and Vista users will continue until
September 2017, although new features will not be offered. In mid-2017, a
final support end date will be announced based on the number of users still
on Windows XP and Vista. Will switching to a different browser keep me
protected? Unfortunately not. Most browsers (such as Google Chrome and
Microsoft Internet Explorer) have already ended support for Windows XP and
Windows Vista. If you want to keep your Firefox up to date, with all the
latest features and updates, you'll need to upgrade your computer's
operating system. Upgrade to a Windows version that Microsoft still
supports, such as Windows 7, 8 or 10. Windows versions that are not
supported by Microsoft are unreliable and unsafe to use, which also makes
it difficult to maintain Firefox on those versions. For planning purposes,
enterprises using Firefox should consider September 2017 as the support end
date for Windows XP and Vista.
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

Lionel Muller wrote:
I was never unhappy with Firefox, nor with WinXP.
Just got the notice below that Firefox is not to be supported on XP.
What's the best alternative browser (I'm keeping XP)?

What's wrong with your current browser?
My FF 27.0 works just fine on XP.

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:41:29 +0000 (UTC), Lionel Muller
wrote:

it difficult to maintain Firefox on those versions. For planning purposes,
enterprises using Firefox should consider September 2017 as the support end
date for Windows XP and Vista.

Since I have no intention to EVER use any version of Windows above XP, I
guess September 2017 will be my last month for using the WWW.
After that. I will just use newsgroups and email....

In message ,
writes:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:41:29 +0000 (UTC), Lionel Muller
wrote:

it difficult to maintain Firefox on those versions. For planning purposes,
enterprises using Firefox should consider September 2017 as the support end
date for Windows XP and Vista.

Since I have no intention to EVER use any version of Windows above XP, I
guess September 2017 will be my last month for using the WWW.
After that. I will just use newsgroups and email....

Why: are you an enterprise? It's only _support_ that's ending (and that
only by Mozilla; I image there'll still be plenty of folk here, for
example, to "support" you after that).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Advertising is legalized lying. - H.G. Wells

Lionel Muller wrote:

I was never unhappy with Firefox, nor with WinXP. Just got the notice
below that Firefox is not to be supported on XP. What's the best
alternative browser (I'm keeping XP)?

Just stick with the last version of Firefox that Mozilla delivers for
Windows XP. Keep using it until you decide to try other web browsers.
Maybe you'll find another you like better -- but they all have or will
drop *support* for the 16-year old Windows XP. If Firefox does what you
want, you'll waste your time on other web browsers.

If dropping support was a critical reason to change to something else,
why are you still using Windows XP? That OS still does what you want.
So keep using Firefox if it still does what you want. I'm using an NNTP
client that was abandoned 12 years ago.

wrote:
On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:41:29 +0000 (UTC), Lionel Muller
wrote:

it difficult to maintain Firefox on those versions. For planning purposes,
enterprises using Firefox should consider September 2017 as the support end
date for Windows XP and Vista.

Since I have no intention to EVER use any version of Windows above XP, I
guess September 2017 will be my last month for using the WWW.
After that. I will just use newsgroups and email....


The only thing that happens, when you use an older web browser,
is web standards slowly migrate to new things. Maybe there will
be a TLS 1.3 for example. But if there is, a couple of other
versions of TLS will still work. Some level of backward
compatibility, like continuing to serve SHA1 certificates
when the latest is SHA2 (SHA256), is an example of web servers
trying to support a broad swath of browsers. Just nothing ancient.

Of more concern, is sites will put up a "your browser is too old" dialog.
A possible way to solve that, is with User Agent spoofing. The version
of Firefox you've got now, I would expect the version of Javascript
and the half-finished HTML5, to last for a good long time. If the sites
used actual capabilities tests, they would probably reach another
conclusion (your browser is good enough).

If you want a second browser, you can get SRWare Iron. The copy I have
runs on 32-bit WinXP. When you visit this page with Iron, all the
multimedia boxes are ticked. So it's a fully capable browser. I
use it *only* for movies that won't play on any other browser.
If you run your Firefox 47 against this, I would expect at least
one red box.

https://www.youtube.com/html5

Those six tick boxes, plus Flash, gets the job done. Iron uses
PPAPI (Pepperflash, just like Chrome does). And the neat thing
about the Pepperflash, is it doesn't try to self-update, and
when other browsers claim "flash has a vulnerability, please
update", Iron keeps running the old version of Flash as if
nothing is wrong. (Well, at least this is amusing, but not
exactly "best practice" on the WWW.)

The modern web isn't a paragon of virtue, but you can kinda
sorta get by. It takes a bit of work.

You can also build Firefox from source, and it's just possible
there isn't a hard block in there. You never know. Removing
support for WinXP and Vista, on the same Firefox version,
tells you Mozilla is "doing this for their own convenience",
and it's passing strange that the new OS platform and the
old, are being shelved at the same time. WinXP is reasonably
feature complete, and I don't think Firefox uses .NET, so
it's not like they're "addicted to versions of .NET that
won't install on WinXP".

To build Firefox, now requires a 64-bit OS, even if compiling
the 32-bit version of the browser. I think XUL.dll has gone
from around 30MB to around 60MB. To build the 30MB XUL.dll,
takes just about exactly 3GB of RAM. You have to switch
WinXP to the 3GB/1GB user/kernel split, in order for the
compiler to be able to finish the job. Not that XUL.dll is
even larger, and the RAM footprint of the compiler has
gone above 3GB, you really need about 8GB of physical RAM
and a 64-bit OS, to be able to compile either a 32-bit
browser, or a 64-bit browser. That's just to give you
some idea of what kind of hardware is required. It takes
around two days of work, to get an environment set up and
ready for your first compile. They don't use or need an
entire IDE (software development environment), and the
compiler they have you download, they just run it at
script level, and make compile and link calls to it.

It's a challenge, but you can do it. And at least
experiment (when Firefox hits 53 say), to see
whether they really did place sticks of dynamite
in the source, to prevent us from using it :-)
There are at least 150,000 files in the source,
so it's all too easy for them to sabotage it
if they want.

You're not going to let a little ole OS get
in your way, are you ? :-)

You can install any Windows you want for 30 days,
unactivated, and do software builds in it. For Windows
8 or 8.1, there are install-only keys, which will
give you the 30-day period. A couple of my Firefox and
Thunderbird build environments, were throwaway, and
when the OS expired, I just tossed the whole works.

Paul

For microsoft.public.windowsxp.general Paul wrote:


If you want a second browser, you can get SRWare Iron. The copy I have
runs on 32-bit WinXP.

That's the kind of advice I was seeking!
https://www.srware.net/en/software_s...n_download.php

All I want is two things, which is the closest thing to Firefox, but
supported.

On 26/04/2017 16:41, Lionel Muller wrote:
I was never unhappy with Firefox, nor with WinXP.
Just got the notice below that Firefox is not to be supported on XP.
What's the best alternative browser (I'm keeping XP)?


If you still like FF and XP then continue using it. Both of them will
continue running on your machine until 2032 by which time you might be
dead or your machine will be dead. Lack of support is not something
that can stop you from using a software as they are not technically time
limited. Subscription hasn't been implemented in OSs.




--
With over 500 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

For microsoft.public.windowsxp.general Lionel Muller wrote:


That's the kind of advice I was seeking!
https://www.srware.net/en/software_s...n_download.php

All I want is two things, which is the closest thing to Firefox, but
supported.

I'm used to Firefox, but since it's suggested, I installed Iron on WinXP:

It automatically went to "http://iron-start.com" when I ran the installer,
and the installer failed on installing flash, for some reason.

Going to the unfamiliar settings, a bunch of noob questions instantly
arise:
chrome://settings/

1. Why does it have a "sign in". Sign in to what?
And what the heck is "Enable Guest browsing"?
And "Let anyone add a person to Chrome"?
2. While the startup pages can be changed, e.g., to:
Startup1: chrome://settings/clearBrowserData
Startup2: chrome://plugins/
Going incognito wipes all that out so that startup pages no longer work!
C:\program files\browsers\iron\chrome.exe --incognito
3. You can't set the startup page to what you really want it to be:
Settings Show advanced settings Content settings
(x) Keep local data only until you quit your browser
[All cookies and site data]

The worst thing of all is that it doesn't work with Gmail.
When I go to mail.google.com it only lets me enter my login.
It never gets to the password, no matter how long I wait.

Lionel Muller wrote:


The worst thing of all is that it doesn't work with Gmail.
When I go to mail.google.com it only lets me enter my login.
It never gets to the password, no matter how long I wait.


I only use it for video.

It's the browser of last resort.

I don't propose using it as your only browser. Or a daily browser.

I use browsers in a preferred order, using one
browser most of the time, a second browser for Javascript
and https SSL/TLS compatibility, and the third browser
is to handle video failures in the others.

I had to laugh - I was running Ubuntu (from a USB key),
and using it to erase some hard drives, and I decided to
try a video on the Linux browser there (which is Firefox), and videos
wouldn't play there either. I don't understand what
these companies are driving at, when so few browsers
work with their "movie wrapper".

*******

I only surf, using OSes I trust. But this has the
side effect, that I also don't have much choice in
browsers while I'm there. The same goes for browsers.
The least-capable browser does the most surfing,
because it doesn't have DOM storage. More modern browsers
are a mine field.

Paul

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:25:23 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Lionel Muller wrote:

I was never unhappy with Firefox, nor with WinXP. Just got the notice
below that Firefox is not to be supported on XP. What's the best
alternative browser (I'm keeping XP)?

Just stick with the last version of Firefox that Mozilla delivers for
Windows XP. Keep using it until you decide to try other web browsers.
Maybe you'll find another you like better -- but they all have or will
drop *support* for the 16-year old Windows XP. If Firefox does what you
want, you'll waste your time on other web browsers.

If dropping support was a critical reason to change to something else,
why are you still using Windows XP? That OS still does what you want.
So keep using Firefox if it still does what you want. I'm using an NNTP
client that was abandoned 12 years ago.

Hi,
I have been using FF37 for the past couple months or more. I think
this was the last version for WinXP. I have WinXP Home Edition SP2.

John

In message ,
writes:
[]
I have been using FF37 for the past couple months or more. I think
this was the last version for WinXP. I have WinXP Home Edition SP2.

John

I think the last one for XP is 52.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad - I'm better! (Mae West)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

WROTE:

I have been using FF37 for the past couple months or more. I think
this was the last version for WinXP. I have WinXP Home Edition SP2.

I think the last one for XP is 52.

Correct. See:

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurerelea...-xp-and-vista/