Mozilla will stop supporting its Firefox internet browser on Microsoft's Windows XP and Vista operating systems next year. No exact date has been announced yet and Mozilla said it will decide on it in the middle of 2017.
In a blog post, Mozilla said it will evaluate the number of Firefox users who are still on Windows XP and Vista in mid-217, and announce a "final support end date." It added, however, that for planning purposes, companies using Firefox should consider that date to be September 2017.
Should support end, it doesn't automatically mean that Firefox will stop running on Windows XP and Vista, Engadget says. However, the browser will be vulnerable to security breaches and other online risks.
Mozilla said all Firefox users using Microsoft's old operating systems will be migrated to the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). ESR builds are regularly updated with security fixes but do not have the new features and enhancements of the browser's standard version, according to Computer World.
Even before that happens, Mozilla is already advising Firefox users to upgrade to Windows versions supported by Microsoft. Mozilla warned users that older operating systems like the XP, which Microsoft no longer supports, have no security updates and are dangerous to use. Microsoft will stop supporting Windows Vista in April 2017.
Mozilla Firefox is one of the last remaining browsers that still support Windows XP and Vista. Microsoft stopped supporting Internet Explorer for XP in 2014 and Google did the same for Chrome early this year.
Computer World reports, however, that Windows XP and Vista users are just a small minority today. Citing data from the metrics firm Net Applications, it said only 8.6 percent of computers all over the world run on XP, while a mere 1.1 percent are still on Vista. Analysts expect the numbers to decline further.
