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Installing Firefox


HoppaLong

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I've got XP Pro_SP3.

This document is about installing Firefox with XP.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/get-latest-version-firefox-windows-xp-vista

It says, "This article is no longer maintained, so its content might be out of date."

Has someone created a combined installer package for XP, so you don't have to download and install an old
version of Firefox, before installing the latest version?  Maybe an MSFN member has created their own version
of Firefox for XP.

If there is no combined or slipstreamed version for XP, please tell me the best old version of Firefox to install,
before I download the latest version.

It says you can use the Firefox updater, but I never install updates when I'm connected to the web.  I prefer
downloading everything and installing offline.

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The updater does not work right for XP. Download from here the full installer for the actual version you want to install and run it, and it'll update your current installation, while keeping all your configurations. It just works! Any statements to de contrary are just FUD.

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I hope I can ask a "Firefox with WinXP" question also ... instead of starting another thread.

Since the Pale Moon decision to drop WinXP I started using Firefox ... today I switched to the latest ESR portable version ... Firefox v45.6.0.

I am currently getting all the personal settings fixed and a few add ons. What I am not completely clear on about the ESR version is this. The regular Firefox version will be dropping WinXP shortly or at version 52.x.x but the ESR version will continue to work and be updated for WinXP? Am I correct on this ... I just have WinXP SP3 with no POS updates?

Also, I read about one complaint with Firefox is that it seems to have "larger memory usage and memory leaks" compared to other browsers. I came across this little program for Firefox that is supposed to fix that or at least improve it. Just wondering if anyone is using this program?

Firemin - <http://www.rizonesoft.com/downloads/firemin/>

Quote

One of the biggest “improvements” that Mozilla claims is the Firefox memory usage, in particular, the vanquishing of memory leaks. Although Firefox memory usage improved a little over the last few years, it still uses a lot of memory; a little more than I feel comfortable with and for this reason I created Firemin.

Memory Leaks

We like keeping our apps running for a few days (that’s just the way I roll) and because of this Firefox was using over ~800MB of memory after about 3 days. It’s quite normal for Firefox to be sucking up over 200MB of memory right off the bat. In a memory leak you’ll see the memory usage keep increasing the longer the program is open/in-use and this is exactly what happens with Firefox.

Enter Firemin

Rather than complain about it, we decided to fix it. Enter Firemin; simply put, it will attempt to eliminate Firefox memory leaks and decrease the amount of memory Firefox uses. All I did was tweak our Memory Booster a little and applied it to Firefox (including Firefox extensions) and all the memory leaks was gone.

... that's all I have at the moment for Firefox questions ... will be back unless HoppaLong is not happy I sasshayed into his thread.

monroe


 

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Guys, I freely admit that my "knowledge base" about Firefox is almost zero.  That's why I'm asking very simple
questions.

After reading your replies to my post, I don't think Firefox is a good choice for me.

For several years I was hooked on a lightweight Mozilla browser, K-Meleon. It loaded web pages incredibly
fast, compared to all the other browsers I had tried.  I'm using the latest official stable release, version 75.1.

Unfortunately, the past several months have been a disaster for K-Meleon.  Many web pages will not render
properly.  I see constant messages about "switching to a supported browser."

If you visit the K-Meleon forum, there are several updated builds created by forum members.  Apparently,
these newer builds fix the web page rendering problem.  Before I abandon K-Meleon forever, I'll post a
message asking about these updated builds.

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I also use K-Meleon ... although it's an older version ... KM v1.8.2.4. I have changed and experimented with different user agents and never see (or very rarely) any "popup" windows about updating to a newer browser.

I do however, run into pages that do not load correctly ... for those I will switch to Pale Moon (last XP version) or Firefox (latest ESR release). I also have hardly no knowledge about Firefox ... just started using it when Pale Moon announced they were dropping WinXP.

I have several user agents that I use for K-Meleon ... I have a Firefox UA and I just started using DuckDuckBot ... it has been working everywhere for me so far. My third user agent is Googlebot but at least one site refused to let me enter ... told me to "get the h*ll out of here" ... more or less, so I am going to change that third user agent to a more "friendly user agent".

 

Firefox --- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0

DuckDuckBot --- DuckDuckBot/1.0; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.html)

This article is not very old ... October 2016.

Web Crawlers and User-Agents – Top 10 Most Popular

Brian Jackson  |  Updated: October 14, 2016

https://www.keycdn.com/blog/web-crawlers/

When it comes to the world wide web there are both bad bots and good bots. The bad bots you definitely want to avoid as these consume your CDN bandwidth, take up server resources, and steal your content. Good bots (also known as web crawlers) on the other hand, should be handled with care as they are a vital part of getting your content to index with search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Read more below about some of the top 10 web crawlers and user-agents to ensure you are handling them correctly.

 

4. DuckDuckBot
DuckDuckBot is the Web crawler for DuckDuckGo, a search engine that has become quite popular lately as it is known for privacy and not tracking you. It now handles over 12 million queries per day. DuckDuckGo gets its results from over four hundred sources. These include hundreds of vertical sources delivering niche Instant Answers, DuckDuckBot (their crawler) and crowd-sourced sites (Wikipedia). They also have more traditional links in the search results, which they source from Yahoo!, Yandex and Bing.

User-Agent
DuckDuckBot


Full User-Agent String
DuckDuckBot/1.0; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckduckbot.html)

As I said, I'm just experimenting with these Bot user agents and maybe others in the future with K-Meleon.

Now there might be some very good news about a new release of K-Meleon over the next week or two ... and maybe not. Over at the KM forum with version 76 ... some are thinking MAYBE Dorian could have a surprise but only Dorian knows for sure.

rodocop

Date: December 06, 2016 07:33PM

I believe Dorian is preparing some sort of Christmas gift for us ;-)

.... it's just speculation or hope at this point so check in there over the next two weeks.

So my question going three or four months into 2017 ... what browsers are going to be left for WinXP in that time frame? As for myself, I will still use my older version of K-Meleon, the last version of Pale Moon and the last version of Firefox ESR ... as they are needed for various sites. They will all keep working ... I would think for 2017 ... maybe 2018 will be a problem.

I guess it will depend on how the newer version of K-Meleon works out. What about SeaMonkey for the future ... I don't know much about it.

*** Just to add ... I use Proxomitron also when I'm online ... some people there believe that the browser should supply as little information as possible to web sites ... only what is needed to have the right experience. I have worked with various user agents in this regard. That's why I decided to add the DuckDuckBot user agent to K-Meleon. I no longer use the older K-Meleon version for serious 'logins' ... banking and such. I have Pale Moon and Firefox for that ... but for web surfing or strange web sites ... the K-Meleon browser with the DuckDuckBot ID maybe works for all that. Someone ... I think at the Proxomitron site, supplied a 'stripped down' version of a user agent for an example a few years back. It had just enough information to work on most web sites. Then for something really important, like banking and such, you have a better backup browser for all that.

The older K-Meleon version that I am using ... I'm guessing still seems to work 90% ... maybe 95% of the time in 2016. With all the crazy stuff going on with the internet ... I like trying to disguise as much information as possible with Proxomitron and fake user agents. My knowledge is limited on all that so I really don't know for sure how much of that really works.

I still do not have a fully working knowledge of all the Proxomitron settings ... usually have to get some help at the forum.

                                                                                                                 
 

Edited by monroe
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I will also add about why I just stopped using the older K-Meleon version for important logins. This just happened in the last two weeks ... in the thread/topic ... Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility Issues started by Dave-H, October 15 ... this post by Mathwiz on Dec 6th had a link to a browser test page. My older K-Meleon browser failed in many areas while Pale Moon and the latest Firefox version passed OK.

Here is that link that Mathwiz posted.

"You can go to https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html with any browser to see what security protocols, encryption ciphers, etc. your browser supports."

So I now only use the older K-Meleon browser for nothing too terribly important ... like banking and such. I think it's OK to use for a forum login. It will be interesting to check out the next new version of K-Meleon ... when it's released.

...



 



 

Edited by monroe
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OK ... the reason I asked earlier about Firefof ESR. I had read something earlier about the ESR version still being OK with Win XP into the future. I couldn't find what I had read till just now ... it says well into 2018.

 

"It is unclear as of now for how long XP or Vista will be supported on the ESR channel. Firefox ESR 52 will be supported for quite a while. The new version will become available with the release of Firefox 52 on March 7, 2017, and will be supported until mid 2018.

Firefox users on XP or Vista may use Firefox therefore at least up until that time unless Mozilla decides to remove support for those operating systems from ESR at one point before the release of Firefox ESR 59 (which seems unlikely)."

https://www.ghacks.net/2016/09/27/firefox-53-no-support-for-windows-xp-or-vista/

Firefox 53: no support for Windows XP or Vista

By Martin Brinkmann on September 27, 2016 in Firefox - Last Update:September 27, 2016

 

Mozilla plans to end mainline support for the Microsoft operating systems Windows XP and Windows Vista with the release of Firefox 53 in March 2017.

This means that Firefox 52 will be the last feature update for those operating systems, as Firefox 53 cannot be installed anymore on those operating systems.

Mozilla explicitly mentions installations that it plans to block. It is unclear whether it plans to block execution of portable versions of Firefox as well.

The organization plans to migrate Firefox users on XP or Vista to Firefox ESR automatically however to extend support.

Bug 1305453 on Bugzilla lists the plan to stop stand-alone Firefox 53 and up installers from installing Firefox on XP or Vista machines.

We plan to eol XP/Vista by first moving those users out to ESR 52. Once 52 merges to aurora, we should land changes to the stand alone installer to prevent install by XP and Vista users. Initially there shouldn't be an issue with running but eventually we'll import a system dependency that will break browser startup.

Another bug, bug 1303827, highlights Mozilla's plan to move XP users to Firefox's ESR branch when version 52 gets released. Firefox 51 is therefore the last version of the browser that is not ESR.

We've decided to move Windows XP to the Firefox 52 ESR branch, so that Firefox 51 will be the last mainline version to support the platform.

We still don't have an official EOL date for XP support, but moving the platform to the ESR branch means that we will *not* need to worry about new feature support for XP which is becoming increasingly difficult.

It is unclear as of now for how long XP or Vista will be supported on the ESR channel. Firefox ESR 52 will be supported for quite a while. The new version will become available with the release of Firefox 52 on March 7, 2017, and will be supported until mid 2018.

Firefox users on XP or Vista may use Firefox therefore at least up until that time unless Mozilla decides to remove support for those operating systems from ESR at one point before the release of Firefox ESR 59 (which seems unlikely).

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP on April 2014, and plans to end support for Windows Vista on April 2017. Windows XP has not received security updates since April 2014, unless you have applied this little tweak to the machine. Google stopped supporting XP and Vista back in Chrome in April 2016 already.

Mozilla Firefox is the last major web browser that supports XP and Vista (when you look at use figures). (via Sören Hentzschel)

Edited by monroe
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4 hours ago, monroe said:

OK ... the reason I asked earlier about Firefof ESR. I had read something earlier about the ESR version still being still OK with Win XP into the future. I couldn't find what I had read till just now ... it says well into 2018.

If you had read the chart in my previous post while paying it the real close attention it deserves, you'd already know that June 12, 2018 is the point in time FF esr 59 becomes the sole FF esr, and from that point on, no new release of FF esr 59 of should occur (= no 52.9.0), isn't it? :angel

.

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Well I did look at your chart and also again before I posted today. I suppose the only excuse is ... I simply did not know what I was looking at. I still do not see 2018 on that chart ... but I'm sure it's there somewhere !

...
 

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It's confusing. Basically FF 52.1 ESR comes out at the same time as FF 53, FF 52.2 ESR comes out at the same time as FF 54, etc. There are usually 8 releases, so the end of the line will probably be FF 52.8 ESR coming out with FF 60. Each ESR release runs about a year, and 52 will start in 2017, so it should end in 2018.

Of course none of these FF versions will have a "time bomb" that will make them stop working after that point; you just won't be able to get any further updates on XP. Eventually, the Web will be using new standards that don't even exist yet, so over time you'll start seeing more and more Web pages that don't work properly on FF 52.8; but it'll probably be 2020 before that's a significant problem.
 

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OK ... that makes sense explaining about one ESR release a year ... with eight version updates for each release. As I posted earlier, I just started using Firefox when Pale Moon announced they were ending support for WinXP. I really have little knowledge about Firefox before that announcement. I remember seeing versions in the 30's and 40's some time back ... but I didn't really know how they were spaced or changed.

I was happy with Pale Moon ... I plan to keep using the last version of Pale Moon for some time into the future and also will be using the last Firefox ESR version after 2018 for as long as I can.

I will keep using this test link to check PM and FF ESR in the future for security.

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html

Mathwiz ... thanks for clearing all this up.

...
 

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4 hours ago, monroe said:

Well I did look at your chart and also again before I posted today. I suppose the only excuse is ... I simply did not know what I was looking at. I still do not see 2018 on that chart ... but I'm sure it's there somewhere !

It´s not there explicitly, but one can infer it based on what's shown for 2016 and 2017... sometimes, the best info is just implied, and this is one such case. :yes:

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3 hours ago, monroe said:

OK ... that makes sense explaining about one ESR release a year ... with eight version updates for each release. As I posted earlier, I just started using Firefox when Pale Moon announced they were ending support for WinXP. I really have little knowledge about Firefox before that announcement. I remember seeing versions in the 30's and 40's some time back ... but I didn't really know how they were spaced or changed.

I was happy with Pale Moon ... I plan to keep using the last version of Pale Moon for some time into the future and also will be using the last Firefox ESR version after 2018 for as long as I can.

I will keep using this test link to check PM and FF ESR in the future for security.

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/viewMyClient.html

Mathwiz ... thanks for clearing all this up.

...

 

That's a good link for checking browser security. You'll be glad to know that a FF version as old as 31.8 ESR passes with flying colors - at least, it does once you go into about:config and turn off a few obsolete encryption protocols ;) But the newer versions can do things like HTML5 video that 31.8 can't.
 

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By looking at the Rapid/Release Calendar here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

It appears that ESR 53 will be supported well into 2018 and maybe 2019. By 2019, Embedded support ends. I wonder if Mozilla intends to EOL Firefox 53 ESR to coincide with the end of Embedded support.

Of course, Firefox 53 could still work for many years after EOL occurs. Many websites I use still work with IE 8, almost 8 years after its release. 

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