Future Of Firefox Quantum On Windows 7

[legacyfan]

fixed the data mentioned

Edited May 21, 2023 by legacyfan

[Vistapocalypse]

This is an actual announcement from Mozilla:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7-8-and-81-moving-extended-support

[yoltboy01]

8 hours ago, Vistapocalypse said:

This is an actual announcement from Mozilla:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7-8-and-81-moving-extended-support

Hopefully, it won‘t get too hard to backport newer versions to 7/8.1 

[Vistapocalypse]

3 hours ago, yoltboy01 said:

Hopefully, it won‘t get too hard to backport newer versions to 7/8.1 

Not even the Chinese ever backported newer Firefox versions to XP/Vista AFAIK, presumably because their customers preferred Chromium. The only full-blown backport I know of is MyPal 68 by feodor2, and of course roytam1 backported Pale Moon and certain Firefox components. Perhaps there will be developers who love both Windows 7 and Firefox enough to make that kind of effort. Time will tell.

[yoltboy01]

Despite saying they would end support for Windows 7 and 8.1 with v115, the newly released nightly version of 116 still works on Windows 8.1. I also tested it with Windows 7 Compatibility Mode and it seems fine so far. The system requirements haven't changed either. 

However, since this is a very new and fresh build, it will obviously take some time to introduce new stuff that will eventually break support for them. As far as I remember Firefox 53 builds didn't work on XP, but work perfectly on Vista. Vista's compatbility was broken with v54. I'm curious when and if Mozilla will break the compatibility for 7 and 8.1 or if they just "declare" them EOL but won't change much from the inside. Time's gonna tell us. 

Nevertheless, here is proof:

imgur.com/a/wUABk3Q 

[Edit: I don't know why they've put an 18+ warning but dont worry ;)]

Edited June 8, 2023 by yoltboy01

[NotHereToPlayGames]

44 minutes ago, yoltboy01 said:

[Edit: I don't know why they've put an 18+ warning but dont worry ;)]

Because Imgur is ad-based and the ads can sometimes be a bit R-Rated.

[win32]

1 hour ago, yoltboy01 said:

Despite saying they would end support for Windows 7 and 8.1 with v115, the newly released nightly version of 116 still works on Windows 8.1. I also tested it with Windows 7 Compatibility Mode and it seems fine so far. The system requirements haven't changed either. 

I looked at the git mirror of the official Gecko repository and they haven't made any commits to remove Windows 7/8.x compatibility yet.

[ED_Sln]

23 hours ago, yoltboy01 said:

Despite saying they would end support for Windows 7 and 8.1 with v115, the newly released nightly version of 116 still works on Windows 8.1. I also tested it with Windows 7 Compatibility Mode and it seems fine so far. The system requirements haven't changed either. 

Since June 1, 115 is no longer updated on Win7, but if you download and install version 116, it works.

Version 53 worked on Win XP, but not longer than a week, then, after another update, stopped running.

[WalksInSilence]

Has anyone here had initial Firefox boot speed since the v113 update? Once running there are no problems but I'm estimating the start up time has doubled from about 15secs to 30secs. I thought it might be a 'theme' issue so I reverted from 'Dark' to the Default but the change in behaviour remains.

I'm wondering if it is not a FF problem but a Windows thing because I'm getting now regular alerts whenever I update FF from MS wanting to check the FF updater .EXE.

I've updated to v114 since (the only version I'm being offered) and it is still taking noticeably longer to launch than v112 and earlier versions use to do.

[yoltboy01]

I was running the latest v116 Nightly Build when a message popped up in Firefox saying something like "Still using Windows 7? How to Backup your Data. Those older OS are not receiving any security updates from Microsoft anymore" (not 1:1 like that, since the message was in German). I am curious why it popped up in Version 116, if 115 is considered to be the last one. By the way, this message also pops up in 8.1 with that same Windows 7 message thing. 

Time will tell what Mozilla might introduce to break compatibility with 7/8.1 or if they just shift them to ESR and won't change anything major in standard releases after 115

[Xack]

They just added a kill switch to the installer program, running it provides a message saying you need Windows 10.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1836874

Extracting the latest nightly (2023-07-07) with 7-zip works for now, but there is a permanent yellow triangle in the hamburger menu. It is only a matter of days before the binary compatibility is fully broken once they start compiling with an incompatible compiler or start using new APIs.

[BW134]

As long as Mozilla team don't introduce Win10/11 only APIs into their web browser, Firefox could still in theory run on Win 8/8.1. That's like when Chrome introduced Win8+ APIs before breaking completely support for Win 8/8.1.

Edited July 8, 2023 by BW134

[WalksInSilence]

I've taken the precaution of downloading various older portable versions of FF.

I'm not minded to update beyond my current installed version TBH, even the ESR option. I know and have been dealing with or just accepting my preferred FF version having problems on some web sites particularly those which actively prevent you using "unsupported" browser versions and try to persuade you to 'upgrade'.

What is the situation in regard to Win7 and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client which shares features with FF? I've not read anything about that. 

[yoltboy01]

8 hours ago, WalksInSilence said:

I've taken the precaution of downloading various older portable versions of FF.

I'm not minded to update beyond my current installed version TBH, even the ESR option. I know and have been dealing with or just accepting my preferred FF version having problems on some web sites particularly those which actively prevent you using "unsupported" browser versions and try to persuade you to 'upgrade'.

What is the situation in regard to Win7 and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client which shares features with FF? I've not read anything about that. 

I also liked the aesthetic of Firefox in v57-88 very much. Sadly, 78 ESR isn't supported anymore, so I always try to keep up with latest version. Right now all versions, including the betas and nightlies work fine on 7/8.1

[win32]

One of the recent commits to Firefox hard-coded the user agent to Windows NT 10.0.