Mozilla will discontinue support for Windows 2000 and XP SP1
Asa Dotzler, director of development on the Classic Edition of Firefox, announced that the browser will no longer be supported for users who do not have at least Windows XP SP2.
M. Dotlzer says that for several years, the Firefox development tools have not been updated specifically for compatibility with Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM and SP1. However, "99.6% of Firefox users have had to pay for this support. Indeed, it would have prevented developers enjoy the benefits of a more recent compiler while depriving FOR IMPLEMENTING significant new features like SPDY".
Mozilla will use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 now, a decision resulting in the abandonment of these versions of Windows. Specifically, they will no longer receive any updates from June 5, that is to say that when Firefox is available in 12 stable version.
Asa Dotzler added that after that date "a migration to Opera will be probably the best thing to do" for users of Windows 2000. For others, the man advised course of updating Windows XP with new versions of Service Pack.
Re: Mozilla will discontinue support for Windows 2000 and XP SP1
This were the spoken words of "Asa Dotzler"
Quote:
For a number of years we've held off on updating our Windows toolchain to a newer version of Visual Studio, and in so doing preserved support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM and SP1. Firefox developers and the 99.6% of our Windows users have paid a price for this support, though. Our developers have not been able to take advantage of new compiler features and have had to struggle to keep valuable optimizations from breaking -- including having had to back out and ultimately delay some important new features like SPDY. Our users have have suffered a slower Firefox than would be possible as both direct and indirect results of moving to a more modern compiler.
