What I actually fear to become the new IE6 is Firefox 3.6 (and 4, to a degree). I've seen and talked to an unholy amount of people who flat out refuse to upgrade to the newest stable release, either because they assume (or have been told) that their add-ons will no longer work[1], or because they - for whatever reason - think the new release modell is bullshit[2]. I've rarely come across a reason that really wasn't just either (sometimes willing) disinformation or flat out bullshit.
[1] Which is stupid considering that the overwhelming majority of add-ons need exactly one fix, and that's the version check, which can be disabled with the Compatibility Reporter add-on.
[2] And then proceed to switch to Chrome. Oh the irony.
...which can be disabled with the Compatibility Reporter add-on
This is the issue. Most people don't know this. I was (1) an avid firefox user from the alpha stage and even I didn't know about the compatibility reporter with out some serious Googling, they should advertise it better
Especially since plugins are far and away firefox's strong suit over other browsers and they want to go with the new update scheme and change the version numbers so much.
(1) Sadly no longer am, due to the memory issues the Chrome team figured out how to fix. I still use it occasionally because I miss its much better user experience but until they get the multi process model done Chrome just uses resouces so much better I can't justify it
Exactly the reason that the latest Firefox now treats add-ons as compatible by default, rather than assuming incompatibility with each new version unless explicitly marked compatible.
That said, refusing to upgrade from 3.6 or 4 still seems crazy.
FF 3.6 is at 4% and dropping. People simply won't have a choice but to upgrade once market share gets low enough because developers will stop supporting it. Google will probably stop this year.
Switch to another browser if you don't like the new FF.
I'd assume you are talking about Google search? No they won't. 100% guarantee you Google will still support FF3.6, just like Google does, and always will always support IE6. jQuery, YUI, and all the JS libraries will always support IE6 as well. You should never go to any of these major sites and see JS errors & major rendering flaws in legacy browsers. If you do, that is just careless.
The reason I bring it up is because there is a biiiiiiiiig middle-ground of "support", and developers who don't realize this, need to. Legacy users don't need, and shouldn't expect the same experiences, but they still need support. You are still talking about Web browsers here. The Web doesn't have versions.
I know. If you are talking about some of the most advanced apps Google develops, I'm sure they will cease supporting FF10 & Chrome 20 at some point this year.
I prefaced my post by saying "I'd assume you are talking about Google search?"
The new release model is bullshit, since it carries no information.
But FF isn't so bad. Without the backing of big corp (which is what kept IE6 in this game so long) there is no or almost no pressure to make sure new homepages still works.
>The new release model is bullshit, since it carries no information.
You're talking about the versioning scheme, which I agree wasn't the best idea. However, the version number by itself never carries information. It's not an argument, it's nit-picking on trivial, completely unimportant details.
The release model itself (four channels, six weeks life cycle for release) is extremely good (there's a reason they copied it from Chrome, as much as I dislike the browser) and needed for a project such as Firefox. Longer release cycles just can't keep up with the development of the web in the long run, and provide much less direct feedback for the developers. Just calling it bullshit for no reason whatsoever is exactly the problem I was talking about.
[1] Which is stupid considering that the overwhelming majority of add-ons need exactly one fix, and that's the version check, which can be disabled with the Compatibility Reporter add-on.
[2] And then proceed to switch to Chrome. Oh the irony.