Mozilla had announced back in November of 2022 that it was considering extending the end of support date for Firefox. The company in March of 2023 it revealed the Extended Support Release (ESR) for Firefox that was released later in July of that year with version 115.
Mozilla however has recently revealed that it wants to further extend support for its browser. The firm conducted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) in the Firefox subreddit last month in June where the Firefox leadership team joined in.
The event included:
- Bethel Kidane, Senior Product Marketing Manager
- Andrew Overholt, VP, Engineering, Platform
- Vicky Chin, VP, Engineering, Desktop, Mobile, and Pocket
- Byron Jourdan, Senior Director, Product Management
- Bobby Holley, CTO, Firefox
- Sheila Mooney, Senior Director, Technical Program Management
- Ian Carmichael, Senior Vice President, Firefox
- Aaron Benson, Director, User Experience
Among them, Byron Jourdan, Senior Director, Product Management of Mozilla, under the Reddit username ComprehensiveDoor643 revealed that Mozilla plans to support Firefox on Windows 7 for longer. When asked separately about whether it also included Windows 8 and 8.1 too, Jourdan added that it was certainly the plan, though for how long the extended support would last was still undecided:
We"re planning to extend support for Windows 7 users past the currently planned date and give them better options for migrating to a new PC when they choose to.
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It does include 8 and 8.1, I should have said that earlier.
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The honest answer is that we don"t know right now, but on the surface it makes sense for us to support it while usage is still high there.
While Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 does not have the biggest share of users according to the latest Statcounter data, Mozilla seems to want to secure this user base and in return offer older Windows version users an updated browser option.
This is because Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge no longer support these OSs.
Source: Reddit (spotted by Sören Hentzschel)