End of the Road for Firefox 2

In case you haven’t heard by now there is no further support offered for Firefox 2.0.* in the way of updates from Mozilla and, as of January 20th, 2009, Google turned off it’s phishing protection for the browser as well. For those that are still hanging on to the previous version of the browser the time has come to upgrade or be open to future attacks.

The current Firefox 3 series is by far a superior browser to version 2 in just about every way and it’s pretty much a safe bet by now that all of your favorite extensions you’re using in Firefox 2 are now supported for Firefox 3 with the possible exception of extensions no longer supported by the author. If one of your extensions is no longer supported by the author there’s not much the makers of Firefox can do about it.

The Internet has always been a dangerous place to cruise around in unprotected especially these days when phishing attacks and malicious advertisements are in abundance everywhere. Hijacks to innocent looking sites or duplications of well known sites is hardly uncommon in these times as well. And even as careful as I am I’ve found myself saved more than once by the built in protection afforded by Firefox 3.0.* and the Firefox 3.1 nightly builds. Much to my surprise I might add.

You can’t afford to take any chances these days and holding on to the older versions of Firefox or any other browser is just asking for trouble. And as always when upgrading from one major version of software to another, I recommend starting with a clean slate.

You can easily do this by exporting your current bookmarks from Firefox 2 first. Then take the time to check to see if your extensions are still listed on the Mozilla Add-ons site and what versions of Firefox they support. If one of your current extensions in no longer actively supported then chances are there’s a equivalent substitute available. You might also find that Firefox 3 already supports a feature or function natively that was once added by an extension in Firefox 2 so it’s worth checking that as well.

Once you’re satisfied with the availability of extensions then it’s just a matter of uninstalling the old browser and installing the new, importing your bookmarks and reinstalling your extensions. A bit of your time for a clean start is always worthwhile especially in the light that although Firefox 3 may look mostly the same up front, it’s a whole different ballgame underneath.

Note: If you happen to be one of the users that encounter high CPU usage when a site is loaded into a tab in Firefox 3 then you’ll need to take a minute and setup this easy fix. The problem occurs with certain combinations of hardware of any given computer but was not isolated as to which by the time Firefox 3 hit the streets Not all users are affected.

Firefox 3.1 nightly builds and the up and coming Firefox 3.1 beta 3 (in testing now) have this problem fixed thankfully.