A Plan to Drop Firefox 3.x Support
The support policy of the selenium project for Firefox browsers is to support the current and previous stables releases, as well as the current and previous ESR releases. At the time of writing, that means the supported versions are “10” and “17” (ESR) and “17” and “18” (stable channel). In addition to this, we are […]
Categories:
The support policy of the selenium project for Firefox browsers is to support the current and previous stables releases, as well as the current and previous ESR releases. At the time of writing, that means the supported versions are “10” and “17” (ESR) and “17” and “18” (stable channel). In addition to this, we are currently supporting Firefox 3.x too.
This is an official announcement that we are planning to end support for Firefox 3.x in the near future in RC, WebDriver and Core/IDE, and this is your chance to be involved in that decision. Unless there is a strong reason to do otherwise, I shall shortly be announcing a timeline for the end of the support of 3.x
Once support for Firefox 3.x is removed, the earliest supported Firefox version will be the ESR-1 release (currently Firefox 10).
Rationale:
Firefox 3.x is no longer actively supported by Mozilla, and this has been the case since April 24, 2012. Since this time, 3.x has dropped to under 1% of global Web traffic (0.62% at the time of writing according to StatCounter) Continued focus on supporting an effectively dead browser prevents the selenium team from using features in the newer releases for little benefit to you.
Continued support of Firefox 3.x by the selenium project gives the impression that that particular version is still a valid option used by the population of the Web. This is simply not the case, and it may mean that testers efforts are being spent fixing problems that almost no users will ever see.
What you can do:
If you agree that this is the right choice, then you do not need to do anything. If you disagree strongly and have the numbers to back up your position, particularly if you can help work on Firefox 3.x support, then please reply to the selenium-user google group.
On a personal note, I know that a lot of you may well have firefox 3.x support in your test plans and will be distressed by this plan. Please take the time to look at actual usage logs from your sites and applications to verify that continued support is worth your time and energy before responding. I’d really appreciate that.
