In June 2018, Firefox will stop supporting Windows XP.

Calendar of future releases of Firefox



Mozilla announced that support for Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems in the Firefox browser will end in June 2018 (see the calendar of future releases ). This means that in June, the release of security updates on the ESR channel in the latest version of Firefox, which is still running on XP and Vista, will cease.



New versions of Firefox still do not work with old operating systems, as well as new versions of Chrome. In the spring of 2017, with the release of Firefox, 53 users of Windows XP and Windows Vista were transferred to the ESR channel with long-term support. This means that ESR 52.x was the latest stable version of Firefox for these operating systems, and Firefox 53 and newer browsers are no longer running.



On the ESR (Extended Support Release) channel, a major browser update occurs when six to eight versions change on a regular channel. For example, after the release of ESR 52.0 in spring 2017, the next major update will be the release of ESR 59.0 in spring 2018. However, ESR versions get full security updates.



The channel with long-term support is intended mainly for corporate users who are not so interested in frequent updating of major versions, which add the latest web technologies and often change the interface. On the contrary, it is important to them stability in the work, a permanent interface and security updates. On the same channel, users of Windows XP and Windows Vista are now forced to stay, if they want to receive updates in security.



Last year, Mozilla promised that support for Windows XP and Windows Vista on the ESR channel would continue at least until September 2017. The exact plans for the release of future versions are now known, so the date is set exactly: this is June 2018.



Firefox is one of the few browsers that continue to support Windows XP. Microsoft itself stopped releasing updates for it on April 8, 2014, with the exception of rare 0-day patches in exceptional cases.



Mozilla strongly recommends that users upgrade their version of Windows to this date because it is dangerous to use a browser with unclosed vulnerabilities.