Mozilla announces extended end-of-life support for Firefox under Windows XP and Vista

Mozilla has revealed that support for its Firefox web browser on Windows XP and Vista is coming to an end.

The organization had previously announced that anyone using these old versions of Microsoft's operating system would be moved to the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). This meant that support would be offered until "at least" September this year. Now the final kill date has been revealed -- and it's later than expected.

While an exact date has not been announced, Mozilla says that June next year is when Firefox support will come to an end. This gives individuals and organizations a further eight months to get themselves sorted out and move away from the operating systems that Microsoft stopped supporting in April 2014 and April 2017.

Mozilla says:

Today we are announcing June 2018 as the final end of life date for Firefox support on Windows XP and Vista. As one of the few browsers that continues to support Windows XP and Vista, Firefox users on these platforms can expect security updates until that date. Users do not need to take additional action to receive those updates.

The organization points out that anyone still running XP or Vista really should think about upgrading: "We strongly encourage our users to upgrade to a version of Windows that is supported by Microsoft. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates, have known exploits, and are dangerous for you to use."

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