Firefox will discontinue version 53 with support for Windows XP and Vista. This means that next year there will be no more popular browsers available for these operating systems that are kept up-to-date.
Version 53 of Firefox will be released in March 2017, writes ghacks.net. XP and Vista users will still be able to use the browser through the Extended Support Release of version 52, for which security updates will be available until mid-2018.
Mozilla indicates that the company no longer has to take into account the support of new functions for the older operating systems when releasing new Firefox versions. The non-ESR version will continue to work with the older operating systems for now, but once features are added that newer Windows versions need to run, that version will no longer start, a developer writes.
The end of support comes a month before Microsoft officially ends support for Windows Vista, on April 11, 2017. Earlier this year, Google also stopped supporting XP and Vista for its Chrome browser. In that browser, the user was made aware of this with a notification at the top of the screen. It is unknown whether Firefox will show a similar message in the long term.