firefox_logoMozilla has recently stated that Mac users will require OS X 10.5 in order to run Firefox, although users of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) can still rely on the recently released Firefox 3.6 until 2011. Josh Aas, Mozilla Mac programmer wrote in a mailing list on Tuesday, “We believe a Mac OS X 10.5 minimum will allow us to provide the best experience possible to our users.”

According to Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler, this decision was made in order to encourage users to upgrade their current operating systems: “It’s like a public health issue. Internet-connected computers that are not kept up to date and secure are almost guaranteed to get compromised and those infected machines are used to assault the rest of the Internet users with spam, more malware, or DDOSe. Mozilla is in a unique position to push this kind of messaging. We’re not trying to sell people new hardware or software or worthless anti-virus measures, so we should be able to communicate this well without people assuming some ulterior (profit) motive.” ”

Currently, Mozilla is working on an upgrade for their Firefox 3.6, which uses Gecko 1.9.2, which will put plug-ins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, into separate memory locations. By doing so, it will increase stability.

Mozilla hopes for a Beta launch in March. They are also working on Gecko 1.9.3, which should be released this week.


Written by: Robert, who runs a website about SEO