Digital Trends

The Mozilla Foundation has announced that it will cease support for the Firefox 2 browser next month, in spite of problems with Firefox 3.

Wave goodbye to support for that Firefox 2 browser. As of the middle of December the Mozilla Foundation will end support for it to let its developers focus on the more recent Firefox 3.

On its site, Mozilla wrote:

"Firefox 2.0.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until mid-December, 2008. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3."

Firefox 2 received its most recent update just last week, at the same time Firefox 3.0.4 was released, which addresses several security flaws. There will only be one more Firefox 2 update.

For all the hoopla surrounding its record-breaking release earlier this year, Firefox 3 has it critics, who claim the browser crashes too often and uses too much memory.

When support for Firefox 2 ends, so will support for its underlying Gecko 1.8 layout engine, which also underpins the Thunderbird e-mail client, as well as several Gecko-based browsers. According to ZDNet, Mozilla will continue support for Thunderbird, but the browsers will likely have to rely on third party developers.