With as many ways as you can have your machine compromised by simply browsing to a website that had some malicious advertising code embedded, I can't imagine why anybody would use such an old browser if they weren't absolutely forced to.
I work with a visually impaired PhD student, and we had to turn off browser updates because of the hell it was causing him (eg why are my search results different all of a sudden? why are pdfs opening differently?).
This isn't limited to firefox, google voice recently got a UI update that lowered the information density. Where he used to be able to see who he was talking to now there is a big colored shape surrounded by whitespace, etc. If he didn't limit the updates, probably 25-50% of his time would be spent dealing with interface changes.
Your comment makes it look as if you never worked with someone who suffers due to needless design changes.
I changed that policy and moved to tracking upstream as closely as I can manage. While it was very hard at first, users have adapted and become better at adapting to new changes quickly. Five years later, I do not see nearly as many "this changed and I don't know how to do it anymore"-type questions as I used to. The initial break was quite hard, but I'm very glad I did it.
It is clear that we value shiny bullshit more than being accessable and inclusive.
And nobody can even make the case that cutting off more and more people from the web even benefits us.
Yup. It's also the go-to strategy for startups and tech companies in general once they have run out of real ideas for their product and one of the quickest ways tech companies' products degrade into shit.
The fact that us techies tend to downplay those challenges does not make them any less real for others.
It's not our responsibility to work around someone Else's updates. If something works now, why should it be changed because it's more convenient for Google?
It's also more secure, because of my external sandboxing.
I also have my own container mechanism for Firefox that I have been using for years.
And this is what the web is all about. It used to be that the web was accessible to people in remote parts of the world, using old hardware, and anyone could write and add to it.
Now it's quickly becoming a black box that only wealthy people can access.
The performance gains that come with newer browsers (generally) should allow websites to run on older hardware. Not to mention support for new protocols and compression that lead to smaller assets being sent to all devices.
I really shouldn't have to do this. Mozilla should have put more effort into add-on compatibility. Add-ons are the only thing that Firefox has going for it.
Oh right, Google and the cabal that runs the web decided so.
Just because something is "old" doesn't mean it is obsolete. This mentality is very wrong, and needs to be opposed. It isn't helping the users, it is helping the platforms.
Up until a few years ago, it was the responsibility of the developer to gracefully fall back and support as many users as possible. Now, instead, we design under the assumption that everyone has a computer made within the last 12-18 months, with the latest updates, on a high speed, low latency connection.
And that is awful, because it is cutting out users who aren't privileged enough to afford the web.
The new "improved" Google Voice is utter trash. It makes my 2011 Macbook grind to a halt. And for what? So that it cosmetically resembles their new phone app. And most tech reporting websites are gushing about how it looks.
And what is the justification for all of this garbage? Is the web faster? more reliable? More accessible to people with disabilities? NO.