[Editor Update May 21, 2008: Keith has moved on to another team within Oracle and, sadly, is no longer an
active contributor to this blog. Feel free to direct any questions about his posted articles directly to Steven Chan, instead.]
Those of you out there using the Firefox browser may have been anxious to upgrade to the latest version ever since version 2.0 was released 8 months ago. Various announcements regarding termination of support for Firefox 1.5 may only have added to your concern. Unfortunately, our certification backlog has been pretty high, and you may have been afraid to upgrade from version 1.5 while awaiting the results of Oracle’s testing.
Well, I’m happy to say the results are in, and we are now announcing support for Firefox 2.0 with E-Business Suite Release 11i and Release 12. The details can be found in these Metalink notes:
- Note 285218.1 (for Release 11i)
- Note 389422.1 (for Release 12)
And, as it turns out, we’re just in time, as most Firefox 1.5 users have been asked by now to upgrade via the Firefox Automatic Updates mechanism.
We Won’t Leave You Hanging
This brings us to the recent automatic update notes you may have seen encouraging you to move to Firefox 2. If you’ve been keeping your 1.5 release up to date, this notice may have popped onto your screen overnight:
By all means, if you can, click “Get the new version” as soon as possible.
Many users may have seen announcements about Mozilla’s end-of-life for Firefox 1.5. Originally slated for April 24, it was delayed one month
to May 24, when the final set of fixes on Firefox 1.5 (1.5.0.12) was released. That’s the last of them, however, and no new updates —
including security fixes — will be issued on the Firefox 1.x line.
As Steven explained about “end of life” statements in his article on vendor desupport for J2SE 1.3, this type of notice shouldn’t be cause for too much alarm. We will continue to provide best effort support for Firefox 1.5, just as we will for other older technologies. That said, if you can upgrade, you absolutely should, in order to ensure that your browser is always up to date with the latest security fixes.
For the record, the certification of Firefox was not exceptionally problematic, it just took us a while to start due to conflicting resources coming on the heels of releases to all the major application suites and technology suppliers. But this should be viewed as good news the next time a new Firefox release comes out and you’re a little nervous about taking it too early. Should a similar confluence of events hold up our ability to certify Firefox 3.0 in a timely manner, keep in mind that Oracle will still support Firefox 2.0 as a client for our applications, at least until we’ve certified the latest version, and for some reasonable overlap period. During that time, we’ll make our best efforts to address any browser-specific issues.
Afterword
By the way, we rarely hear about Firefox issues from our users, which has led many to speculate it’s not a popular browser among our customers. (I’ve tried to explain how that logic is faulty, but not always with success.) If you’re using Firefox in your company — particularly if you deployed it as the standard browser for a large base of E-Business Suite users — drop us a line through this blog and let us know. The more feedback we get, the higher priority future certifications will get.