Firefox ESR for Mac

Yippeeeee! Mozilla has decided to extend support for its already Extended Support Release (which makes it an EESR indeed... 😄) until at least March 2025 and the release of Firefox ESR 115.21. There's a possibility that it will get further extension, as Mozilla's decision is based on usage statistics to determine whether it is extending support. So, if like me you're happy with such a decision, check the privacy prefs for authorizing Mozilla to collect information, I've always kept them unchecked but now I'm seeing a clear benefit out of it. 👍 Mozilla, I love you! 😍

To enlighten anybody facing the same confusion as Lucubration's former comment, take a look at this page: https://whattrainisitnow.com/calendar/ When an ESR version ends its life cycle, it coexists with the next version for 3 iterations. For example: 128.12 comes out when 140.0 appears, then 128.13 together with 140.1, then 128.14 together with 140.2. When 140.3 comes out, the former 128.x is abandoned. This way, people have 3 months to test the new version or upgrade their OS if needed. Currently, the switch from 115.x ESR to 128.x ESR implies that, if you still use MacOS 10.14 or less, you'll have to upgrade to 10.15 or stick to Firefox 115.15 ESR if you can't.

I found this review very confusing, because it refers to "Firefox ESR version 115.1.0"… but my version of Firefox ESR is 102.14.0esr, and when I choose "About Firefox" from the menu, the program tells me my version is "Up to date". Huh? I spent quite a bit of time on the Mozilla website trying to figure this out… their navigation was not intuitive to me, and I had a hard time finding their list of versions (releases) correlated with the operating system requirements, etc. But eventually… as far as I can tell, there is as of now, no such thing as Firefox ESR version 115.1.0… that's the regular version, not the ESR version at all. MacUpdate sometimes gets the versioning information wrong in general, and this seems to be one of those times. If there's something I'm missing here, somebody please enlighten me.

MU> "Version 102.4.0, first offered to ESR channel users on October 18, 2022" ;-)

I disagree somewhat with this page's subhead, identifying Firefox ESR as "Firefox for system administrators." That may be its primary purpose, but I use it as my main FF for a different reason (I'm not a sysadmin). ESR changes less often and less radically than the main channel version, and since Moz's updates frequently annoy me by breaking the various web-development extensions I use... and breaking my FF-CSS and about:config customizations too... I run ESR to slow down the rate of breakage.