229310 - Save the poor Windows 95 users

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Marketing :: General, task)

Description

[u115577]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; ja-JP; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; ja-JP; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7

The latest version of IE available on Windows 95 is going to die. Its official
support offered by Microsoft expires soon (December 31, 2003). Microsoft will
not release security patches for Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack 2 (SP2) next
year.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support/ie55exsupport.asp

Mozilla Foundation should offer Windows 95 users a more secure Internet
experience. We need to help them switch to the Mozilla Firebird browser. It's
time to launch a campaign!

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:




Mozilla Foundation have already cut off official support for Windows 95? Oh,
man. Opera 7 still supports 95!
http://www.opera.com/products/user/index.dml?platform=windows

Comment 1

[irongut]

Mozilla still supports Win95. It says so on the mozilla.org home page and in the
installation instructions.

Win95 is missing from the System Requirements on the Getting Started page:
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/guide/get-started.html

Comment 2

[Andrew Turnbull]

Actually, I believe the "getting started" page lists system RECOMMENDATIONS, not
requirements.  Nevertheless, I believe it would be good to advertise Windows 95
compatibility for Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird, as this could easily be used as
an advantage over the latest versions of Internet Explorer.  I personally am
running the Mozilla 1.6 suite under Windows 95 with no problems.

Comment 3

[Andrew Turnbull]

Windows 95 is not listed in the published System Requirements for Mozilla
Firefox 0.8, though it certainly does run under Windows 95 (I'm using it now):
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/system-requirements.html
Published Windows 95 support will be more crucial to Firefox as it approaches
the 1.0 milestone and increases in popularity.

Comment 4

[Andrew Turnbull]

I have had some more thoughts and information to share concerning Mozilla
Firefox and Windows 95 in the eight months since my previous comment.

I have a system running Windows 95 OSR2.5 with virtually every library update
ever released installed on it.  As far as browsers go, I have successfully run
Mozilla 1.4, 1.4.1, 1.4.2, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.7.1, 1.7.2, 1.7.3; Netscape 7.02,
7.1, and 7.2; Mozilla Firebird 0.7; Mozilla Firefox 0.8, 0.9, 0.9.1, 0.9.2,
0.9.3, 1.0 PR (0.10), 1.0 PR (0.10.1), and 1.0, as well as a smattering of
assorted alphas, betas, release candidates, and nightlies on this system and
operating system.  Mozilla Firefox 1.0 seems to run just as well on this
configuration as it does on Windows 98, and I have not noticed any software bugs
dependent on being run on the Windows 95 platform.

That said, speaking from the viewpoint of a knowledgeable user, I presume that
there are several barriers to officially supporting Mozilla Firefox on Windows 95.

First and foremost, a fresh installation of Windows 95 is not capable of running
Mozilla Firefox as-is; at least one system file update is required.  And since
there weren't really any formal service packs for the OS; just a haphazard mess
of updates, it would be more difficult to ensure system-file compatibility for
Windows 95 than, say, Windows NT 4.0.

Last summer, I tried to run Mozilla Firefox 0.9 on a system with a fresh
installation of Windows 95 original release (Pre-OSR2; version 4.00.950;
7-11-1995 file dates; the works.)  I could not get it to run until after I had
added or updated the system files OLEAUT32.DLL, OLE32.DLL, OLEAUT32.DLL,
SHLWAPI.DLL, and URLMON.DLL.  I also tried running the Mozilla 1.7 suite, and I
only had to update OLEAUT32.DLL before I was successful in running it.

I am aware that version 2.30.4265 or later of the OLEAUT32.DLL file is required
to run recent Mozilla products, and it is available as part of the Microsoft
Libraries Update.  Users of the original release of Windows 98 also need to
apply this update before Mozilla 1.4+ or Mozilla Firefox will run successfully.

I believe that SHLWAPI.DLL and URLMON.DLL are not required to run later (e.g.,
1.0PR/1.0) versions of Mozilla Firefox.  As an experiment, I renamed the files
on one of my Win95 computers, and found that I could still run Mozilla Firefox
1.0 after doing so.  Since these files are associated with Internet Explorer, I
recall there was/is a bit of controversy over Mozilla Firefox requiring them to
run.  Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (which I haven't tested as much) still requires
the files to work.

That leaves OLE32.DLL and OLEAUT32.DLL.  I am inclined to believe this may be a
Win95 original release vs. Win95 OSR2.x issue, since I have heard an account of
 someone not needing to update these files (or any files other than
OLEAUT32.DLL) to get Mozilla Firefox 1.0 to run on his Windows 95 OSR2
installation, although I am not 100% sure.

I imagine that another barrier to official Win95 support for Mozilla Firefox
would include the fact that since so few people (likely 1% or less) still use
it, there would be a very small number of individuals available to test Mozilla
products on this operating system version and ensure that Firefox runs
satisfactorily on the platform.

Because of the above points, I can understand the justification for omitting
Windows 95 from Mozilla Firefox's system requirements.  (After all, they
recommend Windows XP!)  That said, there's nothing that prevents a curious
Windows 95 user from downloading and installing a Mozilla product to see if it
will run on his or her OS, supported or not.

I get the most concerned when I see a third-party website explicitly state that
Mozilla Firefox will NOT run on Windows 95, or I see a school or library
"upgrade" from Windows 95 to Windows 98 or even Windows ME simply for the
intention of running a newer web browser.

Feel free to correct me on any detail if I'm wrong!  I have immense respect for
those responsible for developing and marketing Mozilla products, and are simply
interested in ensuring that the software is available to as many users as possible.

Comment 5

[u115577]

Frequent crash bug was reported about Windows 95 (Japanese environment only?)
See Bug 233540.

Because of this, I cannot use Firefox under Windows 95 regularly :-(

Comment 6

[timeless]

oleaut32 is bug 212363 which should be fixed shortly.

Comment 7

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that since Microsoft has "abandoned"
support for Windows 95, and since we're talking about a 10 year old product, we
should probably not worry much about it. I'm sure there are plenty of 95 users
left, but the focus for Mozilla is on enhancing their products with new
features, most of which will no doubt require newer versions of Windows. In
addition, as was mentioned in comment 4, no Mozilla products run on an
out-of-box installation. Thus, I am WONTFIXing this bug.