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Many people using Windows 7 recommend people using Windows XP to upgrade to Windows 7 and consider Windows XP obsolete. But can anyone of them really tell why to consider Windows XP obsolete? What technical improvements do Windows Vista or 7 have over Windows XP? An updated Start menu, which can be very well achieved using ViStart? Or some more eye-candy effects which can be very well achieved in Windows XP, just see http://www.askvg.com/transform-windows-xp-into-windows-7-without-using-customization-pack/

All this means that there is almost nothing in Windows 7 that can't be achieved on Windows XP. For BitLocker, there is a far superior alternative called TrueCrypt. For Snipping Tool, it has been ported to Windows XP with the use of Alky for Applications, or if you have Office 2010, just use Screen Clipping feature. For Windows Live Movie Maker, Windows Movie Maker 2.1 is still as powerful.

Let's look at the reverse side. Are there any things Windows XP can do and Windows 7 cannot. Yes, there is one thing that I know of that Windows 7 can't do; one software sending sound to multiple audio devices - see http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/5861360d-53c4-4998-bc78-6c208e79e895

Also, there are more things that Windows 7 can do, but are more difficult to do than in Windows XP or require 3rd party software. One such example is of File Types tab under Folder Options. The File types tab not only allowed you to change which file extension is opened by which application, but also allowed specifying parameters for executing that application to open the file and specifying another program for when the user right-clicks the file and selects another option other than Open. This is not possible in Windows 7, except for by manually editing the registry, which can be a nuisance if you have to do it for some file extensions.

AS for other things, there are some useful features that Windows XP supported natively but Windows 7 does not and requires extra software to do. An example is ability to add password to a ZIP file is removed in Windows 7 and requires third-party software like 7-Zip, WinRAR or WinZip to do so.
A good list of features can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_Vista

When it comes to application compatibility, Windows XP beats Windows 7 clearly, running both old and new software without any issues. Windows XP is also the only widely used operating system today which can run with good performance on older, not so powerful hardware.

There is nothing Windows 7 can do and Windows XP can't - my reason for not upgrading to Windows 7. It's a matter of shame that Microsoft did nothing really "new" in Windows Vista and 7 except for some DirectX improvements and Windows Aero.

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Microsoft kills Visual Studio Express - sort of; more on Visual Studio and it's future

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 10:59:32 AM

Visual Studio 11 is the upcoming version of Visual Studio. As we know, Visual Studio Express editions are the cut-down versions of Visual Studio. They are Visual C++ Express, Visual C# Express, Visual Basic Express and Visual Web Developer Express. These Express editions are used by many beginner developers, learning to develop applications with the help of books. These Express editions are still very good, I use Visual Web Developer, Visual C# and Visual C++ Express 2010 editions on my Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 and find them to be excellent - considering they are free. Put together simply, Microsoft has many many people using the Visual Studio Express products.

The bad news comes with Visual Studio 11. The full announcement is available at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/05/18/a-look-ahead-at-the-visual-studio-11-product-lineup-and-platform-support.aspx

Visual Studio 11 Express editions are only going to support developing Metro apps and as a result be available for Windows 8 and above only - except for Visual Web Developer Express (rebranded as Visual Studio 11 Express for Web, atleast for the time being) which continues to be able to create web applications and websites and be available for Windows 7.

What this necessarily means is that Microsoft has restricted Desktop application development to Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher. That means people will have to buy Visual Studio 11 if they want to develop desktop apps or stick on with Visual Studio 2010 Express - as Microsoft recommends to do.

As for Windows XP targeting, the announcement says:

"C++ developers can also use the multi-targeting capability included in Visual Studio 11 to continue using the compilers and libraries included in Visual Studio 2010 to target Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Multi-targeting for C++ applications currently requires a side-by-side installation of Visual Studio 2010. Separately, we are evaluating options for C++ that would enable developers to directly target XP without requiring a side-by-side installation of Visual Studio 2010 and intend to deliver this update post-RTM."

If the post-RTM update enables Visual Studio 11 to target Windows XP AND use all the enhanced features like C++11 support enhancements, Auto-vectorization - then it's a very good news and something vital for the success of Visual Studio 11.
If NOT, then it would be Visual Studio 11's failure + Microsoft will have to face huge criticism from technology news websites, angry developers who kept waiting in hope and many others.

Visual Studio 11 is, no doubt, not going to be as popular as it's predecessors. Reasons for it are it only runs on Windows 7 and above. Windows XP still runs on a significant number of computers. Other reasons are that most C# and VB.NET developers aren't going to upgrade to Visual Studio 11; OK there are 2-3 good enhancements available for .NET Framework 4.0 as well - but not enough to get Visual Studio 2010 users to upgrade. The rest of the major enhancements are part of .NET Framework 4.5 - which isn't going to be supported on Windows XP and Server 2003. Since Windows XP support is significant, Visual Studio 11 users who code just C# or VB.NET have to fall back to .NET Framework 4.0 as target - which restricts them from most enhancements. Left are C++ developers, who are still awaiting the FINAL decision from Microsoft (Microsoft is still evaluating the post-RTM update) and will then consider upgrade to Visual Studio 11 or not.
Simply put together, Microsoft has done some terrible mistakes both with it's development products and user products and is simply going to have a big loss.

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Microsoft - the future

Saturday, May 12, 2012 10:02:32 AM

We all know that Windows XP was Microsoft's most successful operating system ever which remained the most popular operating system in use for a decade (2001 - 2011).
Windows XP remained so popular because Microsoft released Windows Vista with a huge delay; the operating system which was to be released in sometime around late 2004 - early 2005 arrived on retail in early 2007.
Windows Vista was criticized heavily for it's annoying User Account Control feature, incompatibility with software, for being slow and so on. The cause for the software incompatibility was that some software vendors had not updated their programs to work with Windows Vista and the big software vendors, had added Windows Vista support very recently at that time - so users were required to update to newer versions. These complaints were resolved to a good enough extent by 2008 with most software vendors offering updates/service packs for previous versions of their software - allowing them to run on Windows Vista.

But all this was a huge loss for Microsoft. Microsoft had to extend Windows XP Mainstream support because of it's popularity - allowing Windows XP users to have Internet Explorer 8, Visual Studio 2010 (Visual Studio 2010 alone means a lot), Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Live Essentials 2009 and other improvements like Windows Installer 4.5, exFAT file system support (via update), Silverlight 5 and some more of them.

In 2009, Microsoft released Windows 7. At the time of Windows 7's release, the conditions were better - processors were faster so performance was fine even on low-end systems; almost all software vendors had updated their software to run on Windows Vista (Windows 7 is compatible with most software that are compatible with Windows Vista). Also Microsoft removed Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker and such programs making it less bloated. Windows 7 was considered to be well enough to upgrade from Windows XP. Windows 7 started to gain popularity among users.

Okay, the post's title is about future and I am talking about past. No, the discussion is really about future of Microsoft products.

Today, Windows XP is losing popularity to Windows 7.

Microsoft has dropped support for Windows XP from it's upcoming and current products - Visual Studio 11/2012 (including .NET Framework 4.5), SQL Server 2012, Internet Explorer 9 and above, Windows Live Essentials 2011 and above. More products to drop support very soon.

Out of the above, Microsoft has restricted some products like Visual Studio 11/2012 and Internet Explorer 10 to Windows 7 and above alone. What does this mean?

This is a clear indication that if users want the latest and greatest software from Microsoft, they will need to upgrade to newer versions of Windows every 5-6 years.

Office 2012 will be the last version for Windows Vista. Visual Studio 2010 is the last version for Windows Vista. Internet Explorer 9 is the last version for Windows Vista. SQL Server 2012 is the last version for Windows Vista.

For Windows 7, things can vary, for example, if Windows 8 just experiences a terrible fail on the desktop. If that happens, it will be like Windows 7 saying will be the second XP for which the support will be extended and Windows 8 will be the second Vista whose customers will be angry. So I won't make any definite statement for what products are going to support Windows 7.

Now let's discuss about Windows itself in the future - rather than support for Windows in Microsoft products.

Windows 8 is going to be the next version of Windows, and the first version of Windows to bring a new application framework other than the desktop applications, Metro apps handled by WinRT (Windows Runtime). The geeks and developers will ofcourse know how to disable it, or find a use for it. This is not the big change - the big change is that Start menu is being removed. Again, geeks will know some software can bring back the Start menu.

However, the average user would probably be puzzled figuring out how to access the Start menu (and will be disappointed - there is no Start menu!). Not everybody is a computer geek. Unless, Microsoft adds some guide thoroughly introducing these changes in Windows 8, users are going to be puzzled up.

If Windows 8 RTM will be identical to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (except for a few bugfixes, performance improvements and shipping with IE 10 RTM instead of IE 10 Consumer Preview), then it's just unknown what will happen to Windows 8.

12 comments

Avast! 7.0.1426 released

Thursday, March 8, 2012 1:46:26 PM

Yesterday, the release of Avast! version 7.0.1426 was announced by the Avast! team announced on the Avast! Forums.

The release does not include any features but only improvements and fixes. The release notes can be found at: http://www.avast.com/en-us/release-history

The highlight of the release is Compatibility with Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

Other than that it has fixes for issues with the Avast! plugins for Outlook, improvements for Avast! AutoSandbox and some general improvements.

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Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Metro applications

Monday, March 5, 2012 4:38:51 AM

While in my "Windows 8 Consumer Preview - the details and the review" post I couldn't cover Metro applications, in a comment on that post Nimesh Thakkar shared a link explaining how to get 1024 x 768 resolution on netbooks. It worked for me and now I can share details about Metro Applications pre-included by Microsoft too.

1. Internet Explorer 10 Immersive/Metro

After the page loading is completed, Internet Explorer 10 Metro browser looks identical to Opera's fullscreen mode - except that moving the pointer shows the scrollbar in Internet Explorer 10 Metro.
Right-clicking in a blank space on the page shows the Tab bar and the navigation bar.

Clicking on the webpage again hides the Tab bar and navigation bar. During when the page is loading, only the navigation bar is shown. It is also possible to pin the webpage to the Metro Start Screen by clicking the Pin button to the right of the Reload button.

When you click on the URL in the navigation bar, a screen similar to Internet Explorer's New Tab page is displayed.

2. Windows Store Application

The Windows Store Application, as it's name says is used for installing Metro Apps. It also automatically check for updates and notifies of any updates available for currently installed applications.

There are more than enough applications available right now, considering that Windows 8 is still in Consumer Preview stage.

The Store app is a live tile. Live tiles are tiles that update themselves with new content from the server when available - for example; the Weather and Finance app tiles.

The Store app live tile shows number of updates available for installed apps.

In the above screenshot, you can also see the Weather and Finance live tiles. To install these updates, open the Store app. In the top right corner, you can see 'Updates (X)' - where X is the number of updates. Clicking on the link shows the updates available and allows you to install them.

3. Mail application

The Mail application when opened shows messages in your Hotmail Inbox. I couldn't find a way to manually add other e-mail accounts.

4. Maps application

The Maps application shows data from Bing Maps. I couldn't use the application because it said "This app is not available in your market".

5. Skydrive application

The Skydrive application allows you to add and open files from your Windows Live Skydrive account. It can also save files from Skydrive to your computer. However, it cannot delete files from Skydrive which is really bad. I hope the features are enhanced in the Windows 8 RC.

6. Windows Reader application

This is indeed my favourite Microsoft developed sample Metro application. It allows you to open XPS or PDF documents.

Following is a screenshot of the Opera Q4 2011 PDF report opened in Windows Reader-

This is a good PDF/XPS reader and is suitable for basic daily work. ~~However, it does not support printing PDF/XPS - so if you need to print PDF documents; you still need a full PDF reader.~~Press Ctrl + P to print (thanks to a reply as MS Answers).

These are the pre-included apps I have tried out. Beside these there are other pre-included apps like Photos, Video, People, Remote Desktop, Messaging - most requiring a Windows Live ID.

Overall, the Metro platform is very powerful yet light on system resources. The Metro platform awesomeness has just begun.

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Windows 8 Consumer Preview - the details and the review

Sunday, March 4, 2012 4:13:06 AM

I just downloaded and installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and would like to share details and images with you all.

I installed Windows 8 on a separate partition on my system. The installation process took less than 15 minutes to complete. Then the PC restarted two times to complete configuring registry, devices and other settings and it look only 10 minutes for it to complete. After the configuration was complete a wizard appeared asking me to pick some personalization options, sign-in to my Windows Live ID account to integrate it and either accept the default settings for Windows Update, SmartScreen Filter etc. or choose these settings on my own. After I had done all this it took 2-3 minutes for preparing Windows. I must say that the whole process from the installation to here was quite smooth, fast and pleasing. So after 'Preparing Windows' process was over, I then saw the Metro Start Screen.

I installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a netbook with maximum limit of 1024 x 600 resolution. So I can't access any Metro applications. Clicking on any Metro application tile leads to -

So I am currently looking for something that allows me to use these Metro applications.

Anyways, a lot of you might have read that Windows Explorer in Windows 8 uses the Microsoft Ribbon UI like in Microsoft Office 2007. Personally, I like this change.

And some useful options have been added too, for instance see-

As you might have seen in the above screenshots, there is no Start Orb in the taskbar - Microsoft has really removed it. Not very good as we all are quite used to it. An option would be nice.

Switching between the Metro Start Screen and the Desktop is quite simple. Pressing the Windows key switches to the Metro screen while pressing Windows key + D combination switches to the Desktop.

The Metro Start Screen might not be that bad for IT Pros and administrators as well. For instance it is possible to show all administrative tools on the Start Screen too - so they get quicker access to these Windows utilities. It is possible to un-pin the default apps on the Start Screen as well, so if they want they can use the Start Screen only for quicker access to these utilities and settings as well.

The Shutdown, Sleep etc. options might be harder to locate when using Windows 8 for first time for the average user.

Windows 8, unsurprisingly also has a Metro Control Panel which can be accessed by clicking the 'More PC settings' button in the above screenshot.

Enough of Metro UI for now. Microsoft has done much work in Windows 8 besides the Metro UI and StartScreen.
As you see in the above screenshot, there is a button to 'Create a picture password'. This is one of the new features of Windows 8. Rather than I explaining what it is and how it works, I recommend viewing the official post from Microsoft at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/12/16/signing-in-with-a-picture-password.aspx on how the feature works.

Then Windows 8 has also got native USB 3.0 support - so now you don't need to hunt for USB 3.0 drivers from the manufacturer's website like in Windows XP, Vista and 7.

While copying and deleting files in Windows 8 - it now gives an enhanced view of the speed and it is also possible to pause and resume the copy/delete operations.

The Task Manager in Windows 8 has also been enhanced.

Softpedia has shared many screenshots of Task Manager as well as details and anyone interested can see more screenshots of Task Manager at http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-8-Consumer-Preview-Task-Manager-256299.shtml

Windows 8's included Windows Defender is actually Microsoft Security Essentials. That means Windows 8 has anti-virus protection built-in.

Windows 8 also introduces system-managed storage spaces and pools. An explanation of the feature better than my explanation can be found at-
http://www.ghacks.net/2012/01/06/windows-8-storage-spaces-what-you-need-to-know/
Also see http://www.ghacks.net/2012/01/06/why-windows-8s-storage-spaces-tool-should-be-used-only-with-care/

The official article about the feature can be found at the Building Windows 8 blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/05/virtualizing-storage-for-scale-resiliency-and-efficiency.aspx

My favourite features in Windows 8 are Reset and Refresh the PC - which can be accessed from the Metro Control Panel.

Refresh your PC backs-up your personal data, some Windows settings and Metro apps, re-installs Windows and then puts your data back into place and configures Windows according to the settings backup up.
Reset your PC erases the partition and re-installs Windows. Reset your PC option also allows you to do a thorough erase in case you are selling the PC and don't want data to be recoverable by a file recovery program.

These options are great to fix unusual problems in Windows, corrupt Windows installations and other problems when you are using an OEM copy of Windows and cannot use the System recovery option provided by the OEM or accidentially have deleted the recovery partition.

EDIT: Windows 8 32-bit has 16-bit application support disabled by default. Whenever you try to run a 16-bit application; Windows will ask you if you want to enable 16-bit applications or not.

To try it yourself, press Windows key + R to open Run, type setver and press Enter.

That's most of the details. For some details on Metro applications see http://my.opera.com/Swapnil99pro/blog/2012/03/05/windows-8-consumer-preview-metro-applications

Windows 8's 64-bit version will also support Hyper-V and it is possible to enable Hyper-V in Windows 8 Consumer Preview x64 from Turn Windows features on or off dialog.

Hyper-V included in Windows 8 Client has some requirements as per http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/07/bringing-hyper-v-to-windows-8.aspx -

Windows 8 64-bit edition (not supported on 32-bit)
4 GB of RAM
Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) must be supported by processor

The 3rd requirement is not really good - that only the newer PCs will be able to use Hyper-V. According to Wikipedia, only the very modern range of processors from Intel and AMD support SLAT. Hopefully, Microsoft should release a path allowing Hyper-V to be used on non-SLAT capable processors. It's very much possible and easy for Microsoft to do.

Overall Microsoft has done a great amount of work in Windows 8. The performance is very smooth and switching between the Metro Start Screen and the Desktop is very fast so it doesn't slow down the system - even on a netbook. While Microsoft has done major amounts of work on the Metro platform - it hasn't forgotten about the desktop features as well. The removal of the Start menu altogether - though not a very big change; might upset IT Pros and administrators for sometime until they get used to the Metro Start Screen.

I feel Windows 8 is a great improvement over Windows 7 and everybody must give it a try.

If I find any more things to share while I use Windows 8, I will add it to this blog post.

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Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5 drop Windows XP and Vista Support

Wednesday, February 29, 2012 5:59:36 PM

Windows 8 Beta on 29 February - this was the hot discussion on various tech blogs and forums.
Today, Windows 8 Beta was made available - along with Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5 Betas too were made available as expected so that developers can try them out.

Unfortunately, Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5 are only officially compatible with Windows 7 and above. That means applications made with Visual C# 11, Visual Basic 11, Visual F# 11 and Visual C++ 11 Windows Forms applications targeting new features in .NET Framework 4.5 (which is the default build configuration in Visual Studio; though it can be changed to an older .NET Framework version too) cannot run on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

This also affects Microsoft Silverlight - the next major version of Silverlight will also drop official support for Windows XP and Vista.

Surprisingly, Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5 can be installed on Windows 7 RTM as per the system requirements and it might be possible to install both of them on Windows Vista SP2 + Platform Updates also.

While it might be possible to install and use Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5 on Windows Vista SP2 with some modifications in registry or the MSI package - Windows XP users are surely out of luck; it's impossible to utilize the greatest new features of Visual Studio 11.

It is currently unclear if Visual C++ 11 will support Windows XP and Vista for Win32 applications.

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Microsoft kills Windows Vista Compatibility Center

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 12:16:04 PM

I was just trying to help a user running Windows Vista at Microsoft Answers having problem with one of his netbook's in-built webcam. As I usually would - I went to the Windows Vista Compatibility Center to look out for some information to see if there were any updated drivers for Windows Vista; as the netbook manufacturer's website did not contain webcam drivers for the exact netbook model.

This is not something odd; Windows Vista Compatibility Center was really great for finding out driver downloads - and especially I have encountered situations where even after searching the Web for hours there were no driver downloads available (especially common with some older Lexmark printers - not that older though, the Windows Vista compatible ones) ; while searching for the device in Windows Vista Compatibility Center would immediately give me the download link that I could then refer to the person asking for those device drivers at Microsoft Answers.

This time it was really shocking however.

Just went to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-vista/ and saw:

The page says that the Windows Vista Compatibility Center is no longer available and instead tries to convince users to upgrade to Windows 7.

It's a recent incident as the the last time I used Windows Vista Compatibility Center to help a user was on January 14, 2012. So this took place between mid-January to early February.

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Hardware acceleration on the Web - does it mean anything to the average user now?

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 12:47:49 PM

This article only focuses on the present status of hardware acceleration.

Hardware acceleration - many of us have read this term on various technical blogs and many of us know what it is. For those who don't know, hardware acceleration means that the hardware which is faster than software is used to perform the the computations. In the case web browsers, as per http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/09/hardware-acceleration/ it is typically the Content and composting acceleration - content acceleration means faster rendering of the elements of the webpage while composting acceleration means faster putting up the rendered chunks of content. This is just the typical usage of hardware acceleration; some browsers may use hardware acceleration for more purposes too.

This altogether means that webpages render faster when the browser uses hardware acceleration. But is the comparison between rendering time for normal webpages when using the normal software rendering (ie. CPU doing all the work) and when using hardware acceleration of any major significance?

NO. While hardware acceleration might give you a 60 fps on the IE Testdrive Speed Demos or on the Mozilla hardware acceleration stress test - it does not significantly speed up the rendering of normal webpages and does not enhance the web experience to a considerable level.

OK, even when we forget the normal webpages, HTML5 ported games such as Cut the Rope work great in Internet Explorer 9 here - even when "Use software rendering instead of GPU rendering" checkbox was selected under Internet Options > Advanced tab.

Though hardware acceleration doesn't give much benefits, it has disadvantages.

If the CPU isn't processing the computations, then who is? Well, it's the graphics card or GPU. So the GPU now has got more work to do. BUT the issue is that GPU will require more power to do the computations while the CPU would take less power to do the same computations - though at a slower rate. That doesn't matter for the desktop computers - but the battery charge on notebooks and netbooks is reduces faster when hardware acceleration is used.

Thanks to QuHno for making a comment on my blog and sharing this information. Quoting him-

I don't understand the hype about HWA. I have benchmarked several of the browsers that already have HWA built in and the result was less than impressive when it came to rendering speed or reaction time of the browser UI. The only thing HWA did on my test system (Phenom II 6core, ATI 6990, 8GB, w7x64 - so no slow or incompatible system) was to consume more computing power which in turn consumes more energy (I measured up to 30% higher energy consumption of the HWA enabled browsers in comparison to their direct predecessors), which is bad for the environment and for the duration you can stay online with i.e. a laptop or a tablet in battery mode. Furthermore there is hardly any application in the web - may be apart from some geeky test pages - that can make a real use of HWA.

Also, very less people can use hardware acceleration.

According to StatCounter, more than 28% of the world is using web browser versions that do not support hardware acceleration.
According to Net Applications, more than 49% of the world is using web browsers versions that do not support hardware acceleration.

Out of the remaining users, very less have graphic cards that can support hardware acceleration (though Opera aims to provide Direct3D 9 acceleration providing acceleration on many systems - Opera has low popularity and might still have to blacklist many cards causing crashes with hardware acceleration).

Now out of these users, using both a modern browser as well as a newer computers with new graphic cards capable of hardware acceleration - there few who update the graphic drivers. Ofcourse, the main point of this article was in the average user's view - tech geeks surely update graphics drivers; if they can - if their graphics card can support acceleration.

So there is a very low percentage of users actually using hardware acceleration on the Web.

The conclusion is that hardware acceleration might prove useful in the future but for now, atleast on the Web - it does not have much to do.

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Firefox 12 - last supported version for Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM and SP1 users

Saturday, January 28, 2012 2:23:50 PM

I might not have linked to my Neowin profile earlier, but I do have a user profile at Neowin.net - ofcourse with the same username 'Swapnil99pro'. I visit the Neowin forums weekly as there more of discussions rather than people asking support. Today I visited the forums and found something really interesting. That was a thread about Mozilla discontinuing support for Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM and Windows XP SP1 with the thread poster stating Asa Dotzler's blog as the source.

Quoting the entry at Asa Dotzler's blog-

"For a number of years we've held off on updating our Windows toolchain to a newer version of Visual Studio, and in so doing preserved support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM and SP1. Firefox developers and the 99.6% of our Windows users have paid a price for this support, though. Our developers have not been able to take advantage of new compiler features and have had to struggle to keep valuable optimizations from breaking -- including having had to back out and ultimately delay some important new features like SPDY. Our users have have suffered a slower Firefox than would be possible as both direct and indirect results of moving to a more modern compiler.

So this week, after a few months of discussion and evaluation of the latest Firefox user numbers and the pros and cons of moving our tools forward, I've called for Mozilla to begin the process for ending support on those older Windows version. Next Tuesday or Wednesday, after Firefox 12 moves to Aurora, the Mozilla Release Engineering team will begin upgrading our Windows build systems to Visual Studio 2010. With VS2010, we will no longer be able to build a Firefox that runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM, and Windows Service Pack 1.

It's always a difficult decision to leave some users behind. The number of Firefox users on those OS versions -- less than one half of one percent of our Windows Firefox users, and the benefits to our development process and the hundreds of millions of Firefox users on XP SP2 and above, however, compel us to look forward rather than back.

If you are a Windows 2000 user, Firefox 12, released on June 5th, will be the final supported Firefox release. After that, your options are limited. Switching to Opera is probably the best path forward.

If you're a Windows XP user still on RTM or Service Pack 1, I strongly urge you to install the free Windows Service Pack updates.

And finally, for Enterprises adopting the ESR, these older Windows versions will be supported for the length of the first ESR of Firefox. That works out to an extra 6 months or so before these Windows versions become unsupported."

So Firefox 13 and above will use Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 for build purposes. Applications made in Visual C++ 2010 are targeted at Windows XP SP2 and above. So that means Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM and Windows XP SP1 users are stuck with Firefox 12, except if those Windows XP RTM or SP1 users update to SP2 or SP3.

Actually they are doing this because the compiler they were previously using hit 3GB virtual address space limit, the maximum limit for 32-bit systems; making the compiler crash - as per http://blog.kylehuey.com/post/14453464655/pushing-compilers-to-the-limit-and-beyond

I support the decision, as long as Windows XP SP2 users do not have to install anything extra like Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable packages.

EDIT: As per http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mozilla-Switches-Firefox-to-Visual-Studio-2010-to-Fix-Virtual-Address-Space-Issue-249749.shtml Mozilla is currently (remember it is Firefox 13 which will use Visual C++ 2010) using Visual C++ 2005!!!

I don't know if Opera still uses Visual C++ 2005 or not. If Opera uses Visual C++ for development on Windows, then it might have used Visual C++ 2005 at the time of Opera 10.60 to maintain compatibility with Windows 98, 98 SE and ME. It might be still be using it - 64-bit development is possible in Visual C++ 2005 also; so 64-bit Opera Labs builds does not exactly prove an upgrade to Visual C++ 2008.

But Opera does not seem to have any issues with the linker over virtual memory access space - so no need for Opera to upgrade even IF it hasn't.

For Mozilla, it was essential to find a solution to the problem. I do not say that Mozilla made a wrong step at doing so- but when it says - "For a number of years we've held off on updating our Windows toolchain to a newer version of Visual Studio, and in so doing preserved support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM and SP1" - I do not really like it.

Why? Because Mozilla could have migrated to Visual C++ 2008 with Firefox 3.5 itself - when it had already discontinued Windows 98, 98 SE and ME with release of Firefox 3. I don't really know whether Visual C++ 2008 would solve the virtual memory address space limit problem, but as per the bug reports at Mozilla, there were no tests done with Visual C++ 2008; all replies relating to switching to a newer Visual Studio version - did not provide any details about errors when compiling with Visual C++ 2008 - they only talked about Visual C++ 2010.

Applications compiled with Visual C++ 2008 are Windows 2000 SP4+ compatible.

What I have problem is with that without testing with Visual C++ 2008, it directly skipped to Visual C++ 2010 (not a problem for me so far) - but then said that they were kind of forced to drop support for Windows 2000 and XP RTM, SP1 - without even testing with VC++ 2008.

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