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Now, you need to know that Firefox 3.6 is no longer receiving security updates, making it vulnerable to hacks, viruses, Denial of service attacks, etc. Firefox 12 is the only version of Firefox receiving updates now. If it is extensions that you are having trouble with, the awesome thing is with Firefox 10, nearly all extensions (except for some edge cases) were marked as compatible with Firefox 10 and higher. This means if you have extensions that haven't been updated, there is a pretty good chance they will still work. In order to stay safe and secure, you should update to Firefox 12. you can even keep your old Firefox 3.6 on the computer in case mission-critical extensions don't work.

Firefox 3.6 is no longer supported

Common questions after upgrading from Firefox 3.6

I tracked the problem to my AV.

a few questions for you TylerDowner. since part of my post/question was that I dislike the newer versions of FF.

What is the benefit of switching to the newest version?

Safety?
Speed?
I think not as with the modern suit of anti-virus and anti-spyware products the browser is on a short leash with the system. whats more the new versions use more memory (and have horrible memory leaks).

I tested them in comparison all the way till FF 11 to cross compare on a virtual system. I have used FF since it was still in beta. When they switched to the RR cycle the quality went down the tubes (which fine for people who don't know any better I suppose).

You said "If it is extensions that you are having trouble with, the awesome thing is with Firefox 10, nearly all extensions (except for some edge cases) were marked as compatible with Firefox 10 and higher" this does not mean that they will run correctly (and they don't) but more importantly what it tells me is that instead of testing the browser with add-ons and continuing to work with the developers of add-ons they just said to hell with it and enabled them all. that is not professional that is lazy.

and as for the elimination of Hacking DOS attacks Etc. iIsincerely hope you are not part of the development team because the new versions are much more vulnerable to most actual malicious activity's (I tested them because that is part of what I do for a living). otherwise I would not Believe everything a company tells you is new and improved with their software before testing it. especially since the majority of the problems you listed are primarily directed at the website server not your browser so unless their browser protects servers you are visiting i would recheck your facts

so what is the benefit of a poorly designed , untested, unstable, and non-secure web browser?

just my two cents.

Well, let's address your comments :)

Firefox 12 is up to 7 times faster than Firefox 3.6. It includes a new JavaScript Engine, Hardware Acceleration, New rendering system, improved garbage collection, and lots of other improvements.

As for memory, there is actually a team called memshrink that is focusing on reducing the amount of memory that Firefox uses. Alot of their work has landed in Firefox already, but even more will be coming in the next few versions. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink.

You also aren't taking advantage of the new support for web standards, CSS, HTML5, even a dramatically improved spell checker.

As for Security, read the "Fixed in Firefox 12" section on https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox.html. These are all vulnerabilities that your Firefox version is vulnerable too, and anti-virus might not help protect you against.

As for Extensions, it isn't the responsibility of Mozilla to ensure that third-party extensions are kept up to date. With over 6,000 extensions, that would be a monumental task. However, It was decided that since most extensions will work from version update to version update, to simplify the process and just mark many of them compatible. http://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2012/02/03/improving-the-firefox-update-experience/. I can tell you from experience that most extensions I've used worked properly, even after not being updated. When they didn't, I either got an alternative, or the developer released a fix quickly.

Ok you seem fairly levelheaded so here is my counter points

from the top here we go 

"Firefox 12 is up to 7 times faster than Firefox 3.6. It includes a new JavaScript Engine, Hardware Acceleration, New rendering system, improved garbage collection, and lots of other improvements."

JägerMonkey is a complete failure. it is way to big and way too slow to be useful ( we will see how ionmonky comes out)

the hardware acceleration is only useful for "complex graphics" and utilizes the GPU (your OS already does this so it is redundant)

as for the new rendering system making Gecko move to the same schedule of RR cycles and re-branding it in line with the browser releases does not make it better. (for those who haven't noticed that gecko and FF have been the same Version number since 5)

garbage collection for the sake of attempting memory leaks is bad programing. you basically just try to bail out the lost memory before the user notices.

"As for memory, there is actually a team called memshrink that is focusing on reducing the amount of memory that Firefox uses"

Besides the fact the program has gotten so bad with memory in the first place.the front page for the MemShrink speaks for itself (the lions share of the issues they talk about are from V5.0 of FF and up as the subsequent patches to 3.6 eliminated most of its memory issues

"You also aren't taking advantage of the new support for web standards, CSS, HTML5, even a dramatically improved spell checker."

css and html5 are semi valid points. however the support for the newer alliteration of these protocols can be added (and should have been by Mozilla during its updates) this is not an issue of the browser being bad it is a sign of trying to make the new browser more appealing because of "new features" quite a pity really however those HTML5 is still a long way from becoming anything of a standard for web development (they don't even teach about it in universities yet)

a spellchecker.... um ok kinda valid but who cares (yes i realize some people think that is as important as sliced bread) but spell checks have been around for years what did they do make it so people can type worse and it still recognizes what they said?

"As for Security, read the "Fixed in Firefox 12" section on https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox.html. These are all vulnerabilities that your Firefox version is vulnerable too, and anti-virus might not help protect you against."

the security section is quite amusing to me so my question on that is when you release a browser on a RR cycle and don't test the new implemented code why are you curious when you find a large amount of security vulnerability's? there is no perfectly safe browser a person may think that the browser (or AV) they choose will keep them safe but in reality the more "features" you add the more vulnerabilities you create. this is how malicious hackers get into this new and "improved" software to begin with. o and the new version removes the UAC message from win 7 while updating (that is a brilliant idea for a program that has lowered its security standards) so when the update gets spoofed and it installs malware and there was no UAC (that will make a lot of people quite peeved) who is to blame. hackers will always be a step ahead that is how technology works so I am not impressed by someone who patches holes that they opened with "features"

i didn't say it was the responsibility of Mozilla to keep the programs up to date. however you are expecting smaller companies ( and in some cases individuals) to keep their code up to date with FF's new RR cycle. And now that they have just defaulted to "accept" for add-ons the compatibility is not assured (not big for mom and pop but it is for company's)

as a side note i started using FF because it was smaller faster and more secure than IE now it is larger and slower and not too much safer. i think that Mozilla has abandoned the concepts that made it appealing when it came out. and have instead gotten it in their heads that what people chose FF for in the first place is not as important as what Mozilla thinks we "need" here's a hint almost half of the people who use FF have not updated to the new releases that should be a clue in and of itself. say what you want about the new system and its benefits but me and more than 45% of the people using their program disagree about how it should work. i would say that is a large chunk of their demographic.

again just my two cents on the topic

"JägerMonkey is a complete failure. it is way to big and way too slow to be useful ( we will see how ionmonky comes out) "

I don't mean just JägerMonkey. There is also TypeInference. But, I do wonder what you mean by JägerMonkey being a complete failure. Whenever I use a JS heavy website (http://fir.sh/projects/jsnes/ for one) I notice a dramatic improvement from 3.6 to even Firefox 4 (and 12 is even better, though not so significant). And all major benchmarks agree, when you have JägerMonkey disabled, Firefox is way slower on JS tests than with it enabled.

"the hardware acceleration is only useful for "complex graphics" and utilizes the GPU (your OS already does this so it is redundant) "

Actually while your OS might already hardware accelerate (most don't, only Windows vista with some updates, and 7), they don't accelerate browser content. If they did, then you wouldn't notice a speed difference when you disabled Hardware acceleration in Firefox. Also, Windows XP doesn't hardware accelerate, but with the right graphics drivers, Firefox is able to accelerate some content (not as much as with a modern OS though). So yes, it might not accelerate everything, but it speeds up some of the slowest of web rendering, which is a nice bonus.

"as for the new rendering system making Gecko move to the same schedule of RR cycles and re-branding it in line with the browser releases does not make it better. (for those who haven't noticed that gecko and FF have been the same Version number since 5) "

The Rendering system doesn't have anything to do with rapid release. I'm referring to things like the new Retained Layers system and HTML5 parser that speed up page rendering and scrolling. http://robert.ocallahan.org/2010/07/retained-layers_16.html https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/HTML5/HTML5_Parser . The Gecko version number doesn't really matter anymore, as eventually Version numbers will become less relevant and Firefox will likely switch to a date-based versioning system (similar to Ubuntu).

"css and html5 are semi valid points. however the support for the newer alliteration of these protocols can be added (and should have been by Mozilla during its updates) this is not an issue of the browser being bad it is a sign of trying to make the new browser more appealing because of "new features" quite a pity really however those HTML5 is still a long way from becoming anything of a standard for web development (they don't even teach about it in universities yet) "

With Firefox 3.6, once it was released, it stopped receiving new feature updates (with the exception of the plugin container). New features are, and always have been, reserved for major updates (X.0.0 releases). You need to update to a new version of Firefox to gain these new web standards. It's been the same way since Firefox first came out.

And part of the reason HTML5 hasn't reached wide acceptance is because most people aren't running browsers that can use it. (remember the fiasco with IE6?). User's reluctance to update makes web developers hesitant before using new technologies. Yes it is somewhat a chicken or the egg scenario, i'll allow that ;)

And Universities are the last place where web standards are taught. In college two years go I was being taught to build websites using Frames (at the biggest tech college in the area). ;)

I mentioned the spell checker just as a small feature that really does help alot of people. I wouldn't base my whole argument on that feature alone, but it's a nice little touch :) "the security section is quite amusing to me so my question on that is when you release a browser on a RR cycle and don't test the new implemented code why are you curious when you find a large amount of security vulnerability's? "

If you actually look at pre-rapid release vulnerabilities, (https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox36.html covers 3.6) you'll see that some releases here also had some pretty major security holes. Rapid release has nothing to do with the amount of vulnerabilities. All Rapid Release builds take several months to build. Up to 6 weeks in nightly, 6 weeks in aurora, 6 weeks in Beta, then release. The weeks in Aurora and Beta are mainly for Testing, QA, bug fixes, etc. So Rapid Release really isn't as Rapid as it seems, features are baked for as long as 3 months (in some cases longer).

As for the UAC removal, Firefox isn't actually removing it. By separating the UAC prompt and actual updating process from Firefox and into a pre-approved service, it actually is doing what microsoft wanted to accomplish with UAC. Separating the part of a program that can make changes to a computer from the part that is used every day, the user giving approval to that program (given when you install Firefox 12) and updates taking place through that process. It is much better than say Chrome, which simply installs into a part of your computer that UAC can't monitor. And you can always turn the service off if you want the UAC prompt :)

Defaulting to compatible is something that should have been done a long time ago. If you read the blog post about it, you can see there are safe guards in place to make sure that an incompatible add-on doesn't sneak through (no binary, it has to be at least 4+ compatible, etc.). But again, it is the responsibility of the add-on maker to enure their add-ons actually work.

just because I like good debates and I like the counterpoints the reason i feel "JägerMonkey is a complete failure. it is way to big and way too slow to be useful ( we will see how ionmonky comes out) " is the developmental ideas behind it with JägerMonkey they tried to reinvent the wheel and come up with their own method of doing things. so while there is an apparent speed gain the long term gain is negligible as it is almost impossible to optimize. the use of tracemonkey while a little slower could be optimized in a fashion that others could customize it to their needs.with the info i have seen IonMonkey is going back to the older method of compiling thus allowing users to optimize it as they see fit.

HTML5 has been in development for years they still have not even defined the specifications for it yet and the arguments for compatibility will continue on well into 2014 or even 2016 i was trying to be optimistic and say it has some merit but html5 is effectively useless until they get their act together, developers will stick with xhtml and the other standardized protocols because they already exist and are proven.

as for RR even if the program had 6 months of bake time the new format has multiple versions being worked on simultaneously. the primary focus being on "new features" and not on its stability and security. how many years did they work on v2 and how many years were spent making V3 better. there is no way to say that 3 months compares to making an older system more stable over a year or more's time if a person needs extra functionality they can add it. that was the original premise (much like Linux you add what you need). instead it is now one large mess of fluff and "extra features"(again one of the reasons i got rid of IE to begin with)

pre-approved means all that is required it to get FF to install something and your computer allows it to do so without telling you. it is a hackers wet dream now they can have programs install with the authority of FF and your computer will just let it in. true UAC is not disabled but it will no longer stop threads from FF.

I read the blog but where does that leave all of the people using add-ons that are non 4 approved (ie. all the people using 3.6) as i had said previously i understand that it is their responsibility to make sure they work but how does Mozilla expect add-on makers to release updates every 6 weeks. unless they are doing it to weed out smaller developers.

my other points i believe are still valid sorry if i have offended you in any of these posts i dont know if you work for mozilla or are just being helpfull and like a good debate like i do.