Mozilla has pushed out its last planned update for Firefox 2.0, sending the venerable browser out to pasture. Naturally you can still use Firefox 2, but you’ll miss out on phishing protection, countless new features and, as of today, any more security updates.

If you’re still stuck with Firefox 2, whether it be because your network admin hasn’t upgraded or you’re using an older operating system that Firefox 3 doesn’t support, understand that Firefox 2 isn’t going to magically shut off. You can continue using Firefox 2 for as long as you like, it just won’t see any more security fixes.

The last update means that, as of today, Firefox 2 is no longer officially supported by Mozilla. So what do you get for your last Firefox 2 release? Mozilla’s notes say that “Firefox 2.0.0.20 includes an additional security fix over Firefox 2.0.0.19 for users of the Windows platform.” Mac and Linux users, it doesn’t appear anything has changed on your end.

If you haven’t upgraded to Firefox 3, we strongly suggest doing so as there’s quite a few new, worthwhile features, added security tools, some significant speed improvements and, by now, nearly all Firefox add-on have been updated to work with Firefox 3.

If Firefox 3 didn’t quite tickle your fancy, you could always give the bleeding edge Firefox 3.1 beta 2 a try. Most add-ons haven’t been updated to work with it yet, but we’ve been using it ever since it was released and have found it to be faster than 3.0 and reasonably stable for a beta release.

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