Firefox and OSX 10.8.5

For probably a multitude of reasons Mozilla has decided it no longer wants to work older versions of OSX. That sucks! I have an old MacBook Air that I use frequently and recently Firefox stopped working on Facebook and ESPN even though I had changed nothing. While Chrome seems to be working OK, I don't use it much and Safari works but who cares. I want my Firefox! So after a little digging I came upon this post which worked for me.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/best-browser-for-os-x-mountain-lion-in-2016.1985353/

The bottom line is - this is what I did and it ended up working for me.

1) Download the latest version of Firefox from the Mozilla site. It will complain and try to discourage you from downloading it but go ahead and download it anyway. This will download a .dmg file.

2) Open the .dmg file and drag it to your applications folder. In my case it had a big circle with an X through it but I dragged it over anyway. I am fearless.

3) If you now try to run it (again, in my case it said Firefox 3 with an ugly X through it) it will fail. This is because it wants a minimum OSX of 10.9. Boo! To fix this find where the new Firefox folder is (on my system it was /Applications NOT Applications!) Then inside that directory (typically called Firefox Bla.app where Bla in my case was space 3) you will see an Info.plist file. Open this with a text editor or if you have one, a plist editor (I prefer a command line type like VI since these don't do anything stupid, other editors sometimes try to convert the file or add an extension to it) and find the line that shows the minimum operating system version. In my case it was 10.9. Change this value to your OSX version. In my case this was 10.8.5.

4) Once you have done this, OSX will be the next obstacle. It will say things like file is corrupted move it to the trash, or other scary stuff. You can ignore this. The issue here is simply an OSX security setting. By default OSX doesn't like to run downloaded applications. To fix this click the Apple logo in the upper left to and select system preferences. Then select the security and privacy icon. Make sure you click on the lock on the lower left of this pop up dialog and enter your password. This allows you to alter the settings. It also makes the Advanced button clickable. Then click the Advanced button and from there click the General tab. Here you will see why you are having issues. Simply check the Allow Downloaded Applications checkbox and then close this dialog and click the lock again to once again lock your settings. Now OSX will allow you to run this application you just downloaded from the internet. Note that in certain cases it might actually have a checkbox for the Firefox application you just downloaded. If so, check that, otherwise it will just have a generic Applications Downloaded checkbox, but hopefully you get the point.

5) Now you should be able to use Launchpad or finder to start your new version of Firefox. Make sure you have quit any other versions of Firefox you might have had running. You can do this by right clicking the Firefox icon in the docker and selecting Quit.

6) Just to be safe here you should reboot your computer. All we have left to do now is modify one Firefox configuration parameter and we should be good to go. Once your computer has rebooted, again, make sure there are no Firefox icons showing in the dock. So if you are sure there are no other versions of Firefox running proceed to the next and final step.

7) Start the new version of Firefox we just installed (I typically use Launchpad). It will probably say it crashed. This is expected. In the address bar type about:config. This will bring up a scary warning page which we will click to accept the responsibility of altering a configuration setting. Now in the search box near the top of this page type in autostart. You should see several options listed. Find the one that says browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2 and change its value from true to false by simply clicking the value column.

Now you should close this page (maybe open it again to verify the change actually changed) and then shut down Firefox. Again, you do this by right clicking its icon in the dock and selecting Quit.

The next time you restart Firefox everything should be fine. A bit of a pain in the ass but not too difficult to accomplish.

Now keep in mind I have no idea what long term issues might happen but I followed these instructions and everything seems to be working fine for me. Facebook and ESPN once again work so that is all I really cared about. I suspect there might be some issues I run up against in the future and if that happens I will add a new post describing what I have found but for now everything seems to be working OK. It even retained all my settings, bookmarks, passwords, etc.

WooHoo!