Processing Forum doesn't like my Windows-7 PC

My favourite computer is running Windows-7 and Firefox 115.32.Oesr. Recently the Processing Forum has declared this as unsupported, shows in a miserable format, and doesn’t allow posting.

I understand that testing on all old versions of browser is not possible, but was it necessary to go this far? Could ‘you’ have put up a notice to the effect of ‘Not supported, some things may not work’. I’m sure most things will work. If anything doesn’t work the interested users will have a topic to list what doesn’t work and discuss any workarounds.

The ideal of Processing.org is programming education for all. ‘All’ may include people who can’t afford to keep changing their PCs (as Microsoft require). The forum should not be pushing people to buy new PCs.

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Hello Richard,

Please elaborate.

Is this (link below) the message you saw or similar?

My research…

Discourse has its own browser support policy and targets only current versions of modern browsers.

Unsupported operating systems and browsers carry security risks which is why modern software and services eventually stop supporting them.

References:

“The only constant in the universe is change.”
Attribution: commonly attributed to Heraclitus

“The only thing that’s permanent in life is impermanence.”
Attribution: Thor Odinson, Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Roll with it - Idioms by The Free Dictionary

I’m interested in hearing about any workarounds or solutions to this.

:)

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This is posted using Firefox 140.4.0esr (32 bit) on an very old PC (over 15 years) running Antix Linux.

Can’t you upgrade to a newer Firefox esr version?

Security is unfortunately not the only reason; Discourse is pushing all kinds of fancy stuff that nobody (my opinion) is waiting for and that requires newer browsers.

Hi @RichardDL,

I hear your frustration about the forum no longer working properly on your setup.

The forum is hosted on Discourse, and we do not control their software updates or browser support decisions. There is no intention on our part to push people to buy new hardware.

If you would like to raise concerns about browser support, the right place to do that is directly with the Discourse team: https://meta.discourse.org/

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.

(Raphaël)

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From Dropping iOS 15 & other old browsers in July 2025 - Announcements - Discourse Meta

Further, Firefox 140.4.0esr seems to be available for Windows.

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