How mozilla decides to offer me an ESR download insdead of regular version?

Question

I have noticed something strange , when using IE11 Dev images from modern.ie website . When i navigate to Firefox Download page , and click a Download button , the version i am being offered is an Extended Support Release .

Why is this happening ? How the page decides what version to offer ? Will this happen to all Windows 8 users ? or it is happening because i am running a Dev image of Windows 8 ?

I am asking this because our software depends on Mozilla Firefox registry values , and the values of the ESR version are different . I am trying to get hold of Native Windows 8 version to check if this happens there .

Answer 1

I belive that it's the same way that a website detects what java/flash player/shockwave plugin version your using, they have a script witch detect's what browser you have and try to sugest a download for you.

The browser usually is detected by parsing the "Browser Agent" string, witch is something like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0

If you wish to see yours search in google for "My Browser Agent"or use this site http://www.whatsmyuseragent.com/. My best guess is that happened to you because your using the IE11 Dev the Browser Agent string is not in the script that detects your browser and sugested you something you didn't wanted, or it's intentional.

A personal example, i sometimes use Firefox Beta releases (i still have Beta 32 installed, currently FF is at version 31) and one of these days i was formating my laptop and i was downloading all the programs i usually need, by visiting firefox site using the Beta they said that my Firefox was outdated and i was using version 27 of firefox.

In summary yes it can happen, to some users if they don't use the "mainstream" browsers (or if you use some extension that changes the Browser Agent) but it wont happen to everyone.