Serve ESR to users on old desktop operating systems

[pmac]

In this bug the request is for bouncer to handle redirecting users requesting desktop firefox from Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, and MacOS 10.12 to 10.14 from release Firefox 115 and later to ESR 115. Due to the current state of our bouncer service, this may not be able to be accomplished before Firefox 116 is released and so they've asked us if it is possible for us to handle this change on the website. We'd need to change the download bouncer URL product from stub or full installer to ESR-115 for users on these operating systems. We'd also need to make sure that users who'd have normally received stub get the proper 32 or 64bit full installer since stub installer is the thing that makes sure that is correct normally, but there is no stub installer for ESR.

[alexgibson]

OK, breaking this down a little:

• This needs to launch some time after 115 ships, but before 116 (July 4th - August 1st).
• If the visitor is on <= Windows 8.1, or on <= macOS 10.14 then:
  • Replace Firefox release/beta/dev/nightly links with ESR-115.
  • Replace links for both stub and full installers.
  • Try to detect 32/64bit readiness, since ESR has no stub installer.

Does that sound right?

[alexgibson]

Another question: do we need to redirect people to ESR-115 explicitly, or would firefox-esr-latest-ssl be sufficient?

If we need to send them to 115, what would the bouncer URL be?

[alexgibson]

Possible UI treatments for a quick fix for Beta / Dev Edition / Nightly:

We could do the same for both Windows and macOS on the following pages:

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/
• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/

This would be shown to all users on Windows 8.1 and below, and macOS 10.14 and below. Then it would be up to them to visit the ESR page and choose the right installer. It would also hide the regular download button.

This might be more reliable than us trying to detect 32/64 bit using the UA string, which is unreliable.

[pmac]

Does that sound right?

Sounds right to me

Another question: do we need to redirect people to ESR-115 explicitly, or would firefox-esr-latest-ssl be sufficient?

I think that should be sufficient, but it may need to be the -next variant as that's what 115 will be for a few weeks. Though this will only work for the next year until the next ESR is released. So we probably should use the version-specific version of the bouncer URL. We'll find out what the right one is.

[pmac]

Possible UI treatments for a quick fix for Beta / Dev Edition / Nightly:

I like this. The only down side is that l10n won't be ready in time, but it's better than getting people the wrong build.