A very sensible move
Most people can run a much newer browser anyway.
Beginning August 1, Google's online Apps suite will only support the current stable version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer and the previous major release of each of these browsers. This means that on that date, the suite will no longer support Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3 or any older …
Whether it works or not is another, gmail still works pretty much fine in IE6, support really just means whether they go out of their way to make it work or not...and means whether they can wash their hands of it if their system doesn't work right for you, I wouldn't be too worried....the other alternative for gmail users is to use a mail client other than their browser for gmail.
You're right, and furthermore, from what I understood when they announced they were ditching support for IE6, it is largely only 'new features' that may not be supported, rather than an entire app.
So, for example, whereby IE6 does indeed run gmail just fine, it does not pick up my 'theme', displaying the standard blue one instead.
And, of course (at least for gmail), you have the HTML only version as a fall-back.
My point is that although some new features and stuff may not work, I think most of Google's apps will continue to 'function' in older browsers for quite some time.
in all the Google sites I know. The problem is, they actively prevent it working by sending bad code to Opera when it detects Opera UA (User Agent), you can get Opera to report itself as Firerfox (or IE, but Firefox is usually a closer match to how Opera likes it;'s code), and Google sites work just fine.
Google need to stop intentially breaking Opera. I wonder what they are afraid of?
I just wish Google would sort out their browser sniffing. The Google sites work just fine when I spoof Opera as Firefox.
All this achieves, is Opera is lower and Firefox is higher in the site ratings, as developers browser sniff, and end-users change their UA to workaround it.
Google fail.
Yep, that is one awesome memory leak.
But I could always kill the process (have windows task manager minimized as I type this; little fight with FF3.6 earlier.)
What pissed me off was randomly moving crap around so that I actually had to find the homepage icon for the first week of use.
Why is that Mozzilla? Boredom? The wish to go all Microsoft on the end user just this once? Adding some pain with that memory leak?
Then two more weeks finding the homepage icon after giving up on 4; I thought we could customize this thing, a bit, a little, whatever.
So yeah, find a place to put the damn homepage icon and stick to it and try to make 4 stable before pushing 5 down the pipe.
Someone, say a company that funds up to 88% of the Mozilla Foudation*, thought it was a good idea to turn the efficient experience of Firefox 3.x into something a lot worse, so users would flock to their other - more efficient - browser instead?
Of course that contract is also coming to a term this year and Mozilla has made noises of going with Bing instead in the past, so the evil mastermind may lie somewhere else.
Either way the cynical in me just doesn't get how Mozilla can be almost fully funded by companies producing rival browsers and still maintain any sort of integrity or independence.
To be fair they don't appear to be Google's lapdog, having rejected WebP so publicly**, however they still may meet on longer term strategic interests.
* http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/google-makes-up-88-percent-of-mozillas-revenues-threatens-its-non-profit-status/
** http://muizelaar.blogspot.com/2011/04/webp.html
Firefox 4 is actually very stable. The issue you're experiencing is likely to be elsewhere.
Before you blame it, try disabling the extensions that you use and ensure that you have the latest graphics drivers installed.
If that works, enable the extensions one-by-one until you find any culprits.