GUEST,Jon wrote: Is a time going to come when http is banished and https becomes compulsory?

I doubt it, and I certainly hope not. There are thousands of unsupported http websites out there. Most (all?) if the 'insecure' warnings I see in Firefox are due to 'mixed content' - http content embedded in https pages. That's usually just carelessness. But TV licensing just withdraw their website because of just such an error.

...an extended support release which stays a couple of versions behind the main release

The ESR releases are updated with all security fixes simultaneously with the 'release' version; they don't contain other changes or new features - those are updated every year and users are given 3 months - 2 releases - to test it.

If you need to use an old version of Firefox, for a no-longer-supported feature or proticol, choose the last ESR point release - eg 38.8.0, 45.9.0, 52.9.0.