Keeping the software you use up to date is a crucial part of keeping yourself safe while browsing online. At Mozilla we work hard to help you get the most up to date version of Firefox and all the add-ons you have installed. For some time now security updates for Firefox have been installed without you needing to do anything. In Firefox 4 we made extension and theme updates behave similarly.
Plugins, like Flash, Quicktime and Java for example, are a little more difficult to update in this way though. They tend to require explicit permission to install new versions and so we haven’t quite gotten to the point of doing this completely automatically. Instead we developed the plugin check page which can quickly and easily tell you which of the plugins you have installed are old and need updating. It will also tell you where to go to update them.
The latest version of Firefox currently in beta makes it easier to get to the plugin check page. Simply go to the Add-ons Manager, click on the Plugins section and there is a link at the top of the page to check if your plugins are up to date.
What would the cons be for having the checks done automatically in the background and notifying the user that they’re outdated? Updates will still be manual, but the check doesn’t have to be.
It is so stupid to make users manually do this check.
I think browser should update plugins automatically, like it does with extensions.
> Plugins, like Flash, Quicktime and Java for example, are a little more difficult to update in this
> way though. They tend to require explicit permission to install new versions and so we haven’t
> quite gotten to the point of doing this completely automatically.
You are describing a reason without describing it: “They tend to require explicit permission” – and? What’s the problem?
Okay, maybe the cause is some legal shit that you can’t distribute 3rd party plugins, but how about starting a conversations with plugin-owners? Chrome is distributed with Adobe Flash, I think they have some kind of agreement – why can’t you sign the same agreement?
Okay, maybe the cause here is Mozilla’s religion – I don’t know, but why making a page which checks your plugins for updates, instead of integrating this feature inside of the browser?
Why can’t you make plugin-check run just like addons-check, but instead of auto-updating (like it happens to the extensions [unless you re-configured that behavior]) make it just INFORM the user, that “there is a newer version of your installed plugin … is available, Click this pop-up to visit the page where you can install this update”?
Why can’t you do it this way?
Make things _easier_. We don’t need no fucking smart page, that you have to remember to visit periodically, we need the automatism, we need the browser to do this check _automatically_.
Yep I totally agree that the ideal end state is for us to do everything automatically, this is a stepping stone along that way.
Oh, then it would be great.
Could you point me at the bug in bugzilla about that? It would be also awesome if you’d set some terms, for adding this feature, because without terms it will get forgotten “as it’s not a most important thing to do”.
There are a couple but this is probably the best bug to keep an eye on: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=602795
Thx for the link, seems like the bug is being ignored for a year buy now and may be ignored for years more, like it happens for the many bugs.