
Mozilla plans to silently update Firefox - danh
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180272/Mozilla_plans_to_silently_update_Firefox
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ajg1977
Good for Mozilla, I hope this doesn't get dropped from 4.0 due to deadlines or
other reasons. Making it easy and fuss free for users to get security updates
for your product may not be a sexy feature but it is a great one.

The reason Safari is the browser that takes the longest for users to apply
security updates is because at least on the Mac, most (all?) require a reboot.
I still have't updated to 5.01 because of this. Not good. Not good at all.

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risotto
This is excellent, assuming it works like Chrome.

The updates are silently downloaded in the background, and applied the next
time you restart the browser.

This behavior can be disabled fully. It doesn't interrupt your work at all,
never even alerting you that there is a new version it's downloading or a new
version that's running.

This is primarily for security updates where you shouldn't have an option to
browse un-patched for months on end.

~~~
DougBTX
From the article: "Unfortunately users will still see the updating progress
bar on load"

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jasonkester
One of the main reasons I stopped using FireFox as my daily browser is that it
forces me to care about updates.

I open FF to browse the web, and it tells me no, wait while I download and
install some updates. Ok, now wait while I show you a screen telling you about
those updates. If you want, you can close it and these other 5 tabs I opened,
and then you can go browse the web. Total elapsed time: 1-3 minutes, all of
which are spent actively hating FireFox.

Compare that to the Chrome experience: click the icon, 3 seconds later it
opens up ready to go, every single time. Maybe once in a while something is
new, but I never need to care. Perfect.

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schwit
How will this work for Windows 7? Most user accounts will not have write
access to the Firefox folder. Will the updater use the system account?

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JadeNB
The future tense in this article seems a bit strange—Firefox has offered
behaviour something like this for quite a while. It wasn't completely silent,
in the sense that it advertised once it had completed the update; maybe that's
what's being changed? (It is also customisable, and I have it at what I think
is a convenient level: It notifies me when an update's available (so that I
don't forget that I'm running an old version), but leaves it to me to do
something about it (so that I don't run into the troubles viraptor mentions
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1586112>).)

On the other hand, maybe my perspective on _Was sind und was sollen Firefox_
is skewed, because I always try to run the most up-to-date version (including
betas); I can't remember if I started seeing this behaviour in the 3.x branch.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The difference here is you won't see the dialog saying "Do you want to
update?" The update is just going to happen.

~~~
JadeNB
I'm pretty sure that the current behaviour (in 4.0b1) asks "Do you want to
update?" only if "When updates to Firefox are found:" is set to "Ask me what
to do" (corresponding to app.update.auto being false, probably); and that, if
it's set instead to "Automatically download and install the update", then the
update is still not silent—the user receives a notification _after_ it's
completed—but it doesn't prompt _beforehand_.

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benbeltran
I say, great solution Mozilla!

Advanced users can toggle it on/off. Mortal users won't know it's there.

Mortal users are the ones that regularly are better off not knowing. I on the
other hand, prefer to see exactly who's updating and what for, and It's good
to know that I have a choice.

Giving user choice = good :)

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viraptor
There are 3 big reasons to not enable it. They depend on how you use internet
of course, but I'd never use full-automatic mode:

\- Mozilla doesn't know what kind of link I'm using. I may be in another
country on a pay-per-MB 3G, which they will not pay for. Updating a browser
can actually create a really large bill, while all you want to do is open your
email.

\- Mozilla doesn't know what am I doing with my link right now. Maybe I'm
almost saturating it right now with a Video call? I don't want them to start a
not requested >100kB/s transfer in the middle of my call.

\- Mozilla doesn't know how secure my environment is. I may be on a shared
network on a security conference. Yeah... all kinds of things can happen
there. That's why I'm not going to login anywhere from such place and will
definitely not update my system.

~~~
tptacek
If you're running an insecure version of Firefox on a shared network at a
security conference, the security implications of Firefox auto-update are the
least of your concerns.

~~~
viraptor
True, but it doesn't matter - here are some scenarios:

\- If I suspend my laptop with FF running and then restore. FF will be running
/ trying to update even if I don't actually use it (or try to use it
explicitly).

\- If the upgrade mechanism is not secure, you only need to capture all the
traffic and fake a new version being available. I may have the newest version
X, but someone captures the updater query and returns a new version X+1 being
available.

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protomyth
I really wish they would have a better solution then Chrome. Chrome is fine
for a single person, but for installing on a couple of hundred machines, the
"silent" update is not silent to the network admin or anyone in a distance
learning classroom.

I would really like vendors to allow updates from a local web server. That way
I download the update myself and have it only eating local network traffic.

Also, educational vendors are notorious about having software break with
updates. I really hope I can turn this off in labs where students need to take
certification tests.

Like others I am super worried about Adobe updating. Not only from a
compatibility problem or network traffic problem, but their installer on the
Mac is horrible and I really wonder will my non-admin account students have
problems.

~~~
rlpb
Will Chrome updates go through a caching web proxy if one is configured?

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mattmanser
I think this is a great trend for usability and security. For software
companies that can actually do it well.

But at the bottom of the article it mentions that Adobe are experimenting with
doing it. Argh!

Flash yes, I can see it. But Reader? I don't want it to update on the rare
occasions I open a pdf.

Actually the only reason I oppose Adobe doing it is because I think of them as
having some pretty awful programming teams. And whoever writes their updaters
is one of those bloody awful teams.

Certain parts of their products are very buggy compared to Google, MS or games
programmers. They just do not have quality across their brand.

My constant nightmares with adobe updaters across a wide variety of machines
has made me believe this.

When it comes to updaters Adobe have always chosen the worst paths, annoying
prompts when you hadn't used readers for weeks, horrible confusing UIs and
obviously not thoroughly tested.

They're just not up to the task.

I guess what I'm saying is this trend should be welcomed, but with a pinch of
salt, some companies like Google and MS I trust to do it. Others I would not
(Adobe if you hadn't guessed ;).

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CrazedGeek
If Reader silently updates though, the UI issues and annoying prompts are
pretty much eliminated.

~~~
danh
And what could possibly go wrong?

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westi
This is only useful if they don't break extensions on update. Too many firefox
extensions don't survive an update. I'm happy for security fixes to get pushed
out this way but normal bugfix / feature enhancement releases less so.

~~~
ElbertF
Major updates will still show a prompt.

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westi
Yes.

But they have a habit of making non-bug fix changes in point releases and the
implication is these would be installed silently.

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gaius
So how does this work, I'm doing something in my browser and it spontaneously
restarts, losing whatever I'm filling into a form?

I have noticed with Firefox 3 if I ignore its updates for too long it goes to
100% CPU and stays there until I kill it in Task Manager, then on restart it
installs its updates. This never happens unless there's an unapplied update
waiting...

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risotto
If it's like Chrome, which I hope it is, it's completely transparent.

Your browser session is never interrupted, and in fact no update alerts are
ever shown. Just once in a while when you start Firefox it's the new version
that it installed sometime during your last session.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
It doesn't sound like it will be quite that transparent. The article mentions
"Unfortunately, you will still see progress bars."

It makes me think it will be like the current behavior without the dialog
asking to install (e.g. automatically download the update and install it when
you restart your browser).

