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Firefox 12 Released — Introduces Silent, Chrome-like Updater
MrSeb writes "Firefox 12 has been officially released, with only one major new feature: A silent, background updater. Now you will have to approve the Firefox Software Updater when you first install Firefox, but after that the browser will update silently — just like Chrome. In other news, the Find feature now reliably centers the page on any matches — hooray!"
Here are the release notes, the list of bug fixes, and the download page.
This is exactly what the Firefox extended release is for.
Who said anything about root access? If Firefox is running with root privs, you are doing something wrong. Also, the silent updater is optional.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Or don't, as they will are compatible by default now.
someone hasn't seen the latest benchmarks on tomshardware then.
Firefox is just barely but is beating chrome and IE in speed for last 2 versions..
Chrome fanbois are about as bad as Appletards
Now I won't have to go 10 rounds with the wife to keep the ff on her mac up to date.
Alternatively, you could just move her to Firefox Extended Support Release, which is what I did at home as soon as it was available. She'll still get the security patches, but won't get overloaded by all the pointless monthly "updates for the sake of updating".
#DeleteChrome
This is a non-issue. You can get a chrome MSI right now and the GPO object, push it out, and disable automatic updates and just update the next MSI when you're done testing.
Speaking of lazy devs, from the linked release notes:
Known Issues
UNRESOLVED
Windows: The use of Microsoft's System Restore functionality shortly after updating Firefox may prevent future updates (see 730285)
Apparently not only does something already go wrong, it can prevent your from ever being able to update Firefox again! (Without deleting your current profile, reinstalling won't work!)
But who cares, according to the calendar, it's release time NOW!
Chrome runs entirely under the user profile, installs under the user profile, and installs updates under the user profile. Does not require "root access" or any admin privileges to run, update, or install. Your entire +3 post is based on rubbish.
Firefox does require admin rights to run, because it's an insecure turd.
I mean, you can do what you want obviously but your logic is terrible. Firefox updates don't actually break computers (at worst they could break the browser causing you to... use a different one for the few hours before the fix comes out) and people really do get viruses which really do break their computers or, in the more likely case, turn their computers into bots and steal their financial information.
Actually, Chrome also installs a service which runs as LOCAL SYSTEM, just like Firefox now has. Local system is higher than administrator, it's kernel level, for all intents and purposes.
If someone breaks the Chrome service, then it's just as bad as breaking the Firefox service..
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
You can disable auto-updates, regardless of whether or not you're running the extended support version.
Preferences -> Advanced -> Update.
You can also download every version of Firefox we've ever released here. We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.
There is a MUCH better tool out there than those downloader apps for FF, it isn't free but it works on just about every site, even those that the FF plugins choke or refuse to see. its called Jaksta Streaming Video Capture and the nice thing is it isn't tied to ANY browser, so it only runs when YOU are wanting to capture instead of adding bloat to the browser. its quite nice.
But as other have said FF has become a pale Chrome imitation and if I wanted Chrome I'd fricking run Chrome! I personally gave up around version 7 for Comodo Dragon which is Chrome without the phone home, because while i still have FF installed and try it with each release frankly it runs like shit on both my nettop and my netbook. Hell even on my hexacore it will have what I call "senior moments" where the UI will just freeze for a few seconds, not enough to make me kill the program but just enough to piss me off. With the Dragon even on a 2004 Sempron its responsive and snappy and when I close tabs I get the memory back which FF has yet to master.
So while I keep hanging onto this vain hope that Firefox will come back, I have a feeling the glory days of FF are behind it. You can't be #1 just by badly aping someone else and that is what IE and FF have been doing, playing follow the leader with Chrome. Frankly I don't know what they did between 3.6 and 5 but whatever they did was a doozy as I can't run it on low power devices like my netbook without it bitchslapping the cores and sucking down the battery like a drunk at a free minibar. If you are gonna rip off Chrome FF devs, how about ripping off its lack of CPU slamming and nice use of resources huh?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Then what you want is Firefox Extended Support Release or ESR which is just that, bug fixes and security updates. It will be supported until FF 17 which at the rate they are going will be about a year, maybe a year and a half.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You realize GPOs can export files (including config.js) and registry settings across an organization, right?
Which is why they announced an enterprise version with slower updates for enterprise users, right?
The sad thing is that you are a fucking idiot.
As of today 3.6 will no longer receive any security updates. So all of you netbook/low power users need to find an alternative, or bite the bullet.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
You completely misunderstand the nature of the threat here. The attacker can get the user to run some malicious program under his normal privileges. That program can then communicate with the update service that's running under a privileged account. If the update service has some bugs or is badly designed such that it can be exploited, the attacker has now elevated his privileges from normal user to LOCAL SYSTEM (which is basically root).
Actually March 2013:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar
New things are always on the horizon