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Mozilla To Bug Firefox Users With Old Adobe Reader, Flash, Silverlight
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla today announced it will soon start prompting Firefox users to upgrade select old plugins. This will only affect Windows users, and three plugins: Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight. Mozilla says Firefox users will 'soon see a notification urging them to update' when they visit a web page that uses the plugins."
If you know what the right thing to do is, just do it. If you don't know, don't bug the user about it. I get the calls when you show the unwashed masses around me yet another incomprehensible prompt about some thingamabob inside their computers that they didn't know was there in the first place. Make it work or shut up.
It should prompt to update every day, regardless of whether they visit a site with flash/PDF/etc. That way the update gets applied before they "want to view content NOW". Otherwise they'll click cancel.
I run Win2k ...
Firefox has detected an old version of Windows. It is strongly recommended that you upgrade Windows to the latest version.
sigo ergo sum
Opera is probably the wisest browser choice for Win2K.
Then again, using an OS that stopped getting security updates more than 2 years ago on an Internet-connected computer implies you don't care much about making wise choices.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I have no problem with Mozilla doing this as long as the user (or admin) can disable it through about:config.
You don't have to use IE on the Internet, so it shouldn't matter whether IE is on your computer.
Its very hard to stop Windows form using IE in one way or another. Every now and then it pops up when hardcoded in some applications. But I've blocked it at the firewall so it's effectively neutered (I hope).
I gave up on Windows 2000 two or three years ago when most developers stopped supporting it
It's only this year the apps I need to use have started to become incompatible. MS made changes to their compilers last year I think and basically forced the issue. While modders are fighting a rearguard action to patch Win2k, I'll probably move to XP next year. I regularly use a lot of quite old software so am dragging my feet. I could do it all in emulation on a newish PC, and may end up doing that a few more years later. Maybe hosted on Linux. Unix was my first OS, so I'd be happy if I could get back to that and still use my DOS and Windows apps.
Flash Player's own updater never seems to appear until I reboot the computer, which is quite a rare event for me (sleep mode works fine, no need for shutting down). This is a bad design.
It took me a while to figure out what triggers the Flash Player updater to appear: It's in the Scheduled Tasks area. It runs daily at about 12:30PM, and It's set to stop trying to update 72 hours after it starts. So if you rarely reboot your computer, you don't get Flash Player updates.
None of this should be needed.
Microsoft should just allow third party critical updates through Windows Update. Flash, Reader, and Java flaws account for most of the malware installs, and most users are bad at keeping these things up to date. Running a stack of update utilities is irritating to advanced users and confusing to novice users. All this does is make the malware industry happy.