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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."
Update at 5:10PM EST: No dice. “At this time, Mozilla does not have additional information to share beyond the blog post content,” a Mozilla spokesperson told The Next Web in a statement. “We’ll be sure to update you once we have additional details to share regarding the timing, version(s) impacted and visual look of the message.”
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anyone know if it can be turned off? I got some crap that gets broken with new versions of reader.
Maybe i'll just have to switch browsers.
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.
In this day and age a minority of the web actually requires applets. The option should be to 'whitelist' only particular websites.
[Aside: I have a public JRE installed on a windows box for work purposes. I may be vulnerable to rogue Java Web Start apps but there's a scary security warning each time I click on a JNLP link.
As for applets, I can sleep easy knowing there's no chance of infection. It's a 64bit JDK... All of the browsers from Mozilla, MS and Google are 32bit. So on my Windows machine no browser can load the 64 bit plugin!]
To bypass this nagging, just continue to use an old release of Firefox.
Netflix, Lovefilm and Sky TV all use it here in the UK because no-one's broken the DRM yet.
As a Linux user, Mozilla should be targetting Adobe not me. For example, Adobe released a not working version of their flash player, it changes the colours of video on places like Youtube if you have hardware acelleration enabled. To get proper colours you have to disable hardware accelleration, which has a massive impact on system performance, even on a dual core machine.
To add to the problem, Adobe said they will no longer be working on Flash for Linux (at least the 64 bit version). So they released a known buggy version, and refuse to revert to previous version that worked.
Me updating is not the problem, it's companies like Adobe that need to be targetted.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
The Java plugin already was on that list. They already warn for old versions of Java when the plugin is used.
I have no problem with Mozilla doing this as long as the user (or admin) can disable it through about:config.
Pale Moon ( http://www.palemoon.org/ ) is a long-standing fork of Firefox produced by Moonchild Productions, which is distinguished by being optimized for efficiency and speed in 64 bit Vista and Windows 7. There are 32 bit versions as well. Firefox does not provide a 64 bit version at this time. If you've never heard of Pale Moon, check it out. It is now my main browser of choice. Here is a review: http://www.softwarecrew.com/2012/08/pale-moon-15-building-a-better-browser/.
Perhaps this browser will give you your "Firefox" experience without the upgrade "bugging" that Mozilla is introducing.
Instead of a lecture, do you have an answer to the question that was originally posted? All we are getting is BS and no solution as to how to disable the damn thing.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They are trying get everyone to upgrade because the number 1 issue they have had on the tracker for months is related to people using old versions of flash and it reflects negatively on peoples view of the browser
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.
When sites say I "need" Java or Flash, I just click the little x on the upper right corner of the screen. More time for real life.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
What do you recommend for a professional graphic designer to use instead of Adobe products such as Photoshop or Illustrator? Unlike free software, these support Pantone colors for printing.