Firefox Keeping Rapid Release, But Adding Silent Update Option For Irritated Users
Firefox’s relatively new rapid release schedule lets developers implement and unveil new features and updates quickly, but there’s one thing we hate about it. No, it’s not the headache it causes enterprise users, although that sucks, too. It’s the constant update notifications. Geez, Firefox needs to update again, we get it already! Fortunately, Mozilla gets that we get that, and they’re looking to move to silent updates sometime in 2012.
“In the past we have been very careful to make sure people know something is changing with their web browser before it changes,” Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker said in a blog post yesterday. “ Our position was to err on the side of user notification. Today people are telling us — loudly — that the notifications are irritating and that a silent update process is important. This work is underway.”
While Baker claims that some improvements will be made in the coming months, he pointed readers to a blog post by Mozilla dev Brian Bondy, who was assigned the task of quelling the update noise. Long story short, his solution is on track for an early 2012, Firefox 10-ish implementation and involves adding an optional “Mozilla application updater” to Windows services, which should stop the Windows User Account Control from prompting users whenever a Mozilla product – including Firefox – needs to update. Users will be able to disable or uninstall the updater service at any time. There’s tons of technical information linked to in Bondy’s blog post, if you’re a nitty-gritty kind of Firefox user.