Firefox 11 Will Feature Add-on Sync

Posted 12/26/2011 at 8:08am | by Pulkit Chandna

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With Mozilla inking a new search referral agreement with Google and with one report pegging the three-year deal as high as $900 million, it has nothing to worry about as far as its financial security is concerned. This generous replenishment of its coffers couldn’t have come at a better time as financial uncertainty is not something Mozilla can afford at a time when its position in the browser market is under threat from Chrome. It can now use this added financial security to focus on making Firefox a better browser. One area it can improve in is the sync feature, which currently does not support syncing of add-ons.

Chrome has had this feature for well over a year now. But now Mozilla plans to catch up with its rival in this area very soon. The ability to sync extensions will be part of Firefox Sync beginning with the release of Firefox 11 next spring. This feature will only support add-ons installed from its own add-ons site. This will be in order to prevent the inadvertent syncing of unwanted add-ons that accompany a number of third-party apps and virtually force themselves on the user.

Currently, Firefox Sync only supports bookmarks, history, tabs, passwords and browser settings, leaving users interested in syncing add-ons at the mercy of third-party solutions.

Image Credit:Soeren Hentzschel