Silent Updates to Appear in Firefox 4.0
Mozilla is set to add silent updates circa Firefox 4.0 however, the updates will only be available on the Win32 platform and only effect minor updates such as 4.0.1, 4.0.2 etc… without user interaction. The user will STILL be notified on major version changes such as 4.0 – 5.0 etc…
Most updates, including all security updates, will be downloaded and installed automatically without asking the user or requiring a confirmation, said Alex Faaborg, a principal designer on Firefox.
“We’ll only be using the major update dialog box for changes like [version] 4 to 4.5 or 5,” Faaborg said in a late July message on the“mozilla.dev.apps.firefox” forum. “Unfortunately users will still see the updating progress bar on load, but this is an implementation issue as opposed to a [user interface] one; ideally the update could be applied in the background.”
It comes after a report from two security researchers at Google compiled a report (PDF link) on software security and stability which also went to praise Mozilla for their update mechanism being the best of the browsers prior to the arrival of Google and it’s Chromium project (Chrome browser).
Silent updates seem to be making more and more of an appearance into software these days, Adobe now uses silent updates in its PDF reader software but the user MUST enable it.
[Source]
