Mozilla is moving to silent updates of the browser, pushed automatically in the backround. How will this impact Portable Firefox?
Dana
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They will remain off by default. You can use them in Firefox directly if you'd like and turn them all the way on. We encourage users to use the PA.c Platform and its built-in automatic updater, of course, as you then get updates to Firefox Portable (including the launcher, etc) and not just the Firefox inside it.
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The information I heard earlier was saying that it would be implemented by the installation of an update service; the portable version won't include that. I don't know if it will work with another technique if that's not there.
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That is reassuring. I was afraid the new update service might break Firefox portable.
It won't affect us at all. The Mozilla Maintenance Service is an opt-in feature on Firefox's Windows installer to update Firefox without the UAC prompt. Support for this is already in Firefox 12, which we are happily distributing.
The Silent Updates you're thinking about should work fine with Firefox Portable, as it's practically the same as the current updater, but without a prompt and grace period for incompatible add-ons.
gluxon wrote: "The Silent Updates you're thinking about should work fine with Firefox Portable, as it's practically the same as the current updater, but without a prompt and grace period for incompatible add-ons."
I've been wondering about the whole update thing with Portable FF -- that is, as opposed to a complete new install with later portable versions. You can't just update the portable program itself with the 'Update' button, right ? (It would be nice to have such an option with the portable versions . . . . ) So, what is the extent of the Silent Updating, and what if anything do we need to do to enable it ? I'm running XP SP-3 as Administrator, and the whole UAC business from Win 7 has not really come up for me.
In regard to the extensions, I have noticed NoScript updating itself through a few recent versions, with no action on my part, so some kind of silent updating must be going on. Haven't really seen that with most of the other extensions, though, and I found no trace of the former, explicit 'Check Extensions for Updates' button still present in FF-12 portable, which is what I'm still using.
I'm aware of articles on enabling Flash, Java, and plugins for portable FF, but these seem to already be working for me without having done anything special to get them. Perhaps portable FF is picking up that functionality from the old, regular FF 3.6 that I never uninstalled ?
My quote remains true, but you're right in the fact that updating Firefox does not update the FirefoxPortable.exe launcher. So far, Mozilla rarely pushes updates to Firefox that would require a change in the portable launcher, so using the built-in updater hasn't been too big of an issue. But it also might be a good idea to update using the PortableApps.com Updater once in a while (or entirely to be safe).
Firefox has Add-on updates set to automatic by default. I'm not sure what version this was in, but I think it was within Firefox 9-13. You can change this behavior in the Add-ons Manager. It's should be under the gear button.
And as far as I know, Firefox doesn't touch plugins at all.