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."

turn it off?

[sumdumass]

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.

Re:turn it off?

[1u3hr]

I run Win2k and Flash can't be upgraded any more anyway. And I use Acrobat 4. I don't want any later version. I don't want to be nagged to upgrade things. I know what I have and I know what I need.

Mozilla targetting wrong people

[Wowsers]

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.

Re:turn it off?

[1u3hr]

Opera is probably the wisest browser choice for Win2K.

Which is my default browser. . But some sites just don't work and the I resort to Firefox.

Then again, using an OS that stopped getting security updates more than 2 years ago on an Internet-connected computer implies you don't care much about making wise choices.

Or it shows that I don't trust the OS whether updated or not and have a hardware firewall and third party security software. And use a version of Windows that doesn't try to call home or have IE embedded so deeply in it.

Maybe having been online for over 20 years and never having a malware infection implies I actually have a clue. (Or maybe I'm just too dumb to realise how much malware is on my PC, feel free to believe that if it helps you to feel superior.)

Re:update

[JakeBurn]

Last year I read that 30% of internet bandwidth in North America was being used to watch Netflix. Netflix still uses Silverlight.

Pale Moon?

[C0L0PH0N]

Pale Moon ( http://www.palemoon.org/ [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/ [softwarecrew.com].

Perhaps this browser will give you your "Firefox" experience without the upgrade "bugging" that Mozilla is introducing.

Re:Before

[pla]

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.

You realize, of course, that not all of us need or want to stay at the bleeding edge of every product we use?

Most people just want the same thing they used yesterday to work today. Most people get really, really annoyed when what worked yesterday starts nagging them to upgrade today (or worse, "Adobe Flash (malware) has been blocked for your protection" - Fuck you, Moz!).

Keep it up, guys... Google can't thank you enough for pushing us to use Chrome. And yes, I know that Chrome updates itself, but it doesn't change (aka "break") anything each time.