14 DAY TRIAL // One big piece of the silent updates puzzle has just landed in Firefox 15, background updates. Like the name suggests, this enables Firefox to install updates in the background without disturbing the user. This, along with the other silent updates-related features, should make the entire process a lot more hassle-free and almost invisible to the user.
The goal with background updates is to have newer versions of Firefox downloaded and installed while the browser is running. This way, the next time the user loads Firefox, the updated version is already installed and all that's left to do is some clean up.
In the vast majority of cases, users shouldn't even notice the slight increase in startup time and would have no idea that Firefox was updated.
This is the way Chrome updates work and this is the most efficient since users don't get bothered with it. This ensures that newer versions of Firefox are installed as soon as they arrive, not as soon the user makes time for it.
The downside of this is that users have less control over the update. For most people, this is hardly a bad thing – they don't want to be bothered with updates, they want their browser to work.
With this new feature, more people should be running the latest version of the browser at any given time than ever before, certainly than since the rapid release cycle was implemented.
However, there are users that want to have more control over the update process. Luckily for them, unlike in Chrome, all the automatic update system is optional. While silent automatic updates is the default, users will have options.
The background update feature is now enabled in Firefox 15, but there's no guarantee that it will make it into the stable version a few months from now, when it lands.