14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox sparked the web browser ‘revolution’ but, these days, Google Chrome is leading the way in terms of new features and functionality. Mozilla has started adopting and adapting some of Chrome’s best features, especially with Firefox 4, and is now saying that it will move to an auto-update system for the upcoming browser, meaning that minor security and stability patches will be pushed and installed behind the scenes.
“For Firefox 4 minor updates will occur automatically. Users can change the setting in Options > Advanced > Update. We'll only be using the major update dialog box for changes like 4 to 4.5 or 5,” Alex Faaborg, Firefox’s principal designer wrote in the Mozilla Firefox development discussion board on Google Groups.
“Unfortunately users will still see the updating progress bar on load, but this is an implementation issue as opposed to a UI one (ideally the update could be applied in the background). We will also be able to prompt the user if they haven't restarted in a very long time and there is a particularly bad security vulnerability that need to be patched,” he explained.
The main argument against automatic updates and the main reason why Mozilla hasn’t adopted this system so far is that installing software without the users’ permission is seen by some as a privacy breach and people want to have control over their computers.
But the fact is, most people really don’t care about these things and they are the ones that won’t know what a new version brings and why they should update. In fact, Faaborg says, some are complaining that Firefox updates too fast already and that they see no changes between versions. Since most of these updates are security fixes, there are going to be no discernible differences, but many don’t know that.
With the automatic updater, Firefox users will always be running the latest version of the browser making them less vulnerable to attacks. By comparison, even the stable version of Google Chrome updates a lot faster than Firefox. But, since all of this is done in the background, it’s a lot less of a hassle to keep it up to date.