One of my favourite features in the next version of Firefox, which just hit the beta channel, is the one you’ll never see. In the new Firefox Beta for Windows, we’ve introduced a standalone update service to apply updates in the background. One very happy consequence of this is that our users will no longer see Microsoft’s User Account Control (UAC) warnings.

The UAC warnings in Windows have a noble goal. If you’ve installed software without meaning to, or if something is running without your consent, or if a trusted program has been modified, the UAC prompts shock you out of your normal flow. They dim the whole screen, and grab your attention:

Hard to ignore. Most computer users don’t really understand the technical details behind the warning, which is the whole point. If you don’t know exactly what’s going on, you probably take the safer path and disallow it. The warnings are an effort to improve your security.

Firefox is built to improve your security. We are relentless. Not just in identifying and fixing security bugs, but also in releasing new tools to protect your security and privacy online. Online security moves quickly, which is why we release a new version every six weeks with the latest enhancements.

Unfortunately, the Windows UAC warnings weren’t born in a time of frequent software updates. Every time we update Firefox, the UAC system identifies it as a new or modified program and warns you all over again. Those warnings work against their own purposes; they scare people away from running the most secure software.

In the new Firefox Beta, we use a system level service to apply updates in a way that doesn’t trigger UAC warnings. You get your updates with less hassle and interruption and, when some legitimately scary piece of software is detected by UAC, you’re less likely to have learned to just click it away idly.

None of the work I’m describing here takes away your ability to control updates, of course. You can choose to be prompted for each update if you want, but for most people that’s just a nuisance. And on fresh installs, when Firefox really *is* a new program on the system, UAC will always double check that you actually meant to install it. (You did, didn’t you?)

In the old days we used to make a lot of noise about each release of Firefox. We were proud of the work we’d done and eager to have you to try it out. We’re still incredibly proud of the work we do on Firefox, we’re still eager to have you check it out. But we’d like you to not have to think about releases any more. We want Firefox to just delight you by getting better and better each time you use it. And when you’re not in the mood to be delighted, and just want to get online and get things done, we’ve taken one of the last interruptions out of your way.

Johnathan Nightingale
Senior Director of Firefox Engineering

UPDATE: The security bug reported by ZDI is one we had already identified and fixed through our internal processes. This eliminates the need for us to delay this week’s releases, and we will be shipping them later today. However, in order to understand the impacts of Microsoft’s “Patch Tuesday” fixes, we will initially release Firefox for manual updates only. Once those impacts are understood, we’ll push automatic updates out to all of our users.

——————————————————————————————————————————–

Every six weeks, another Firefox train leaves the station. This week we will release another update, but not on Tuesday as we typically do. There are two reasons for this:

1. This Tuesday is Microsoft’s scheduled monthly update to Windows, and those updates have interacted badly with our updates before. We don’t have reason to expect specific problems with this month’s updates, but we’d rather take a day or two to understand the impact before we update all of our users.
2. We’re also waiting for a report from ZDI about a security vulnerability that may affect this new version of Firefox. We expect to receive the report by end of day Monday. Once we can evaluate the vulnerability, we’ll know whether we need to include a fix in Firefox before the update is released.

We’ll update our post here once the latest version of Firefox is available to the world. In the meantime, if you want to get an advance peek at what’s coming in future versions of Firefox, check out one of our early release channels.

Johnathan Nightingale
Senior Director of Firefox Engineering

I like trains. Last year, we put Firefox on a train-based release model: every six weeks, another train leaves the station. When a feature catches the train it moves through iterative testing on our Nightly, Aurora and Beta channels and, if that testing confirms its stability and general excellence, it goes out to hundreds of millions of Firefox users. If testing reveals an issue, we pull the feature out for another round of review, and let it catch a later train. The trains have run on time ever since, and the results have been incredible. Firefox improvements reach our users regularly, faster than ever before.

However, when we decided to rebuild Firefox for Android using a native UI, we recognized that the first release couldn’t ride the trains. The iterative release model that serves us so well with Firefox works best when most changes are incremental and independent. Building a new high-performance front end for Firefox on Android, by contrast, involves many interconnected pieces being rebuilt in tandem.

Right now, the engineering team is focused on building an amazing browser for Android phones, and we’ll have a beta to show you in the coming weeks. It might coincide with one of our regular 6 week trains, but it’s quite possible it won’t. If it doesn’t, don’t worry. It’s cool. Firefox for Android will get back on the trains once the native UI rebuild is finished, but for a change this major we have extra work we want to do before we send it out the door. We’ll only ship it once we’re happy with its quality and performance. If you can’t wait that long, check us out on tablets or try our early release Aurora builds. I think you’ll be pleased.

Johnathan Nightingale
Sr. Director of Firefox Engineering

Last week we released a new version of Firefox. We shipped on time, 6 weeks after the last update, making it our first true rapid release milestone. There was cake. Now that we know that we’re capable of this velocity, I’d like to revisit the reasons why it’s important, and the lessons we’ve already learned.

Mission drives Mozilla. People sometimes forget that we’re a non-profit, that our only job is to make the Web a better place. Rapid release advances our mission in important ways. We get features and improvements to users faster. We get new APIs and standards out to web developers faster. We are delivering on the promise of the web at web speed.

Small, frequent releases improve quality, too. Engineers in the Mozilla community regularly say things now like “I don’t like not understanding this piece, let’s back it out and I’ll catch the next train.” We move deliberately. We don’t rush. And, even though it sounds like a contradiction, when we take our time we go faster.

There’s a great deal for us to be proud of, but we also need to be humble. This change was hard for us to make, and it’s been hard for some of our supporters, too. We have been glib or dismissive in the way we’ve communicated about parts of it. We live rapid release daily, and that makes it easier for us to see past the problems. We are also tenacious about the necessity of our new schedule, and tenacity can be mistaken for obstinacy.

We, everyone in the Mozilla community, all of us, need to communicate with clarity and sensitivity. We need to help the people who support our mission to understand why these changes are essential. We need to keep listening, and adjusting as we learn. We need to, and we will.

The push to ship faster isn’t some kind of software machismo. We push ourselves to ship faster because the web is under threat. Amazing and innovative people are doing amazing and innovative things and right now they have a choice: build for the web, or build for the walled gardens. The web can win that fight.

The open web is the most amazing, universal communication and distribution platform ever built. To win, the web needs to be agile and responsive. To help it, we need to be agile and responsive, too. That’s why rapid release matters.

Johnathan Nightingale
Director of Firefox Engineering