In the rest of this post I focus on five Firefox update improvements and how they should improve your Firefox update experience.

Background Updates
Today Firefox periodically checks for updates. Once an update is detected, Firefox automatically downloads the update and waits to be restarted in order to install it. The update is applied on start-up as the updater needs to modify Firefox files, which may be locked while Firefox is running. Updating Firefox on start-up may result in a short delay in starting your browser as you wait for the update to be installed. You may also see a progress dialog as shown below.

A new update installation method allows Firefox to install an update while the browser is running. This means that the update can be installed immediately after it is downloaded. A restart of the browser is still required to apply the update but, using the new method, the application of the update will happen very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that you shouldn’t even notice it. The new version of Firefox will then launch with no delay as the update procedure has already taken place.

Background updates are currently planned to be delivered in the next couple of releases. This means that updates for subsequent Firefox releases should no longer display a progress dialog after restarting the browser.

See Ehsan Akhgari’s blog post Updating Firefox in the Background for more technical details about this change.

Reminder to update UI
Most Firefox updates include security fixes. In order to keep your system secure it is important that you install updates shortly after they are made available. As discussed above, Firefox must be restarted in order to apply an update. In order to facilitate the installation of an update, if Firefox has not been restarted within 12 hours of the download of the update you will be prompted to restart with a dialog.

In our user research we discovered that more than 99% of Firefox users restart their browser within 24 hours without prompting. The impact of extending the prompt period was considered minimal, so in November we changed the notification period to 24 hours.

This change means that the vast majority of Firefox users will restart their browser without being prompted and will therefore never see the Update Ready to Install dialog again.

Windows UAC service
On Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7, when updating Firefox you will be prompted with a User Access Control (UAC) dialog. This dialog is a Windows security mechanism to ensure that only applications that have been explicitly granted permission can make modifications to restricted areas of your system, such as writing to the Program Files directory.

The current structure of the Firefox updater requires that you grant permission to the updater each time it needs to install an update one of these versions of Windows. This repeated prompting occurs for two reasons: the Firefox installation resides in the Program Files directory and update changes are made to the registry. From a user perspective the repeated prompting is unnecessary because the first time that you accept the prompt you indicate that you put your trust in Firefox. After you have granted Firefox permission to update it should continue to be able to update future versions of Firefox without prompting you again.

In order to work with UAC security and provide an update experience that doesn’t prompt you for each installation, a new update service will land on Firefox Aurora shortly. This service runs as a background process and installs updates when they become available. After you grant permission to the Firefox update service you will not be prompted with a UAC dialog when installing updates for subsequent releases.

For those interested, Brian Bondy’s blog post Mozilla Firefox and silent updates contains more specific technical details about this Microsoft Windows specific change. We are also looking at ways to improve the update process for our Mac and Linux users.

Add-ons default to compatible
Add-ons are a key benefit of using Firefox. Our users depend on their add-ons and need them to work. Firefox historically took a conservative approach to add-on compatibility. This approach was taken to minimize the chance that an add-on would have an undesired affect on your Web browsing experience when updating to a new version of Firefox. There were typically add-ons that are incompatible the day of a Firefox release. If you had one of these add-ons installed you would see an Incompatible Add-ons dialog that prompted you for action before the update was downloaded.

Add-on authors had to explicitly state that their add-ons were compatible with new Firefox releases. If an add-on was hosted on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) and was using the add-ons SDK, we could automatically keep it up-to-date. However, most add-ons will continue to work with no modification with new versions of Firefox. So…

…with the latest version of Firefox, add-ons are compatible by default. Well, to be accurate, most add-ons are compatible by default. There are certain classes of add-ons that are still flagged as incompatible, such as add-ons that contain binary components, add-ons whose compatibility range does not include Firefox version 4 or later, and add-ons that have been determined to be incompatible by the Firefox Add-ons team.

These changes should result in more of your add-ons being compatible on day 0 of a release. This means less work for you and less work for add-on authors. This also means Firefox updates should download without any prompting by the Incompatible Add-ons dialog.

Add-on authors should see the post Solving Firefox’s add-on compatibility problem by Blair McBride (aka Unfocused) for all of the details about the changes to the add-on update system.

What’s New Page

The What’s New Page is displayed in Firefox after the browser is updated. This page notifies you that your update has completed successfully and informs you about relevant product changes. As of Firefox 8, the What’s New page can now be turned on or off per release. This means that we can elect to show or hide the page per release based on whether there is important product or Mozilla-related information to share with you.

The five updates detailed in this post will result in a silent Firefox update experience that continues to keep your browser up-to-date, current with the latest Web features, and secure.

What’s New in Firefox Beta for Web Developers:

• Full Screen API: Developers can create Web applications that leverage the entire screen. The Full Screen API works with any HTML content, enabling developers to build entertaining and compelling Web video and game experiences. You can get more information in this blog post.
• Page Inspector: Page Inspector makes it fast and easy for developers to test the design, style, font, color and page positioning of their website. Developers can see the HTML and CSS rules applied to any selected page element. This makes it easy to navigate through different page elements while viewing the HTML document structure for the page.
• Style Inspector: Developers can use the Style Inspector to see the CSS properties applied to any selected page element and easily change the values to experiment with new looks. You can get more information in this blog post.
• CSS3 3D-Transforms: Developers can create two-dimensional elements that animate and transform into 3D using HTML5 without the need for third-party plugins. You can get more details in this blog post.
• Anti-aliasing for WebGL: Now 3D WebGL content will have edges that blend smoothly, especially with games and animations.
• Scratchpad with Orion Code Editor: The developer Scratchpad adds the Orion code editor, allowing developers to edit more than plain text. The Orion code editor provides syntax highlighting and other great features and makes it easier to write JavaScript.

What’s New in Firefox Beta for Users:

• Add-ons Compatible by Default: Firefox updates are smoother and easier because incompatible add-ons are automatically disabled and all other add-ons will default to compatible (except binary add-ons). We need your help testing the update process to make sure that incompatible add-ons are properly disabled. You can read more details in this blog post or file a bug.
• Enhanced Firefox Sync: Firefox Sync is enhanced with an easier setup process so you can pair your Android phone, tablet or any Firefox-enabled device without needing to be at your desktop computer.

For more information:
Get Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux/Firefox Beta for Android.
Long, technical release notes for Firefox Beta on Windows, Mac and Linux/ Firefox Beta for Android.

The latest phase of our add-on compatibility plan has arrived in Aurora, and we need your help to test it! Since Firefox 4, we have been automatically making add-ons hosted on AMO compatible with new Firefox releases. Now, we have extended automatic compatibility to non-hosted add-ons, which account for 75% of all add-ons in use (currently in the hundreds of millions). This means you should see less of the incompatible add-ons dialog, and more of your add-ons should just work.

You can read more about the plan, including how we determine eligibility for automatic compatibility here. For additional background reading, check out this blog post.

Once you have Aurora installed, all add-ons that are compatible with Firefox 4 or later can be installed without extra steps. Firefox will install them even if they are declared incompatible in the manifest file.

If you don’t already have Aurora installed, you can get it here. With Aurora, you’ll see our newest features before they go beta, and have a chance to send us feedback before the final release.

The latest experimental additions to Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac and Linux streamline the user interface and give users more control when managing third-party add-ons. This update adds support for more HTML5 technologies, improves performance and scalability of HTML5 media elements, updates the WebSockets protocol and adds CORS support to WebGL. This update to Firefox Aurora for Android adds features to make mobile browsing more secure and convenient.

New Experimental Features in Firefox Aurora for Windows, Mac, Linux:

Users have more control in managing their add-ons  (#thirdpartyaddons): After upgrading, users will receive a one-time notification with the option to review and confirm the add-ons they want to keep, disable or delete.

Additionally, Firefox will now ask user permission before installing third-party add-ons. Any third-party add-ons will be disabled by default until the user confirms the installation.

Experimental Interface Updates:

• Tab animations (#tabanimations): Tabs animate to make it easier for users to see when they are moving, reordering or detaching them.

• Restore tabs on-demand (#RestoreTabsOnDemand): For users that have lots of tabs open, we’ve added a preference that allows tabs to load on demand, resulting in faster start-up times when windows are restored.

To turn on this preference on Windows, go to your Firefox Menu button, select Option, then go to the General tab and check the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box.

For Mac, Go to Preferences under the Aurora Menu, then go to the General tab and check the ‘Don’t load tabs until selected’ box.

• Channel Specific ‘Firefox Menus’: Each development channel now has its own Firefox Menu color to easily distinguish among Nightly, Aurora and Beta releases (Windows only).

Experimental Platform Features:

• Improvements to HTML5 media elements:  We’ve changed how we create threads for HTML5 media elements so that a large number of media elements can be created without overwhelming the browser.  There’s added support for new media APIs to improve the overall performance of video and audio in the browser.

• Additional support for HTML5 technologies:  We’ve done a lot of work in this release to add support for technologies that are in the HTML5 standard. For example, the crossorigin attribute and insertAdjacentHTML are now supported.

• WebSockets Updates: This update includes a lot of improvements to WebSockets. We updated to the latest version of the protocol and added support for new WebSockets APIs.

• HTML5 Native Right Click Menu Support: We’ve included support for an experimental HTML5 feature that lets the user add menu items to the right click menu on websites.  You can learn more in the bug.

• Support for CORS for WebGL textures:  Textures loaded from other domains now require the use of CORS.

You can see the partial list of platform features in this Mozilla Hacks blog  or Firefox for Developers article.

New Experimental Features in Firefox Aurora for Android:

• Master Password Support (#mobilemasterpassword): The Master Password Support feature helps users encrypt saved usernames and passwords for better security. Users only need one master password

To activate Master Password Support on Android, go to “Preferences” and select the “Use Master Password” check box.

• Add Bookmarks to Your Home Screen: Users can now bookmark any website and add it to their Android Home Screen. From the Home Screen, the user can launch the bookmarked website with one click.

Try the features now and start testing!