Mozilla Plugin Check Now Live

Johnathan Nightingale

16

A little over a month ago, I talked about a project we had started to inform users when their plugins were out of date. This is a really important project for us, because old versions of plugins can cause crashes and other stability problems, and can also be a major security risk. In the first phase, we focused on the popular Adobe Flash Player plugin, and we were thrilled to see more than 10 million Firefox users click through to Adobe’s download page to get themselves updated in the first week.

Today, we’re bringing the rest of the story. Our web team has just pushed the full plugin check page live, checking the status of more than 15 popular plugins, with more still in the works. Visitors to the page can see which plugins they have installed and, for any that are outdated, follow an easy link to the update site.

Plugin list with update information

In the upcoming release of Firefox 3.6, we’ll also include built-in support for helping users keep up to date. When you visit a page with Firefox 3.6, we’ll use this same service to let you know if any of the plugins used on the site have updates available.

We’ve got a pretty strong list of plugins and versions already but we’ll continue to maintain and grow it based on our conversations with plugin authors and our users. If you want more information, or are interested in helping out, check out the web team’s post. Did the plugin check uncover any surprises for you?

Johnathan Nightingale
Human Shield

16 responses

  1. cuz84d wrote on :

    Nice work on landing a user friendly tool!

  2. catsmeow wrote on :

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  3. JayeRandom wrote on :

    So, why did Firefox 3.5.3 just now pop up a dialog box notifying me that it had gone ahead and disabled the Windows Presentation Foundation plugin? I did not visit the plugin check page; I did not apply any Windows Updates; I did not apply any Firefox updates.

    When and how did my Firefox install learn that the WPF plugin was undesirable?

  4. Ricardo Moreles wrote on :

    Yes, good to know my plugins are out of date, but step forward, when can I remove them without go through windows registry and Mozilla Firefox Plugins folder?

    1. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

      @Ricardo

      Nothing but social pressure makes vendors provide uninstallers. Go apply some pressure! Applications from reputable vendors will have a standard and working uninstall mechanism.

  5. mrgames2 wrote on :

    This tool sent me to Viewpoint media players website to install the most current version. This was not detected by Secunia software advisory or Windows update. The site is listed on Web of Trust as dangerous. It is. As soon as I tried to start a download, Data Execution stepped in to prevent damage to my computer. MALWARE, THANKS A LOT FIREFOX!

  6. obada wrote on :

    Forward and we are with you firefox

  7. david wrote on :

    Good job! it’s also important to activate a useful option in the plugins, uninstall instead of desactivate, plugins also runs after this. Thanks everyone in Mozilla!

  8. ON5MJ wrote on :

    I do need as well to remove all the unwanted plugins but sometimes I don’t know if this will impact applications that use them. So telling the people ‘it’s time to upgrade your plugins’ is fine, giving them a way to remove them properly is finer.

  9. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

    ON5MJ: You can disable individual plugins through the plugin tab of the Add-ons dialog. Firefox can’t simply delete them because we don’t know what bad side-effects that might have on other applications.

  10. Godert H.van Diermen wrote on ::

    Dear Sir,
    Thank you for the opportunity to thank you for your concern of the safety of my computer when I get e-mails from my own e-mail address offering viagara and other proposals.The little I know about my computer is that it is loaded with cookies while I am assured of my privacy,not that it upsets me because I am 87 and use my computer for e-mailing,Google and the news.I am not tinkering with my program but for unexplained reasons my program is changing,suddenly my “low battery” warning disappeared and my computer shuts down on low battery without the 5 minutes programmed warning.This makes me believe that outside interference has a handle in my computer.In this world of ours I have lost any illusion a long time ago.I hope that you did not.Have a lot of success in your fight for reasonable computing.
    Godert H.van Diermen.

  11. video izle wrote on ::

    So, why did Firefox 3.5.3 just now pop up a dialog box notifying me that it had gone ahead and disabled the Windows Presentation Foundation plugin? I did not visit the plugin check page; I did not apply any Windows Updates; I did not apply any Firefox updates.

    When and how did my Firefox install learn that the WPF plugin was undesirable?

  12. sikiş wrote on ::

    This tool sent me to Viewpoint media players website to install the most current version. This was not detected by Secunia software advisory or Windows update. The site is listed on Web of Trust as dangerous. It is. As soon as I tried to start a download, Data Execution stepped in to prevent damage to my computer. MALWARE, THANKS A LOT FIREFOX!

  13. Mariaester Cantu wrote on ::

    When I make contact with Home Land Security and Cyber security with my work I was sure it would be safe and security when I e-mail. To understand that not even my faxes are safe. The work that you have done to prevent hackers still doesn’t work. What then? Do you know that their are phone companies that are betraying United States,through them and into our network systems. If I wrong , I am work but, if I am right the terrorist are attacking our phone lines contacted to our internet services whether it be business or home networks.Even law agents from all over our own nation. It’s not that your system and programs do not work. But, if it’s your system projects that have been stolen from your own employees and are selling you out for a good price including knowing how to take over human being mines and other nations use it to attack our nation, “UNITED STATES”. What then.

  14. sendadiet wrote on :

    soy de argentina y me encuentro que está todo en ingles , puedo acceder a leer esto en castellano? porque no sé ingles

  15. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

    sendadiet:

    The Plugin Check page was released as a bit of an experiment. We’re working on translations but wanted to get feedback before we got that done. The upcoming Firefox 3.6 refers people to this page and we expect translated versions of Firefox will have translated versions of the Plugin Check to link to.

    (from Google translate):
    La página Plugin cheque fue lanzado como un poco de un experimento. Estamos trabajando en la traducción, pero quería recibir comentarios antes de llegar a hacerlo bien. El próximo Firefox 3.6 se refiere la gente a esta página y esperamos versiones traducidas de Firefox se han traducido las versiones de los Comprobar plug-in para el vínculo.