Mozilla Progresses On Silent Updates

Mozilla is making progress on adding a silent update mechanism to Firefox, with plans to integrate the new service in Firefox 10 early next year. One of the developers working on the feature cautioned that silent update might slip, however.

At this point, we’re not quite sure which version of Firefox this will land in…We’re working to land it as soon as is safely possible. –  Ehsan Akhgari, a Firefox engineer in charge of one of the silent update components, said in a blog post last weekend.

Akhgari’s part of the project is to minimize the amount of time it takes Firefox to launch after downloading an update. To do so, he’s come up with a way to stage the downloaded update, essentially an updated copy of Firefox, in a separate Windows directory, then swap the older edition with the newer one the next time the user starts up Firefox.

Other pieces to the silent update puzzle include installing a Windows service so an update doesn’t trigger a UAC (user account control) prompt message and setting all add-ons as compatible by default, again so that Firefox doesn’t display a warning message.

Nevertheless, the sidestepping of Windows Vista’s and Windows 7’s UAC prompts is currently “at risk” for making it into Firefox 10, although notes from a status meeting Mozilla held this week indicate that the feature should wrap up this week and move to testing.