Mozilla To Protect Adobe Flash Users

juct writes "Beginning with versions 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 of Firefox, Mozilla is going to check the version of installed Adobe Flash plug-ins and warn users if it discovers an outdated version with potential security holes. Mozilla confirmed this new security feature and said that the Flash version check was part of a wider commitment to 'protect users from emerging threats online.' Just recently, a study confirmed that 80 per cent of users surf with a vulnerable version of Adobe's plug-in."

Re:Does flash not already do this?

[postmortem]

It does, sometimes on system startup; however it only installs updated plugin for Internet Explorer.

Yeah, I got that.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Signed up for beta/testing FF updates. I get notified by FF that adobe is out of date. I click to install it. And lo! what installs? Not Flash... but some crappy Adobe Download Manager plugin whose sole purpose seems to be to download and install Adobe products. The Flash update did not ever download, even after FF restart.

Broke my own first rule on this one -- never download anything you're not 100% certain of - but it's still frustrating. If FF tells me it's taking me to install Flash, I think I should be able to trust that Flash is what I'm going to get.

Re:Does flash not already do this?

[A Friendly Troll]

I have never had Flash notify me that it needs an update. Ever. The only time I've seen the notification was on a single computer at the office.

A few days ago I was given this link http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager05.html [macromedia.com] - I think it was somewhere on Slashdot, either in the article, or in the comments. Sure enough, I went there, and Flash was set to never notify me of updates.

Worth checking out.

In the meantime...

[MrNonchalant]

Here's a page that checks your Flash version and lists the latest version for the different browsers/operating systems: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ [adobe.com]

Re:Automatic updates

[robmv]

... because an XPI extension is written in XUL and/or Javascript, while a plugin is a compiled DLL that the browser loads up into its address space. they are two different things that work in different ways, even though they both add features to the browser. That's not to say that Flash couldn't be hosted on Mozilla's add-ons site, just that you are unlikely to see it in the form of an XPI file.

Why some people always assume the person that is talking has no knowledge of what he or she is saying?, please take a look at Mozilla Extension reference [mozilla.org] and you will see that you can package plugins inside an XPI (/plugins/* reference on the exampleExt.xpi sample)