Firefox 3: Plugins
May 30th, 2008 | Published in Browsers, Firefox, Mozilla, Work | 8 Comments
[I use a Mac, so all the images in this post are of the Mac user interface. The UI for other platforms will differ slightly. Click on pictures to view other sizes.]
Plugins are small third-party programs that can be added to Firefox to manage content that Firefox does not handle itself. Popular plugins include Adobe’s Flash player, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Java, RealPlayer, and Shockwave. Without the Flash plugin, for example, you wouldn’t be able to watch YouTube videos.
In Firefox 2 the only way to get information about what plugins you have installed is to type “about:plugins” in the location bar. This brings up a page of somewhat complicated, detailed information about the plugins that looks like the following screenshot. The page is a simple list of information — there is no way to interact with the plugins through the page at all.
Firefox 3 still has the about:plugins page, but also offers a much more useful new feature as part of the revamped Add-ons Manager. In Firefox 3, you can open the Plugins section of the Add-ons Manager by going to the “Tools” menu, selecting “Add-ons”, then clicking on the “Plugins” tab of the Add-on Manager.
Here you can see a much simpler and easier to understand list of installed plugins and their version numbers. Each plugin can also be enabled or disabled with a single click, and you can go to the original source of the plugin (if it is specified) by right-clicking and selecting “Visit Home Page”.
In addition, like with other add-ons in Firefox 3, if a plugin is found to contain a security vulnerability, Firefox will automatically disable it and tell you where to get an updated version. This is a significant security improvement for Firefox, which previously had no way to let you know that you had bad plugins installed. The list of blocked plugins is stored locally on your computer, and Firefox periodically verifies that the list is completely up to date. If Mozilla knows about a vulnerable plugin, you’ll be informed and protected automatically within 24 hours.
And there you have it. Another small but vital improvement that makes Firefox 3 significantly safer and easier to use.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:46 pm (#)
I don’t believe you. I updated from Flash Player yesterday (or was it two days ago?) from 9.0 r115 to 9.0 r124. According to Adobe, Flash Player 9.0.124 was released on April 8, 2008 and it was fixing security vulnerabilities in Flash Player 9.0.115. I have been using Firefox 3 RC 1 since it was released. I don’t know if Firefox 3 RC 1 detects and disables the vulnerable Flash Player version today but from 2008-04-08 to 2008-05-28 seems like more than 24 hours to me.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:31 pm (#)
Hey Jesper … you can see the list of blocked add-ons and extensions here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/blocklist/
We didn’t block Flash yet because of a bug where we’re not offering the right package for upgrade. This is a release blocker for us, but in the meantime, we didn’t want to put users in a situation where we’d block Flash and then make it impossible to upgrade it :)
Also, you might want to look here: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting to see what our Blocklisting policy is.
May 31st, 2008 at 1:39 pm (#)
This does seem like a rather bold claim to be making, when we’re not currently blocking any of the major plugins that have had security problems in the past (Flash, Java, Quicktime, Realplayer, WMP, …).
June 12th, 2008 at 6:46 pm (#)
I have tried every which way to get the WMP plug-in to work in here but have failed on every attempt
June 12th, 2008 at 6:46 pm (#)
I have tried every which way to get the WMP plug-in to work in here but have failed on every attempt
June 12th, 2008 at 11:12 pm (#)
[...] more, see Firefox 3: Plugins by Deb [...]
June 21st, 2008 at 7:37 am (#)
Ah yes a “small but vital improvement” that I’m beginning to think I don’t need.
Firefox 3.0 RC1 has blocked my Quicktime plug-in 7.1.6 “for your protection”.
The “tell me why” link takes me to the blacklist page.
The blacklist page has 5 entries.
None of which is in anyway related (even remotely) to Quicktime.
ver. 2.0.0.14 is looking good again.
June 21st, 2008 at 7:37 am (#)
Ah yes a “small but vital improvement” that I’m beginning to think I don’t need.
Firefox 3.0 RC1 has blocked my Quicktime plug-in 7.1.6 “for your protection”.
The “tell me why” link takes me to the blacklist page.
The blacklist page has 5 entries.
None of which is in anyway related (even remotely) to Quicktime.
ver. 2.0.0.14 is looking good again.