In previous versions of Firefox Mobile, you could check for and install updates for your add-ons by pressing the “Update” button in the Add-ons Manager. This meant that you could check whenever and as often as you wanted, but, if you didn’t really want to manage these things manually, you could find yourself without the latest versions.
Desktop versions of Firefox will prompt you that a new version of an add-on is available. Maybe this prompt is enough for you to actually update the add-on, maybe it isn’t. Maybe you find the whole process annoying and/or boring.
In Firefox Mobile 1.1, we introduce automatic add-on upgrades. Once a day, Firefox will check your add-ons for an update and if an update is found, we download and install the new version. If you’re interested, you can go to the Add-ons Manager and see what add-ons have been updated. If you’re eager to use the new add-on, you can restart. In the future, some add-ons may not even need a restart.
Of course, you can still use the “Update” button to force add-ons to update right away, without waiting for the next automatic check.
If you want to turn off automatic add-on updates, you can use about:config and set extensions.autoupdate.enabled to false. If you’d like to change the timing for automatic updates, set extensions.autoupdate.interval to a different number of seconds.
Hey :-),
It would be great to update add-ons automatically if and only if Fennec is running with a Wifi connection, and not with Edge or 3G connection. Is it possible?
Ivan – it’s something we’ve thought about. Also, not auto-updating when you’re roaming, so more likely to have crazy data rates. It’s not in 1.1, but we’re looking at getting the hooks into to know what your current connection type is.
It’s great to see auto-updating coming to Firefox.
I think the concept of update and the UI designed to ask the user if he wants to update is too complicated for a large number of users.
I’d suggest that not to allow auto-updating by default. The problem is that people can buy out the code base of an add-on and change it to something unsavory, as shown with the TACO debacle.