Categories: developers end users

Strengthening User Control of Add-ons

It’s no secret that Firefox users love to install add-ons — more than 1.5 million are downloaded every day from our official gallery. But users aren’t the only ones who love adding on to Firefox: third-party applications frequently install bundled add-ons into Firefox as part of their own installation process. While some of these applications seek the user’s permission beforehand, others install add-ons into Firefox without checking to make sure the user actually wants them.

These add-ons installed by third parties present a number of problems: they can slow down Firefox start-up and page loading time, they clutter the interface with toolbars that often go unused, they lag behind on compatibility and security updates, and most importantly, they take the user out of control of their add-ons.

That’s why we’re introducing two new features to ensure users have complete control over their add-ons:

Users must opt in to add-on installation

If Firefox starts and finds that another program has installed an add-on, Firefox will disable the add-on until the user has explicitly opted in to the addition. Users that want the functionality provided by a third-party-installed add-on can easily allow the installation, while users who don’t can cancel or ignore the prompt.

Screenshot of add-on install prompt

An opportunity to fix the past

Upon upgrading to this upcoming version of Firefox, users will be presented with a one-time dialog to select the add-ons they wish to keep installed. By default, all of the add-ons the user has installed from within Firefox will be kept, but add-ons installed by another application will be disabled unless the user chooses to keep them. Regardless of installation method, we encourage users to disable add-ons they aren’t using to improve Firefox’s performance.

Screenshot of add-on selection dialog

If any add-ons will be disabled, the user will be asked to confirm the changes. This additional step should ensure users don’t accidentally disable add-ons they wish to keep.

Screenshot of add-on confirmation dialog

We understand that there are legitimate use cases for some third-party add-on installations, and that those developers have done the right thing by asking users to opt in to the add-on, following our performance best practices, and providing a good user experience. Unfortunately, the extent of unwanted add-ons installed through these methods has caused us to take action, but we’re confident that users who truly want such add-ons to be installed will opt in when Firefox prompts them.

You can try out these and other new features in Firefox Aurora starting next week.

163 comments on “Strengthening User Control of Add-ons”

  1. Reaner wrote on

    This is brilliant, I’ve wanted this for so long. I’d also like to be able to remove add-ons and especially plug-ins that for some reason don’t have an option to be completely removed.

    This is a great start though, I’m looking forward to trying it.

    1. Sam wrote on

      I cant agree more.
      Great job (and hopefully for those pesky plugins too)

  2. Manuel Strehl wrote on

    This is very good news! Especially change 1; less “techy” people now get a notice, when there are addons installed “under the hood.” I’m looking forward to see this on my relatives’ computers☺.

  3. Steve Fink wrote on

    This is awesome, but I’m unclear on the best practices for scrupulous add-on installers.

    Let’s say I have some application/installer that wants to install an add-on, and I’m already prompting the user for whether they want it or not. Clearly, my prompt is now redundant with Firefox’s, so I’d like to eliminate it, but only for versions of Firefox that have the new prompt. What’s the exact check that my external installer should use if it wants to continue to be a good citizen for users both before and after this change?

  4. Michael Kaply wrote on

    To reiterate what Steve said, we have an installer on Windows that installs an add-in to Firefox (via an EXE). It’s only job is to install the add-on and the user is agreeing to install the addon.

    How do we keep this prompt from appearing in this case?

    (The reason we use an EXE is because it’s the only way to distribute our add-on on download sites other than AMO)

    1. Martin Jungowski wrote on

      Mike, quick question: how do you install your addon? What exactly thes the installer do and where does it eventually place the .xpi (or the extracted equivalent thereof)?

      1. Mike Kaply wrote on

        It finds the profile.ini, locates the default profile, unpacks the addon into that directory.

    2. Tim wrote on

      Mike, you can sign your extension via mccoy (distributed by Mozilla) and distribute via your own website. Package your xpi, run sha1sum to get a checksum, copy the checksum into your update.rdf file, and then use mccoy to sign the update.rdf file. It works for me, and I dont use the AMO since I need to distribute updates to my code quickly for student use.

      1. Michael Kaply wrote on

        The reason we use EXEs is for distributing on non Mozilla sites, such as software download sites.

        1. nobody special wrote on

          You should re-read the comment you replied to.

    3. Stefan wrote on

      I have the exact same problem and beyond. Our company distributes a set of plugins that are installed explicitely by an offline installer, mainly because our app is sometimes used in closed networks. The installer uses default Firefox behavior and is meant to install just the plugins, which are not a “side-effect” of a larger install.

      We are in a very bad position, since it is already EXTREMELY annoying that we have to rebuild and retest all our plugins (and there is a bunch of them) about every month when the Gecko API changes (at least at version level). Not to mention the fact that we have to provide upgrades at the same time as Firefox does.

      Some of our customers have no “outside” access, the Firefox will not upgrade all by itself, but since some have, it is a major pain in the *** since the Firefox versions are shipped every other month.

  5. Dextro wrote on

    This is an excelent idea, I love it. Now I just wonder if you plan to do the same for plugins like the infamous skype one for example?

    1. Justin Scott (fligtar) wrote on

      Skype is an add-on and will fall under these new features.

      1. Bill wrote on

        Yes! Good!!!

      2. bob bowman wrote on

        Skype no longer supported by latest edition of firefox
        When will it be

  6. Alex Faaborg wrote on

    Firefox unfortunately doesn’t have any way of knowing if the user was ever asked about installing the extension. So the only way to ensure user control is to ask them when Firefox launches.

  7. Gijs wrote on

    Can we remove unnecessary (‘automatically’ – well duh!) and superfluous words (“always at any time”) from this dialog?

    And, while we’re at it, can the wording in this dialog be grandmother-optimized?

    eg.

    “Add-ons installed by third parties will be disabled automatically unless you select them below.”
    –>
    “Select which add-ons from other programs you want to keep.”

    “third party” is legalese. How about just using “other programs” (or maybe even just ‘others’ in direct opposition to ‘you’) which is really what is meant here, right?

    1. Alex Essilfie wrote on

      You’re absolutely right. It looks like the Mozilla guys got it wrong there.

      If you put too much text in a page that requires user action, the user just clicks OK or whatever is available and get on with their business.

      Years as a software developer has taught me to reduce text to barest minimum. I’m surprised Mozilla is *trying hard* to get it wrong.

  8. Dan Veditz wrote on

    It’s unfortunate you have to pay for the sins of others. Can you think of some reasonable way we can discriminate between good and bad actors? Just as we all now have to wait in long airport security lines I think this is something you’ll just have to live with.

    1. Mike Kaply wrote on

      Most of these add-ons don’t install themselves in the profile, do they?

      I thought they install at a central location (which makes them uninstallable).

      What about blacklisting?

  9. Nicholas Nethercote wrote on

    Oh god this is wonderful.

  10. Pete Boyd wrote on

    We install Adblock Plus and Zotero add-ons system-wide on all our clients’ workstations. Will each person be prompted in this same way for add-ons installed system-wide?

    People may not know what Adblock Plus is, but we at least want them to have it turned on to reduced bandwidth consumption, keep their browser running faster and free-er of malicious intrusion; and they may not know what Zotero is now but may want to use it in future. We can;t hand-hold each person through this experience.

    1. Natanael L wrote on

      Create a custom Firefox profile with these installed (install Firefox, install the addons, close Firefox, make a ZIP file of profile folder), replace the default profile on new computers with that one.

      1. Pete Boyd wrote on

        I’m not sure what you’re on about… I already know how to install an add-on (by copying the {UID} directory into %PROGRAMFILES%\Mozilla Firefox\extensions\). My question is will users be prompted when we first deploy an add-on and subsequently update it.

        1. nobody special wrote on

          You should re-read the comment you’re replying to. He’s not telling you how to install an addon, but how to install a complete profile.

  11. stefan wrote on

    While I welcome this change, I’m curious how it will prevent bad devs to just add an “add on accepted” pref to each firefox profile they can find. It will certainly alert devs who thought they do a good deed by auto installing, but some unwanted addons are installed to promote the company/product or to generate revenue from ads somewhere down the line (usually bundled with “free”ware).

    Hopefully it doesn’t end in a war where each side has to update constantly to reach their goal.

    1. farhad wrote on

      While I welcome this change, I’m curious how it will prevent bad devs to just add an “add on accepted” pref to each firefox profile they can find. It will certainly alert devs who thought they do a good deed by auto installing, but some unwanted addons are installed to promote the company/product or to generate revenue from ads somewhere down the line (usually bundled with “free”ware).

      Hopefully it doesn’t end in a war where each side has to update constantly to reach their goal.

  12. Firefox Add-ons wrote on

    I love this update. It’s so annoying having to keep checking back to see if the add-ons have been made compatible.

  13. Mike Kaply wrote on

    My question is how often are you going to run the “Select your Add-ons” thing.

    Is this going to be something just once, or are you going to do it every few releases?

    If you keep running it, eventually people are just going to disable their add-ons so they don’t see it.

    Once again, you guys seem like you are discouraging people from using add-ons.

    1. Justin Scott (fligtar) wrote on

      As mentioned in the post, it is only ever seen once by the user. It happens when they upgrade from a version below FIrefox 8 or a later version if they skip 8.

      1. Mike Kaply wrote on

        If the goal is to address the third-party problem via a one time dialog, why is the statement about making Firefox faster brought up at all?

        This is a really confusing message.

        The message here should be:

        “You got add-ons you might not have agreed to. If you don’t know what they are, disable them.”

        Adding in the “Make Firefox faster” part is encouraging people to disable other add-ons as well.

        1. Justin Scott (fligtar) wrote on

          Yes, the dialog and this post encourage people to disable add-ons they aren’t using. User control and performance are the two primary reasons we’re doing this.

  14. Mike Kaply wrote on

    Can you please add add-on descriptions in the “Do you want to keep this add-on” dialog?

    Some users won’t know exactly what an add-on is/does from just the name.

  15. Mike Kaply wrote on

    The more I read this, the more confused I am:

    > By default, all of the add-ons the user has installed from within Firefox will be kept, but add-ons installed by another application will be disabled unless the user chooses to keep them.

    The only third-party add-ons you can detect are add-ons that are not installed in the profile directory, correct? (At least for the big scary Select Your Add-ons page)

    On subsequent starts, what are you considering third party add-ons?

    There are multiple “third-parties” here:

    1. Add-ons installed in a central location (these are more insidious because they can’t be uninstalled from the browser)

    2. Add-ons that are installed in the extensions directory where Firefox is installed.

    3. Add-ons that are installed in a users profile directory (by programmatically finding the profile and installing it into the extension directory of a profile).

    Are all of these considered third-party? What’s to prevent an evil third-party from simply modifying a Firefox install to prevent the third-party dialog from coming up at all?

  16. Chris Coulson wrote on

    What about Linux distributions who ship addons in their default install? We ship 2 addons by default with Firefox in Ubuntu (and 1 of those implements a core piece of shell integration. It would be a pretty bad UX for that to get disabled on upgrade). I’m not sure what I’m meant to do :/

    1. Justin Scott (fligtar) wrote on

      We’ll be posting info for enterprises and other distributions that need to ship with add-ons built in soon. It’s still possible.

      1. Chris Coulson wrote on

        Excellent, thanks. That’s good to hear 🙂

      2. Rick Alther wrote on

        Justin, where is this post discussing how enterprises can package add-ons without them being disabled by default?

      3. Christoph wrote on

        Any update on this? Where are the enterprise instructions?

        1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

          See here on how to set a preference that disables this feature altogether.

          1. Christoph wrote on

            Thanks, but this is not was I was looking for:
            1. It is a user preference, but I need something I can set system-wide.
            2. It completely disables the dialog while I was looking for a way to mark ‘legitimate’ extensions in the dialog.

            The current logic “Whatever was not installed by the user was installed by a 3rd party and should therefor be disabled by default” is fundamentally flawed. It doesn’t take into account package management in Linux distributions nor sysadmin’s needs to install add-ons globally.

      4. Pete Boyd wrote on

        Can you post a link to that info please? I’ve looked through this site’s list of articles and can’t see that it was posted.

      5. bambo wrote on

        where are the infos for enterprises?
        It’s a shame that mozilla doesn’t care for them nor those system admins and developers out there who package ff with some of their prefered addons.
        I shoudn’t be at all surprised if they discontinue using firefox in the very near future. I could fully understand.
        Thx mozilla for your super-duper new rapid release cycle, breaking binary
        xpcom compatibility every 6 weeks. Don’t you understand?
        You are harming your biggest plus over your competitors, your addon-ecosystem, your platform. I am sorry, but how stupid can you get?

      6. Martin Stransky wrote on

        Any news about the info for enterprise distributors?

        1. bambo wrote on

          This is a way which works for me, first topic from davidtse916 :

          http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2320715&start=15

  17. Name wrote on

    I don’t just want to disable these annoying things, take Java for instance, I just want the basic Java, not Quickstarter,Not JDK, Not Java Console. I want to be able to completely nuke these nasty pests – So stop hiding where they are – the enumeration of these is too well hidden and firefox does not say where the dlls or plugins are. Disabling is not good enough, I just checked my plugins and one of the bastards is enabled again – I did not do that and it wouldn’t have happened if Firefox was more up front about plugins.

    What file does hold plugin enumeration info? How does Firefox find the plugins?

    Every plugin is of course another vulnerability vector.

  18. Anon wrote on

    Hope there is some way for us school and office admins to stop users installing add ons – maybe a config file in the programme directory.

  19. Jonadab wrote on

    > We understand that there are legitimate use cases for some third-party add-on installations

    I don’t understand that. Every single third-party-install add-on I’ve ever seen, without exception, is at *best* totally 100% pointless.

    Some of them, including some quite common ones by major IT-industry giants, could be fairly described as malware. But even the essentially harmless ones (e.g., the stupid Microsoft .NET thing) serve no useful purpose — unless you count reminding the user of the brand name in question every time they look at their add-ons list as a “use”.

    I applaud this. This is the first really positive, user-friendly change to the Firefox UI in a long time — since 2.0, if I’m not mistaken.

    1. Wolfos wrote on

      Yeah, it’s usually just something your mom installs which just takes over Firefox, changes the default search engine to sponsored Bing search and more.

  20. Wolfos wrote on

    Why the version number? Firefox… 8…? Why?
    Most people are still at 4, which came out only a few months ago. Why would we take any update from you even seriously anymore if you bring out a new major version every week or so?

  21. fxuser wrote on

    Long overdue… too many unscrupulous add-ons. Also tell us where they load from so we can nuke them permanently

  22. therube wrote on

    I wish [they] would stop using the overly broad term “addons” [or add-on, or add-ons, depending upon the day of the week] & speak more specifically whether this relates to extensions or plugins or both & how they may be treated differently.

    And then just what is “Third Party” & “You” … (I typically download all my extensions, some signed, some not, & install them locally. Is that You [like me] or Third Party [if it’s not being installed via AMO] or ?

    Would this check for maxVersion issues?
    Overrides are still available?
    And this whole new dialog, able to be disabled through a Preference [of course not!]?

  23. Franz wrote on

    Hi,

    I also would like 2 know where the add-ons are, cause I don’t just want to disable these nasty pests.

    So stop hiding where they are!

    What file does hold plugin enumeration info? How does Firefox find the plugins?

    1. therube wrote on

      (In SeaMonkey 2.3 at least, you can …)

      plugin.expose_full_path;true

      Then about:plugins will show the full path. (Go figure.)
      (about:addons is unaffected by that setting.)

      Setting that is probably considered a “security” risk.

      1. Franz wrote on

        Hi therube,

        thx a lot!

  24. HaPe wrote on

    Very good idea.Should have been implemented years ago.Recently installed a program which installed “ask.com”-toolbar even though I opted out of it.What made me angry was the fact that ask.com came with an “uninstall option” one within Firefox and another one within Windows uninstallation program.None of them could remove that damn ask-toolbar.Of course: removing Firefox completely – via normal uninstallation routine- and installing it again did not fix the problem either.ONLY using Revo-Uninstaller and its “harshest” uninstall option could finally remove this add-on.Looking forward to the improved Firefox…..

  25. Horst wrote on

    This is really good news IMHO.I,ve been looking forward to Mozilla putting something like this into operation for quite some time..should hopefully alleviate quite a few problems with installing extensions.
    Will it be possible to turn off this misfeature?

  26. Anybody wrote on

    Excellent news. Now please handle plugins the same way in a future version of Firefox.

    Every other program installs plugins that then get automatically enabled and expose the Firefox user to loads and loads of security vulnerabilities. Plugins should be off by default just as Addons are now off until enabled.

    Something completely different: Now that Firefox 8 has landed in the Aurora channel, why is there no longer a 64Bit version for Windows? While Firefox 8 was “latest-mozilla-central”, it always had one but since it has moved now to “latest-mozilla-aurora” no win64 builds are provided anymore 🙁

    1. meh wrote on

      There isn’t any win64 builds for Aurora, Beta or Release.

  27. Dimas wrote on

    Do you know if I can disable these features? For example, when I’ve updated to Firefox 8 beta a window appeared asking for the addons I want to enable or disable. It’s nice for home users, but in my company I don’t want the users can change it for two reasons:

    – For them that’s confusing, they don’t know about addons
    – I don’t want they can disable important company extensions

    Unless I can disable it we can’t update to Firefox 8.

    Thx

  28. Jo Hermans wrote on

    go to about:config, and set extensions.shownSelectionUI to true

  29. Foxload wrote on

    In general i think its a good feature. But the one-time dialog is maybe confusing for the home users. A lot of users are just clicking through to get rid of update dialogs. After that they will be confused when Third-Party add-ons are not working any more. Per default all existing add-ons should have a selected checkbox to keep them.

    1. starrlife wrote on

      That happened to me- now my Firefox keeps saying it’s already running and it’s loading slower and some of my bookmarks are different?

      1. Amy Tsay wrote on

        Hi starrlife, this article may help you: http://bit.ly/sedLls. You can also ask questions here: support.mozilla.com/kb/ask. Let us know if this helps–thanks!

  30. michal wrote on

    finally, I will be able to get rid of those unwanted things completely.

  31. mr.RM wrote on

    Not related to add-onns, but somewhere along updates I found one thing missing:

    Search no longer works with Scandinavian letters Ä, Ö or Å. And this is a thing I use regularly.

  32. Swarnava Sengupta wrote on

    great update, appreciate it 🙂

  33. MaTachi wrote on

    Looks great I must say! This will be really good for less techy users!

  34. Sudip wrote on

    Firefox adblockplus is most powerful addon.

  35. Bob McIntosh wrote on

    I would be very careful you don’t loose site of what the average user thinks. The rapid and to me unsafe pace of change is like Microcrash change for the sake of change. My biggest complaint is the changes have so far caused me grief with the layout AND the loss of Symantec antivirus protection until Symantec can catch up. This may not occur at a speed you think their focus is not to support Firefox but to support me.
    The word “arrogant” comes to mind with Mozilla some what like Netflix. I will have to look a Chrome it has only been breached one time to my knowledge in three years. With this change for change sake I can no longer see Firefox as my go browser. After all most people just want the beer cold and there when they reach for one, not rearrange the fridge every 90 days!
    We’ll see how many of people like me there are.

    1. me wrote on

      +100

  36. Great! wrote on

    This is super great for people who aren’t that good with computers and just let things get installed without knowing why and then complain that their computers are too slow and we have to go in and fix it.

  37. Jonathan wrote on

    What Stefan said. This won’t prevent bad software from automatically accepting themselves as an add-on. It might work for all current software, but any future versions will know about this firefox change and will work around it.

  38. Steve Gustafson wrote on

    I need a last good version of Firefox, and am not finding it easily on any of the Mozilla sites. I may have been hit by a malware version of “Firefox 8”. I innocently clicked an “update” frogmarcher and it broke the browser.

    It broke *all* of my addons, including ones that I use daily such as Linky and Bazzacuda; and ones that I find it painful to be on the Web without, like Flash and Ad Blocker. System Restore just made a Firefox that crashes any time I try to load it.

    I suppose I need to reinstall 7 and start over. I am not finding that version easily on the Mozilla site.

  39. Enrico wrote on

    Simply fantastic! I saw so much unwanted addon installed without even warning the user in windows. Luck for me i use Linux 99.9% of the time eheheh.

    Thank you very much, keep improving firefox! Make us even more free 😉

    1. Ravi wrote on

      You are right bro. Windows users are affected from those annoying third parties add-ons. I installed Ubuntu Linux along side Windows 7 and I am greatly satisfied with Linux. Boots in less than 5 sec and yeah the Firefox start-up is soooo fast. Keep up the good work Mozilla and make it more better browser!!

  40. mary cay blue wrote on

    I already don’t understand Mozilla Fire fox and can’t do the plug ins. I don’t understand anything you’ve written about colors, etc and it sounds more confusing that it already is do I won’t be doing this new windows 8 till I’m more comfortable with windows 7 and understand things..i’ve sent questions in the forums trying to fix my plug-in and I get no responses that I understand. I’m not a computer bug so I don’t understand even what is simple to someone else. These plug-ins have been a horrible nightmare.
    But, thanks for asking anyhow. Sorry

  41. mary cay blue wrote on

    I gave a real answer and you wanted me to rewrite. So, I’m not ready for windows 8l Thanks for asking

  42. Tobias wrote on

    Why is the only option in the add-on warning tab “Continue”? It doesn’t seem all that clear to me whether clicking Continue will install the add-on or not. I hate to suggest something from a certain other browser, but really, why not Allow and Deny buttons, with the Allow button disabled until the user has checked a box labelled “Trust third party add-ons from Weasel Inc.” or similar?

  43. Parasolstars wrote on

    Hello,

    Though I appreciate the idea, I’m disappointed because at every reboot of mine I need to authorize and install each one of my addon because of this new feature.

    I guess it’s a bug, but really, I just don’t know how to fix it…

  44. Dale wrote on

    Firefox 8 is not compatible with several add-ons that I depend on (Tab Mix Plus, Password Maker). I did not know this until AFTER I accepted the recommended Firefox upgrade.

    Does anybody know of a clean way of “downgrading” Firefox back to 7? Without losing my settings, bookmarks, add-ons etc.?

    Thanks!

  45. Christoph wrote on

    Once again this shows that Mozilla doesn’t care about the enterprise market. Imagine you are in a corporate network and administer thousands of boxes and you want to make sure that all employees have a certain set of plugins. How would you do that?

    Or what about Linux distributions? Every two weeks user’s get an update and all extensions that are delivered by the distribution are disabled. Even the language packs included in the very same package as Firefox itself is considered as 3rd party install. So every two weeks users are facing an English browser without any extensions and have to manually enable their extensions again.

    Mozilla is becoming amazingly distro- and enterprise-hostile recently.

  46. bflaska wrote on

    Hi, Someone else was at the monitor just now when the new Firefox downloaded. They allowed total disabling of add ons. BUT I NEED my Norton toolbar with the identity safe … how do I get this back in Firefox? I am perplexed. Will you please advise (and please be specific)? Thanks, I need your help.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      The add-on should be disabled, so you can re-enabled it easily by visiting the Add-ons Manager, looking for it in the Extensions section, and clicking on the Enable button. You’ll probably need to restart Firefox after that.

      1. bflaska wrote on

        Perfectamente! That worked like a charm, Jorge, thank you very much!

  47. Chris wrote on

    I can`t use DAP or Speedbit video downloader with Firefox 8 why as worked well in previous firefox versions and why not Firefox 8,

  48. Tim wrote on

    I agree with Cristopher. As a sys admin this is a nightmare. I have specific business legitimate needs for global extensions on mac osx and you have screwed with ff again! God damn it stop it! I will indefinitely keep the thousands of machines on version 7 now! I have had enough! And when management complain about the corporate systems that only work with Firefox I will convince them to make them work with Google Chrome and ditch ff forever!

  49. Thor wrote on

    I agree with Tim and Christopher.
    Stop making it harder for admins deploying firefox at their org.
    I use an addon to make adjustments to the firefox for our business, however this new update will compleatly destroy the very concept of pushing out adjustments to my users. In my setup I have disabled addon install exept those I install. So in my setup the user should absolutly not be handling addons install/disable/uninstall! 🙁

  50. The Man wrote on

    This is a really stupid idea. Not only does it make legitimate add-ons harder to work across the board for many users. For home/small business/large business. It doesn’t even give common sense functions as to completely deny installation in the first place. NOR does it give a complete removal function for all the garbage that installed without user consent in first place!

    How it should be:

    When using an exe or equivalent to install an add-on. The install area in firefox should allow the installation. HOWEVER ! The browser should place the files into an area that doesn’t affect the browser just yet. The next time the browser is activated by the user. The add-on menu can ask whether or not this installation should be allow into the browser and THEN check off “allow or deny”. Allowing it, shall place the files into the function area of the browser to be used. To deny it shall delete those files or give a 2nd option of keeping the files in a non functional dormant state to be activated at a later time in that menu.

    The other thing that SHOULD have been implemented from the very beginning of the browser. Would be the removal function. If the user did not specifically add the add-on to the browser. It shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place. But to make up for this gross incompetence in lacking such a feature. It should be able to forcibly remove the add-ons as an option to do so.

    As a side mention that many have asked and little if anything said about it. Wtf is with changing the browser around every 10 seconds with out adding any option to turn off features BEFORE the update takes place??
    Ex: Update browser. Get an optional list of the new features that would be added or changed. Checkbox/uncheck anything and everything the user does NOT want to use BEFORE they are just willy nilly added and getting stuck with garbage. And yes many this people get angry about that FF personnel may think are good, but may NOT want.

    The newer versions are far to aggressive and frankly show the lack of common sense and interest in what the user base want from this product. Free or not. Keep up the bad work and you will continue to get such commentary.

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