We need to talk with Adobe on bringing similar user experience to Firefox. Google recently started to bundle Flash on their browser, which is making first-time Flash installation smoother than on Firefox, and updating it should be easy as they use the same update channel also for Flash updates. Mad props for using Starcraft 2 as an example youtube video. Tags: flash, plugin, plugins, user experience, ux Protecting users from plugin crashes is a great thing, and I’m looking forward to seeing the plugin update experience becoming just as awesome. Eliminate any steps you can - get it down to a one-click experience if possible.Do not force people to download the XPI (Firefox could use an external installer + hash check like it does with PFS).Do not have the McAfee opt-out on the Flash download page.Don’t have an intermediate step on the plugin checker.Show specific warnings about which plugins are out of date.Safe to say that there are many ways we can improve this process: Linux: 6 steps, high likelihood of failure or conflict with package manager.

Windows: 9 steps, 2 unnecessary software downloads from Adobe.Follow the on-screen prompts until you reach our goal: a browser running an up-to-date version of FlashĪdobe and Mozilla both need to make this process easier for users.Visit YouTube (or any page with Flash on it).Edit my blocklist.xml files and preferences to blocklist the Flash filename on each platform.It looks something like this:Īs a follow-up to that post, I walked through the update process for Firefox. In a previous blog, I talked about the blocklist service in Firefox and its role in keeping users informed and up-to-date with regards to plugins. Out-of-date plugins can be a security risk. This means that when plugins crash, it doesn’t take the browser with them.īut please remember: it’s still important to keep your plugins up-to-date. This week, Firefox 3.6.4 was released with out-of-process plugin support.

Update firefox flash plugin