Re: Ask Technica umratica: Firefox update

"Siderius Nuncius" <matron.nuncius@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was going to upgrade to Firefox 3.5.2 (currently running 3.0.something)
but it says it's incomaptible with Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.0
and that Firefox will disable it until it's updated for compatibility.

Don't worry, Sid, Firefox will not disable something on the entire
computer. These messages are about Firefox's own add-ons, and a
disabled add-on remains but is not used. No harm done, especially
not to anything outside Firefox.

Now what is that particular add-on, and how did it get there? I
had to search the web to find out. The add-ons own page is at
"https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9449";, and the
page contains some where agiled comments from users which gives
me the impression that as part of an upgrade of the .NET
component within Windows, Microsoft detect whether there is
a Firefox installation on the computer and then silently
install this add-on. Also it seems that it's not possible to
remove the add-on in the way you normally do within Firefox,
hence the angry comments.

What does it do, and what is it (supposedly) good for? Well,
it's to support a technology called ClickOnce
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClickOnce), which is a way of
downloading and launching a Windows application directly from
a webpage, without going through the steps of downloading,
installing, and starting. In other words, it makes something
possible in Firefox that is regarded as one of the most
dangerous security holes in Internet Explorer. Seems like
disabling it is actually not a bad idea at all.

The add-on also makes Firefox tell a web server, each time
the program asks the server for a web page, some information
about the computer, namely, which version of the .NET
framework (not the Assistant, the system-wide .NET component)
is present on the computer. Something that some people would
prefer not to happen.

The Wikipedia article also links to detailed uninstall
instructions, by the way, but these involve editing the
registry, so people should take care to follow the
instructions closely so that they don't delete the wrong
thing. Which is not to say that one needs to be an expert
technician to do this, the instructions are very detailed.
Think of it as operating without the safety fallback of
a "Tray" from which something deleted by mistake can be
recovered.

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article08-600
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/963707

Sebastian

.

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