#17 Unintended Firefox updates

[David Rhoades]

A classroom containing 40 students: a few students inexplicably found their version of Firefox inside of dojo mysteriously updated. This had very negative consequences for those students during class because it killed M3 proxy extention. They were able to download it but we’re not able to get it to work. Plug in simply did not work for the latest version of Firefox.

Therefore, we must configure Firefox inside of dojo to prevent automatic updates. This is very high priority for us when teaching classes. ALTERNATIVELY, find an extension that makes switching proxies in the latest version of Firefox easy.

[Steve Pinkham]

Do you know what version they were running? If they were running 56 (which is the latest version in ubuntu repos and latest firefox release) the extension should load fine, but installing it does not add the icon to the firefox UI anywhere, you have to do that manually. If they were running 57 beta somehow, the extension site won't even let them download the extension.

My guess is it had nothing to do wih firefox version itself, but that they selected the little pop-under on Firefox startup that suggests you "clean up firefox" for a like new experience.

.

57 will come out soon though, so we should find a way both to block that pop under and lock the browser at 56 for now.

[Steve Pinkham]

I'm guessing we've not had this problem before as we're always pushing a new version of dojo for most training sessions: Firefox only offers those pop unders after 30 days of non-use.

[Steve Pinkham]

FF locked at current version for now, and pop under for clean firefox disabled.