Firefox's Flash warning goes unheeded

If the browser's border or title area blinked red every five minutes, just for 30 seconds or so, because of a very serious issue, surely the user would realize something was wrong and that they needed to investigate this further - hence leading them down the track to updating their software bits and pieces.

Its just an idea that they and other software developers could use if the old ideas don't work.

By nicomo on 17 Sep 2009

never saw the warning on the page...

the page looked no different from any other time...so didn't pay it a lot of attention. Perhaps i am on the latest version.

I guess most users wont know that if they run IE and Firefox, they need two different versions of Flash.

Its good however that Firefox is even attempting to bring this to users attention.

I use Sumo (Software Updates Monitor) to try and plug the serious gaps, but with it all changing on a daily/weekly basis, how is anyone really supposed to keep up with all this?

Simon

By bouncy1 on 17 Sep 2009

33% is a signification percentage!

"Firefox's Flash warning goes unheeded" ... because only 10 million people upgraded.

10 million? That sounds like a lot of people taking heed.

By peterm2k on 17 Sep 2009

I'm not surprised

I did click on the link and it made my Firefox almost unusable since every time I go to a page with Flash on it, that page now takes so long to load that I close the browser down and do something else instead. Uninstalling and reinstalling hasn't helped either.

By IanT9 on 17 Sep 2009

Automatic Update

Most Firefox add-ons will automatically update, so why can't adobe set up their flash plug-in to do the same.
All the end user then has to do is accept the update, rather than being sent to some other site to do the update.

By ChrisRiddick on 17 Sep 2009

Adobe needs to get Flash to update as easily and automatically as Firefox and other software. It is an entirely manual procedure at the moment, and a tedious one as it needs to be done separately for both IE and Firefox.

Why can't Flash be updated via the Adobe Updater that is installed with Adobe Reader?

No-one reads the "you've just upgraded" page as Firefox updates are so frequent and the page doesn't normally contain anything important. I agree with other comments - 33% is a surprisingly high proportion.

By halsteadk on 17 Sep 2009

Users don't trust these update-notifications..

.. and quite rightly so.

"If the browser's border or title area blinked red every five minutes, just for 30 seconds or so, because of a very serious issue.. "

On the contrary, they would assume this was being done by a malicious website trying to spoof them into installing a Trojan, and would respond by closing the browser and/or rebooting.

The issue here is that modern browsers allow Javascript to fake system dialogs. This is, IMHO an Very Bad Policy, as it means the user can now trust nothing, all popups and update-notifications must be assumed hostile.

This, I suspect, is why so few respond to the warning.

By Anteaus on 17 Sep 2009

Just because people don't click on *that* link, doesn't mean they are not updating. Likewise, people could click, get confused and give up, but it gets counted.

This is where you can set Flash to check for updates:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en
/flashplayer/help/settings_manager05.html
Maximum is every 7 days.
You can also find and delete all those Flash cookies.

By davidsoap on 18 Sep 2009

It's a good idea but following through forced Adobe updater/Adobe GetPlusPlus on me - never again will I trust such a message, I simply cannot stand updater apps.

By thewelshbrummie on 18 Sep 2009