User:Jorge.villalobos/WorkWeek2012Q2

Problems

• Can't give users warnings, only blocks.
• Block UI is very unfriendly and doesn't offer solutions.
• Add-ons are installed by users who have no idea what they're doing
• Add-ons are installed without users knowing
• Malicious add-ons in Facebook
• Blocklisting ineffective against dupe ids
• Was the 3rd party install screen useful at all?
• Add-ons like Ask.com are overriding it.
• There's no automatic performance tests happening in Firefox
• Relationship with third parties -> inflammatory postings by Mozilla staff
• Openness
• Plugin check page, difficulties blocking and updating plugins
• Install experience: too many prompts but no useful data?
• I just updated Java and it dumped three add-on into my Firefox, of which Firefox asked me about one. The other two was just enabled.
• Recently installed Firefox already has a bunch of add-ons from previously installed applications and Windows Udpates
• Old SDK extensions
• Unless we're going to send to the browser the whole (long?) list of bad add-ons, the browser will need to tell Mozilla which add-ons it's running. This may be a privacy concern.
• I can think of multiple ways to deal with the bandwidth / size issue: compression; report list version and be sent a delta, etc. I'd assert that's a solvable issue.
• People forget which add-ons they have installed.

Possible Solutions

Blocklisting

 Having different levels
 Security, stability, user respect
 Update frequency
 User Interface
 Update as separate service
 Waiting time before blocking?

Add-on signing

 Who can sign?
 What to do about current and future unsigned add-ons?

Add-on IDs

 Register Ids and versions

Have better feedback channels for users and staff Closer communication with sumo

Not Allowing third parties – Unreviewed Add On Manual testing of top add-ons

Sources and Related Discussions

• McAfee is killing us.
• bug 727938 - Block McAfee Site Advisor 3.4.1 -- it leaks every content compartment forever.
• The McAfee Site Advisor add-on has an appalling memory leak
• Testing the top 100 add-ons for memory leaks
• bug 720856 - Need way to flag known problems in installed extensions to users.
• Expose Add-on Performance feature page.