The information pop-up offers users the option of downloading Firefox 3.5 immediately, downloading it later, or skipping it completely. Although the pop-up informs users of potential add-on incompatibilities, users will only find out whether updates for their installed add-ons are available after upgrading to the new version of Firefox. The Mozilla development team says that 90 percent of add-ons have either been updated for version 3.5, or new version have been created.
Mozilla has, according to its own statistics, recently celebrated its one billionth download since version 1.0 was released in November 2004. According to media reports, this figure has been questioned by Amy Barzdukas, product manager at Microsoft, who cautioned that big numbers in PR statements should always be viewed with scepticism. Barzdukas said "It's an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area". Internet World Stats puts the world total for internet users at around 1.59 billion and many Firefox users will have downloaded the browser more than once.
Firefox 3 about to get a major update
Starting a little later tonight, users with the latest version of Firefox 3 will be getting an offer to update to Firefox 3.5. If you’re running Firefox 3.0.13 you will see the offer in the next couple of days, though if you’re eager you can always “Check for Updates” in the “Help” menu. This is what the offer will look like:
Clicking the “Upgrade to Firefox 3.5″ link will open a new tab with more information about Firefox 3.5 to help you make your decision about upgrading. From there, you have a choice:
- select Later if you don’t want to decide now; Firefox will ask again in 24 hours
- select Never if you don’t want to accept this upgrade offer; we might send you another offer again in the future, but it won’t be for several weeks or months
- select Get the new version to continue on with the upgrade process!
Once you’ve accepted that, Firefox will download and install the update, then offer to restart the browser. When you restart, you’ll be rolling with Firefox 3.5!
Now, although over 90% of Firefox add-ons have been updated to be compatible with Firefox 3.5, in some cases the authors have created entirely new versions. If that happens with your favorite add-on, you might see the following screen:
You can see exactly which add-ons are being flagged as potentially incompatible by clicking on Show List. As mentioned above, for most popular add-ons, there probably is an update available, but you’ll need to install Firefox 3.5 first in order to check. If you continue with the update process, when Firefox 3.5 starts up for the first time you’ll see the following screen:
By all means, Check Now to see if there’s a version of that add-on which works with Firefox 3.5. If there is, you’ll see the following:
You’ll want to Install Now which will fetch the update and then continue loading Firefox 3.5.
If an update isn’t available, Firefox will check every day and let you know once the add-on author has created one. If you’ve come this far and decide that you can’t live without your favorite add-on, you can always go to www.firefox.com and click on “Other Languages and Systems”, and click on the link to download an older version of Firefox.
source: Mozilla Developer Center
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