Bully for you jscher2000, I am pleased you are happy with Firefox on your system. Unfortunately for me and the many other users who have turned updating OFF there is great disappointment when the update goes ahead and the first you know of it is the message dialogue informing you that your add-ons have been disabled. Please refrain from calling people liars and if you are going to reply why not make it useful? I have set my firewall to block the updater, I think this will stop the problem, however if this fails I will return and report MY EXPERIENCE and not MY OPINION here. Regards

Hi technoweary, maybe I read your post too broadly. I am not denying that your Firefox is misbehaving, but there is a difference between saying "Firefox is designed to do X and for me Firefox always does Y" and saying that everyone should ignore Firefox's settings because they are ineffective.

I am completely with you on user choice. I never allow automatic updating if given a choice. Firefox is designed to honor that.

My question is, if your setting gets flipped back to automatic, why is that happening? Do you notice any other non-default settings getting lost or reverted? If so, check out this article: How to fix preferences that won't save.

A workaround might be to create a file named user.js containing this line (or adding this as a new line if you already have such a file):

user_pref("app.update.auto", false);

More info on user.js:

• User.js file - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
• A brief guide to Mozilla preferences - Mozilla | MDN

Also, you probably need to check now and then to make sure that the file has not been cleared or removed by another process that might be scanning/cleaning your system.

Of course, Firefox's Reset feature will bypass any of the above customizations and return update settings to default.

If Kaspersky is your most critical application, you could consider an obscure workaround, which is to run the corporate version of Firefox. It stays on the same version number for a much longer period of time and gets security updates without major feature updates. I've never tried it myself, so I don't know what limitations it might impose, but you can read more about it here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/.

Apologies if I was snappy, but I am only reporting a problem I have experienced and when searching for an answer I find that many people experience the same issues.

And let's be very fair here.

MOST of the people who are seeking help on this very issue simply request a "rollback" facility when things go pear shaped. IN MY OPINION that is not much to ask and I think that by Mozilla ignoring this I must totally agree with the previous ForeRest post and many other posts on other sites that this is a snub.

And while we are being fair and honest, let's not forget that MOST people affected would simply "rollback" when they found their system was unacceptably changed and wait a while until the developers got things sorted out before updating.

Just another point that is worth mentioning is that I do not think the configuration was flipped.

It was set at 'Notify' the first time the update happened automatically, that was when I first posted. At the time I even went to the Chrome browser because I did not like the "take it or leave it" attitude of Mozilla concerning the "rollback" request. I quickly returned to Firefox for reasons posted. After that I set the configuration to 'Never' and got the problem again, even loosing Cocoon this time. The configuration was checked a few times but changed at the time of the update and went to automatic.

But let's get back to the point. You are kindly reading my posts and replying, but this takes your time and mine and we are now in the "jumping through hoops" stage where you ask me to try different things and different applications in an attempt to sort out my problems. I thank you for your attention but right now I think I have the easiset answer in running Version 18 and blocking the updater, (assuming Firefox will not bypass the firewall of course).

Again my apologies for being curt in my last post, but I stand by my posted advice that using the version that suits and blocking the updates that make a configuration unacceptable is a good work around.

I was however wondering how to check when the add-ons I like are brought to compatibility with the latest Firefox version? Your advice on that would be most welcome.

(Not wishing to be boring I would point out that if there was a "rollback" feature it would be very easy to test for compatibility with every new release) Regards

Just to sum up this thread, as it has spiraled out of control:

• Each new version of Firefox fixes critical security holes in the release before. These holes are publicly disclosed after each release, meaning it would be easier for them to be exploited in older versions. We want to updates users to newer versions for them to be as secure as possible.
• We don't support older versions. Bugs that exist in older versions will only be fixed by updating to the newest release.
• We occasionally change how Firefox stores data in it's database, and while updates will convert the data to the new format, downgrades won't, resulting in a loss of data.

The critical security issues are mentioned in http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox.html

Hi technoweary, you asked:

I was however wondering how to check when the add-ons I like are brought to compatibility with the latest Firefox version?

This is a somewhat difficult question. There are two kinds of compatibility issues:

(1) The maximum version number in the extension will be exceeded and Firefox enforces strict compatibility.

You can install an extension (what else?) to show the maximum version numbers in the Add-on page: Is It Compatible?

However, for most extensions, Firefox ignores the maximum version number. Where it is enforced, it is because the developer specified that it be observed, or because it contains certain kinds of components that are thought to be problematic when run outside of the developer's specifications. As far as I know, there isn't a convenient way to know this information in advance.

This extension might be useful for knowing when you have finally gotten the updated Kaspersky add-ons, but will you remember to check when they are updated so you can catch up with Firefox? Hmmm...

(2) Functionality breaks.

Some add-ons need to be updated for changes in Firefox itself. Pre-release testers often use an extension named Add-on Compatibility Reporter to submit reports on compatibility in upcoming versions of Firefox. Each extension hosted on the Add-ons site may have reports associated with it, but these are challenging to access and interpret because as far as I can tell, they aren't summarized into an overall positive/negative score, and even if they were, you would be hard pressed to know why it works for some and not for others.

If Firefox weren't extensible, this would all be so easy! And so irrelevant. The current system of putting the add-on publishers in the driver's seat with respect to specifying compatible versions will be with us for, I suspect, a long time to come.

What the volunteers here want for you is to be as secure as possible, which means to run as recent a version of Firefox as possible because the most serious flaws that get fixed are usually triggered just by receiving a web page or other document, not necessarily even from a sketchy site, since other sites often are compromised with embedded iframes or injected scripts. The problem with relying on security toolbars for protection is that this is not something they can block.

I found 20.0.1 which I had no plugin problems with. But which do I want, and how do I execute ? [ ] firefox-20.0.1.bundle 09-Apr-2013 21:05 441M [TXT] firefox-20.0.1.bundle.asc 09-Apr-2013 21:05 189 [ ] firefox-20.0.1.source.tar.bz2 09-Apr-2013 21:05 96M [TXT] firefox-20.0.1.source.tar.bz2.asc 09-Apr-2013 21:05 189

Hi 1jazzguy, if you are running Linux, please see this thread for more information on the changes regarding plugins: Linux, Firefox 21.0 and the latest flash FOR LINUX (11.2). I can't view youtube videos because firefox has disabled the plugin. Help!

If you are not running Linux, none of those files sounds as though they would be useful for you. Check out the link in this article: Install an older version of Firefox.

Hi jscher2000, I'm running Windows XP. Read your link, but that doesn't sound promising. What i was thinking of doing is this: I have a Firefox 20.0.1 (exe) saved. If I open MSIE 8, I can import my bookmarks, then uninstall Firefox 21, restart, and the re-install the old version. ?? (Also, I'm use Kaspersky Pure which is up to date)

1jazzguy,

Please Ask a new question by using this link > https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new < and provide the requested information.