Add-ons are optional. I find some of them incredibly useful, but you probably will end up with different ones that suit your needs or interests. If the add-ons are installed from the Mozilla Add-ons site, then they are checked for updates on a regular basis. Some add-ons will have bugs or cause conflicts with other add-ons or web sites. You can see the evidence of that on this forum, especially after major upgrades... All that flexibility makes Firefox harder to support, but everyone wants choice. :-) --- I should add that much of the web does not work correctly with the Adobe Flash plugin, so maybe that one isn't so optional.