http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html
The most interesting thing about this article is that the reporter misunderstood why the extension was uninstallable and attributed it to Microsoft, not Mozilla: <snip> Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox's handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the "uninstall" button on the extension. What's more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that -- if done imprecisely -- can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up. </snip> The real reason the extension is uninstallable, as explained in the comments: <snip> Unfortunately, this is only partially Microsoft's fault. Firefox makes it easy for applications to ship their own browser extensions - they only need to add a registry entry that points to the extension's directory. But Firefox cannot uninstall extensions that were installed like this (because it didn't install them in the first place, because it might require administrator rights and because doing that would affect other Firefox profiles as well). So while this feature is great for application developers, it is rather flawed from user's point of view. Luckily, you can disable this extension which is just as good as uninstalling it. Removing the registry entry isn't recommendable anyway, it will come back on next update. The drawback is - every time I create a new Firefox profile I have to remember that I should disable the .NET extension. But I guess most people don't have that problem. </snip> We have a similar mechanism in Chromium that allows external apps to install extensions, and it was originally going to have that same limitation. Erik and Matt pushed back though, so our current implementation does allow such extensions to be "uninstalled". We keep a pref that prevents us from reinstalling them on the next startup. - a --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Chromium Developers mailing list: [email protected] View archives, change email options, or unsubscribe: http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
