In the comments to my previous post, Ryan Walters notes that he’s running Firefox 1.0 and doesn’t see any update icon. That’s not good.
Here’s what the generic icon looks like:
When you click the green icon, it checks for updates. After it completes the check it displays this dialog box:
The dialog box tells you there’s a Critical Update, and you should install it immediately. At that point it even turns the update icon red. But none of that information appears until you specifically click that oh-so-subtle icon.
So why didn’t Ryan see that icon? I don’t have a copy of Firefox 1.0 installed, so I can’t say. It’s possible that the Auto Update option isn’t enabled on his computer. (Click Tools, Options, click the Advanced icon, and select the Firefox check box under the Periodically check for updates heading.)
Update: As I was writing this, a pop-up notice (“Updates available”) appeared in the tray area at the lower right side of the screen. Windows developers call this sort of notice “toast.” Unfortunately, it went away almost immediately.
Like I said earlier, this isn’t an acceptable update mechanism for software that is intended for use by a broad-based, non-technical audience. If Firefox wants to preserve its reputation as the secure alternative to IE, it has to protect every single user from exploits that can install unwanted software.
Ed Bott 
The reason many Firefox users see a delayed appearance of the red “check for updates” button is said to be a bandwidth conservation issue.
I asked the Foundation about this when they last issued the 1.0.2 patch and was told they try to get people to get the patch from mozilla.org first. It can take up to a week for the patch to be shuttled to all users via ‘check for updates’ to avoid server overloadl.
Thanks for that news, Ryan.
I have a system running Firefox 1.0.1. The red icon is visible and I see occasional messages that tell me updates are available. But nothing screams at me that these are important security patches and that I am in danger if I don’t get them.
In Windows XP SP2, IE now has Automatic Updates, in which patches are downloaded and installed automatically. Firefox has to find some way of doing the same thing. Left to their own devices, people will ignore the messages and icons. We’ve seen itso many times…
Yes I definitely have never seen that arrow icon. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have FireFox open that much (but it really shouldn’t take it very long to detect an important security update). It’s also possible that auto-update wasn’t turned on (although I don’t remember turning it off); I can’t check it however because I’ve since manually updated to FireFox 1.0.3.
Most likely, it seems, FireFox simply didn’t have this feature in version 1.0. Does the documentation say otherwise?
I also think the Check for Updates feature should be under the Help menu, where other publishers seem to put it.
I had never noticed it before reading these two posts. It’s a clever interface device, but Firefox users should know about it.
I only noticed the red icon after reading this thread.
Still, seeing the thing is free,I guess we should take some responsibility to check the program features. Although my ambivilence also prefers most essential items to be automatic.
I still think firefox is far more secure than IE ..at least for the moment.
I rarely get infected with FF,however IE tracker invasion is usually a daily cleaning chore when I have to use IE.
I only use IE for accuradio and live365 internet radio. Neither of these excellent services work under FF.
I guess a patch would be nice!
jp
John,
What problems have you had with FF and Live365? Under FF, I selected MusicMatch Jukebox as my player and it works just fine.
It even runs fine under Linux, using xmms as the default player.
My brother showed his computer science prof (and diehard Firefox fan) a CNet article about the security issues with Firefox. His prof mentioned the issues in class yesterday. With Firefox on the screen, she said, “I guess they haven’t made a fix for it yet, seeing how the article doesn’t mention it.”
My brother could see that little red arrow in the corner. He just laughed.
This is bad, I had to search Google for a reason why “check for updates” didn´t work and I came to this page and only then noticed the incredibly small white arrow with red background.