Update Unchecking

[Eleventy_Threeve]

OK. I just said in another thread that there shouldn't be a lot of core changes and I just thought of one to request. These days PM users are going to be forced to run a growing number of old versions of our extensions in order to make them work. A number of us agree that the number of updates appear to be at an all time low though. The developers probably are all getting Mozilla fatigue.

Now the PM extension development has been slow. This isn't a putdown. I am sure that it is a lot of work and it will need an entire community of people to fully get into gear. Nobody could do all of that by themselves. The other thing is with all those other developers quitting that also means more and more of our extensions are going to be abandoned. Sure, we wont be bugged by updates. That also means less development too.

So in the meantime that means we are in a state of limbo. A bunch of us set our updates to do manually. Unfortunately that means that when we check it keeps showing the same ones that we don't want to update already checked. It wouldn't take much for anybody- especially a rookie to accept that and then end up with the wrong versions. I propose that they either come unchecked standard or perhaps there be some sort of option to where we could toggle it somehow.

[squarefractal]

You have these options under the gear icon (for all addons) or under the "More" link (specific to an addon), but I guess it's just easier to write a rant (albeit a very small one) than to look at the appropriate places.

[Eleventy_Threeve]

I don't know what you are talking about. There is no "more" in my gear.

[squarefractal]

In the addons page:

For all addons: Addons page > Gear icon > [uncheck] Update all addons automatically.
For a single addon: {Addon entry} > More link > Automatic updates: (Radio button set) {Default, On, Off}

[Eleventy_Threeve]

I already set it to do them manually a long time ago and then every time I tell it to check for updates the 2 unwanted ones show up pre-checked. I also went into them and clicked on the dial exactly as you said, rechecked and they also came up pre-checked.

Also if I wanted to rant I would say so. If people don't explain what is happening how is anybody supposed to solve issues?

[jumba]

I like the suggestion that the addons whose automatic updating is disabled are by default unchecked in the available updates list when manually checking addon updates.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Why not set extensions.update.enabled to false so you still GET update notifications when you check for extension updates but they are not automatically update .. only the ones you want and only when you say so... As we have some Pale Moon Specific Add-ons that also update via AUS we need you to keep THOSE up to date...

[Night Wing]

Why not set extensions.update.enabled to false

I never knew about the above setting. I will now do this for all of my Pale Moon browsers on all four of my computers. Thanks for the tip.

[Eleventy_Threeve]

We did the about:config change and I don't see any difference. We told it to check for updates and the same 2 came up and pre-checked.

I am not trying to "rant" here. I am saying that it isn't that big of a deal for me but for people with less experience this could trip them up.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Prechecked but not automatically installed upon checking.

[Eleventy_Threeve]

Thanks for the clarification. However, there still is the original issue and request. While we are in our transition phase to building our own library many people could get tripped up by them being prechecked. Every time I look I have to remember not to do them. I would like to think that I am learning tech and becoming something of a veteran. For rookies things like this could really trip them up. That is why I bring it up.

[Falna]

I think that Eleventy_Threeve makes a good point. PM is fine for those of us who know something of the technology involved, but for less informed who expect things to work out of the box, it's an issue.

If it's going to take some time to build a separate PM library, and if it's not too much of a distraction from this aim, could an interim solution be to ask the community to help build and update a list of the latest PM-compatible FF extensions, and to change the code in PM to check for updates first against this list, falling back to checking the FF repository if there is no entry for the extension?

[jumba]

I don't like the idea of maintaining a list of thousands of addons in AMO.

Most likely any addon on AMO that requires Firefox >= 29.0 doesn't work with Pale Moon without problems unless it explicitly supports PM when it should define the support in its install.rdf file.

[squarefractal]

but for less informed who expect things to work out of the box

The "less informed" should know Pale Moon is a separate product from Firefox, and should not expect extensions intended to run on a different product to be 100% compatible.

Do note that Pale Moon already has a repository of extensions which are available at https://addons.palemoon.org. Automatic updates from APMO before a fallback to AMO is slated for the second version of the Phoebus project.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Actually our AUS already falls back to AMO if we don't have a specific extension in our database this has been true for quite a while actually.

[squarefractal]

Actually our AUS already falls back to AMO if we don't have a specific extension in our database this has been true for quite a while actually.

It doesn't, as far as searches are concerned.