Why does the "Check your plug-ins" page keep reporting well-known plug-ins as unknown?
For as long as I can remember, only Adobe Flash Player and Silverlight are known, while Google Earth Plugin, iTunes Application Detector, Picasa, Microsoft Office 2010, and Google Update are always reported to me as unknown. These latter five strike me as plug-ins that are not obscure and are likely to be in lots of users' browsers, and further, that they are provided by companies who would likely provide straightforward ways to perform automated checking of version numbers.
I grant that Mozilla cannot be expected to keep up with every conceivable plug-in, but it seems to me that, if the page/service is going to be helpful (and worth featuring in the newsletter, and so on), then some more effort should be put into it. As the old saying goes, anything worth doing is worth doing right.
If this is a case of "we know what has to be done, it's easy, but we just don't have the person-power," I'd be happy to volunteer my help.
Chosen solution
The plugin check page currently has version information for:
Flash (Shockwave Flash) Acrobat PDF plugin Shockwave for Director Cisco Web Communicator Java QuickTime RealPlayer Silverlight VLC
I don't know how these were selected, but it may be based on a history of security vulnerabilities.
Mozilla is hoping to deprecate ALL plugins at some point, and that may lead to decreased resources for the site in advance of that eventuality. Still, I suspect a lot of people still use this site.
To assist with the project, check out the following page as a starting point: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Websites/Plugincheck
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Chosen Solution
The plugin check page currently has version information for:
Flash (Shockwave Flash) Acrobat PDF plugin Shockwave for Director Cisco Web Communicator Java QuickTime RealPlayer Silverlight VLC
I don't know how these were selected, but it may be based on a history of security vulnerabilities.
Mozilla is hoping to deprecate ALL plugins at some point, and that may lead to decreased resources for the site in advance of that eventuality. Still, I suspect a lot of people still use this site.
To assist with the project, check out the following page as a starting point: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Websites/Plugincheck
Thanks, Jefferson. I had forgotten about the planned deprecation of plug-ins. I agree -- this is probably a big part of the explanation of the apparent lack of resources being allocated to the plug-in check page/service.
Thanks also for the link. At first glance, it looks a little beyond my current skill set, but I might find a place where I can pitch in.