Mozilla Releases Plugin Checking Tool For Firefox

Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday has unleashed a brand new security tool to let Firefox users keep some specific browser plugins up-to-date.

The new tool, dubbed as “Plugin Check”, is available in the guise of a web page that shows information on a selected number of visitors’ plugins, and aims to help users checking whether some specific plugins are updated, or a latest release of any plugin is available.

As of now, the service incorporates as many as 15 plugins, with additional coverage to include more plugins is there on the cards.

However, plugin update tracker will be incorporated as an in-built functionality of the upcoming version of the browser Firefox 3.6, which is scheduled to hit download websites sometime in the next month.

The newly-launched security tool comes as a part of an initiative kicked off last month to persuade Firefox users to update older versions of Adobe Flash Player.

According to Mozilla, around 99 percent of Firefox users have had Adobe Flash Player installed, and 75 percent of those were still running the older iterations.

Jonathan Nightingale from Mozilla Foundation has hailed the new project by saying: “This is a really important project for us, because old versions of plugins can cause crashes and other stability problems, and can also be a major security risk”.