When a visitor of SUMO is running outdated plugins (e.g. Adobe Flash), we should show a notification bar or similar, encouraging the visitor to upgrade the plugins or read more about the risks of running old plugins. This notification would be visible on all pages of SUMO throughout the browser session (but obviously for performance reasons, the actual plugin check would only be done on the first page load of the session). The backend scripts to detect plugin versions is partly being done in bug 391433. Example of how this notification bar could look like on SUMO (cc'ing Neal to get UI/UX feedback): [--------------------------------------------------------------------] | You are using outdated versions of one or more plugins in Firefox. | | Please <upgrade them [1]> to stay secure. <Learn more [2]> | [--------------------------------------------------------------------] [1] link to plugin version checker page [2] link to KB article explaining the risks of using old plugins

Depends on webdev; can't commit to 1.1 milestone.

I think someone in the security or webdev team is already doing a mozilla page for this so we can "borrow" the code.

Now that this is getting ready to launch on mozilla.com, it would be really nice if we could get something implemented on SUMO since it would solve many of the problems being reported on SUMO as well as increase the number of people who upgrade their plugins. The notification should probably be more explicit about the security risks of running outdated plugins than the text proposed in comment 0, e.g. something like this: --- Your plugins are not safe! We noticed that you are using old and insecure plugins in Firefox. Please [b]<upgrade them now [1]>[/b] to stay secure. <Learn more about outdated plugins [2]>. --- [1] link to plugin version checker page [2] link to KB article explaining the risks of using old plugins, and linking to the plugin version checker page (Also, s/Neal/Neil/ !!)

Since this functionality is almost complete with PFS2 and will eventually be merged into Firefox, is this really something we should spend time on? I'm concerned about the client-side overhead of doing the check on every page, and if we're only doing it on one page, why not just send people over to PFS?

Might be best to hold off working on this until the functionality is actually built into Firefox itself. Once it's in Firefox, we can evaluate whether this is needed or not. (It wasn't entirely clear to me that this would indeed get built into Firefox, although I did read it in a 3rd party news report -- that's great news!!)

(In reply to comment #5) > (It wasn't entirely clear to me that this would indeed get built into Firefox, > although I did read it in a 3rd party news report -- that's great news!!) That's my understanding. It's possible I misunderstood but I think the Tools > Addons > Plugins tab will eventually connect with PFS. In the meantime, once it's ready, we can direct people to the PFS site.

cc'ng Blair and Dave, who worked on the in-product support. I agree that in-product support will obviate some, though not all, of the value of doing this on SUMO pages. A wait and see approach to the in-product support and the effect it has on SUMO requests for plugin help sounds prudent.

The decision was made to handle outdated plugins in the product itself. Since we are already disabling outdated plugins and will make unusual plugins "click to play", I think the usefulness of this feature on SUMO is diminished. I'm WONTFIXing it. Please reopen, if you don't agree.