7 ms·

I admire Firefox for what it's accomplished, but Chrome has stolen my heart. I had to use Firefox today actually to test something, and discovered a Bing bar th

I admire Firefox for what it's accomplished, but Chrome has stolen my heart. I had to use Firefox today actually to test something, and discovered a Bing bar that I'm pretty sure I didn't consent to, taking up valuable real-estate.

ootachi 16y ago
Whatever that bar is, it's not Mozilla official. Some other software on your computer put it there.
- AndreSegers 16y ago
  That very well may be, but my point was basically that it's not something I have to worry about in Chrome either.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    You will, once the toolbar/adware/malware makers start targeting Chrome more. (Google can try to stop them, but it will be an arms race.)
    - Raphael 16y ago
      It doesn't have bars really, only buttons that open floating views. Although I suppose you could inject a bar into the web page.
- GHFigs 16y ago
  Some other software on your computer put it there. Why does Firefox allow this?
  - sid0 16y ago
    It's not a question of Firefox allowing this -- if you run any program on your computer it'll have access to your data (and hence to your Firefox profile), and one of the principles behind Firefox is extensibility.
    - aboodman 16y ago
      Chrome has taken the same approach Firefox did: We can't prevent this from happening so we try to provide a good way for other software to do it, so they don't do it in terrible ways: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/external_extensions.html http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/external_extensions...
  - barredo 16y ago
    It's an addon
  - ootachi 16y ago
    There is work to give the user more control over this that unfortunately didn't make it into Firefox 4 [1], but ultimately it's a battle that can't be won; on the desktop, apps can modify other apps. I suspect that this will happen to Chrome too. [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=596343 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=596343
    - digdug 16y ago
      Heck, since Chrome has to put itself into the users AppData folder in order to do silent updates, is there anything preventing malware from just screwing with the Chrome libraries themselves?
  - amalcon 16y ago
    Technically, your operating system's security model allows this. There's little Firefox could do to prevent it. This is a historical accident; only toy and mobile OSes have any sort of application-level access control.
    - HelloBeautiful 16y ago
      >> There's little Firefox could do to prevent it. Wrong, they can just add DRM.
  - sp332 16y ago
    Even though you can't uninstall it, you can disable the extension on a per-user basis. Firefox looks in both per-user and system-wide locations to find installed addons. Only per-user addons can be removed by the user, in the addons dialog. System-wide extensions can be disabled per-user, but not uninstalled (disabling is almost the same thing). To uninstall a system-wide extension, hopfully the publisher has an unistall script, but worst-case, you can just delete the extension folder from the system-wide location. e.g. C:\Users\All Users\Mozilla\something on Windows.

ootachi 16y ago

Whatever that bar is, it's not Mozilla official. Some other software on your computer put it there.

AndreSegers 16y ago
That very well may be, but my point was basically that it's not something I have to worry about in Chrome either.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  You will, once the toolbar/adware/malware makers start targeting Chrome more. (Google can try to stop them, but it will be an arms race.)
  - Raphael 16y ago
    It doesn't have bars really, only buttons that open floating views. Although I suppose you could inject a bar into the web page.
GHFigs 16y ago
Some other software on your computer put it there. Why does Firefox allow this?
- sid0 16y ago
  It's not a question of Firefox allowing this -- if you run any program on your computer it'll have access to your data (and hence to your Firefox profile), and one of the principles behind Firefox is extensibility.
  - aboodman 16y ago
    Chrome has taken the same approach Firefox did: We can't prevent this from happening so we try to provide a good way for other software to do it, so they don't do it in terrible ways: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/external_extensions.html http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/external_extensions...
- barredo 16y ago
  It's an addon
- ootachi 16y ago
  There is work to give the user more control over this that unfortunately didn't make it into Firefox 4 [1], but ultimately it's a battle that can't be won; on the desktop, apps can modify other apps. I suspect that this will happen to Chrome too. [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=596343 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=596343
  - digdug 16y ago
    Heck, since Chrome has to put itself into the users AppData folder in order to do silent updates, is there anything preventing malware from just screwing with the Chrome libraries themselves?
- amalcon 16y ago
  Technically, your operating system's security model allows this. There's little Firefox could do to prevent it. This is a historical accident; only toy and mobile OSes have any sort of application-level access control.
  - HelloBeautiful 16y ago
    >> There's little Firefox could do to prevent it. Wrong, they can just add DRM.
- sp332 16y ago
  Even though you can't uninstall it, you can disable the extension on a per-user basis. Firefox looks in both per-user and system-wide locations to find installed addons. Only per-user addons can be removed by the user, in the addons dialog. System-wide extensions can be disabled per-user, but not uninstalled (disabling is almost the same thing). To uninstall a system-wide extension, hopfully the publisher has an unistall script, but worst-case, you can just delete the extension folder from the system-wide location. e.g. C:\Users\All Users\Mozilla\something on Windows.