Dear Microsoft, please keep your lousy mitts off my Firefox install

"Plenty of people consider software that installs in this kind of underhanded way to be malware"

noone considers a microsoft security update to be malware except you, fanboy.

For those of you using Firefox, here is a guide on how to remove Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant firefox extension. Apparently it is a security vulnerability.

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article08-600

But in step 10 instead of deleting just the DotNetAssistantExtension folder you need to delete the Windows Presentation Foundation script as well (don't remember the actual file name), since that is the script for the plugin in question here.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

From a developer's perspective, you want the client to have the same experience, regardless of browser - this is true, even for plugin scenarios.

I am sure you'd love it if every time you happened to be in Safari and went to YouTube you had to switch over to Firefox or IE to watch it. Better yet, every time you go to a site you have to go and search out and install the plugin for the site. We're a long way from straight HTML/CSS/Javascript and plugins are an (unfortunate) reality of the web right now.

So let's all suck it up and realize that Microsoft has hundreds of millions of customers (some of which pay), and that they try please as many of those customers as possible with their decisions.

It also might be useful to understand the following before throwing stones at companies for installing plugins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI

I was surprised that Microsoft found it necessary to malware-install these components instead of simply asking for permission. Just goes to show that Microsoft will stoop to new lows in order to piss people off.

@polobunny
>But go ahead, try and push Linux on everyone out there.

*Nope*
Reread my post.

I only recommend Ubuntu Linux to my friends, I didn't recommend it to you.

1. I don't know you.
2. You seem to be happy with windows.

So...
You're happy to use windows.

I'm happy for you to use windows (You're another "Target" for the windows malware authors).

From my point of view this is win\win
:-)

Would you guys take a look in your plug in list and let me know exactly which one of those things you installed yourself?

The plugins are firefox counterparts of other pieces of software installed on the system. Programs that often need browser access or that need to be accessed from the browser if said browser is the default, install little bits of themselves info FF.

It's not a huge conspiracy theory by any means. In this case, it's suspect becuase it's being done by the OS update....but we tend to forget that the maker of IE is the maker of our OS, or maybe the problem is that we relate them too heavily? Either way, it's not a huge deal for the fact that companies do this, the problem is when the plugin causes a hole in FF, and apparently that's where the issue is with this plugin.

So if you're going to get angry or bitch about this, at least get angry for the right reason.
And for the person talking about Linux being run by users an users being run by Windows - go check out FF in Linux, chances are if you use it for any amount of time, it will be full of plugins that you didn't have knowledge about either.

Want to stay on topic, but it is hard. grr He even wants to tax the internet! There! o.0 Grrr Out of respect for DS, I will not post about Obama's incompetents any longer!:)>

FYI there are guides to unistall this, I've included a link to the guide on ghacks.net.

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/10/18/how-to-uninstall-windows-presentation-foundation-plugin-in-firefox/

It is pretty lame that this was snuck in, the plugin plays havoc with firefox all the time.

Ha Ha! I got a message from my firefox when I started it today saying that Presentation slows it down so I should disable it! I thought that funny