Firefox BITS: Mozilla plans to change the browser technology used by the Firefox browser on the Windows platform.
The company plans to use BITS, the Intelligent Transfer Service, from the Background Intelligent Transfer Service in Windows to manage Firefox updates.
BITS is a Windows file transfer service that supports downloading and resuming interruptions of each file transfer while being more "careful" at the cost of each network.
Current versions of Firefox use a process called Mozilla Maintenance Service (Mozilla Maintenance Service) and a background update component to promote updates to Firefox installations. This feature launched 2012 to improve the update experience, especially on Windows devices.
Firefox 68 could be the first stable version of Firefox that uses BITS technology on Windows devices according to Mozilla's plans.
The operation is still in active development and it is very likely that the timetables will not come out.
However, using Firefox BITS is the first step in Mozilla's design. The company wants to develop another new element to better manage background updates.
The new item is called Background Update Agent and is designed to download and apply updates to Firefox. The process will run in the background and may download and install updates even if the Firefox browser does not run on the system.
Mozilla hopes the new update mechanism will be very beneficial for Firefox users with slow Internet connections.
Note that Firefox BITS is still in development at this time and may not work as planned.
Use Firefox BITS
Firefox supports two BITS preferences at this time. One determines whether BITS is enabled and in use, and the other if the version of Firefox comes from a test channel.
Open the internal address about: config and make sure you are careful.
In the search box, type bits and press enter.
The setting for app.update.BITS.enabled will appear. If it is True, it means that BITS is used and is enabled, while False means that BITS is not used and is not enabled.
The settings for the app.update.BITS.inTrialGroup are temporary and will be used during testing.
After the changes, restart Firefox.
Mozilla plans to add more settings to Firefox's options, which give users control over the update process. Browser users will be able to disable background updates to prevent the process from running by downloading the update when Firefox is not running.
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