If you have taken the time to customize your Firefox browser, and why wouldn’t you with the multitude of themes and add-on available out there, then you will notice that Firefox will inform you with there is an update available for these extensions. It will do this automatically, which is great; but the browser will not load while you are being prompted about the updates, which is really annoying for some of us.

Picture this if you will: you fire up your machine, and knowing very well that your Windows operating system takes some time to boot , you go to the kitchen to make a cocktail confident in the fact that you set up Mozilla Firefox to start automatically and load all your favorite pages . Imagine your frustration when you return and find that Firefox did not do what you expected because prompted you about an extension update and you were not there to confirm it.

The Update Notifier Firefox add-on solves this problem by simply checking for updates after the browser has booted up and loaded your home page (or several other pages if you have set the browser to “Show my windows and tabs from last time”). The add-on is free and works with Firefox versions 1.5 through 3.0 (you are well advised to use Firefox 3.0 or better since Mozilla has pulled support for v. 2.0 and previous).

Additionally, Update Notifier can be configured to automatically download the updates, install them, and then restart the Firefox browser. This feature is a much welcomed one, since after confirming that you want to update your extensions the only option given to you was to press the “continue” button. Since that dialog only presents one option, it is simpler to have the add-on do it for you. If you do not want to update at all, then simply set up Update Notifier to turn off update notifications.

If you would like to get Update Notifier, a download location is available here.