Later this month, said Blizzard, Mozilla will publish a page on its Web site that Firefox users can visit to check the update status of other plug-ins. With the release of Firefox 3.6, now scheduled to ship in early November, the browser will check for newer versions of plug-ins through the same mechanism now used to check for updates to any installed Firefox extensions or add-ons.

"We're going to try to get to the point where you can upgrade [an outdated] plug-in via the plug-in service that we currently use for installations," promised Blizzard.

Mozilla's ambitions are actually , according to a plans posted on its Web site. Firefox 3.6 will also warn users of any outdated plug-in when they visit a page that requires the use of an older plug-in, when the browser starts up, and when the plug-in list is periodically updated by Mozilla.

The initial goal is to have Firefox 3.6 detect outdated versions of several widely-used plug-ins, including Apple's QuickTime; Adobe's Flash, Shockwave and Reader; Microsoft's Silverlight; and Sun's Java.

Flash is a major target for attackers, who regularly exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in the popular software. Adobe has patched the program twice so far this year, in and . Among the July update patches was a fix for a flaw that hackers had been using for at least a week in widespread attacks.