Hi Everyone,

We need your help testing out the new Stub Installer for Mozilla Firefox on Nightly! The stub installer is a new installer for Firefox that aims to streamline the installation process for our end-users by allowing them download a very small executable, run it, and get all of the resources downloaded and installed immediately. With this feature, we will make the installation of Desktop Firefox builds faster and easier for Windows users.

Want to try out an early build of the feature? Here’s how you get started:

If it’s before October 8th, you’ll want to use this link to get a build of the stub installer

If it’s on or after October 8th, you’ll want to use this link to get a build of the stub installer

If you run into any immediate problems please report the bug here or email stub-feedback@mozilla.com. Note that this stub installer is still in testing and is currently English only.

If you would like to help test this feature in more depth, then try running of the test cases you see below. If you hit any problems, feel free to use the above links for reporting a bug and providing feedback. I would greatly appreciate the help in testing this feature! Feel free to email the email alias above if you have any questions.

Install Firefox with the default installation rules with admin privileges – Verify firefox is installed to the default installation directory (C:Program FilesMozilla Firefox for 32-bit, C:Program FilesMozilla Firefox for 64-bit) with the same contents from the old installer, the firefox.exe is signed (Use a diff program to compare contents of directories like windiff)

Do an export of the Firefox related 1) HKLM and 2) HKCU entries in regedit from an installer just before the stub installer. Do the same with the stub installer. Use windiff or another diff program to compare each set of 2 exports are the same.

Install Firefox with the stub installer. Then, start firefox up. Verify firefox starts up with no unexpected errors.

Using an installation of Firefox from the stub installer, crash firefox. Verify that breakpad appears. Then, submit the crash report. Verify that the crash report was sent to the crash stats server.

Install Firefox with the stub installer that is an old FF version. Then, update Firefox. Verify firefox updates to the latest version of the particular release channel.

Uninstall Firefox that was made using the stub installer. Verify that the installation directory is removed along with any start menu/desktop shortcut references including the pinned to taskbar shortcut.

After launching firefox built from the stub installer, quit it. Verify firefox shuts down with no process running in the background.

Open three new tabs in a launched firefox from the stub installer and load a website in each. Verify the content comes up for each tab.