Although it’s certainly still far down the road, Mozilla has revealed that it will add a feature to Firefox 8 which will disable third-party software from automatically installing add-ons to the popular web browser.

This means that there will be no more stealth installations of add-ons for Firefox 8 and third-party software developers cannot automatically install an add-on to Firefox if a user installs their software.

This would also mean that Firefox 8 users in the future will have to approve every add-on that gets added to Firefox 8.

Currently, the most up-to-date Firefox version is version 5 and there are instances where add-ons are installed stealthily, or without the knowledge of the user.

In fact, those of you who follow the tech scene may remember Asa Dotzler – the open web advocate, co-founder of the Spread Firefox campaign, director of community development at Mozilla and Firefox evangelist – complaining last year about what he said were Trojan Horse-like installations to Firefox.

Dotzler particularly targeted Apple, Google and Microsoft for plug-ins installations. He wrote on a November 28 post on his blog:

“Why do Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others think that it is an OK practice to add plug-ins to Firefox when I’m installing their software packages… This is not OK behavior. I downloaded and installed a specific application from these vendors intending to have only that application installed, and without my consent that application foisted additional software on me. These additional pieces of software installed without my consent may not be malicious but the means by which they were installed was sneaky, underhanded, and wrong.”

Dotzler said that the solution is “simple” and that all developers had to do was “ask” the user first if they want to use and install a piece of software to Firefox.

It seems that is exactly what Mozilla intends to do with Firefox 8. According to Mozilla, after people upgrade to Firefox 8, all third-party add-ons will be turned off by default and users need to manually start all of them to ensure that they know what is running with their Firefox 8.