How to block all authomatic updates of firefox itself and plugins and also requests to update??

Question

I would like to have a stable browser with the extensions I selected. I like Firefox for being highly customizable and for a huge choice of extensions written by volunteers not working for Mozilla.
Since none of support seems to be able to understand the problem (or is instructed not to understand), I feel that I need precede my request by an explanation, which is inevitably fairly long. I need to explain why the standard suggestions by support are not acceptable.
Unfortunately, every new version of Mozilla made the visual customization of the GUI (i.e. a complete theme; probably, they were called skins before) used by me not working. The versions 18 and higher are compatible with only one (complete) theme suitable for me. For me, you reduced the choice to just two options: the default GUI, which I personally cannot stand at all, and one more. And the second one may disappear at any time. I was under impression that the people at Mozilla do understand that different people may have different tastes (and that this is good), in contrast with the people at Google who are, apparently, do not. It turned out that I was wrong.
Still, it was possible to check the option "do not install upgrades" and keep the version you liked. Then Mozilla changed this and the updates started to be installed without consent of the user. This is something far beyond my comprehension. The option "do not install" turned into an outright deception. I doubt that this is legal even if this is hidden in the small print somewhere.
The Mozilla support was not helpful at all with this type of problems and took a cavalier approach to all who asked: “We know better what you need”. Fortunately, somebody posted a solution, or, rather, a hack allowing to get rid of automatic upgrades. Note that this hack is for moderately advanced users only, and, being a hack, it may not work with future versions.
More or less simultaneously the problem with plug-ins appeared. The first major sign was the impossibility to watch the YouTube videos. The other plug-ins followed. Now I am unable to open without a hassle a PDF document downloaded even from a government site, not to say about reputable libraries (and the files were created by libraries themselves by scanning, or by Google), or files created by my friends whom I definitely trust much more than Mozilla.
Again, Mozilla support is of no help at all. Moreover, they post derogatory remarks about users complaining about these issues and trying to intimidate them. The support may go as far as to suggest upgrading Firefox to version 23 as a solution to the problem of keeping version 3 without constant hassles. This is an insult. Moreover, when I posted a couple of remarks in the thread https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/971139#answer-498622, the thread was almost immediately closed by Tylerdowner, top 10 contributor, administrator, moderator. This is a serious abuse, but the buttons to report this disappeared. How he got his titles? This guy is guilty of abuse and should be banned from all forums.
Dear Tylerdowner, the-edmeister and others. Please, try to understand a couple of basic ideas.
First, my computer is my computer, and you have absolutely no right to change it without my consent. I will take of its security myself. The owners of other computers will take care of their security themselves. There are a lot of tools dealing with security; and I don’t know anybody without at least one. This is the first basic principle.
The second idea has nothing to do with my privacy and Mozilla’s invasion of my privacy. It is not hard to realize that Mozilla is not the only software I am using, and even not the only browser. You do not control the rest. No matter what you do, the computer may be infected in other ways. If your browser is not allowing me to watch a video, I copy-paste the URL in another one and watch it there, and this is not the only other way to watch it. Even if your concerns about the security are sincere (I don’t believe that they are; they are too mechanical and repetitive), blocking something in Mozilla is futile. The result of your behavior will be the abandonment of Mozilla by more and more users, the process already going on.
Finally, here are my requests.
1. I and other users need a simple extension for Firefox written by Mozilla (not by
volunteers) and allowing to disable all updates in one-two clicks and disable all monitoring of plug-ins and anything else which may be present in the user’s computer. Of course, there should be an option to reenable these features. It should be a couple of buttons in the Options window, or in a separate pop-up window and have simple GUI. Of course, it should work as described, which is not the case for the Options window now. No hacks, no changes in about:config, no renaming or moving of files, etc. I appreciate everybody who made such suggestions. One of them allowed me to get rid of updates without my consent. It remains to see if the suggestion in the mentioned thread can solve my problem with plug-ins; as of now, it works for me only partially. But such thing should be done by Mozilla.
2. It would be great if the software engineers at Mozilla will learn (relearn?) the concept of the backward compatibility. More specifically, the Mozilla should prepare every new release or update in such a way that all (I mean this literally, all) extensions and themes posted on the Mozilla site will be still working after the update. The volunteers don’t have time to keep up with the constant updates, and many authors of very good extensions already stopped to support them.
3. Do not release a new version if you are not sure that it is bugs-free. Then there will be no need in updates between the versions (by a version I mean Firefox numbered by an integer without dots). Perhaps, this is incompatible with the current release schedule. The abandoning of this crazy schedule is the easiest thing to do; only a desire to do this is needed.

Answer 1

Dear feer56,
First, I have to repeat: every new Firefox version was not compatible with many old themes. I do realize that I am, probably, especially unlucky – my favorite theme was always disabled. Still, it is not an accident that Mozilla tried to eliminate the complete themes completely and replace them by some pictures: the list of themes turned into a cemetery of not compatible themes. I just checked: out of 496 complete themes no more than 40 are compatible with Firefox 22. I don’t have any newer version.
Please, do not attribute to me the idea of including all the themes into the basic browser download. I did not suggest anything like this. I suggested caring about the backward compatibility.
Of course, I followed your steps 1-5 quite a while ago. But in Summer of 2012 Mozilla started to ignore these preferences. Firefox downloaded new version in the background, and next time you open the browser, it upgrades itself before you even realize what is going on. There was no way to interrupt this process. Even if firefox.exe was terminated through the tasks manager in Windows, it first completed the update, and only then closed.
I never saw any step by step instructions to deal with this problem. I just searched the Mozilla site for “disable automatic updates, and the first two pages of results deal with <b>enabling</b> updates. Eventually, one gets to disabling at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/966835?esab=a&s=disable+automathic+updates&r=18&as=s . One of the top 10 contributors suggests switching to Firefox for IT professionals, and then deal with this problem only once a year. Or to follow steps 1-5 above. In the case it will not work, he suggests looking at an irrelevant article. He should know and I am sure that he knows that the problem is not with not saving preferences by a mistake; the problem is that Firefox ignores them now by design. Eventually this was admitted by somebody.
Changing about:config is not an easy task. The meaning of most entries is unclear, the modifications suggested by somebody turned out to be not sufficient. This is also a task for IT professionals.
I said nothing about the competence of Tyler. He is arrogant; this is a completely different matter. He may use his competence at some place where he will not need to interact with customers.
“If you do not like what Mozilla is doing and rather be tracked and rather be followed, please use Google Chrome. We're all here to help you.”
Do you mean that it is better to be tracked by Mozilla than by Google? As I learned yesterday, Firefox compares daily the software installed on my computer with a blacklist on Mozilla servers. This is tracking. And there is option to opt-out, there is not even a warning.
If you care about your customer not being followed, include an option blocking the Google-analytics into the browser itself. Irrespectively of privacy, Google-analytics prevents many pages from loading completely: it takes too long to perform all these Google-zero-by-zero pixel dances.
Then you say that the volunteers working on the core code deserve much more respect than volunteers working on extensions. I am not sure that this is the case. I don’t see that the core is noticeably better than for other browsers. The fact that Mozilla wasn’t able to solve during 10 years the main problem of Firefox, namely the buffer overflow, and then stopped even to acknowledge its existence, is very disappointing. In contrast, a lot of extension is very useful.
I know about the testing process only what Mozilla tells to the public. And Mozilla tries to blame the short period between the releases for new bugs introduced in each new release.
What was your idea in suggesting me to read that article? Do you think that it contains some valid excuse to the lie in the Options window, for example?
But the article is useful, thanks. It tells me that there is no hope here and I should look for another browser. In the meantime I should block Firefox from accessing the Mozilla site completely. It looks like very soon I indeed will be an IT professional.
I have absolutely no interest in mobile devices and don’t see how they could be useful for me. And no matter what the projects are, the market share of Firefox is going down.
Best wishes.