758500 - Windows only supports app installations to one user's account, not global app installations for the machine

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Web Apps, defect)

Description

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Windows currently does not support installing applications globally (i.e. install the app once, run in all user accounts on all machines). If a user currently installs an application, it is written to %APPDATA% for their user account. However, this approach limits the application to be only used on that specific user account. If user B (say a guest) logged in as guest, then they would not see the applications the first user installed on the machine. If they knew directly how to find the application, it would still require the user to login with the first user's account to get access to those applications. The major problem in this situation is the fact that installing native applications does allow for global installations in Windows (e.g. I installed Nightly on user account #1, on my guest account, I still see the app and can use it).

Comment 1

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Bill, Jen, and I discussed this today and confirmed that the current behavior is by design, as global installations are challenging on Windows due to UAC (as a result of which even large software products like Google Chrome install into a user-specific directory).