Nameless Voice on 11/11/2017 at 00:35
It's been a long time coming, and I've been shaking my head in diseblief for the last few months, but it's about to come to pass.
On Monday, Mozilla will be releasing Firefox 57 ("Firefox Quantum") as their official browser.
The new version will break all the old XUL-based "legacy" extensions. Only those which have ported to the new WebExtensions framework will continue to work, and that framework offers significantly less access to the core features of Firefox, so many of the extensions will simply be impossible.
Two-thirds of my extensions are Legacy, and I can't imagine living without them. Firefox without extensions is a terrible browser.
Some of the notable extensions I use that won't work include NoScript, TabMixPlus, All-in-One Gestures, Private Tab, Paste and Go Key, RefControl, Feed Sidebar, Tab Groups (which is a feature that used to be in Firefox itself), and a few others such as a quick next/previous tab hotkey.
While some of those are just hugely complex and haven't been ported yet, it sounds like the majority will not be possible with the new extension framework at all.
Back in the day, I used to use Opera, before they decided that they couldn't be bothered any more and just threw out most of their features and turned it into a Chrome clone. Now it looks very much like Firefox are doing the same thing. Abandoning the features that their dedicated userbase used the browser for and trying to streamline and simplify instead.
I don't understand it - the power of its extensions are the reason that people use Firefox. Without that, it's useless. I don't understand how they could intentionally release a version that's going to be such a huge step backwards in that area. You presumably won't even be able to customise your keyboard shortcuts, since even that basic functionality doesn't exist in Firefox without extensions.
Yes, the new extensions will be more secure and probably easier to write, but that hardly matters if what they can do is so limited.
I'm not quite sure what to do. The only real solution, which isn't great, is switching to one of the Firefox forks such as Pale Moon or Watermonkey, or maybe a totally different browser like Vivaldi.
For the time being, I've turned off Firefox updates. That will buy me some time to make a decision.
I'd advice anyone else who uses Firefox and relies on extensions to do the same for now.
Pyrian on 11/11/2017 at 02:28
Sometimes, companies pivot to chase a larger userbase, only to find they've lost their own users.
Nameless Voice on 11/11/2017 at 02:31
How true that is, both in applications and in games.
Zerker on 11/11/2017 at 12:22
Well, I always found NoScript too heavy-handed in how much it breaks, so I've been using Ghostery instead. It serves the same general purpose of insulating you from crap without quite so many exceptions. That one is at least an actively developed, modern extension.
However, "Context Menu Image Saver" is not. Sometimes it wouldn't work, but it is really handy for... say, directly downloading new backgrounds into my 'backgrounds' folder without needing to go find it. Sigh.
Nameless Voice on 11/11/2017 at 15:58
Yes, I do wonder about NoScript. It keeps you safe, but it's really annoying.
Azaran on 11/11/2017 at 18:22
I still use version 52, and will keep using it until it becomes unusable - might upgrade to another pre-Quantum one. Keep this (
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/) link handy for all the versions.
My main issue is Adblock Plus. It works amazing on my Firefox, but on Chrome there's sites that block me unless I disable it. Then again, could be the filters that need updating
rachel on 11/11/2017 at 20:50
I miss Opera, godammit that was such a nice experience... :(
Nameless Voice on 11/11/2017 at 21:21
Azaran: You should throw out AdBlock Plus and use uBlock Origin instead, anyway.
It doesn't have that thing where advertisers can pay them to allow it to still display their "non-intrusive" ads, plus it's meant to be faster and more efficient.
Raph: Yeah, it had tons of features that just worked. Half of my Firefox extensions are re-creating functionality that Opera had built-in from the start.
Vae on 11/11/2017 at 21:27
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
I'm not quite sure what to do. The only real solution, which isn't great, is switching to one of the Firefox forks such as Pale Moon or Watermonkey, or maybe a totally different browser like Vivaldi.
I understand your plight, NV...and I suggest looking into (
https://brave.com/) Brave.
The project is lead by Brendan Eich (co-founder of Mozilla, inventor of Javascript), and I really like what's going on there.
Quote:
For the time being, I've turned off Firefox updates. That will buy me some time to make a decision.
I'd advice anyone else who uses Firefox and relies on extensions to do the same for now.
Alternatively, using Firefox ESR will keep XUL extensions working until 6-26-2018.
Nameless Voice on 12/11/2017 at 01:40
Brave sounds like a nice idea, but once again it's based on the Chrome framework, so you'd be limited to only what Chrome extensions support - which is basically the same functionality as the new Firefox will have?
