With Firefox self-destructing, what's the next best choice (for addon users)?

Coldblackice

[H]ard|Gawd
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With Mozilla selling out to Google/Chrome by moving to WebExtensions, thereby destroying their best asset of an extensive addon community, what's the next best choice as far as browsers go? Looking through my list of addons, I get depressed when I realize that most of them will die in the near future.

Has there been any talk of anyone creating a better/new alternative (instead of Chrome or Firefox)? Or is it all but inevitable that the future of browsing will be a dead-end as far as (severely limited) addon development and creativity?
 
I had high hopes for Brave considering it's heritage (the guy that helped found Mozilla itself, Brendan Eich, created it when he walked away from Mozilla) but so far it's been disappointing, at least to me, and has effectively no extension support worth even considering at this point. That could change, of course, so it remains to be seen if it'll happen. I don't have any use for Vivaldi or Opera, can't really stand Chrome or Chromium myself, so it looks like I'm going to be using Firefox ESR for a long time to come. I'm not sure what they might do with the next ESR version (should be in March, v52) so if it's not possible for all of the extensions I use right now (about 24 of 'em and yes I do actually make use of them quite frequently) to work with that version I'll just keep 45.x.x running as long as I can.

There's just nothing out there that can be customized like Firefox can even in spite of some of the things Mozilla has been screwing up the past 2 years and apparently it's just going to get worse. Yes I wish some group of talented coders would take the source code which is still available for a less "restricted" older version and work with it to create some new fork that actually matters but that's a shot in the dark and I don't have any real expectations of that happening.

As far as addons, nothing can touch what Firefox is capable of but as you stated that's going to change. Saw that report yesterday about a developer of a popular addon/extension walking away from Firefox because of the changes but it won't matter in the long run. Hundreds if not thousands of devs could just walk away from Firefox for their own reasons and Mozilla will just keep doing their own thing which is pretty sad.

Would be nice to see someone take Firefox in a new direction and run with it and keep it going and just as customizable as it should be but that could be a pipe dream nowadays that never comes true, guess we'll see what happens.

EDIT:
I just did a little test using Firefox 52.0 beta 1 (available here as the .exe - I only use Firefox Portable so it's easy to extract the actual browser files themselves and transplant them into a copy of my Firefox Portable folder). I had an issue with the add-on digital signature thing but found a workaround to get past that here and so far in testing (only a few minutes obviously) I've had no issues with the addons I use aside from had to reinstall 2 of them because I had started the browser and it disabled them after which I did the workaround.

Regardless, this sorta-kinda bodes well considering Firefox ESR 52 will be based on the same code so, perhaps I'll be using ESR for another chunk of time into 2017, hopefully.
 
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Brave is super fast and I'm looking forward to it, it's just not ready yet. Vivaldi is also super fast.

Still, neither can pry me away from FF. I still think the FF UX is superior. Not a single Chromium browser does bookmarks right, and they lack the privacy controls that FF has. Plus, FF is getting some big upgrades later this year with Servo code coming over.
 
For me, Pale Moon does a great job. It is written by a guy with a background in security and it retains many things Mozilla has abandoned. From the surface it behaves very much like a classic Firefox, but underneath a lot has changed. Recently, with version 27, it has gone through a major overhaul.
 
I've been using Pale Moon since when it was the only real 64bit browser based on Firefox.
 
The guy is asking about moving away from Mozilla based browsers. Plus PM's new rendering engine has compatibility issues with Firefox extensions, further decreasing the availability of them, which was his primary complaint.
 
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Cyberfox ? I know its firefox but more secure, maybe it wont take the same route as mozilla has ?
 
This is terrible news.

Will NoScript be affected?

Firefox comes pre-loaded in most Linux distros. NoScript install takes only seconds. It's an instant safe browsing solution.
 
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No NoScript is supposedly going to web extensions by the end of the year or sooner!

OP go to Firefox ESR you will have until 2018 if not longer if you do!
 
The guy is asking about moving away from Mozilla based browsers. Plus PM's new rendering engine has compatibility issues with Firefox extensions, further decreasing the availability of them, which was his primary complaint.
I totally understand, and I did hesitate to post my recommendation at first, but if certain plug-in developers decide to not migrate to WebExtensions they will look for another NPAPI supporting browser. As far as I know, Pale Moon is the only option going forward.

Cyberfox ? I know its firefox but more secure, maybe it wont take the same route as mozilla has ?
Cyberfox closely follows Mozilla's codebase, so it is not a fork therefore NPAPI is gone. It is essentially an optimized Firefox build for your particular flavor of processor (amd, intel, x86, x64). Some features are removed (Telemetry, Health-report, Sponsored tiles & other components that collected information) and some of their own features are added. As far as I know their focus is some added privacy, not security like PM.

Random note: On this crappy old Core 2 Duo E5200/G45 browser box, YouTube performs the best on Waterfox (again, just a well optimized 64-bit vanilla Firefox).

As for NPAPI, your only options are to use an older build of your favorite variant, Firefox ESR or try Pale Moon if you want updates. Otherwise, you should already be prepared to face the reality of WebExtensions.
 
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If they kill addons I'll just run old Firefox. I don't give a flying fuck about this over-pushed fucking bullshit of security any more. I'm yet to have a major attack after using computers for 25+ years and I ran windows updates like once a year at most on almost all of my builds. Simple firewall, don't click/open dodgy shit, don't go to dodgy shit, block JS/flash/BS (except [H] and similar good site advertisements - I even click on the interesting ones lol!!), then all those fucking holes and SSL nazi can't connect cus teh certificates bullshit mean next to nothing.

I don't give a fuck if something is out of date. SSL is compromised and all data goes through fucking NSA fibre sniffers anyway. I don't care about Igor 4chan the 400lb russian hacker and NSA is going to get it either way. Someone gets your credit card? Woopty shit, file with bank and sort it out.


So.. security is for? Paranoid types and people who value privacy to a level which is not actually possible? It all seems very over the top. If China/Russia/NSA wants in, they'll get in. They don't give a fuck about whatever firechrome 69 version you're running and if the SSL certificates are up to date.

Igor on the other hand, is going to single you out, out of 2 billion people, to fuck with. Better get your fireblox up to date! Less functionality is always better.
 
It's Firefox, just with a different name. The lack of some features doesn't really change things that much so no I personally wouldn't bother with it myself and as noted above I'll stick with Firefox ESR through the next revision (52) and that'll probably be the last one I stick with for years to come if Mozilla keeps wrecking things as they've been doing.
 
I know this is a long shot, but can Sea Monkey satisfy the Mozilla die hards?

I was wondering if anyone would suggest this. I'm using SeaMonkey Portable for my older linux rig and I think it performs very well. I don't know what the latest and greatest looks like because I chose the release that best matched the kernel of my OS (2.6.29.1) and the hardware of this laptop, so I'm running 2.20 release, but I've found that the SeaMonkey developers don't try to crank out constant releases so, the OP might consider giving it a try. It is a Mozilla Gecko style browser like Firefox. Most Firefox plugins that I use work in SeaMonkey.
 
The death of Firefox has been greatly exaggerated me thinks.

No. Not really. The current crop at Mozilla seem to have a hard-on for Chrome. Probably because emulating it takes less effort and skill than maintaining and evolving a platform like Mozilla. Leaving them more time for their shitty marketing and SJW nonsense.
 
NoScript is supposedly going to web extensions by the end of the year or sooner
So this hasn't happened yet, but will happen later?
shitty marketing and SJW nonsense
While I agree there is a lot of that going on at Mozilla, it's also nice for there to be an influential actor in the industry that is motivated by trying to make the internet better with little to no profit motive. It's good that the EFF doesn't have to go it alone all the time, right?
 
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