Mozilla Will Kill Legacy Firefox Add-Ons in Exactly Three Months

Megalith

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Firefox 57 is both an exciting and scary prospect for me: user feedback of Firefox Nightly suggests that Mozilla has largely eliminated the browser’s sluggishness, yet there is huge tradeoff in that practically none of my current 15-something add-ons will continue to function. It is estimated that only 20% of all Firefox add-ons are WebExtensions-ready.

...Mozilla said it will continue to allow developers to upload and list legacy Firefox add-ons on its add-ons portal (AMO), but they'll only show up for users with older browsers and buried in search results under newer WebExtensions-compatible add-ons. Changes are already being rolled out to AMO and Firefox 57 (currently Firefox's Nightly edition). The release of Firefox 57 is the end of a two-year-long project that started in August 2015 when Mozilla announced the new WebExtensions API that would eventually replace the older Add-Ons SDK.
 
I dont use that many extensions, but I hope that those are updated properly.

But, this change is overdue.

My understanding is that it is needed to allow FF to be more secure, modular and crash resistant, so, something had to give.
 
I don't use a ton of extensions either, but some of them are not WebExtensions, most notably DownThemAll.
 
So after using the new Firefox 57 nightly for a few weeks now, I have to say it is really friggin fast. The only problem I had is it kept launching SteamVR for no reason but was able to fix this by going to about:config and searching for "vr" and then just disabling everything. Now so far so good! Also most important extensions (adblock, video downloader, grease monkey) are fully supported.
 
Cutting bulk is definitely something Mozilla needs to do. Firefox is getting faster and faster with each release though.
 
I thought firefox was slow until I tried chrome recently. Damn that shit got bloated fast. Now it runs slower, much slower, than a firefox with years of history.
 
If I understood correctly, these will be permanently dead.

AdBlock Plus -> dead
Classic Theme Restorer -> dead
Private Tab -> dead
DownThemAll -> dead
Stylish -> dead
Tab Groups -> dead

Having 300,000 users is not enough to get on Firefox's API radar. I don't know how many it takes.
 
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My understanding is that it is needed to allow FF to be more secure, modular and crash resistant, so, something had to give.
What its guaranteed to do is ease development and make FF "faster" since they'll be able to simplify and standardize much of the internal software.

All the other stuff....there is no guarantee that will come with these changes. I understand why they're doing what they're doing and all but I wish they would've started a year or 2 earlier and gave the community more time to learn how do extensions for the new FF software model.

Half the reason why people still use FF is because of its flexibility and incredible extensions and now both of those things are going away so this might all be a little bit of a rough transition for them. Yeah it'll be nice to have FF be faster and all but I don't think browser speed is enough to stand out against Chrome or even Edge both of which are also pretty fast.
 
If I understood correctly, these will be permanently dead.

AdBlock Plus -> dead
Classic Theme Restorer -> dead
Private Tab -> dead
DownThemAll -> dead
Stylish -> dead
Tab Groups -> dead

Having 300,000 users is not enough to get on Firefox's API radar. I don't know how many it takes.

I really liked downthemall a lot, very sad that it won't make it past FF57. Adblock works (ABP not sure), the other stuff I never used. Right now I have both Chrome and FF nightly installed and I do different stuff with different browsers. I would love one super fast browser that does everything but that just doesn't seem like it's in the cards...
 
Yeah I'm using FF 57 and 3 add-ons out of 14 are still compatible. Had to switch to Stylus because Stylish is not up to date. The ad-blockers I used and are defunct and no time frame of when they will get reworked for 57. So Now I have to use adblock hyper and regular adblock. I do not like the re-done buttons either. Now bookmarks main menu tab has a drop down box that wastes time. I liked it when the bookmarks tab had it's own button. I also don't like that the bookmarks are now scrambled in the main one. If you use the menu bar bookmarks it comes out fine. That needs to get fixed. It runs pretty well. Other than the add-ons getting nuked it's good.
 
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Yeah I'm using FF 57 and 3 add-ons out of 14 are still compatible. Had to switch to Stylus because Stylish is not up to date. The ad-blockers I used and are defunct and no time frame of when they will get reworked for 57. So Now I have to use adblock hyper and regular adblock. I do not like the re-done buttons either. Now bookmarks main menu tab has a drop down box that wastes time. I liked it when the bookmarks tab had it's own button. I also don't like that the bookmarks are now scrambled in the main one. If you use the menu bar bookmarks if comes out fine. That needs to get fixed. It runs pretty well. Other than the add-ons getting nuked it's good.

I don't know if this is helpful but I do have a bookmarks tab with one click. In the picture below it's the middle button just to the left of the double arrows. To your point, a bookmarks menu is just better. This still waste time because you have to collapse the sidebar which is annoying.

photon-firefox-57-3-5.png
 
Goodbye XUL, I'll miss you...

Oh no wait I can just use Palemoon (and Chromium) like I have been since they announced removing XUL extensions.
Though if they add support to WebExtensions for styling the browser UI then I'll probably go back :)
 
I write add-one and this makes me very happy. Firefox's whole add-on architecture was just bloated, slow and unstable. Even if the new API breaks popular add-ons in the short term, it will be so worth it in the long term.
 
Firefox 57 is amazing. SIlky smooth and really fast.
Yeah, I just tried the nightly alpha and this is easily the fastest version of Firefox I think I've used in the last several years. This is very promising because Firefox was always my favorite browser until it got bloated.
 
i'm not updating then.

I use downthemall, foxyproxy, noscript, greasemonkey, youtube video downloader, text link, and scrapbook.
 
You just can't do with webextensions what you could do with XUL.
They should leave XUL in. They're taking it out because some XUL extensions are breaking over e10s and other stuff - and while yes certain XUL extensions are getting broken because of what Mozilla is doing, that doesn't mean you fucking gut your program. (like Fx55 - Image Zoom's extension is broken - that is fixable if the developer feels like fixing it, but what the extension currently achieves won't be even doable once Fx57 lands)
 
I currently have FF version 54 x64. How are they on version 57? Are they skipping 55 and 56? I only run Ublock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Bager, and Last Pass.
 
I currently have FF version 54 x64. How are they on version 57? Are they skipping 55 and 56? I only run Ublock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Bager, and Last Pass.

55.01 is the current stable release.

56 is in beta and 57 is nightly alpha.
 
Every single one of my extensions are marked as "Legacy". The only thing that keeps me using FF is the fact that these extensions do work in a way that I prefer. The day that changes is the day I go back to using Chrome.
(I don't find the latest versions of FF all that slow).
 
Soooo...Addblock and Noscript won't be supported? Those are the only ones I really care about.
 
This sudden transition and alienation of user functionality and extension authors will be discussed for a long time, much like the KDE3 -> KDE4 fiasco that left a lot of users high and dry. Though I think FF will recover faster (months) than KDE (years).
 
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