AskSlashdot: How Do You See Your Life After Firefox 52 ESR? (mozilla.org)

Artem Tashkinov writes: Soon to be released Firefox 56 says that out of 35+ add-ons that I have installed only a single one is a proper WebExtension which means that Firefox 57 will disable over 95% of my add-ons many of which I just cannot live without and for most of them there are simply no alternatives. This number of add-ons sound like an overkill, but actually they are all pretty neat and improve your browsing abilities. That's the reason why I'm using Firefox 52 ESR, which still fully supports XUL add-ons, however after June 2018, it will stop being supported.

Let's list the most famous ones:

• DownThemAll is still largely irreplaceable since you can download from many parts of the internet much faster if you split the downloaded files in chunks and download them simultaneously;
• GreaseMonkey allows you to fix or extend your favourite websites using JavaScript;Lazarus: Form Recovery has saved my time and life numerous times; it regularly backups the contents of web forms and allows to restore them after browser restart or accidental page refresh;
• NoScript: allows you to whitelist JS execution only for websites that you really trust; JS has been used as an attack and tracking tool since its inception;
• Status-4-Ever and Classic Theme Restorer return Firefox to the time when it was a powerful tool with its own identity and looks, and not a Chrome clone;
• UnMHT add-on allows you to save complete web pages as a single MHT file;

So what will you do less than a year from now?

Comments

Dogging

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Re: Dogging

[Anonymous Coward]

Fag.

Use less firefox

[hij]

Sadly, it looks like I will be using less firefox. On the plus side I will get some of that missing memory back.

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped using it as soon as they forced pulseaudio down my throat.

Re:Use less firefox

[BKDotCom]

Firefox user here. I have never heard of pulseaudio
through I must say that throat based audio tastes intriguing

Re:Use less firefox

[dreamchaser]

Firefox user here. I have never heard of pulseaudio
through I must say that throat based audio tastes intriguing

You might like this, then.

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I started using Firefox when it first came out and used it until about six months ago, when I switched to Vivaldi. I use Vivaldi with uBlock, uMatrix, TamperMonkey and a couple of other extensions that cover everything I need. A lot of extensions that I used on Firefox, like TabMixPlus, aren't needed on Vivaldi because the UI is designed for the power user. I can't guarantee that every extension is replicated (I've never used DownThemAll or UnMHT) but it's quite powerful and versatile. Try it and see if you like it.

Re:Use less firefox

[PopeRatzo]

On the plus side I will get some of that missing memory back.

I wish I could get some missing memory back. Note to all you young Slashdotters out there: stay off the weed and stay in school, because...um...well I can't remember the reason at the moment, but I'm pretty sure there's a perfectly good reason.

Re:Use less firefox

[hairyfeet]

Switch to Pale Moon. They haven't been using any FF upstream since the Australis fuckfest and its been doing great, just rock solid classic FF without the bullshit. They have done a ton of tweaking to make FF run better, have better support for video formats, security patches, etc and the devs have been great about answering their users and actually listening to them instead of giving them the bird like Mozilla did!

So please ask any extension devs that make extensions you love to switch to PM, that is what I did and you'd be surprised how many of them are now making their extensions for PM. For any extensions that are not going forward you can talk to the PM devs, they are making their own repo for extensions and its growing by the day.

Re:Use less firefox

[arth1]

Pale Moon doesn't work with supported long-term stable operating systems like Red Hat / CentOS / Scientific Linux 6, requiring a newer version of libc for no good reason (as it doesn't use the new capabilities).
It also doesn't build reliably with newer compilers, which is why it's both masked and keyworded in the gentoo overlay.

SeaMonkey is a better choice.

Re: Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary, total non-starter until they fix that.

Re:Use less firefox

[slaker]

On the other hand, if you're on desktop Windows, which is probably pretty common even among Slashdot users, Palemoon is probably the best of the available Mozilla forks for all of the reasons the grandparent post said. I use wget more often than I load a desktop browser on my Linux systems and I bet I'm not alone in that, either. It's not that it doesn't matter, but given the size of the team working on Palemoon, I think they're justified in concentrating on the most common desktop platforms.

Re: Use less firefox

[Reverend Green]

Yup. Extensions are the only reason I use Firefox.

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the philosophy, but Pale Moon has a limited number of extensions available. They've also ceased development on the Android version of Pale Moon due to limited resources.

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I only tolerate Firefox since Aurora, I could never last more than five minutes with the previous UI. On my personal hate-list it's right up there with GIMP.

Re: Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice, it's not really any worse than Firefox is.

How much say do users have over Firefox's development? Essentially none.

Here's how Firefox's development has typically gone lately:
- Mozilla proposes some new functionality that no user ever actually asked for.
- Mozilla writes a blog post describing what they're going to do.
- Firefox's users loudly object, and point out all sorts of problems with Mozilla's idea.
- Mozilla ignores the users, and makes the changes anyway.
- The Firefox users are not happy, and some percentage of them move to Chrome.
- Rarely, Mozilla undoes the change after even they realize how fucking stupid it is (like the "sponsored tiles" advertisements they embedded in the browser).
- Otherwise, the change remains, and it continues to ruin the user experience, causing even more Firefox users to move to Chrome instead.

It's about the same for bug fixes. Report a bug, and chances are it'll never get fixed. Just look at how long people have been pointing out Firefox's poor performance and excessive memory usage without anything significant being done to fix these problems that other browsers just don't suffer from.

And it doesn't really matter that the source code to Firefox is available. It's a real monstrosity to understand and modify, even for experienced developers. Now they're writing parts of it in Rust, which is perhaps the most programmer-unfriendly programming language meant for everyday use. Yeah, it's open source, but unless you're already a JavaScript, C++ and Rust programmer with a huge amount of time to waste getting to understand the code, it's effectively a closed source project.

Even if you do manage to make a change, it can be a trip to hell and back actually getting it committed if you aren't working for Mozilla.

From what little I've seen of Vivaldi's community and developers, I think they're actually much more willing to act on user feedback than Firefox's developers are. So despite Firefox's source code being available, I think that Firefox is a far more proprietary product than Vivaldi is.

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience with Pale Moon has been that it is very slow to start and suffers from chronic, obvious performance problems when playing flash /HTML5 videos.

Attempts to get resolutions to these problems have been met with the typical "Must be your system/configuration", "The problem is not Pale Moon, it's you" arrogance that is so common in the open source community.

Note: Firefox/Chrome/IE/Opera suffer no problems at all, so the issue is not with me.

Re:Use less firefox

[johanw]

Don't know, I'm typing this from Palemoon on an Ubuntu desktop at work.

Re:Use less firefox

[arth1]

Don't know, I'm typing this from Palemoon on an Ubuntu desktop at work.

Not Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which is still supported. It has glibc 2.15, and palemoon 27+ won't run with anything less than 2.17.

Thing is, many of us need to stay on long term stable releases with at least 5 years of support. Then we also need to pick software that works on the still supported LTS releases.
Firefox, Seamonkey, Chromium all do. Palemoon does not.

It's just not a good choice for LTS systems, as they have explicitly said that they won't support OSes for as long as the OS has support, but only support the newest bleeding edge systems. For some of us, especially businesses, that is not an option.

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, Cannabis actually improves memory because it reduces stress and anxiety. Sure, you have the attention span of a goldfish while stoned on Indica, but once you come down (half hour to an hour, tops for me unfortunately) your short-term memory is improved. I naturally couldn't memorize phone numbers and the like due to generalized anxiety disorder (result of 15 years of chronic stress) but after I finally gave in and tried cannabis after reading many studies proving it safety and nonaddictive characteristics, I've found my short-term memory is greatly improved and I've finally broken through a weight loss plateau I was stuck on (due to hormones which in turn were due to stress).

I know you were making a joke but you're perpetuating bad science.

Re:Use less firefox

[PopeRatzo]

Funny, Cannabis actually improves memory because it reduces stress and anxiety. Sure, you have the attention span of a goldfish while stoned on Indica, but once you come down (half hour to an hour, tops for me unfortunately) your short-term memory is improved. I naturally couldn't memorize phone numbers and the like due to generalized anxiety disorder (result of 15 years of chronic stress) but after I finally gave in and tried cannabis after reading many studies proving it safety and nonaddictive characteristics, I've found my short-term memory is greatly improved and I've finally broken through a weight loss plateau I was stuck on (due to hormones which in turn were due to stress).

I'm too high to read all that, sorry.

Sure, you have the attention span of a goldfish while stoned on Indica

Seriously now, are other strains besides indica easier on the attention span? I've recently moved to a state that has medical marijuana dispensaries and I'm interested in checking them out (I have some glaucoma, so maybe I could get a doctor to write a prescription). I'm looking for advice.

Re:Use less firefox

[Rakarra]

Not Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which is still supported. It has glibc 2.15, and palemoon 27+ won't run with anything less than 2.17.

RHEL7 comes with glibc 2.17. If you're stuck on RHEL6, I certainly feel for you. As a RHEL user, I'm certainly used to supporting users who need the cutting edge technology, but that cutting edge requires you to bleed a little.

Re:Use less firefox

[arth1]

RHEL7 comes with glibc 2.17

It also comes with systemd and incompatibility with some of our software and networking. RHEL6 is supported for several more years.

Re:Use less firefox

[Reziac]

Disabling disk cache helps somewhat. Because every cache system needs 1500 empty folders!

Re:Use less firefox

[shutdown -p now]

Did they implement tab and history synchronization across devices? That's pretty much the only reason why I didn't stay last time I tried Vivaldi.

Re:Use less firefox

[shutdown -p now]

This is all very much dark magic right now. Because of the legal issues, there's very little genuine research into it. So all you have is a lot of anecdotes, which are still not data even if you aggregate them. Even the well-established tropes like indica vs sativa differences are vastly oversimplified (or rather an attempt to generalize certain traits of specific strains that just happened to be correlated with these), and do not reflect the real story. On top of that all, individual physical response seems to vary a lot.

About the only thing that we've clearly established is the lack of any immediate and obvious physical harm. So, at least, it's safe (where legal) to experiment, and find what works best for you personally. It may well be some particular strain, or a blend.

Re:Use less firefox

[x_t0ken_407]

Not yet. Really the only last feature I'm waiting on, though I've been using Vivaldi as my main browser for over a year now.

Re:Use less firefox

[PopeRatzo]

There's a dispensary in my little coastal town. I feel a little funny going to a doctor to get the prescription though. There's nothing really wrong with me (though I do have a little glaucoma). I wonder if you can just go to one of these doctors and say, "Get me high". Can there be special code words like "anxiety" or something? I don't really have much in the way of anxiety. I'm uncomfortable lying to a doctor. It would be like lying to a priest (which I have also done, but not since I went to a Jesuit high school).

Re:Use less firefox

[shutdown -p now]

I don't know. I waited until my state legalized recreational marijuana, so that I could just walk into the store and have the usual open peddle-me-your-goods conversation with the clerks.

But I do know quite a few people who were going through the medical marijuana route before then - and those who went into any details about the process, did seem to be using anxiety as the official excuse.

Re:Use less firefox

[Shirley Marquez]

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is no longer a supported OS. It went EOL in April.

Re:Use less firefox

[arth1]

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is no longer a supported OS. It went EOL in April

Incorrect, at least as far as commercial customers go. It went from regular maintenance update support to extended security maintenance support for Advantage customers in April, and will be supported until April 2019.

That's still a short lifecycle compared to Enterprise Linux releases, where each OS gets at least 10 years of production support before (for Red Hat) going into extended maintenance support. The 10 year model more closely matches what Microsoft Windows operating systems offer - you still get updates for Windows 7, and expect programs to work on it. The short lifecycle of Ubuntu, even after they increased the LTS support from 3 to 5 years, is one of the reasons it's not more popular.

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is expanding the webextension API beyond what chrome's supports, which will make extensions like NoScript possible:

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/08/01/noscripts-migration-to-webextensions-apis/

Status for firefox addons moving to webextension:

https://arewewebextensionsyet.com/

W3C working group to define standard webextension API for all browsers:

https://www.w3.org/community/browserext/

Google has a pretty good track record of sticking to W3C standards, so eventually every extension will work on every browser, except Microsoft browsers since Microsoft likes to ignore W3C standards when it suits them. /thread

Re:Use less firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to Pale Moon, but it is kind of janky, like randomly going idle (no CPU/IO) and not redrawing the window for ~15 seconds, but it's clearly still responding (e.g. clicking on tabs changes the window title, sound still plays).

Whether I stay or not is really up to how the devs respond to me trying to resolve these issues, which has been pretty positive so far!

Re:Use less firefox

[Shirley Marquez]

Well, not popular for the data center. I believe it is popular for desktops, insofar as any desktop Linux other than Chrome OS can be said to be popular. 5 years is probably about as long a life cycle as you want for a desktop OS anyway; by then the application versions will be hopelessly obsolete.

The same as before with one exception

[OzPeter]

I now know what a slashvertisement for Firefox 56 looks like

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me, my life will be entirely different. I'm not just giving up Firefox, I'm giving up the Internet. I mean I'll still use it, just not directly.

I'll be sending my posts via postcard to Internet4U, a Chinese prison labor company that specializes in Amazon reviews, Facebook Likes, and Warcraft gold. They have a new service where you post via postcard mailed to them, they post your message for you online, and then send you any responses you receive back to you via the post.

They actually guarantee I'll see Slashdot stories before they are six months old, and they have a deduping service too!

Re:The same as before with one exception

[pr0fessor]

Sorry, a slashvertisment would have nice things to say about the new and shiny not "OMG! They are taking away all my favorite add-ons"

   

Re:The same as before with one exception

[msauve]

It's a trick question. If a new version of a browser is so important to you, you don't have a life.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[wonkey_monkey]

Must you be demeaning just because other people have different priorities to you?

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Anonymous Coward]

Question, how did you feel about Windows 10 being forced upon you?

Re: The same as before with one exception

[F.Ultra]

You made me worried so I gad to boot up my computer, turns out it still runs Ubuntu so I don't know what you are talking about.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[default luser]

Precisely.

The people whining the loudest are ignoring the fact that ALL THE MOST POPULAR PLUGINS ARE BEING OR AVE ALREADY BEEN PORTED.

uBlock Origin - already ported.

Stylish - has already been Chrome-compatible for years, so port is painless. Allows you to customize ANY webpage, and make it portable across browsers.

NoScript - the oldest and toughest tool of them all, but the creator is making the effort Should be ready by next year

Everything else is used by a handful of users.I mean, what the hell else is used by your average Firefox follower?

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Spazmania]

Each user uses a different handful. That handful makes it worth sticking with Firefox in a Chrome world. Remove the handful and... no more Firefox users.

As for me, I use Classic Theme Restorer because I like how Firefox used to look and work. Even though firefox freezes on me daily, I continue to use it because with Classic Theme Restorer it looks and acts like I want. When that's no longer the case, I'll have no further reason to put up with Firefox's flaws. The end.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you RMS?

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Anonymous Coward]

You try living in a city with only a convenience store. I buy everything from clothes to music and computer stuff online, through a browser.

And now Mozilla is taking the only browser I've been happy with away (Firefox with 16 addons replacing functionality that was already removed, including Classic Theme Restorer.

Until I find a new browser, I will be unable to buy stuff other than bread and milk. And guess what, trying out different browsers take TIME. If I didn't have a life - like you claim - I probably wouldn't mind needing to waste time on finding a new browser. But that time is going to have to be taken away from something else. Just like learning to use a new browser is going to take more time the further it is from Firefox + CTR.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[kinocho]

My main reason for using Firefox is "NoSquint", it allows you to change the zoom/font size based on domain. The developer is an idiot who periodically breaks the extension just to have an excuse to send an update (with expiration date), but it is very useful.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[default luser]

Sorry, should have been clearer in my post:

Most of these "essential" plugins that people are whining/worried are going to die will get a port. They're NOT AS CORNER CASE/DEAD CODE AS YOU'RE IMAGINATION BELIEVES..

You already said the creator is a fucking control freak with timed demolition attached to every release, so no doubt he will create a new Firefox version.

And it has a Chrome version already, so just like Stylish this will be a painless port, if it hasn't already happened.

But of course he's not going to tell you his plans because he;'s a fucking tyrant who relishes leading his users on a never-wending rollercoaster. But he likes his disciples, so he won't leave them high-and-dry.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[default luser]

And if for some crazy reason the nuclear option happens, you can just try setting the minimum font size.

It was going to happen some day anyway, with those timed releases.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the ones that fit the new extension model. Anything that changes look and feel of browser components/chrome are being dropped with no possibility of ports, updates or restored APIs to continue as before.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[kainosnous]

It's a trick question. If a new version of a browser is so important to you, you don't have a life.

Maybe that was true a decade ago, but not today. There's two types of people who have good reason to care about their browser choice: 1) Professionals who do much of their work through the web, and 2) people who spend a significant amount of their time online. These days, it's not that uncommon anymore for people with quite an active life to still spend a significant amount of time online. Of course, that trend is changing as web services evolve, but I think there's still enough browser interaction by normal people that a browser is an important thing.

But it's the first group that I feel is most affected. Many professionals use their browser extensively for work, and with the rise of JavaScript based web apps, I don't think that trend is shrinking anytime soon. If you spend 9+ hours a day using a piece of software to make your living, how it works is vitally important to you.

I work for a web hosting company. Obviously, many departments here view a lot of websites. However, most of our browser time is actually interacting with our internal web applications, along with a lot of googling. Depending on the department, the work can be very fast paced and can require a lot of juggling issues. TreeStyle Tabs is one extension that is irreplaceable for us, and is probably the single largest reason why most of the people here feel like we cant leave Firefox. GreaseMonkey/Scriptish is another. Of course, each person has their own personal suite of tools which they rely on to get their work done, and many of those tools are Firefox addons.

I'm not implying that we couldn't work without Firefox. Many people already gave up on Firefox a while back, and with each change, more people leave. What I am saying is that browser choice can legitimately be a huge factor for many people. If the web just isn't really your thing, that's fine, but for many of us, it's a significant piece of what we do.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Rakarra]

Just look at the previous Slashdot story which had a well-intentioned fellow who was clearly advocating on behalf of Mozilla, talking about how the new Firefox addon model was just as good as the old, all the major addons had already transitioned to it, and if they hadn't, well it's their fault because they had a year's warning that this would happen.

I don't think he had an answer for the folks who complained that the new addon model made some older addons impossible to implement.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Rakarra]

My main reason for using Firefox is "NoSquint", it allows you to change the zoom/font size based on domain.

The developer is an idiot who periodically breaks the extension just to have an excuse to send an update (with expiration date), but it is very useful.

The web is a fast-moving target, and anything dealing with it has to be updated often. The developer was probably sick of getting bug reports for old versions. That sounds a bit heavy-handed, but I can see why he would do it. Wouldn't be the decision I'd make, but it doesn't seem 100% unreasonable. ;-)

Re: The same as before with one exception

[Rakarra]

Yeah, I don't know either, I have two computers at home, one running Fedora and another running Windows 7. I haven't seen the Windows 10 forcing yet.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[kinocho]

I understand that, but then the guy forgets, the addon breaks, and you have to edit it manually. And 3 days later he sends an update that only refreshes the expiration date with no other changes. I am grateful for the extension, but the guy is still an idiot.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[baerd]

Sorry, a slashvertisment would have nice things to say about the new and shiny not "OMG! They are taking away all my favorite add-ons"

Unless it is a clever way to advertise Pale Moon, which I had never heard of until this ...

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Rakarra]

Wow. Sounds like he's actually creating more work for himself.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[fafalone]

More than a handful use TabMixPlus, Classic Theme Restorer, and DownThemAll, just to name 3. And those will be either severely reduced in functionality or outright impossible. Tab Mix Plus was the main reason I used Chrome for one day and found the UI so intolerable as to be unacceptable for my main browser. And smaller addons add up; at least half of mine had non equivalent in Chrome, and won't in WebExtensions either. It's great some of the largest ones can get most of their functionality back, but spending hundreds of hours re-writing your extension and working with Mozilla to get entirely new APIs implemented just isn't an option for dozens of small addons, which as I said, add up.
It's a terrible decision that no one wanted. They're shoving it down our throats. That alone should be reason to not continue with FF. And alienating your entire existing userbase to try to steal shares from a competitor by becoming more like them, by copying everything bad about them and skipping the good, is a terrible business strategy. It's not going to work, everyone will just go to Chrome proper or a FF fork.

Re:The same as before with one exception

[Anonymous Coward]

Other somewhat common plugins I personally use include:

• Disconnect: ported;
• Decentraleyes: ported;
• Self-destructing cookies: will not be ported, hopefully the ported alternative Cookie AutoDelete is decent;
• I don't care about cookies: not ported;
• FoxyProxy: ported;
• Tree Style Tabs: ported;
• NoSquint: not ported, but alternatives exist;
• Random Agent Spoofer: will not be ported.

The most essential for me are Tree Style Tabs (ported), FoxyProxy (ported), uBlock Origin (ported), and Self-destructing cookies (alternative exists), so I guess I'll be fine.

Use a good browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

...like Safari.

(Seriously, it's the best browser out there - Firefox is slow and a resource hog, Chrome spies on you, Opera is slow)

Re:Use a good browser...

[dreamchaser]

Some people like cross platform browsers because they, you know, use more than one platform.

Re:Use a good browser...

[pr0fessor]

I used to use opera because it had tabs when others didn't, handled pop ups better, and it was so much faster than any other browser. Now it's just like chrome and safari for speed and everyone has tabs, pop up, and ad blockers now.

Re:Use a good browser...

[tepples]

Is Safari worth $499 (source)? If so, how?

Re:Use a good browser...

[tepples]

In theory, if you replace your current Windows or GNU/Linux PC with a Mac running Windows or GNU/Linux in VirtualBox, you can get all your PC platforms onto one piece of hardware.

Re:Use a good browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari murders kittens

try harder next time

Re:Use a good browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand. What connection is there between the browser I use on one computer and the browser I use on another?
What difference could it possibly make?

Re:Use a good browser...

[slaker]

Opera lost me for being the browser that decided it didn't need to use all the same keyboard shortcuts as any Mosaic-derived (Netscape, Spyglass, IE..) software and for being the only browser for a long, long time that thought it did something worthy of making it non-free commercial software. In my experience, Opera-Classic was also by far the crashiest browser I used over its life. It had fantastic crash recovery, but holy god did it need it.

Opera was also very late in getting addons and customization. It's nice that it kinda-sorta had some power user features, but nothing it ever did was as compelling the Mozilla feature set at any point in its history, up to and including today.

Re:Use a good browser...

[pr0fessor]

I don't think I ever remember opera crashing on me except on pages with malicious content browser high jackers, pop unders, full screen pop ups, and the like turning scripting off was easy and took care of that though it didn't have an exception list it was just a checkbox on a menu that you could switch off and on.

The new opera may as well be chrome.

I've looked at vivaldi and am waiting for it to get a little more mature now that it has a fairly standard set of features I'm hoping it will get faster and more stable and that it does something that will differentiate it from the rest.

Re:Use a good browser...

[Hognoxious]

It's annoying when things are in different places.

Re:Use a good browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, just point me to the Windows version.

Re:Use a good browser...

[JohnFen]

But to do that, I'd have to use a Mac.

Re:Use a good browser...

[JohnFen]

I don't think I ever remember opera crashing on me

Crashing is primarily what I think of when I think of Opera. My experience was horrible. That was years ago, and they probably (I hope!) fixed that since then, but it was certainly something that came with Opera for me.

Re: Use a good browser...

[slaker]

The correct answer for me has been Palemoon, which continues to do all the stuff I like about Firefox, with a UI I like and all the add-ons I need. I realize that it's a lost cause in the long term since it doesn't have the developer resources to get a highly tuned JavaScript interpreter or whatever weirdo DRM video formats we might have on the horizon, but for now I think it's the best of my available options.

Re:Use a good browser...

[higuita]

you think that apple/safari do not spy you?!! :D
and how about missing features?
finally, unless you have a MacOS, have you tested safari in windows? it's junk!

Re:Use a good browser...

[alexgieg]

...like Safari.

First and foremost: why do you begin your comment at the title? Do you like seeing that "like Safari" alone? Because that's what most people reading will see. Almost no one reads post titles.

As for actually using Safari, that requires a computer that'd require, here in Brazil, paying at a minimum 36 monthly installments of up to 15% of one's monthly wages. Besides, even on Macs most users go for Chrome because, of all reasons, favicons on tabs.

So, no.

Re:Use a good browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe for you old fucks. The rest of us can pick up any browser and immediately figure out where to put in the address that we want to surf to. It's not like a browser is a fucking CAD program...

Re:Use a good browser...

[Hognoxious]

Strawman. Nobody said they couldn't figure it out, you arrogant little cowcunt.

Interface guidelines exist because consistency is a good thing.

I think we need more browser choices

[HBI]

The Mozilla codebase has proven difficult to maintain - see Pale Moon. So just forking it is problematic.
The Google and Apple submissions are under corporate control and therefore are anti-user and more importantly, can't be forked.
Opera just has never been very good.

Konqueror or Links2 perhaps?

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[JohnFen]

Konqueror is, in my opinion, one of the worst browsers available. Unless it has a major revamp (mostly to get rid of the numerous serious bugs and problems rendering HTML), it's not even in the running.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Anonymous Coward]

4chan is trying to create a web browser, but it only works with basic HTML at the moment.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mozilla codebase has proven difficult to maintain - see Pale Moon. So just forking it is problematic.
The Google and Apple submissions are under corporate control and therefore are anti-user and more importantly, can't be forked.
Opera just has never been very good.

Mozilla gets nearly all of its revenue from Yahoo. Previously, they got all of their revenue from Google. Mozilla is under just as much "anti-user corporate control" as any other browser.

Unfortunately, you are right about the Mozilla code base. It is a clusterfuck of massive proportion, and Mozilla has spent the past several years making it even worse.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[mukinrestak]

Opera was the best browser around through version 12. It was when they turned into a chrome clone that they turned into shit. Maybe Mozilla could learn a lesson from that...

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[farble1670]

Opera was the best browser around through version 12. It was when they turned into a chrome clone that they turned into shit. Maybe Mozilla could learn a lesson from that...

What's the lesson? When you have 0.03% market share, and your competitor has 78%, keep doing the same old shit?

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I love love love Konqueror. I just wish half of the web pages out there didn't lock it up.
It's probably the stupid crap they shouldn't be doing in the first place that makes it happen, but it's just not usable anymore.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[JohnFen]

Yes, I used to use Konq a lot, and share your affection. But, at some point, it stopped working well enough to be usable.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[JohnFen]

I couldn't even begin to imagine trusting any software coming from the 4chan crowd.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[JohnFen]

No, but the lesson equally shouldn't be "make it into a clone of the competition".

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[jez9999]

The Mozilla codebase has proven difficult to maintain - see Pale Moon. So just forking it is problematic.

What's your point? Pale Moon is maintaining the codebase, and it's one fucking guy.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mozilla codebase has proven difficult to maintain - see Pale Moon. So just forking it is problematic.

What's your point? Pale Moon is maintaining the codebase, and it's one fucking guy.

Maybe if they got a non-fucking guy, he'd have more time to maintain the codebase.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Anonymous Coward]

IceCat?

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera just has never been very good.

For a better part of a decade, Opera was clearly the best browser in existence, and was as feverishly copied by it's competitors as firefox is now copying chrome.

Granted, that was a few years ago.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Anonymous Coward]

The Google and Apple submissions are under corporate control and therefore are anti-user and more importantly, can't be forked

Chromium is already a fork of Chrome.

Re:I think we need more browser choices

[Reziac]

Saw somewhere that Konqueror is now abandoned and will be deprecated. :(

Whatever problems it has are all overshadowed by one great virtue: It is neither Firefox nor Chrome.

Seamonkey

[that this is not und]

I run seamonkey so hopefully the Firefox team won't break the base code so badly that Seamonkey can't be built.

But since they're trying to actively kill the plugin development community, it's possible there just won't be much to install in Seamonkey.

We need to keep track of who is in charge at Firefox so we can make sure they never get our business again, no matter what project they migrate to like locusts when FF is dead.

Re:Seamonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

Or fork whichever latest FF does not kill extensions. And fix whatever bugs that are there. No need for new features for a while. Isn't this the advantage of Open Source? You're not totally dependent on the software vendor (Mozilla).

Re:Seamonkey

[antdude]

I read that SeaMonkey is going to use Firefox's ESR code from https://wiki.mozilla.org/SeaMo... ... They do need help badly.

Re:Seamonkey

[thegarbz]

But since they're trying to actively kill the plugin development community

By releasing a more secure API that makes it easy to port code between browsers, easier to maintain, and reduces the endless cycle of constantly breaking plugins?

Did you actually mean "frustrated coders sick of their shit" when you wrote "development community"?

Re:Seamonkey

[Anonymous Coward]

seamonkey project has already announced that when that time comes, they will be following firefox's missteps and going webextensions as well. they don't have the manpower to keep the current, more flexible and capable, addon architecture going on their own. thunderbird is also in the same boat.

pale moon is the place to be.
for capable addons and more, you see.
cuz firefox has sold us out.
and chrome isn't the way for me.

Re:Seamonkey

[doom]

Mozilla has screwed us over multiple times, making it difficult to pick the point at which it should be forked. The Palemoon project exists if you want to stick with pre-Australius code-- to my eye it responds faster on light duty loads (less than a dozen tabs, let's say), and there are various XUL-based extensions that continue to work. It was having trouble with video the last time I looked, but nothing forces you to stick with just one browser for everything you do...

Re:Seamonkey

[Reziac]

I'd like to see PaleMoon and SeaMonkey go off and do their own damn thing together, and to hell with Firefox. For what do we need Firefox's changing the guts all the damn time anyway?? How does it benefit us, the users??

SeaMonkey user here, PaleMoon in a pinch, Konqueror on the side (tho I gather we're about to be deprived of that soon). Haven't even installed Firefox since SM came out, and probably never will again. If I wanted fucking Chrome, I'd use Chrome!

Re:Seamonkey

[doom]

Does it bother anyone else that ESR is the abbreviation for "extended support release"? Whenever I see something like this I think "No, no, why would you want to use esr's code?"

Re:Seamonkey

[that this is not und]

Isn't Eric the maintainer of Fetchmail?

That makes him an expert at Open Source.

Keep using 52 ESR?

[TWX]

And probably a plugin that lets me fake my browser's info to sites that ask.

Did that for FF 31 for a very long time, didn't really ever have functionality problems either. IMHO this current versioning system is complete and utter garbage as it no longer has any meaning. Used to be that the ones-digit meant a milestone. Tenths decimal was a major revision, possibly with additonal features ,but the look-and-feel remained largely the same and the user experience was similar enough that training documentation was generally valid. Hundredths decimal was minor, minor tweaks only, usually bugfixes.

most of what I see coming out of FF now is hundredths-decimal changes. Sometimes it's tenths. I'm not even sure when it's ones/units anymore. Maybe FF 57 would count. In short though, I don't really care anymore and I only use FF because I used Netscape and then Mozilla and then FF, so if FF gets too dissimilar to what I'm used to or too similar to other offerings then I probably have no reason to bother keeping with it anymore.

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome and many other programs are the same way now.

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[TWX]

Sure. And Chrome's versioning sucks and is where FF go its versioning.

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[Bigbutt]

Yea, I'm still using 36 at work. Running anything newer kills my company Windows access within a few minutes, locking my account.

[John]

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. And Chrome's versioning sucks and is where FF go its versioning.

Fx, not FF.

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[JohnFen]

Sorry, I'll stick with abbreviating it as "FF", because that makes more linguistic sense.

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[Anonymous Coward]

And probably a plugin that lets me fake my browser's info to sites that ask.

You don't need a plugin for that. Create an about:config key named "general.useragent.override" and set it to the useragent string you want sites to see.

Re: Keep using 52 ESR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that doesn't have the per-site settings available in some extensions, *and* there's no dropdown menu to change at will! And like other about:config options, you have to restart the browser for it to take effect.

Totally just as good! /s

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[Rakarra]

People say "Fire Fox," not "FirefoX"

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[Reziac]

Agreed on the versioning madness. It's to where I think of them all as multipled by 10, or maybe 100.

User-agent changer (anything you want) and various other handy toggles:

http://prefbar.tuxfamily.org/

The one add-on I can't live without.

Re:Keep using 52 ESR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fx, not FF.

Says who? FF parses better. Fx you!

I'll use Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

.... I mean, not that this is a change or anything, but I stepped away from Firefox ages ago.

Gone

[amiga3D]

I suppose it'll be something else. There are other options and I'm going to start exploring them now. Maybe FF will get their sh*t together in the meantime.

Re:Gone

[JohnFen]

Maybe FF will get their sh*t together in the meantime.

Don't bet on it.

Re:Gone

[Dutch Gun]

I've been using Firefox for a long time, since tabbed browsing was a killer new feature. I've seen it convulse with pointless UI changes, copying Chrome visually (and even their ridiculous versioning scheme) but presumably failing to understand *why* Chrome was eating their lunch. I watched as idiotic deals were made with Pocket, integrating more cruft no one wanted directly into the browser.

Now, Firefox is breaking backwards compatibility. I totally understand *why* they might like to do this, but that really makes no difference to the user. Functionality which was once there is now no more. If they were going to break compatibility anyhow, maybe they should have bitten the bullet and written an entirely new browser like MS did with Edge, so they wouldn't have to make any compromises going forward. Now, instead, we get the worst of both worlds: the historical cruft of an old browser AND broken backwards compatibility.

At this point, I suspect I'll just jump to Chrome, which is what Firefox ultimately seems aiming towards anyhow. It was mostly simple inertia that was keeping me on Firefox, and now I've been forced into some sort of action. Might as well pick the better browser at this point.

Re:Gone

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were going to break compatibility anyhow, maybe they should have bitten the bullet and written an entirely new browser like MS did with Edge, so they wouldn't have to make any compromises going forward

They are doing it, piece by piece. The older components are apparently holding performance back with new systems. As users of modern, bloated web and multi-core processors we want our browsers to stay fast even in the future.

the historical cruft of an old browser AND broken backwards compatibility.

They are literally removing old code at speed at this point.

Re:Gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Properly configured NoScript makes the browser plenty faster on most sites. Loosing NoScript can only make firefox slower.

Re:Gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately NoScript writer is intensively involved in the design of new the add-on framework and the coming version 10 should be fully Firefox 57 compatible.

Re:Gone

[doom]

They are doing it, piece by piece.

You're missing the point: if you're going to role out an entirely new UI, you shouldn't pretend it's the same piece of software. Give it a new name, and see if it wins converts, but leave the old project alone in the mean time.

Big changes like this are effectively forks, and you shouldn't try to hide that from people by calling it an update.

Re:Gone

[Anonymous Coward]

chrome sucks since they insist on mashing all tabs into a nonscrollable tab. open more than three tabs and it breaks the point of having tabs.

add to that recent chrome have been erratic for me.

i used to use waterfox and firefox. try chrome, vivaldi, etc. at various points so for the moment i'll probably switch to palemoon which i've already started investigating.

Moving to Chrome...

[TemporalBeing]

Honestly, the primary add-on that kept me in Firefox was TabGroups, which at least for FF57 won't be possible with WebExtensions. They finally came to an agreement on an API in early August that would re-enable extensions like TabGroups to work under WebExtensions, but before that work is completed it won't even be possible.

So yeah - once they announced the move to WebExtensions from XUL I started looking at Chrome since it was clear that Mozilla didn't really care about their users or why people actually used Firefox to start with. I may reconsider once TabGroups is available in Firefox again, but the ship may have already sailed on the future viability of Firefox now that they're killing all their XUL extensions.

Re:Moving to Chrome...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hopeful about that work to reenable certain extensions, so I think I'll stick to FF52 ESR until that's unsupported (June 2018 IIRC) and probably bail if the work isn't done by then.

Already stopped updating

[WoodstockJeff]

FireFox stopped allowing key add-ons I use already, because the authors have not created signed versions. So I had to reinstall version 47, where I could at least tell it to accept the fact that they add-on wasn't signed.

Re:Already stopped updating

[farble1670]

FireFox stopped allowing key add-ons I use already, because the authors have not created signed versions. So I had to reinstall version 47, where I could at least tell it to accept the fact that they add-on wasn't signed.

Sounds a little like you are blaming FF for the fact that the extension devs are too lazy to provide their users with a way to trust their addons. Is that right?

Re:Already stopped updating

[Anonymous Coward]

It's less too lazy and more that many extension developers burnt out redesigning everything for last year's big extension api change and now they have to do it all over again. And there's no telling for sure that there won't be another one next year when they realize how woefully inadequate their implementation of webextensions is.

Re:Already stopped updating

[GuB-42]

Sounds a little like you are blaming FF for the fact that the extension devs are too lazy to provide their users with a way to trust their addons. Is that right?

I think he is blaming FF for not letting the user choose.
Walled gardens are not a terrible idea. Protecting the user against himself is sometimes necessary. But the thing is : we have enough of this already. A lot of Firefox users use it because they want to keep control, otherwise they would have just use the default option of IE/Edge, Safari or Chrome. They don't use it to let the Mozilla foundation be their nanny.

Re:Already stopped updating

[Anonymous Coward]

otherwise they would have just use the default option of IE/Edge, Safari or Chrome

Ha! Nobody really uses Edge do they?

Re:Already stopped updating

[AntiSol]

Sounds to me like he already trusts the addon since he was already using it and went to the trouble of installing an older version of firefox specifically for it.

Sounds to me like Mozilla thinks it knows what a user wants better than he does.

Re:Already stopped updating

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here, but for different reason.

I just got tired of finding out what Mozilla broke whenever FF updates, I don't even know which which version I am on (didn't bother to check). Losing the status bar and having to get an add-on to get it back was the last straw for me.

Re:Already stopped updating

[iampiti]

Nope, he's blaming Firefox for not letting the user, under their own responsability, to use the addon.
I'm tired of software treating the users as stupid and not letting them choose what's best for them.

Re:Already stopped updating

[Anonymous Coward]

Too lazy to clean up other people without being paid for it?

If anyone is lazy, it's the Firefox devs that keep breaking extensions while expecting other people to clean up their mess.

Re:Already stopped updating

[doom]

Sounds a little like you are blaming FF for the fact that the extension devs are too lazy ...

No, we're blaming mozilla for being too lazy to to care about backwards compatibility, and too egocentric to pay any attention at all to their users opinions about what they're doing.

They keep offering themselves as a development platform, and then yanking the rug out from under developers.

Re:Already stopped updating

[farble1670]

I wasn't commenting on anything other than the OP's implication that requiring devs to sign their extensions was an annoyance perpetrated by FF.

Re:Already stopped updating

[farble1670]

No, we're blaming mozilla for being too lazy to to care about backwards compatibility

Implementing a policy that ensures extensions are not tampered and are sourced by the actual dev is not "not caring about backwards compatibility".

Of course, if there was a malware problem with those unsigned extensions I'm sure you'd be the same person crying that mozilla is "too lazy to care about security".

Re:Already stopped updating

[farble1670]

I'm tired of software treating the users as stupid and not letting them choose what's best for them.

Then fork your own browser maybe.

FF is written for the masses, not the 0.001% of users that perform their own extension verification. If you enjoy the FF project support policies that make it safe and secure for the masses. Wide adoption is what gets the project users and hence new features and new developers to work on those features.

Re:Already stopped updating

[doom]

Implementing a policy that ensures extensions are not tampered and are sourced by the actual dev is not "not caring about backwards compatibility".

Here's a thought: the addons pages could have a big lock icon stuck on the ones that mozilla can vouch for, and the others are "you're own your own".

But then of course, there's the still the problem of not breaking support for the old unsecured addons, doesn't it? Refusing to do that is what I'm calling lazy. There's a new bright-and-shiney out there, and chasing it without dumping the crap that was the last bright-and-shiney would take some serious thought and effort.

(Whenever they really want to fuck you over, the excuse is always "Security!". Once they say that you're supposed to salute and go away).

Re:Already stopped updating

[farble1670]

Here's a thought: the addons pages could have a big lock icon stuck on the ones that mozilla can vouch for, and the others are "you're own your own".

And the vast majority of people would install the unsigned ones anyway. Then FF gets blamed and the bad press when malware gets spread through them.

There's a new bright-and-shiney out there

Signed code is a "bright and shiney"? Huh.

(Whenever they really want to fuck you over, the excuse is always "Security!". Once they say that you're supposed to salute and go away

If you perceive this has "f****** you over" then all I can say if they have professionals and medication that can help you get over that.

Re:Already stopped updating

[doom]

Mozilla has chosen to repeatedly screw over it's user base with gratuitous UI changes... now that it's user base is dwindling they've decided the solution is to do it again.

I wouldn't count on there being any meds to assist them with this condition, I'm afraid it's chronic.

Re:Already stopped updating

[farble1670]

Mozilla has chosen to repeatedly screw over it's user base with gratuitous UI changes... now that it's user base is dwindling they've decided the solution is to do it again.

The main complaint I've read here about FF's UI is that it's "Chrome-like". I'd have to say that since Chrome is the most popular browser on the planet, FF's problems are most likely not related to it's UI choice.

Anyway to repeat myself... I just loaded it up. It's a window. Tabs at the top. Location bar under that. There's a back button. Pretty much like any other browser today and in the past back to Netscape. What are we talking about here? The size of the back button? The font in the location bar? Those choices are "screwing over" the user base?

Ummm....

[sycodon]

...if your life is affected by a browser, you need to re-evaluate your life.

Re:Ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

...if your life is affected by a browser, you need to re-evaluate your life.

This.

If you're looking for an alternative to Firefox then you should already be using Palemoon, which retains the more sane UI and customizability that made Firefox popular in the first place, so you don't need a "theme-restorer" extension and it still has the status bar built in so you don't an extension for that.

Re:Ummm....

[tsqr]

If you don't get the euphemism, don't comment. "Life After" is not how it affects your life, it means how things change after an event. It can be significant (life after cancer), or something simple (life after Twinkies).

While agree with the gist of your comment, this little gem leads me to believe the poster is leaning more towards "life after cancer". Or maybe "life after death". Firefox 57 will disable over 95% of my add-ons many of which I just cannot live without [emphasis added].

Re:Ummm....

[TomR teh Pirate]

Respectfully, I disagree. The headline title is intentionally provocative, and the parent makes a funny and relevant point. As a point of reference, I remember my cousin's GF being all sorts of bewildered that my wife and I hadn't yet jumped on the smartphone bandwagon when Apple had released their smartphone. She said, "Oh my god you need one of these. It will change your life." Ehh, maybe it changed her life, but mine is pretty much the same after getting around to buying said device. Personally I bailed on Firefox a long time ago in favor of Chrome. It had a negligible impact on the way I work, but not what I would call a life-altering experience...

Re:Ummm....

[Archangel Michael]

As an old timer grey beard, I can honestly say I have said "I cannot live without" some tech that was great and is now gone without a replacement. I can also confirm, I lived.

I try not to be so hyperbolic about tech I can or cannot live without. "Yeah, it sucks" is my normal reaction these days.

Re:Ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I installed a plugin once to export savec passwords. That's about it.

Re:Ummm....

[tsqr]

As an old timer grey beard, I can honestly say I have said "I cannot live without" some tech that was great and is now gone without a replacement. I can also confirm, I lived.

I try not to be so hyperbolic about tech I can or cannot live without. "Yeah, it sucks" is my normal reaction these days.

Same here. Of course, there definitely is tech that some people literally cannot live without - pacemakers and dialysis machines come to mind; I'm sure there are many others.

Re:Ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's life, like the one that ends in a coffin and there is life, like you live it on the web. Wondering how you're going to deal with life on the web when Firefox goes full GNOME-tard doesn't mean you think it's time to switch your bed for a sarcophagus.

Just sayin'.

Re:Ummm....

[ZippyTheChicken]

why don't you list all the options the bring NoScript to other browsers then because NoScript doesn't just stop foreign script it stops sites other than the one you are browsing to track you.... Google will never implement this nor microsoft and if you can't go with a resource like FireFox that has a large base then you end up with some shit browser that never has any security testing.. I don't just find it offensive i find it indefensible that there is no option for NoScript on other browsers or that Firefox will do away with it.

Re:Ummm....

[OrangeTide]

I try not to be so hyperbolic about tech I can or cannot live without. "Yeah, it sucks" is my normal reaction these days.

I'm sure I could even live without a graphical webbrowser. There are a lot of things you can live without if you must. When did such hyperbole become so fashionable? And why hasn't years of derision suppressed such hyperbole?

Re:Ummm....

[JohnFen]

One of my children wrote a school report about hyperbole a number of years ago. She started it with the sentence "Hyperbole is the best thing ever."

I was very proud.

Re:Ummm....

[Gavagai80]

It wouldn't surprise me if some people's pacemakers are controlled by Firefox extensions. Or IE 6 ActiveX controls.

Re:Ummm....

[adrn01]

However, the Palemoon site only has Palemoon explicit addons/extensions. When Firefox drops support for current addons, one would expect them to delete them all from their site as well. Someone better mirror before they are gone forever.

Re: Ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

NoScript is ready for the new mechanism. Check their website.

Re:Ummm....

[UnknownSoldier]

Look just because you are an Apple/Google/Microsoft shill doesn't imply that everyone else is.

Maybe you should pay more attention to history then to bitch about other people's choices who value freedom and options for the browser to work the way we want it -- even if you don't.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -- Ben Franklin

--
Atheist, noun, a spiritual blind man arguing with the rest of the world that color doesn't exist and everyone should all be blind like him.
Theist, noun, someone with spiritual monochromatic vision who argues that everyone else seeing in other colors is wrong.

Re:Ummm....

[OneAhead]

I hope the teacher gave her a good grade for that. It's not just funny, it's a damn good example of effectively conveying a message.

Re:Ummm....

[OrangeTide]

Love it! Your kids are going to do OK.

Re:Ummm....

[Hylandr]

why hasn't years of derision suppressed such hyperbole?

Because Slashdot was purchased by the mainstream media.

Re: Ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh talk like that for Barnaby Jack killed

without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[evolutionary]

If Mozilla doesn't come up with a way of keeping the extensions we have grown to love firefox for, I guess I won't be using FireFox. It is strange that Mozilla would not have taken this into account. I've been playing with Vivaldi and I'm a fan of the browser (as well as his music) Have Vivaldi with Umatrix installed, which is like "NoScript" on steroids. So for me Vivaldi is a good alternative to Firefox.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Seq]

You're upset that firefox is moving to web extensions, so you abandoned it for a browser that also uses web extensions? And your cited example (umatrix) is also available as a ff57+ compatible web extension.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 21st century Slashdot.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news. You are a liar. FIrefox is terrible and you should be using IE, which is way better.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[dunkelfalke]

Because old Firefox addons were the only reason left to use Firefox. It is simply not a very good browser anymore.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to what? The stinking pile of dog shit that is Chrome?

Browsers suck. Get over it. They are incredibly complicted.

I tried the native browser on GNOME recently, and despite bugs I found to my surprise that it has fixed some of the stupidity in Chrome.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is, I believe, if you're forced into a WebExtensions-only browser you might as well use one that doesn't prioritize cloning Chrome and SJWing.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to what? The stinking pile of dog shit that is Chrome.

Yes, it's a shit clone of a shit browser.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried the the nightly version of Firefox (its the one that has their new engine based on Rust)? It is fucking fast. Rocks Chrome.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

And has far fewer features. Cool story, brah.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the fact that, out of the box, Vivaldi supports more customization than FF+WebExtensions. For me, one of the killers is good mouse-gesture support, which Vivaldi has built in.

Using Vivaldi now fits my habits and feels a lot more like the browser that I know than FireFox does.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK several addon developers already mentioned that Firefox has additional APIs on top of web extensions, they just had to kill old APIs since those weren't thread safe. So basically Firefox addons can still do more, many addon devs. just don't have the time for a complete rewrite.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

He's choosing the better browser running web extensions, not a shitty browser running web extensions

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[Anonymous Coward]

All the addons I've checked that haven't been converted have the usual WONTFIX WEDONTCARE crap on their requests for APIs that make it possible to convert the extensions.

Re:without my security extensions, play Vivaldi

[evolutionary]

To be clear, I've never said that FireFox wasn't a good browser, but I find Vivaldi is a better browser. Also, firefox's new updates appear to kill a lot of addos (extension equivalent). The most popular ones for web developing and security from what I've read will not have a chance to be updated for this new standard. The extensions in vivaldi that work will will continue to work. That is the real issue: a key feature will be (at least for awhile) effectively disable. Mozilla should be working with add-on developers to help the switch over. If they do that and an upgrade doesn't kill my firefox "add-ons" cool. If that is a reinstallation from "add-on" to "web extension" cool. But just dying, not cool. That is the primary issue.

Just famous or famous and going away?

[fahrbot-bot]

NoScript

Because NoScript is migrating to WebExtensions API. I believe that Classic Theme Restorer has already proclaimed that they won't. Don't know about the rest.

Re:Just famous or famous and going away?

[JohnFen]

I believe that Classic Theme Restorer has already proclaimed that they won't.

Both the CTR folks and Mozilla have stated a number of times that it will not be possible to create an extension that does what CTR does -- so it's toast.

Which is, in the end, the deciding factor in my not staying with FF after 56. CTR is the only thing that makes the FF UI tolerable.

Re:Just famous or famous and going away?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the 57 nightlies. The UI is better than before (after some customization), in my opinion. Hiding the menus by default is now tolerable.

Re:Just famous or famous and going away?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. CTR mae Firefox so much more usable for me. Losing it on top of all the security issues (like it or not, firefox devs, we do need to connect to older appliances that do not meet your requirements for certificates, and you even took away the ability to click through and accept such a connection).

FF is like going to an uber strict religious school that tolerates only one single method for doing anything, and its their way or the highway.

Fortunately Safari on Mac has come a long way, and is, for me, much more usable than current Firefox. Unfortunately I'm seeing some of the same security 'inyourface's coming along with Safari now...

Re:Just famous or famous and going away?

[edxwelch]

Last time I tried Firefox with CTR it was so slow, it was unusable. I think it must have been the CTR plugin slowing down, because this was on a fresh profile.

I now use Palemoon and Chrome for the websites where Palemoon doesn't work.

Re:Just famous or famous and going away?

[JohnFen]

I've been using CTR since it was first released, and have never noticed a performance impact. I wonder why it affects your installations (or, conversely, why it doesn't affect mine)?

I guess it's a moot point, though.

Re:Just famous or famous and going away?

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the CTR folks and Mozilla have stated a number of times that it will not be possible to create an extension that does what CTR does -- so it's toast.

Which is, in the end, the deciding factor in my not staying with FF after 56. CTR is the only thing that makes the FF UI tolerable.

Firefox 57 comes with an all-new UI, though. I'm also sad to lose the customizability, and hope that over time the APIs will start offering that power again (which, frankly, they should've been prepared to do for a year or two before deprecating XUL extensions). But I've been using Nightly 57 for a while now, and have to say that the UI is quite nice in a back-to-the-roots way. Very compact, more settings to configure, and square tabs! So I might not even be missing CTR that much. Many of the things I wanted it for are now back in mainline.

My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Futurepower(R)]

The big issue: Technology companies are usually badly managed. Mozilla Foundation is just one example.

My list, updated from the list I posted to another story. Every add-on is marked "Legacy" in Firefox version 55.0.3 64-bits.

1. Adblock Latitude For Pale Moon browser only. Blocks display of ads. "Adblock Latitude is a direct fork of Adblock Plus made specifically for the Pale Moon browser."
2. BetterPrivacy Deletes Local Shared Objects, LSOs. LSOs are files placed on your computer by the Adobe Systems Flash plug-in. Use of Adobe Flash allows web sites to track you, permanently even though your browser is configured to delete the files known as "Cookies" after each re-starting of your operating system.
3. CanvasBiocker Prevents websites from using the Javascript <canvas> API to fingerprint them.
4. Classic Theme Restorer Quoting 3 paragraphs:
   
   "This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017."
   
   "This add-on will stop working when Firefox 57 arrives in November 2017 and Mozilla drops support for XUL / XPCOM / legacy add-ons. It should still work on Firefox 52 ESR until ESR moves to Firefox 59 ESR in 2018 (~Q2)".
   
   "There is no 'please port it' or 'please add support for it' this time, because the entire add-on eco system changes and the technology behind this kind of add-on gets dropped without replacement."
   
   
5. Cookies Manager+
6. Disconnect
7. Facebook Blocker Prevents Facebook from following you everywhere there are Facebook "Like" buttons.
8. Firebug "Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page..."
9. Ghostery DON'T UPDATE. New versions don't allow sufficient user control.
   USE THIS: ghostery-5.4.10-sm+an+fx.xpi Link: Version 5.4.10
   Ghostery sells data it collects. (Business Insider, Jun 18, 2013)
   Ghostery web site
10. HTTPS Everywhere Doesn't install in Pale Moon. Encrypts traffic by using HTTPS encryption rather than HTTP wherever web sites accept HTTPS. See How to Protect Your Data After Congress Passed Legislation That Allows Your Internet Search History to Be Sold (Vogue Magazine, March 29, 2017)
11. Mozilla Archive Format For Firefox and Waterfox only. Saves web pages. For the Pale Moon browser, use MozArchiver.
12. MozArchiver For Pale Moon browser only. Like Mozilla Archive Format that is used with Firefox. Saves web pages.
13. NoScript "The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Seamonkey and other mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

The big issue: Technology companies are usually badly managed. Mozilla Foundation is just one example.
 

Most companies of any kind are usually badly managed.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[tepples]

"There is no 'please port it' or 'please add support for it' this time, because the entire add-on eco system changes and the technology behind this kind of add-on gets dropped without replacement."

Then why didn't the maintainer of Classic Theme Restorer work with Mozilla over a year ago to ensure such a "replacement" when Mozilla announced that it was switching to WebExtensions?

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[rudy_wayne]

The big issue: Technology companies are usually badly managed. Mozilla Foundation is just one example.

Most companies of any kind are usually badly managed.

Yes, but Mozilla is exceptionally bad. Over the past few years they have seemed to make a very serious and concerted effort to destroy everything that made Firefox popular in the first place. Very few companies have said Fuck You to their customers as openly and deliberately as Mozilla.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[quantic_oscillation7]

here... https://docs.google.com/spread...

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla have no real customers and are SJW-converged. Politics is more important than building a good browser, and the loss of market share has no direct impact on their bottom line.

The only reasons I continue using it are:

1. NoScript.
2. Brave isn't yet included as part of the Ubuntu repo.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these will be fixed in time, at least the ones who have a vibrant following. Yes we're going to go through a feature loss and subsequent gain as the extension authors work with mozilla to add back in the api's they need to function.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably Mozilla refused to play ball.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[suutar]

how do you know they didn't try to? Perhaps CTR uses something that Mozilla just doesn't want to provide anymore.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is intentionally getting rid of heavyweight themes and not providing any replacement. Mozilla has a web site listing their most popular extensions, with user counts, and Classic Theme Restorer is not in the "Most Widely Adopted" extensions list even though it has more users than other extensions in that list like Xmarks Sync. It is pretty clear that they know it exists and is popular and they don't care because XUL is too uncool for web developers.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to review your own list. You claim to be running FF 55, but quite a few of the plugins you list aren't even compatible with 55 (like Facebook Blocker, Firebug, etc.) so you can't even be running them in the first place. Facebook Blocker hasn't been updated since 2012 and per the very page you linked to isn't compatible beyond FF 26 (!).

Disconnect, Ghostery, and uBlock Origin are already fully WebExt; they are NOT Legacy anymore.

HTTPS-Everywhere and NoScript have both announced they will be WebExt compatible, they just aren't there yet.

And BetterPrivacy has been completely withdrawn; the link you provide isn't even valid anymore.

I mean I'm all for pointing out where this migration to a new plug-in system falls down but come on, at least post information newer than 5+ years ago.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

My list, updated from the list I posted to another story. Every add-on is marked "Legacy" in Firefox version 55.0.3 64-bits.

1. ...
2. uBlock
   Origin (Apparently the best ad-blocker for Firefox.)

...

You may want to update your list. The linked page (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/) specifically says "Compatible with Firefox 57+"

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

"There is no 'please port it' or 'please add support for it' this time, because the entire add-on eco system changes and the technology behind this kind of add-on gets dropped without replacement."

Then why didn't the maintainer of Classic Theme Restorer work with Mozilla over a year ago to ensure such a "replacement" when Mozilla announced that it was switching to WebExtensions?

Because the WebExtensions API will not provide this functionality. Period.

This is why people are upset. The design philosophy Mozilla has chosen (copying Chrome's web extensions) means it will never be available. Web Extensions do not have the hooks necessary to alter the browser. By their own admission web extensions are for modifying web content, not the browser itself and there are no plans to offer it.

So while some extensions are getting web extension versions, they will never reach feature parity with the originals and others are simply impossible.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

The changes they are making to the architecture should enable it to be much faster and more secure in future. Yes, a lot of addons will be broken, but the payoff should be massive performance improvements going forward.

As parts of Servo get integrated into Firefox, I don't see why it won't become become quite a lot faster than all the other browsers, this should be a pretty compelling feature on it's own.

Without making the changes the browser will fossilise, not getting particularly faster and gradually leaking users until only cowboy neal uses it.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Because when it comes to Mozilla, "working with" consists on creating a feature request in Bugzilla and have it marked WONTFIX WEDONTCARE.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are the customers of Mozilla? AC suspects they are not who you think they are.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[thereitis]

Maybe because Firefox has such a small marketshare, such an effort isn't attractive?

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

> BetterPrivacy

"This add-on has been removed by its author."

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of developers did try, the response from Mozilla was along the lines of "nah".

If it doesn't fit the WebExtensions model, they're not interested.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[q4Fry]

I don't understand. HTTPS Everywhere and uBlock Origin work just fine on the nightly (v57). I had to ask the extensions to update themselves, but now they work great. I can't speak to the other things on your list, but I also use PrivacyBadger which works fine and performs the functions of Ghostery without phoning home.

I will probably switch to Firefox from my current browser when v57 hits Beta or Stable. I only left because the built-in development tools for WebKit and Blink were better than FF or Firebug.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

i use 7 extensions:
enhance steam, greasemonkey, reddit enhancement suite, session manager,
tab mix plus, ublock origin, and umatrix.

all are tagged legacy but three, res, enhanced steam, and ublock origin.

i have three greasemonkey userscripts that i run.

Re:My add-on list: All are marked as "Legacy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke Anything is essential to me, too. I've found a rather equivalent WebExtensions replacement for it: look for "Remove/Crop-to Selection".

Same as today, using Pale Moon

[gosand]

It's been about a year, and Firefox hasn't given me a single reason to come back.

Re:Same as today, using Pale Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been about a year, and Firefox hasn't given me a single reason to come back.

The only people left complaining about Firefox are either just too stubborn to leave or too stupid. Many of us jumped ship to this fork years ago.

Re:Same as today, using Pale Moon

[drinkypoo]

I switched back to actual Firefox from Pale Moon a while back because it had poor performance and compatibility. I switched to Pale Moon again recently since the plugins I love were going to go away, and I'm quite pleased with the results.

Pale Moon

[JBMcB]

I'll probably switch to Pale Moon. Even has the old school UI that I like.

Current plugins installed:

NoScript *INDISPENSABLE*
GreaseMonkey
Nuke Anything
DownThemAll
VideoDownloadHelper

Re:Pale Moon

[JohnFen]

You'll still have NoScript after 56. So that's something.

Re:Pale Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Pale Moon disables Ad Nauseum via an extension blocklist. Not because the addon is a security risk, but because Moonchild thinks the threat of losing revenue is more important than freedom of choice. Use a browser that respects your freedoms.

Re:Pale Moon

[JohnFen]

From that post, it sounds to me like the main reason for blocking that add-on is that it was engaging in fraud by generating false clicks on ads.

Also, I note that you can change Pale Moon settings to allow the use of the extension, so it's not like it has been banned.

Re:Pale Moon

[thereitis]

My current plugins:

AdNauseum
Disable WebRTC
Pure URL
Referrer Control
Self-Destructing Cookies
uBlock Origin

I'm running the Waterfox fork.

Re:Pale Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure most of those addons don't work on PaleMoon

Re:Pale Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like it's a deliberate misuse/abuse of others' computing resources. Just use an ad-blocker (or go nuclear with no-script), and exercise basic common-sense privacy protection practices.

Re:Pale Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

You're sure, but you're also grossly incorrect. With the exception of later versions GreaseMonkey, all of the plugins listed so far in this thread are functional. An alternative to GM is available (Guerilla Scripting), though it is decidedly less refined.

Re:Pale Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you switch, read this announcement:

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16504

Note in particular how the message is delivered: Users, suck it up or go die. It's my decision, your opinion doesn't count.

We need to take over Mozilla.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pale Moon and Waterfox are useful, but we need to get developers to coup Mozilla and force them to keep the tried and trusted extension APIs and fix the user inteface which is getting flat and clippyfied. Firefox is necessary to stop a Chrome only or IE/Edge only web, that's why we used Firefox in the first place. We can do it. X.org took over from XFree86, EGCS and GCC merged, Devuan stopped SystemD in Debian and Bitcoin Cash saved Bitcoin. Now we need to launch operation FreedomFox.

Chromium

[a9db0]

More Chrome or Chromium profiles until some of the add-ins catch up. Without AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and HTTPS Everywhere the web is nearly unusable. Without TabMixPlus and Xmarks, it's a lot less convenient.

Re:Chromium

[roca]

Good thing NoScript, Adblock Plus and HTTPS Everywhere have WebExtensions versions then.

This is way overblown

[Anonymous Coward]

This list is ridiculous because Greasemonkey and Lazarus already have Webextension versions (i.e. they already exist for Chrome) and Noscript has one in the works. There's half the list.

There are certainly a few extensions I'm going to miss but this really did need to happen. Current Firefox performance is awful compared to Chrome. The nightly builds of F57 already have enormous performance gains over the stable build from yanking out huge amounts of legacy code. Webextensions will definitely be less capable than the old system but Mozilla is actively working with extension developers to enable at least some stuff that's impossible in Chrome (i.e. Noscript).

Re:This is way overblown

[JohnFen]

Overblown to you, perhaps. But for some people, like myself, this is not a small problem.

Current Firefox performance is awful compared to Chrome.

Perhaps -- I use Chrome as little as I can get away with, so I can't really compare the two.

However, personally, this doesn't matter even a little. FF performance is acceptable to me, and that there are browsers out there that are faster is only meaningful if they don't suck for me in other ways. Chrome definitely sucks for me in most ways.

And, going by everything that Mozilla has said about 57, Firefox will too.

Re:This is way overblown

[Anonymous Coward]

Current Firefox performance is awful compared to Chrome.

That may be true for some users, but definitely not power users. I regularly have many dozens or even hundreds of tabs open- Firefox is literally the only browser that can handle that, and it has handled it quite well for a long time, even before the current focus on improving performance. After 30+ or 40+ tabs, Chrome quite simply becomes unusable. The UI becomes unresponsive, there are regular multi-second freezes, RAM usage is through the roof (yes, even compared to Firefox), and sooner or later it will just crash. One of the main reasons for that poor performance is Chrome's insistence on always loading all tabs fully into memory, while Firefox does lazy loading. Also, multi-process tab handling is kind of pointless if it's the UI thread that ends up freezing. Chrome's architecture is a bit of a joke and terribly unoptimized.

I know Chrome wins all the benchmarks, but those are artificial workloads that don't relate at all to how many people actually use a browser. So Chrome does really well when running contrived JavaScript in a single tab. Whoopee, good for them, but it doesn't make it any less sluggish and unstable when I actually start using it for real, and open a few tabs.

I switched to Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

After updating to Firefox I-don't-support-your-plugins-anymore version, and suffer the loss of O(200) tabs in tab mix plus, I finally switched to Chrome...
Fuck you Firefox. Fuck you.

Re:I switched to Chrome

[SCPRedMage]

The loss of TabMixPlus is something I'm going to hate, myself; literally the only reason I haven't switched to Chrome as my primary browser is the inability to have multiple, scrolling tab rows like I can get with TMP. Chrome just squishes the tabs more and more until it's impossible to tell which tab is which.

Move on to better things

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the state of the Web and how most people use it, it's a shadow of what it used to be. The Web will go the way of cable: when people are done dealing with scripts and ads, they will go elsewhere.

For now, I use Pale Moon and a handful of extensions that add value and protection to my experience. Mozilla stopped caring about the Web and started caring about money. W3C is a corporate entity now as well, proven by their failure to reject DRM. Gopherspace is growing quite a nice little community. One that cares about writing good prose instead of generating ad revenue. Consider my vote one of "no confidence".

Javascript and misuse of technology ruined the Web, so they're free to wallow in the vulnerabilities and corporate control. I'll pass.

ESR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there a old troll-post about ESR's poops?
I'd like to see that.

Re:ESR?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you would.

Moving on

[Anonymous Coward]

To Chromium for Windows: https://chromium.woolyss.com/

Perhaps they will be updated

[Dorianny]

Is there any technical reasons these addons can't be moved to the new API?

Re:Perhaps they will be updated

[JohnFen]

Depends on the addon. The new API is much less powerful than the old, and some things that plugins can do right now won't be possible after 56. Classic Theme Restorer, for example, is impossible to replicate (according to Mozilla).

Re:Perhaps they will be updated

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone else can probably give a much better technical analysis, but from what I've read... The current XUL extensions let developers interact directly with the rendering engine, which is how AdBlock Plus and NoScript can stop the engine from even loading/executing ads/scripts when you load a page, including embedded scripts. Chrome's versions of these extensions essentially render the page twice, once with all the ads/scripts, and then it goes through and strips out the unwanted ads/scripts, and cannot stop the engine from executing embedded scripts. This is the model Firefox is adopting for the most part with the upcoming version of Firefox.

Because scripts can be run on sites, extensions like uMatrix or various NoScript-like extensions offer far less protection. As I recall, the NoScript devs have/had a page that shows how Chrome and Chromium browsers will execute embedded scripts. There's certainly nothing stopping someone from making a sort of NoScript Lite for the new Firefox API, it just will never be as effective as the old one.

It will be interesting to see how long Pale Moon will continue, since they ultimately base their code off of the Firefox code. Either they'll be left maintaining a parallel branch that will continue to diverge as time goes by, or eventually they'll just break down and rebase everything off of Firefox 57 or whatever version they're at when the Pale Moon devs finally decide it's just too much effort to keep going it alone.

Re:Perhaps they will be updated

[tender-matser]

Yes.

With the new API, it's impossible to do obvious things you would like to do in an add-on, like creating a side-panel, or adding an extra menu item.

Also, there's no way to step through an animated image, other than doing something very shitty and complicated, like setting a timer to repeatedly render it on a canvas.

There's no way to stop animated favicons in tab titles or history menus at all ;-)

There is no way to enumerate all listeners registered on an element.

There's also no way to replace the whole data of an HTTP response, other than by redirecting it -- which is not transparent, and would fail with the very pages where such a thing would be useful.

And these are things I tried to do in my silly, ~1.2k lines, own-use extension. I can only image the pain and disgust of the people that have invested their time in writing and maintaining a real extensions, with real users.

Re:Perhaps they will be updated

[JohnFen]

they'll be left maintaining a parallel branch that will continue to diverge as time goes by

This is my hope. As you say, the other option is to eventually rebase from 57 or later. If that happens, then there won't be any reason to use Pale Moon.

Palemoon

[Anonymous Coward]

I already switched to Palemoon. I have 19 extensions (including many of the ones you mentioned) and they all worked with Palemoon. A few of them even had native Palemoon versions.

Re:Palemoon

[thegreatbob]

GreaseMonkey is likely the only casualty that many will care about. Guerilla Scripting appears to be a less-refined, but compatible, alternative.

Still evaluating

[JohnFen]

But right now, it's looking like I'll be switching to Pale Moon.

Re:Still evaluating

[Rob Riggs]

Need something like that to continue to use the f5 VPN plugin. Seems to be what f5 is recommending for their Linux users. They still don't have a reasonable replacement for that POS plugin they distribute.

Same thing I'm doing now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Pale Moon instead.

How do I see my life?

[hawguy]

How Do You See Your Life After Firefox 52 ESR?

If my life was significantly different after a new release of any software, I think I'd see my life as re-evaluating whatever life choices made that software such a significant part of my life.

Re:How do I see my life?

[Anonymous Coward]

You too? It's how things will change AFTER AN EVENT. For fuck's sake, people. Give this finger-wagging nonsense a rest. It's not a life-changing event like life after a mastectomy, but it will be different. For instance: Life after Windows is an example of something trivial but a change nonetheless. It's not like he's speaking of it in terms of a titanic shift in the course of his life. It'll just be an adjustment after a not-so-insignificant length of time using a piece of software.

Tell me, is it foggy all the way up there on your high horse?

Re:How do I see my life?

[Anonymous Coward]

You wanna buy some death sticks?"
"You don't want to sell me death sticks."
"I don't wanna sell you death sticks."
"You want to go home and rethink your life."
"I wanna go home and rethink my life."

Mod parent UP.

[Futurepower(R)]

Track poor managers: Quoted from the parent comment: "We need to keep track of who is in charge at Firefox so we can make sure they never get our business again, no matter what project they migrate to like locusts when FF is dead."

Re:Mod parent UP.

[Man On Pink Corner]

Gotta say, I've heard dumber ideas. It would be very helpful if someone started a site that keeps track of product managers who scramble the UI in popular applications, force-feed operating systems to unwilling users, or redesign websites whose only fault is that people like the way they work now.

Basically a cross between LinkedIn, FuckedCompany, and Rotten Tomatoes, where users post independent "performance reviews." When an exec moves to a new company, we'd know to disable automatic updates for that company's products.

If anyone wants to take a serious shot at this problem, they can count on at least one subscriber.

Re:Mod parent UP.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's name shall be ASSBOOK.

So you can keep track of all the assholes in the world.

Re:Mod parent UP.

[coofercat]

Not without it's problems, but you could imagine such a site for all professions. Thinking about it, there are lots of places where you can review tradespeople, why not sysadmins, developers and product owners?

If only linked in had half a brain, they could add this as a feature, and it could actually make linkedin a bit more useful.

Re:Mod parent UP.

[Cederic]

For around 8 seconds until their user base deletes their entries and/or sues for defamation.

Re:Mod parent UP.

[Rakarra]

Gotta say, I've heard dumber ideas. It would be very helpful if someone started a site that keeps track of product managers who scramble the UI in popular applications, force-feed operating systems to unwilling users, or redesign websites whose only fault is that people like the way they work now.Basically a cross between LinkedIn, FuckedCompany, and Rotten Tomatoes, where users post independent "performance reviews."

Unless you actually worked inside the company and saw the shit going on, you can't make any sort of independent analysis. Certainly not from the outside. There are plenty of places that put out bad products but have good people working there, and there are also plenty of places that will pin the blame for a product failure on one person or group rather than another who made the bad decisions.

Maybe the product manager had to be the person to take the fall. Maybe he was the one who had to deal with mandatory changes required by some interfering upper brass. I would never trust such a site. But anyway, it sounds like GlassDoor might at least partially fit those requirements.

Netscape 4.7

[gatzke]

I used Netscape Communicator 4.7 way longer than I should have. Keep the installer bundle and run until she dies or you find a replacement.

Or find a fork.

Re:Netscape 4.7

[Reziac]

Ha... I still have Netscape 3.04 installed, and occasionally use it for one thing or another (it's a lot handier and faster if I need to trawl through an FTP site, and unlike Mozilla, it can multitask -- no need to wait for the link handler to finish processing before I can hit the next.)

ToolBars anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many addons do you need? Seriously? I use a few, but over 35 addons? It's like a throwback to IE in the 90's.

Is this what your browser looks like? https://i.stack.imgur.com/82hWm.jpg

Re: ToolBars anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

The funniest part is this bit: Popular blocked: 0

Lul

That's easy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lynx.

No, the problem is now

[Anonymous Coward]

Old versions of Firefox will not just stop working. Someone might fork it. But the problem is now. Many essential extensions are already unmaintained because the developers gave up, and I'm watching them slowly degrade because nobody fixes the bugs that arise with every new Firefox version. For example, All-in-One Sidebar just lost almost all its icons. But I'm still using it because there is no alternative that I know of.

I pity those...

[Anonymous Coward]

who's lives revolve around a web browser.

Re: I pity those...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is this person you speak of?

The Death of FIrefox

[shubus]

Yes, Firefox seem to be adept at shooting itself in the foot, but this time Mozilla will lose a very significant segment of their user base: There is a large user base who depend on the Add-On's which make Firefox so useful. The real showstopper for me is AdBlock Plus. Best we can do now is NOT update and keep checking on "Legacy" items in our Add-On's to which vendors have re-coded. Likely most will not within a decent time frame so I'll probably be jumping ship along with the other heavy Add-On users.

Re:The Death of FIrefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox's userbase has been shrinking for awhile, but agreed. They are seriously making a bad move here. Mozilla will likely kill off not only a decent part of of their userbase, but will lose out on people like myself who try to steer others to Firefox.

I simply will not use a browser with Noscript.

What alternative do you have in mind? I can only think of Pale Moon at the moment, but it's currently dead on Android.

'Less than a year' is 'Today'

[andywest]

I have already switched to Pale Moon for Windows. I also did the same for my Mac, even though Pale Moon is still experimental on macOS and I needed to do a long search for its latest version. (If you are interested, it is here.

Maybe you don't need a new browser

[Anonymous Coward]

but rather a new life? Or more of a perspective on your current life at least. If your biggest problem is the plugins your browser won't support, then you are a fortunate person indeed.

mozilla + rust = servo

[jopsen]

https://servo.org/ Browsers engines are hugely complicated, and forking then will always be hard, very hard.
Mozilla Firefox is and will remain the best option... with the work being put into servo and features being ported over to firefox we're seeing dramatic performance improvements coming up...

Extensions breaking is always sad, but there is finally a WebExtensions spec, so breakage can be prevented in the future. The reason extensions are breaking is because they historically have been tied to semi-internal APIs; and have been holding back development... In fact the power previously given to extensions could be considered dangerous.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

" In fact the power previously given to extensions could be considered dangerous"

How's that Kool-Aid?

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[JohnFen]

I am fully aware of the reason that extensions are breaking. However, when that means that Firefox has reduced functionality, those reasons mean nothing to me.

we're seeing dramatic performance improvements coming up...

That's all well and good -- but (above a certain level, which FF is) performance is less important to me than functionality.

In fact the power previously given to extensions could be considered dangerous.

This is easily the single worst excuse for the API change. I don't see how "we're making it worse for your own good" is a point that proponents of these changes would want to be making.

Re: mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

"We'll get it right this time, guys. Totes promise."

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[phantomfive]

It's fine to make a stable API, but if WebExtension makes GreaseMonkey impossible, then it's a broken API. It doesn't matter how stable that API is, it's broken. The developers who don't understand are geniuses of the apple bar kind.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[AmiMoJo]

The story is stupid anyway. Look at the list of add ons they think they are going to lose:

DownThemAll - many similar add-ons exist for Chrome
GreaseMonkey - Chrome version is called Tampermonkey
NoScript - there is a Chrome version
UnMHT - SaveAsMHT for Chrome

WebExtensions are largely compatible with the Chrome API so they should all port over just fine.

Status-4-Ever and Classic Theme Restorer are the only ones you will lose, but Pale Moon is a reasonable alternative if you really can't stand any of the many Chrome based offerings.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact the power previously given to extensions could be considered dangerous.

Dangerous? Overreact much?

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

If dramatic improvements are expected in the future (aka "coming up") then keep this shit in-house until AFTER you're ready to deliver on that promise.

Sometimes you have to rewrite to move forward and such rewrites go through a period where they are not superior to the version users are used to. But you do not have to inflict an inferior, still-under-development replacement on those users.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[roca]

WebExtensions supports user scripts so there doesn't seem to be any reason why Greasemonkey couldn't be ported to WebExtensions.
https://developer.mozilla.org/...

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[pointybits]

Greasemonkey is being worked on but it required a rewrite from scratch, so it may be a while.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[higuita]

Actually several add-on where found to leak memory, crash the browser, change settings, spy the user, steal passwords, relay cookies, add fake CA. all those that where found, where blocked, but the current API is dangerous. Mozilla already disabled several features to try to make it safer, but that broke many add-on and the reality is that add-on have access to almost everything in the browser, they can workaround those limits.
Again, fixing the old add-on interface would require a major rebuild of the add-on, so it is better to simply dump it and write a new API that allow better control and as bonus, allow easier reuse of code between chrome and firefox add-on (so it would help most add-on developers)

In the last 3 years, each firefox release broke several add-ons. keeping in that road will only make people unhappy. breaking all the add-on once and change to a proper API will allow future firefox be released without breaking the add-ons. Having a proper API, compatibility is easier to maintain and after the initial add-on breakage and unhappy users, slowly the maintained add-on will be ported and easier to keep working for a long time

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[kwoff]

Your post is a good example of why I'm abandoning their arrogance. I wish I wasn't, but there it is.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[JohnFen]

As I said, I do understand the rationale. I honestly do. I resent it when software eliminates useful functionality on the rationale that it's "for my own good". I'll decide what's for my own good and what isn't, thank you. If the functionality is too dangerous for Joe Random to use, then make an about:config setting to enable it.

Unfortunately, unless the change isn't as bad as Mozilla says, or unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat at the last minute, it doesn't matter to me if this API change eliminates add-on breakage in the future, because I won't be using Firefox.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[AntiSol]

we're seeing dramatic performance improvements coming up...

It's easy to improve performance when you remove functionality. A fast car with no steering wheel isn't much use to me.

In fact the power previously given to extensions could be considered dangerous

It could more correctly be considered liberating.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[slaker]

I might be mistaken since I don't frequently use any WebKit browsers, but last time I checked, NoScript for Chromedidn't have the full set of capabilities found in the Mozilla-based version. uMatrix may be similar and is often described as being just as capable but I've likewise not had the patience to deal with its idiosyncrasies compared to the NoScript I've been using for years.

With regard specifically to "downloading" addons, I've tried quite a few and I've found I can do the most work with the least effort with DownThemAll. There's a very good reason it's a popular tool.

I'm a Palemoon guy already. I can't bring myself to move everything I do over to Google, but moreover, Non-WebKit browsers work much better for my browsing habits (even, ew, Edge) in my experience. To the extent that the choice exists to not use Chrome or something Chrome-like, I'm going to do that.

Re: mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

A great lesson I learned in my twenties: never tell anyone you're going to do something, or something is in the making. Just get it done. Get it usable, then release/show it when it's ready. Human expectations are never realistic, so it's best to curb them wherever possible.

Sure, it means nobody sees your work until it's somewhat ready, but that's the law of first impressions for ya.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact the power previously given to extensions could be considered dangerous.

That worries me the most. I don't mind the inconvenience of extensions breaking if they'll eventually be replaced... but it sounds like the actual functionality of what an extension can do is going to be severely curtailed. It's so weird... it was clear to me that the extension model was the biggest draw to Firefox over Chrome, et al. They're neutering their primary marketing point.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[tlhIngan]

Actually several add-on where found to leak memory, crash the browser, change settings, spy the user, steal passwords, relay cookies, add fake CA. all those that where found, where blocked, but the current API is dangerous. Mozilla already disabled several features to try to make it safer, but that broke many add-on and the reality is that add-on have access to almost everything in the browser, they can workaround those limits.

WebExtensions isn't going to help in that department, if looking at Chrome extensions is any clue where extensions are also doing the same thing!. Hell, attacking Chrome extensions is a popular thing - either by buying out a popular extension from a developer (and then stuffing it full of adware and stuff) or even just flat out trying to hack the developer.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[tlhIngan]

Browsers engines are hugely complicated, and forking then will always be hard, very hard.
Mozilla Firefox is and will remain the best option... with the work being put into servo and features being ported over to firefox we're seeing dramatic performance improvements coming up...

No, they're not. Well designed browser engines have been forked. The best known might be KHTML, which Apple forced to produce WebKit. WebKit is now the foundation for many different web browsers, like Chrome (using Blink, a fork of WebKit), Safari, practically every mobile web browser out there now (Apple ported it to ARM, Google ported it to Android) and even KDE dumped KHTML and incorporated WebKit into its web browser.

It's not that Apple created a really easy to use browser engine, they chose KHTML as their base because it was the easiest to fork and use to create WebKit. Apple apparently kept that for WebKit which allowed Apple and Google and Opera and others to take that create their own forks of it.

All it means is KHTML and WebKit are nicely structured pieces of code. Heck, Steam uses WebKit as its embedded browser as well, switching away from Trident/IE embedding when it went multi-platform.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Ed Avis]

For me the main use of UnMHT is not to save MHT files, but to read them. On my work desktop, using Microsoft Outlook to read mail, you can use Firefox with UnMHT as a workaround for Outlook's horribly slow HTML renderer. Outlook shows 'click here to display this message in a web browser'; by installing UnMHT you can associate Firefox with .mht files so this action opens the message in Firefox. Otherwise you're stuck with Internet Explorer or possibly Microsoft Edge. (There is a trick you can use in your HTML messages to make sure Outlook always shows that prompt to display in a browser. So at work, when generating HTML to spam out, I always include that. Then messages which render too slowly in Outlook, because of large tables for example, can be viewed in Firefox with a right-click.)

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

found the goolag shill

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

Extensions breaking is always sad, but there is finally a WebExtensions spec, so breakage can be prevented in the future.

When riding a bicycle, punctures are always sad, but now we have replaced the wheels with two solid concrete blocks, so punctures can be prevented in the future.

For some reason, our competitor across the street thinks that this is will mean more customers for him, even though we can now guarantee zero punctures.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

By then, you won't have any users left so yay

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[higuita]

buying a extension, there isn't much mozilla can do, but they will implement a webextension API that they think is mostly safe. they will not be 100% compatible with chrome, they will remove features they see as dangerous and limit as much as possible what add-ons can do. each add-on will request "permissions" and the mozilla team will enforce that they can only use those permissions. Also, the add-on will still be signed and checked. Probably add-ons that require more dangerous permissions will be check with a closer look to see if the developer is not abusing then

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the one being stupid might be you, or maybe you're just disingenous, since you're leaving out quite an important aspect; Yes several of these addons have a chrome version, but are they equally capable? The answer to that seems to be No which moots your entire post.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently don't understand the rationale. The keyword is: specification. WebExtension implementation must follows the specification. If some add-ons devs require some features which are not available in WebExtension, then they talk to Mozilla. Mozilla then negotiate with WebExtension community to amend the spec.

It's quite sad really, for some of add-ons there won't be WebExtension version of them. The dev add-ons have filed bugs about the issues, but it seems a dead end.

FoxyProxy released WebExtension version few days ago, and it received very bad reviews from its users.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[JohnFen]

Of course I understand. Perhaps what you don't understand is that the rationale does not make the impact on me as a user any more acceptable.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[JohnFen]

last time I checked, NoScript for Chromedidn't have the full set of capabilities found in the Mozilla-based version.

There's a NoScript for Chrome?

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

Any useful extension API is dangerous. In order to do what I want them to do, extensions have to have the kind of access that they would need to "leak memory, crash the browser, change settings, spy the user, steal passwords, relay cookies, add fake CA".

Just as I choose to run the browser itself, which has access to screw up most of my computer, I want to be able to choose to run addons that have access to screw up the browser.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[kamakazi]

This discussion of breaking extensions that hook into Firefox and replacing them with a "good" extensions API is familiar.
I seem to remember some guy named Notch telling us all that "everything will be better after the API comes out" so all the Minecraft modders quit updating their mods and waited. and waited. and waited. And went and did something else.
A little further back there was a huge population of devs that were told "We are gonna break all the "hacks" that let you hook into PalmOS 3, but don't worry, we will soon have a new shiny OS with a good API for all the stuff you want to do" so the devs waited. and waited. and waited. And went and did something else.
I hope Mozilla pays attention to history. In both the forementioned cases an extremely active and creative developer base was destroyed, and both products suffered greatly because of it.
When a product actually depends on part of it's user base to improve that part of the user base is crucial to the products continued success, so anything that alienates the people who develop plugins or tools or additions to your software, whether that be just being stupid and greedy like Oracle with Open Office, or by attempting to define the vision of independent developers, or by breaking their tools turns your vibrant community into a desert with tumbleweeds and eerie noises.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[shutdown -p now]

Thing is, there's an inherent balance between power and safety here. Some things that need to be in the API for certain very useful extensions also happen to be very dangerous if extensions abuse them. If you throw them away, you increase safety but reduce power.

The problem with Firefox doing that, specifically, is that a different power vs safety balance is one of the few things that are left that still distinguish them from Chrome. Worse yet, this is at a time where, because of how prominent WebKit/Blink is, many websites are starting to target it exclusively, and ignore Firefox - which means that overall experience is getting worse for Firefox users, and the bias is already in favor of Chrome before you consider any actual differences between the browsers at all. So Firefox can't really compete on being better overall - but it can compete on being sufficiently different, that there's a niche for which it is arguably better. And that has been power users, with their extensions that they can't have anywhere else. And in the past few years, Firefox has been consistently doing things that piss them off.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[Anonymous Coward]

>extensions are ...historically have been tied to semi-internal APIs

Usually I try to be nice, but

You IDIOT!! This is precisely what extensions are for, to hack the browser engine without having to recompile. Their entire purpose in life is to allow heavy customization of the function and UI without recompilation.

If you want to add a "lightweight" secondary extension framework, by all means do so. But do NOT remove the ability to customize the browser.

Yes, that's right: Mozilla (and the handful of other browsers) should not be able to force their concept of the web on the public.

Re:mozilla + rust = servo

[nateman1352]

Considering that Chrome uses more or less the same API, and Chrome has an equivalent called Tampermonkey, I'm pretty sure Geasemonkey will be fine. The more important thing is that Mozilla has been very open to adding stuff to the WebExtension API if there is something an existing addon needs that isn't there yet.

WebExtensions is a good long term direction, the problem is Mozilla is forcing it WAY too fast. It's pretty clear the community is not ready for the switch yet, but as usual Mozilla doesn't give a crap about thier user base.

Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to CyberFox nearly a year ago, then switched to Waterfox when Cyberfox's lead developer decided to quit for health reasons. Waterfox 55.0.2 seems to be having problems with Flash (one game and at least one video website I still use require Flash), but otherwise it's been a great browser and will not disable old extensions or XUL/XPCOM in the foreseeable future. :)

Re:Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Waterfox 55.0.2 seems to be having problems with Flash

Perhaps that is a feature and not a problem :)

Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a huge Silverlight application (no media streaming thing but a business app, so spare me your 'use HTML5 video' replies). I'm on Linux. FF ESR is the only browser that I can use (with Pipelight) to use that app. We are porting it to HTML5, but it will take another year at least until that's complete.

Re:Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah. $job requires java plugin to access various web ui config interfaces. thank god theres no IE dependence.

Software should solve problems, not create them...

[QuietLagoon]

The developers seem to be taking Firefox in a direction that results in a second-class clone of google's Chrome. If I had wanted to use Chrome, I'd be using Chrome. So it looks like, for me at least, the answer to the question is - I'll be looking for something to replace Firefox if what I need stops working. It's really a simple decision. I use software to help me solve problems, not to create more problems.

I'm in the throes of re-writing my extension

[rsilvergun]

I've been putting it off because the APIs aren't completely settled and I don't much relish the thought of doing it twice (my app's a tricky beast thanks to some quirks of Windows pathing among other things). I think that's the biggest problem. Firefox is making all these changes but they haven't really settled them, meanwhile they're rolling them out to production. I'm guessing that since they just don't have the money they used to they haven't got a lot of other options besides what's basically an all inclusive beta program.

Re:I'm in the throes of re-writing my extension

[thegarbz]

Just write your extension to Chrome. It should be trivial to port to Firefox as that was one of the points of using WebExtensions.

Firefox was already broken

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already slower and more broken than anything else out there, so no difference!

Not whining

[Anonymous Coward]

How do I see my life afterFirefox 52 ESR? Well, I certainly won't be wringing my hands and whining like a bitch, which seems to be your "solution".

Let's take a look at your highlighted add-ons in any case.

* DownThemAll is still largely irreplaceable since you can download from many parts of the internet much faster if you split the downloaded files in chunks and download them simultaneously;

Seriously? What is this, the dial-up era?

* GreaseMonkey allows you to fix or extend your favourite websites using JavaScript;Lazarus: Form Recovery has saved my time and life numerous times; it regularly backups the contents of web forms and allows to restore them after browser restart or accidental page refresh;

Tampermonkey works in Firefox, and is a WebExtension, so fully compatible going forward. So there's an alternative.

* NoScript: allows you to whitelist JS execution only for websites that you really trust; JS has been used as an attack and tracking tool since its inception;

I'm sure you'll find some other way of crippling your web experience. Why not just stop messing around and use Lynx?

* Status-4-Ever and Classic Theme Restorer return Firefox to the time when it was a powerful tool with its own identity and looks, and not a Chrome clone;

I don't use either of those because I'm not stuck in the past. If you can't get past a UI change that happened half a decade ago, and which moved Firefox on from looking like something out of the nineties, then Firefox is probably better off without you.

* UnMHT add-on allows you to save complete web pages as a single MHT file;

Use Pocket. It's called progress.

Re:Not whining

[Anonymous Coward]

ZOMG PROGRESS. Its 2017, and you're still relying on http(s) and some web language. just wow.

Re:Not whining

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha dumbarse other-AC thinks Firefox's crap new UI moved it out of the nineties. Well, silly other-AC, all it did was make firefox annoying to use, so CTR is needed to make firefox useful. You maybe can't see it but the firefox devs broke firefox in little ways over and over during those years and now they're trying to put the final stake through its heart. Idiots.

Re: Not whining

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of the Internet tough guy act, that nobody buys, btw, why not make an actual argument against the old tech instead of berating someone because their workflow is broken by UX tards that wouldn't know real work if it hit them in the head.

I mean, this is Slashdot, but still. 'lel progress' is not an argument.

Re: Not whining

[Anonymous Coward]

Because some arguments you just have too many times. Australis was a long time ago. Anyone still desperately clinging to ye olde looking Firefox with classic theme restorer etc in 2017 is not going to be persuaded to move with the times by any amount of facts or logic. Best I can do at this stage is a little mockery.

Wait a little more

[higuita]

Only now add-on developers started to migrate to webextension API and same new APIs is still being updated to allow more add-ons to work... not all the current features will exist, but most will, if not, open a mozilla bug requesting it and let then define how dangerous it is to be implemented or what workaround exists.

Please notice that the old add-on interface is way too powerful and hard to maintain compatibility, its a blocker to replace geko with servo, so yes, the old interface needs to go... keeping a compatibility layer that only support half of the features is the same thing as removing it, as most add-os would stop working... so it's better to require the use of the new api and stop the pain of always having broken add-ons. Those that aren't maintained anymore, will die... and then, after some time and more/better webextension knowledge, someone will rebuild it if there is demand. Also, the removal of the old add-on api may be postponed if the add-on migration is delayed, so lets see...

right now i already have 2 add-ons not flagged as legacy and i know that at least 4 more of then are being ported (no-script included)

So wait, it's still too early to know how many add-ons will disappear, the first barrier is the API to stabilize and developers to learn it. After that add-ons will slowly start to show up.

Re:Wait a little more

[JohnFen]

OK.

I'll check back in with FF in 5 years, then.

Re:Wait a little more

[higuita]

Also, right now we are in hybrid add-on, many already deploy webextension support, but keep compatibility with old add-on too. This hybrid add-ons are still marked as legacy, but relly are not.

Re:Wait a little more

[higuita]

you do not need that much time, but until the end of the year you should get a huge amount of add-on migrated... that percentage of the current add-on is that is unknown

But anyway, what are you going to use instead? chrome with all the tracking, huge memory requirements and also lack of most good add-ons? even without add-on, firefox is still better

Re:Wait a little more

[JohnFen]

I still haven't completed my assessment of the options, but right now, Pale Moon is looking most likely. If your prediction is correct, I may not have to change browsers. We'll see, but things are looking pretty grim.

I consider Classic Theme Restorer mandatory, and Mozilla says that something like that is simply impossible under the new scheme. If they make the UI configurable enough, I wouldn't need something like that. However, the entire direction of Firefox over the past couple of years has been away from allowing that amount of configurability, so it seems exceedingly unlikely that they'll have a change of heart this late in the game.

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of FUD in this post.

Of the extensions OP listed, several either have WebExtensions ports or are in the progress of them.

Greasemoney has a WebExtensions alpha and is aiming for a full release in in 4.0.
Lazarus is being forked to be ported over.
NoScript already works with WebExtensions.
UnMHT has been broken since e10s, forget even WebExtensions.
DownThemAll is working off of an incorrect premise. (Chunk downloading hasn't been actually faster for a while.)

Re:FUD

[JohnFen]

DownThemAll is working off of an incorrect premise. (Chunk downloading hasn't been actually faster for a while.)

The reason I use DTA is not the chunk downloading, it's that DTA massively improves the entire process.

But I assume that there are other extensions that also fix the weaknesses of Firefox's download manager (I haven't actually checked), and that's why I don't consider it to be a showstopper issue.

Re:FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

(Chunk downloading hasn't been actually faster for a while.)

It is demonstrably faster for me. For example, it's about 20% faster to download ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso via DTA (specifying eight segments, although it seems to use only seven for the download in this case) compared to just "save link as". This is with Comcast 200mpbs down service. So, your claim is not universally true.

Re:FUD

[Espectr0]

DTA is the less needed extension of the lot. You can just install an external program (remember GetRight?) such as Internet Download manager or Jdownloader, and have the browser's MIME settings launch it.

Waterfox

[Anonymous Coward]

I have already made the move to Waterfox. Been liking it so far.

Re:Waterfox

[black3d]

Holy ****. How did I not know about this?

Just installed WaterFox, and it imported my profile and all addons automatically, and away I go. Am going to have to retrain NoBlock, but this is great.

Ha, I like how they've changed the "LEGACY" flag to "FULL ADD-ON". From the patch notes -

Whatâ(TM)s new in Waterfox 55.0.1?

Updated to Firefox 55.0.1 (Release Notes)
Full add-ons are now marked as such in the about:addons page, in preparation for keeping support.
Waterfox will CARRY ON SUPPORT for add-ons.

So, I've found my FireFox replacement.. Thanks anonymous!

I like Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the practice of controlling how people speak. There's been numerous examples of this, where some Mozill-ite pops up their ugly head, and spouts off about gender pronouns or similar nonsense. Let's be clear: The people working on this are a bunch of ugly, fat, hypersensitive pieces of shit. That's the real problem. I dont care if the developer is some fakegender weirdo IRL, but no fat ugly shithead is going to tell me how speak. Ever. If you are going to act like a snivelling faggot about "gender pronouns" - then you will be treated like one.

Other than that, Firefox is pretty good. Theoretically, etc.

Use older portable versions from Portable Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Portable Apps has portable versions going back to 2007 (Windows only unfortunately) located here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/files/Mozilla%20Firefox%2C%20Portable%20Ed./

Don't need to be installed into the OS so you can run different versions as needed (not at the same time it seems though. Maybe using profilemanagere or the -no-remote option, although I'm not sure this works with portable versions).

You can also get older versions of extensions usually.

I already started moving to Pale Moon as a backup though.
-j

Chrome

[chuckugly]

I'll just keep using Chrome.

Going to uninstall

[Anonymous Coward]

Without ad blocking it's going to be useless so bye bye firefox

Re:Going to uninstall

[preflex]

uBlock Origin is working fine for me right now on FireFox 57 nightly.

Re: Going to uninstall

[Anonymous Coward]

WebExtensions require the page to be processed twice before blocking actually works, since uBlock WebEx cannot intercept connections before they start.

The WebEx version uses more RAM and bandwidth as a result, because you're still loading the bloated assets.

For Silicon Valley and developers, it's no big deal. For everyone else it's an unacceptable use of resources.

If it keeps on, the Web as we currently know it will die as people move away from ad- and script-ridden bullshit.

Re:Going to uninstall

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yeah, it's been ported to Webextensions. It's the only extension I have other than TrackMeNot that has been ported so far.

Currently still 'legacy':

HTTPS Everywhere
NoScript (port in progress)
Self-Destructing Cookies (Dead/will not be ported, alternative: Cookie AutoDelete, Android in progress)
Random Agent Spoofer
Pure URL
Privacy Settings
No Resource URI Leak
Decentraleyes
BetterPrivacy
Greasemonkey

And a bunch more...

4chan browser 'netrunner'

[Anonymous Coward]

No source code, not even a github or bitbucket link? Really?
You expect me to use a browser from 4chan (the retched hive of scum and villainy of the internet)? Does it include any extra features, like BackOrifice or some similar remote access software?

Umm, No. Just No.

Re:4chan browser 'netrunner'

[Anonymous Coward]

I see Gentoo on that list, so there's got to be at least some source out there, right?

Re:4chan browser 'netrunner'

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it came with celebrity nudes?

Re:4chan browser 'netrunner'

[Anonymous Coward]

not necessarily. only 1 of the 3 gentoo users is using it.

Re: 4chan browser 'netrunner'

[Anonymous Coward]

Open your eyes tard.
The source code links are on the page.

Re: 4chan browser 'netrunner'

[Anonymous Coward]

https://gitgud.io/odilitime/netrunner/tree/master

Ask and you shall receive

what fucking weirdo has 35+ extensions installed?

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[tepples]

Konqueror has had several revamps. In order, they were called Safari, Chrome, and Vivaldi.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[JohnFen]

Except that none of those are anything like good old Konq.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[Billly Gates]

Were they really better than Konqueror?

Or were shitty web developers writing for IE 6 only and maybe had a if/else to feed broken Netscape code if you were lucky when you ran it last?

We all remember the good days of 2003 on slashdot but forget the time we had to register for a job at a state website and had to boot up XP with IE 6 as the site wouldn't render in any other browser and used VBScript.

Firefox cleared this up slowly as we advocated it late last decade to the point where Chrome could then come out as ancient code got updated slowly for w3C in addition for one site version for IE 6 and another coded just for IE 7. Ah the good old days.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[JohnFen]

the time we had to register for a job at a state website and had to boot up XP with IE 6 as the site wouldn't render in any other browser and used VBScript.

Not only do I remember, I am being increasingly reminded -- the web is moving decidedly back to those days. I have to keep three browsers installed, because no one browser can handle all the web sites I need.

I'm just waiting for the "Best viewed with..." badges to return.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[Narcocide]

Safari's fork of WebKit got significant improvements over the years in accuracy of rendering especially with regards to CSS2/3 support. None of that work got donated back to WebKit or Konqueror. It's still a joke when it comes to standards-compliant rendering.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll happen. I won't be updating to firefox 57. Which means I won't be able to test websites I build on it. Instead, I'll just quietly remove firefox from the "supported browsers" list.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[Espectr0]

Konqueror invented KHTML, which eventually was the base of Safari and other browsers. Vivaldi is just leeching chromium, so the comparison isn't valid, because VIvaldi isn't creating a new browsing engine.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[Carewolf]

Konqueror has had several revamps. In order, they were called Safari, Chrome, and Vivaldi.

You can try Qupzilla or if you don't like the name, Falkon as it has been renamed.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[tepples]

What kind of replies do you typically get when you report errors using the site in Firefox to the site's operator? If you get a reply to the effect "this won't be fixed", then report it to bugzilla.mozilla.org using Tech Evangelism.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[JohnFen]

I don't report such errors. I used to, a long while ago, but it was generally a waste of time so I fell out of the habit. I either work around problems myself or stop using the site.

Re:Vivaldi is the new Konqueror

[Billly Gates]

Safari is TERRIBLE. I worked for a popular company around slashdot and for some reason Safari could do HTML 5 drag and drop around 50% of the time. Each time we had to code around it so people could drop files back and forth between the cloud Apple would always rebreak it.

The only 1 star customer service rating I got was of course from a Safari user who assumed I was an idiot as no way Apple could ever make such a horrible product that wouldn't offer this etc.

Plan to upgrade XP as well !!

[ripvlan]

With the old version of FF entering the warning track - I've decided that I'll take the time to upgrade everything.

Getting rid of my flip phone and moving to Windows Phone.
Upgrading from Windows XP to Ubuntu Satanic.
FF ESR to Opera !!

there. now I'll be current and fashionable.

sorry for poking fun at the OP. But this is why companies (like major air traffic control systems) still run on XP. It was as good as it ever got - and too many reasons to stay behind. Adapt or get run over by the wheel progress.

Re:Plan to upgrade XP as well !!

[farble1670]

It was as good as it ever got

That's funny. Do you remember viruses, malware, and rootkits. XP was as bad as it ever has been.

Re:Plan to upgrade XP as well !!

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly don't remember Windows ME.

Re: Plan to upgrade XP as well !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I member.

Re:Plan to upgrade XP as well !!

[Anonymous Coward]

All Operating Systems are shit.

Re:Plan to upgrade XP as well !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooooooooooooooooosh!!

Re:Plan to upgrade XP as well !!

[Anonymous Coward]

my vote would have to be 7 for as good as itgot. 10 would've been ok sans the insane amt of xtra cruft that they added...

Switch more people from Chrome to Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

So I work in IT and I routinely see computers come in with the complaint that the browser is all messed up. While I use Firefox by policy from on high we are supposed to only support Chrome but the reason Chrome is messed up*? Browser Add-ons.

Browser add-ons by and large are garbage. Sure there are a few good ones out there but most of them are stinking garbage. The fact that they are currently the easiest way to take control of a computer means that they are continuously targeted. Whether through vulnerabilities in the add-on, hijacking the update server or just buying out the developer and pushing a new poisoned version, browser add-ons are probably the most effective attack vector we see these days. I cheer for Firefox trying to do something about the issue. I wish Google would show the backbone that Mozilla has and step up and fix their problems.

* Beyond the bloat and broken every other release cycle but you don't have a choice to update anyways

Re: Switch more people from Chrome to Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know what you are talking about. Listen, I haven't had a virus in over 15 years. If you are getting viruses from extensions then the problem is you and your users.

Too Many Browsers Already

[Anonymous Coward]

Use uzbl. It follows the unix philosophy and certainly isn't bloated.

Re:Too Many Browsers Already

[HBI]

I really don't want to use a python interpreter in my web browser.

Time to move

[kugeln]

I abandoned Firefox after using it almost the entire time of it's existence when they decided to start adding 3rd party widgets (Pocket; Hello). Look at Chrome/Opera/Safari, whatever floats your boat. Chrome has made some decisions lately that, while good for the "world" are somewhat hostile to the individual/business trying to use Chrome to deliver antiquated, craptastic enterprise software, but was still my choice at the end.

Re:Time to move

[ilikenwf]

Waterfox removed that crap...

Ad Nauseum

[JBMcB]

Not because the addon is a security risk, but because Moonchild thinks the threat of losing revenue is more important than freedom of choice. Use a browser that respects your freedoms

Not exactly what the post said, but close. I mostly agree with his assessment of the plugin, and I don't see a problem with tweaking a config option to re-enable it. Heck, I wouldn't have a problem recompiling Pale Moon sans the block list if it's that big of a deal. To me, it isn't.

"So what will you do less than a year from now?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely nothing.. because I use a proper browser from a reputable company that hasn't sold out, struggled to lead - let alone survive, or produced shit browsers for the past few years..

None

[Anonymous Coward]

I already spend too much time online as it is and almost all of it has no large/meaningful impact on my life, not even reading Slashdot. I expect to reduce my internet usage drastically and cut my net bill by 2/3rds. Books are better than TV/Movies, radio and podcasts still work, and website archiving SW works fine on tech manual/API sites. It doesn't matter what browser you use when the entire site is local.

What's the big deal?

[Rick Schumann]

So basically there'll be a new version that supports only a different sort of browser add-on using a different API, and not that it won't suport ANY add-ons? Wha'ts the big deal? I'll just keep using what I have until such a time that the new-and-shiny version that supports add-ons using the new API has all the add-ons that I want, then I'll worry about switching over. Why is this even a big deal? What am I missing, that someone else is getting all anxious over it?

Re:What's the big deal?

[JohnFen]

What am I missing, that someone else is getting all anxious over it?

Honest answer? This is describing me personally, but I suspect I'm not alone: I still use Firefox because it supports functionality that no other browser (aside from earlier versions/forks of Firefox) does.

I have also been using Firefox from the very beginning, and have a strong emotional connection with it.

When 57 hits and the functionality that I need goes away, I'll have to use something else. It's an emotional blow, A bit like losing the family pet. So the whole thing makes me feel sad and comes with a sense of loss.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Rick Schumann]

Guess I'll have to turn off the automatic updates, then.

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I missing, that someone else is getting all anxious over it?

What you are missing is that the anxious "someones" are most likely either snowflake wannabees or trolls (or both).
Don't feed the trolls or melt the snowflakes.

I uninstalled the last old-style Firefox "add-on" several years ago, mostly because of performance issues.
And I haven't felt any need since then.

Can't wait till Firefox finally finishes cleaning out their stables so that everyone can move on to the next new hotness.

Re:What's the big deal?

[JohnFen]

I already have, but that's a temporary measure.

Re: What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newer is not always better. WebExtensions wastes bandwidth and RAM, which will gimp any lighter machine. So with WebEx, you can't block things without the engine loading them first. So WebEx also doesn't allow addons to protect the user.

What exactly do you get by jumping to 'the new hotness'? All I see is deliberately tanking security and privacy. I'm not loyal to anyone. If all 'modern' browsers take that away, I'll stop using the Web for anything serious.

Nobody is required to deal with this BS, and Firefox will tank hard because of it.

Ok.. .isn't this slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I check Firefox is open source. SOOO... if you really don't like the direction the current product is going fork it. keep your mainline mostly in sync with the new stuff coming out and but keep the features you like. Isn't that the way it is supposed to work?

Re: Ok.. .isn't this slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Why fork a project that's clearly got something against its users? You could probably build something better from scratch.

I gave up on Firefox years ago...

[oh-dark-thirty]

It seemed every other release would break most of my add-ons and I'd have to wait for the devs to update their stuff. Now that they will intentionally kill them all, I certainly have no reason to go back.

Re:I gave up on Firefox years ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too. I decided if FF wanted to be like Chrome, I might as well just use Chrome.
Still have FF installed. Fire it up to do testing sometimes.

ESR and Developer Edition don't check signatures

[tepples]

ESR and Developer Edition allow disabling signature checks. But I thought Mozilla already signed all extensions distributed through addons.mozilla.org. Therefore, I can only assume that the extensions were distributed outside addons.mozilla.org. Have you contacted the authors to request a signed version, or if not, to see if you could become the new maintainer? If so, what was the reply?

No NoScript = no Firefox for me

[cjonslashdot]

The main reason that I stick with Firefox is the NoScript extension. If that stops being available for Firefox, I will stop using Firefox.

Javascript is the vector for 99% of the attacks on the Internet. There is no substitute for an extension that shows you what scripts a page wants to run and allows you to selective enable those sources - either temporarily or permanently.

Re:No NoScript = no Firefox for me

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC umatrix lets you do that.

Not that it matters; why should you have to adjust to changes in a "similar" tool instead of using what you like? Mozilla is driving away a lot of users with this kind of crap.

Re:No NoScript = no Firefox for me

[Anonymous Coward]

And then what? There are literally no equivalent alternatives.

A half broken version of NoScript will be released after Firefox 57 is released. Perhaps stay with FF 56 or FF 52 ESR until it is fairly mature. Will probably take until Mid 2018 at least!

*Checks to see which addons are legacy*

[black3d]

So.. guess who won't be updating.

Anyone under 40 still use it??

[Billly Gates]

Wow oh wow how Firefox the favorite of old slashdot and geeks had mighty fallen.

Oddly Firefox 10 years ago is what Chrome was today. A new leaner faster browser without the bloat and was an experimental patch of Mozilla. Today Firefox is like IE. Old, insecure, and breaks between releases.

Firefox can not have sandboxing with %appdata to lowrights catching it up with IE 8 and Chrome 1.0 (2009 era security) so congrats. My last sentence was not meant to be flamebait but I have seen too many infections with Firefox as an ad can watch passwords being entered in from anotehr tab. Chrome and IE 8+ have procceses and kernel level sandboxing in Windows to avoid this and can run on more than 1 core to boot!

The other last sentence again was not flamebait but highlights why I and others have left. It got slow and couldn't take advantage of modern hardware until just a few months ago.

I think it would have been best if Mozilla made a new -webkit or electron based browser as this is what all the kids are doing today from scratch or at least redesign their own engine and make a do over? This is why Google used Webkit as the emails noticed Chrome OS/Browser was based on Gecko before they trashed it as too inflexible They kind of did which is why 95% of all the extensions closed but in 2017 we use apps to do these things and not run everything in a browser.

It astounds me as I can not image myself writing such drivel in 2007! But like RealNetworks, Netscape, WinAMP, Wordperfect, and the graveyard before it that times do change.

Re:Anyone under 40 still use it??

[Anonymous Coward]

Thy fallacy is appeal to novelty. Either that or bandwagon; it's kind of hard to tell.

Re:Anyone under 40 still use it??

[q4Fry]

Serious questions here: Have you used v57? Does it still have the sandboxing issue you describe? Or the cross-tab leakage?

I, too, left FF because it ate all my RAM and stalled, but I like what I see in the Nightly and I'm expecting to switch back. Now it's Webkit/Blink/Electron "apps" eating all my RAM.

Re:Anyone under 40 still use it??

[Anonymous Coward]

winamp, case in point. nothing replaces it that is even remotely as good. about the best that i can say wrtpure players is that they take eye candy over utility, even the ones that still slavishly ape winamp.

Old versions and sharing outside Pocket

[tepples]

Use Pocket. It's called progress.

I am aware that Pocket allows archiving HTML documents within Pocket's private storage for later reading. But can Pocket export an archived document as it appeared on a given date? Does Pocket let you preserve a document version across multiple machines and share that version with other users who aren't also Pocket members? Or does it instead re-fetch the latest version of the document when you sync your list to a new Firefox installation, and allow sharing only the URL?

Re:Old versions and sharing outside Pocket

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm blindsided by someone taking my trollish post seriously enough to reply to it, even sarcastically. Even I think calling that much-hated feature of Firefox as "progress" is a bit outrageous. In all honesty I do not personally use Pocket, so I can't answer your questions, even if they are not rhetorical, but I suspect it does not do any of those things.

I see that there is a "Save as MHT" Chrome extension, however, so I guess there is a reasonable chance that that will work, or be made to work quite easily, in Firefox once it goes WebExtensions-only.

XUL should be kept for existing extensions only

[Eravnrekaree]

I gave up on Firefox a long time ago, after far too many crashes. XUL is pretty badly designed as an extension API. Many had asked firefox devs, nevertheless, about the possibility of maintaining backwards compatability with existing plugins, only requring the new API for new plugins. They said that such major changes were planned to browser internals that the amount of porting it would take for plugin developers just to keep up would mean a major rewrite of plugins anyway.

XUL and friends is a very low level interface, and is extremely unsafe since it exposes so much of the browser internals. This is a serious security problem. It is infeasible for the browser maintainers to verify the safety of these extensions. WebExtensions will improve security greatly. Really, Ive always thought the way Firefox does extensions is foolish for this reason and just asking for trouble.

WebExtensions does have an advantage, its compatable with Google Chrome, so if you do port, your extensions become available to many more people.

yes, it would be nice if there was a way to keep XUL for existing extensions only, and only require Web Extensions for new extensions. But really, XUL is pretty bad from the security standpoint.

Re:Software should solve problems, not create them

[black3d]

It's almost as if the Firefox team doesn't realise the only reason people still use Firefox is because of the broad support for addons.

Of the 13 addons I use, all except 1 are marked Legacy, and ironically, that 1 is something I was testing and never use. In fact I need to remove that.

Every other addon I consider essential to my browsing experience, simply because they've allowed me to configure my usage to the most optimal experience for me. Likewise, if they stop working; I'm not going to waste time dealing with roadblocks to performance - I'm just going to switch to another browser which will continue to perform these functions. Whether that's PaleMoon (which I already have installed for a few occasional tasks which are no longer supported by FireFox) or to Chrome, depends on which provides the most functionality.

Unfortunately, Mozilla, your strong SJW stance isn't going to bring legions of supporters to your browser - they're all using Chrome or Safari. Power-users are your bread and butter, and if you shut them out, then there's nothing really left.

about:config.... What's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Firefox 57 Nightly with uBlock Origin and NoScript and it's a much better experience than 52.

type "about:config" in the address bar
search for "extensions.legacy.enabled"
double-click it until it says "true"

That's it. Surely wise techies can muddle through such instructions?

Re:about:config.... What's the problem?

[JohnFen]

type "about:config" in the address bar search for "extensions.legacy.enabled"
double-click it until it says "true"

That's it. Surely wise techies can muddle through such instructions?

Of course they can. Wise techies have also heard Mozilla when they said that config switch will not be there when 57 is actually released.

Re:Software should solve problems, not create them

[black3d]

Well, nevermind, this solves all my problems. https://ask.slashdot.org/comme...

According to the release calendar...

[MiniMike]

however after June 2018, it will stop being supported... So what will you do less than a year from now?

Well, since the release calendar shows ESR 59.0 available on March 5, 2018, I'll probably be using that. Seems a safe bet that by then most extensions will work with it. Is there more to this question, or was this just so you could list some of your favorite extensions? (And how could you not list Adblock Plus?)

Re:According to the release calendar...

[iggymanz]

this rapididly spinner counter that is the version number, lost meaning to me years ago. version fifty-something, I won't even remember the exact number two minutes from now.

Pale Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd likely be using a stable branch of that until it stops working.

Carry on as usual using Waterfox

[ilikenwf]

It's like Firefox before Mozilla started sucking.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

This no extensions gonna work Apocalypse is avoided enough. It's not in that bad of shape and as the deadline approaches more and more stuff gets with it. Tab tree viewing is being ported by Piro and that extension proves to me this is going to be workable. Everything else is FUD from people who don't want to understand how things move.

FF add-ons

[technical_maven]

All of the Firefox add-ons I use (17 of them) are either already compliant or will be by the deadline... Thus, I see it as a non-issue...

Otter Browser?

[innocent_white_lamb]

Has anyone tried Otter Browser?

I just stumbled across it the other day in the Centos NUX repository and it looks like it might be interesting, though I haven't installed it to play with yet.

Very

[Anonymous Coward]

I stuck at v51 since the next Firefox demanded me to switch to Pulseaudio.

What extensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not use extensions.
Period
End of story.

Reason: Extension == Probable Malware.

Some, not all, of those extensions are migrating

[MAXOMENOS]

• NoScript is migrating to the WebExtensions API.
• DownThemAll is, rather famously, not moving to WebExtensions API and is calling it quits.
• GreaseMonkey appears to be a migration-in-progress, although it doesn't look great; meanwhile TaperMonkey can be used as a work-around.
• Nuke Anything was last updated in 2014 and appears to be abandonware
• VideoDownloadHelper believes they will be able to migrate to WebExtension API by FF57
• Status-4-Ever might migrate to WebExtensions eventually, but probably not by FF57. Details here.
• Classic Theme Restorer is not migrating and will eventually die.
• UnMHT appears to be a big fat question mark - which is to say that my Google-fu has failed me.

Others?

noscript

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I would have expected, that actively maintained add-ons would be migrated if possible.
Looking at the link, it is interesting that moving to the supported API is so complex, and has so many hitches.

But it will be available.

I should send that guy some money.

"the many Chrome based offerings"

[Anonymous Coward]

Such as Firefox 57.

Old Reliable Firefox, I'll miss you

[scdeimos]

I can't wait to see how awful the web has become. :(

While NoScript is getting ported to WebExtensions, and GreaseMonkey is trying to port to WebExtensions, other useful extensions like Self-Destructing Cookies are giving up entirely [This add-on is no longer maintained. It is incompatible with Firefox 55+ and this will never change. Also, it will not be rewritten as a WebExtension.].

The site Are we WebExtensions Yet? lists some of Firefox's most popular extensions and their porting status to WebExtensions.

Re:Old Reliable Firefox, I'll miss you

[Anonymous Coward]

For Self-Destructing Cookies, I switched to Cookie AutoDelete which is compatible and seems to work just as well.

The extension I miss the most is 'Google Translator for Firefox'. I'm currently using 'Translate This!' but it doesn't have in-line translations. Also it isn't a WebExtension yet either.

Is there an alternative that does tabs like FF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason I use Firefox, is that I can open as many tabs as I want (literally 100s), and they scroll instead of being compressed to the point of being unreadable as Chrome etc. does. Is there another browser, with extensive plugin support, that also does this?

Brave new world

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so some Firefox extensions go west. Nobody seems to have mentioned that Brendan Eich has left Mozilla and has his own browser now. What's the state of extensions in Brave? Is it just me who sees an opportunity here?

Re:Brave new world

[JohnFen]

I've ruled out Brave because of how it handles ads.

Tab Groups!! Re:Moving to Chrome...

[slinkp]

I'm the same. TabGroups is very hard for me to live without.

Did you find anything usable for Chrome? I'm trying out TabsFolder currently, but the inability to move tabs around between existing groups is making it barely useful for me.

I use TabGroups to context-switch between different work projects, different personal research projects, etc. It makes my work day SO MUCH easier to handle.

I'd be open to totally different approaches to my problem - how to stop using a bunch of websites, easily switch to doing something different, and easily switch back later. And move things from one group/context/session/whatever to another. It doesn't have to look or feel like TabGroups as long as I can switch contexts relatively efficiently. It doesn't necessarily have to preserve per-tab history, though that is sometimes convenient.

Choices

[alexo]

Unfortunately I upgraded to 55 before finding out that a downgrade is no longer possible without borking the profile, so no 52ESR for me. Grrr!

I understand that there are several options, including Pale Moon, Waterfox and Seamonkey.
How do they compare? Which one has better compatibility with old extensions?

One thing that I liked is the ability to sync bookmarks and passwords between desktop and mobile. Can any of the above do that?

Re:Choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people have tried downgrading from 55 to 52ESR and report that "borking the profile" means "will need to download favicons again the next time you click on a bookmark".

Re:Choices

[JohnFen]

My recommendation is to try out the various alternatives yourself and see which ones fit your needs the best. There may be differences that are important to you, but you don't know are important until you encounter them.

Re:Choices

[alexo]

Firefox 55 changed the on-disk format of persistent storage in profiles. Once a profile has been used with Firefox 55 (or later), it should not be used with previous versions of Firefox. IndexedDB, the (DOM) Cache API, Service Workers, and the asm.js cache will all fail to operate, generating confusing errors and causing portions of Firefox and some websites to break.

-- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

Is Microsoft destroying Firefox?

[Futurepower(R)]

"Mozilla is exceptionally bad."

Is Microsoft intentionally destroying Firefox? Mozilla Foundation is practically owned by Microsoft, through Yahoo:

When Google stopped paying Mozilla Foundation $300,000,000 each year (Dec. 22, 2011), Mozilla Foundation took money from Yahoo to sneakily "update" Firefox so that it uses "Yahoo search". Yahoo search is actually Microsoft's Bing search. A quote from Marissa:

"I'm thrilled to announce that we've entered into a five-year partnership with Mozilla to make Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox across mobile and desktop," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a blog post Wednesday. "This is the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years."

Now, somehow, the Firefox and Thunderbird user interfaces have been degraded. Firefox no longer allows making a duplicate tab from a tab; it is necessary to right-click on a web page to make a duplicate; that doesn't work well because it is necessary to find a place on the web page that is not a link.

Thunderbird and SeaMonkey composer now have the Save-As bug.

Microsoft paid Yahoo. Yahoo paid Mozilla Foundation to trick users into using Microsoft's Bing search engine. And now Mozilla Foundation is apparently allowing the degradation of its products. Apparently Microsoft wants Firefox and Thunderbird to be degraded that so there will be more users of Microsoft's browser and email software.

The sneaky tactic is not working: American Firefox users dump Yahoo and go back to Google. (January 13, 2015)

Then: Yahoo's Incredible Shrinking Profitability In Its Core Business (Forbes, March 1, 2015).

Yahoo has been EXTREMELY badly managed:

After Terry Semel, and before Marissa Meyer, there were 5 Yahoo CEOs who stayed less than 2 years each.

Nothing has changed, apparently. Marissa Mayer's second-in-command 'leaves with $109m' on being fired from Yahoo after just 15 months. (January 16, 2014) The rapid changes in management continue, that time with a $109,000,000 loss for Yahoo. (What management arrangement allowed a poor manager, someone who was so bad he was fired, to make $7,266,666 per month?)

Maybe that explains the bad management of Mozilla Foundation. It is possible the story needs updating.

Tree Style Tabs

[Mike Van Pelt]

55.0.2 on Linux still runs my two can-not-live-without plugins -- NoScript and Tree Style Tabs.

Chrome, alas, has nothing like Tree Style Tabs. (Yeah, there's a plugin that does that hideous separate window thing, but that's hardly an adequate alternative.)

I'll just have to be sure and disable updates until and unless Tree Style Tabs has a WebExtension version.

Re:Tree Style Tabs

[Mike Van Pelt]

Ah, the author of Tree Style Tabs is actively working on a Web Extensions version, so it looks like I'll be in good shape there.

This is a joke, I hope?!

[rlk]

Firefox has been increasingly defeatured over the past year or two. And to make matters worse, the FF developers consider that a feature.

The first big one was requiring add-ons to be signed by Mozilla, putatively to protect users (because Mozilla would inspect the code). That was sort of OK-ish at first, because there was a preference that could be set to turn that off, but they did (as promised) get rid of that option in FF 52. The stated intent was that people could be hurt by rogue extensions coming with instructions about how to turn off the signature enforcement. But it turns out that there is still a saving throw; only add-ons require signature enforcement; other types of addons (such as themes) don't, and the ones that do are listed in a file. Maybe the Mozilla people did that by intent, so that someone who wants to run unsigned extensions badly enough can do so. But yes, this means that you can't run your own extensions in your own browser, unless you submit each new version to Mozilla (not necessarily make it public), or you use the developer version.

(This was never implemented for the long-term support versions; these versions are intended for corporate use, and they know that corporations won't allow their code to be submitted for inspection.)

But the really big change, as of FF57, is to get rid of all of the old extensions altogether in favor of "WebExtensions", which use an API supposedly much more like that of Chrome, to make it easier to port addons between browsers. This strikes me as a highly self-destructive act (why use fake Chrome rather than the real thing?), but that's what they want to do. The problem is, as the OP noted, that none of the classic extensions are WebExtensions, so they're basically destroying their ecosystem overnight.

Re:This is a joke, I hope?!

[msauve]

I'm not saying what they're doing doesn't suck, it does, just like how the majors also killed the use of older encryption even though it deliberately breaks access to some older devices which can't be upgraded.

But, to ask "How do you see your life...?" and complain that some add-on which reskins the browser will break? This is not a life changing event, it's a minor annoyance. Better to ask - If you don't like the direction they're taking, complain - here's a link.

Re:This is a joke, I hope?!

[Gavagai80]

From Firefox's point of view, their marketshare is now so low that trying to retain their current users doesn't matter -- they have to go after Chrome users. How can they get people to switch from Chrome? Supporting those people's Chrome extensions is a necessary part of that (though they'll have to put something compelling on top of that).

Re:This is a joke, I hope?!

[theweatherelectric]

The problem is, as the OP noted, that none of the classic extensions are WebExtensions, so they're basically destroying their ecosystem overnight.

Mozilla has communicated the transition to WebExtensions for two years. It has not been a rapid or an overnight process and everyone's had plenty of notice. Add-on developers have had a long time to get involved to develop and extend the WebExtensions APIs, which is what the developer of NoScript did and he got the changes he needed to support NoScript.

Re: This is a joke, I hope?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Noscript still doesn't have what it needs.

Re: This is a joke, I hope?!

[theweatherelectric]

Gosh, who to believe? Some anonymous coward on Slashdot or the author of NoScript? Decisions, decisions.

Re:This is a joke, I hope?!

[JohnFen]

This is what I wonder. Making FF into a Chrome clone won't be enough -- if there's no difference, then the logical thing to do is use Chrome. I used to think that privacy was the edge they were going for, but some of their more recent changes make me question that assumption.

Wat?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you agree then that firefox is dead once there is no reason to run the old add ons? Everyone will just switch to chrome?

The old addon mechanism is the only unique thing in firefox. Discard that and ... chrome is unchallenged?

Re:Wat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damnit! That should be "once there is no way to run the old add ons".

My Life?

[SCVonSteroids]

Seriously? How do I see my life after a piece of software is released? Seriously?

Re:"So what will you do less than a year from now?

[Anonymous Coward]

AWeb?

Re:Ummm....So what will you do less than a year fr

[turkeyfish]

"if your life is affected by a browser, you need to re-evaluate your life."

it's probably because your browser provider has just sold your personal information to some hacker, who has just assumed your identity and sold your house, told your employer you are quitting your job because the company stinks, divorced and deported your wife, and sold your kids into slavery.

Still Using Firefox 52

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that software must be updated lest you burst into flames is somewhat ridiculous and frankly a way to let the companies exert control over your hardware whenever they want. While I might buffer it with a virtual machine or Sandboxie, I'm going to be continuing to use Firefox 52.

In my experience, updates do a lot more damage than they ever actually fix. I've had considerably more damage from security patches than any piece of malware. It might be the fact that I scan everything I download before using it, and don't just download/input credentials on any site that asks for them, but nevertheless, I've had updates badly screw up computers that are literally fresh out of the box.

And, quite frankly, my potential alternatives to Firefox are hardly what I'd call superior. It's more along the lines of choosing what flavor of being screwed over and spied on I would prefer.

Re: Hope it supports my favorite extension

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod post up. Only post in this thread that actually addresses the issue at hand.

NSAPI is required

[chiasmus1]

NSAPI is required for some of the applications I need to support at work, so in order to make everything work, I installed Firefox 51 and disabled updates. In addition to installing Firefox 51, I made sure I downloaded the complete Firefox 51 installation executable so that I could install it anytime I needed it. Firefox 52 does allow the plugins to work, but you need to do some backend configurations, so I just stop at Firefox 51. This has been a real problem since Google Chrome disabled NSAPI a little while ago and all other major browsers do not support it now. I just say get Firefox 51 and disable all updates.

Re:NSAPI is required

[scdeimos]

Aside from Adobe Flash what else needs NPAPI? Even Unity recommends replacing their old Unity Web Player with Unity 5 + WebGL.

I checked my extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked my extensions in 10 minutes I was able to find Firefox 57 able extensions with only 1 Exception. The exception was not critical. I will continue to use both Firefox and Chromium.

dickheaded web site for dick heads

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a turd of a web site for dickheads. no beta

Re: Some, not all, of those extensions are migrati

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody's covering the fact that the blocking extensions perform better in XUL. In WebExtensions, a page is processed twice in order to block things. Your privacy and security are worse than bad; it shows you pages that look blocked, but they still wasted your bandwidth and CPU to process twice. So at best, it lies to you.

Given it's also compatible with Chrome, it means the crapware that's filled tho Chrome store can infect Firefox, too.

None of the 'big' browsers are doing things right. It's all corporate gardening.

Firefox is absolute trash

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to love the program, but some months ago it became a gigantic memory hog.

Now? It is 100% unusable. I have it installed on many systems and it is slower than molasses on all of them.

I'm not sure what Mozilla changed, but they need to fix this ASAP before I dump it for good.

A typical experience anymore is.. you click to open the app, then wait upwards of a minute for the window to show up. Then when the window shows up, it says "Not Responding"... awesome job guys.

Isn't this a good thing?

[imcdona]

Moving to a standards based plug-in system that allows plug-ins to work with Firefox, Chrome and Microsoft Edge with minimal tweaking sounds like a step forward.

Re:Isn't this a good thing?

[JohnFen]

It depends. Obviously, these changes come with a cost, so it's not an unambiguous win.

If cross-browser compatibility for extensions is important for you, then yes -- it's a step forward. If it's not important for you, then it's more of a step backward.

Such drama queens.

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly don't understand why some people are such drama queens about what will happen in a year, given that so many addons are already ported or replaced, and many more are slated to be possible over the next few releases of Firefox alone. There are quite a few people thanklessly doing the hard work to keep a powerful addon system going on a modern browser, so the rest while the rest of us uselessly hew and haw and act like we'll actually be switching to Pale Moon or Vivaldi.

Re:Such drama queens.

[mike2006]

Because Firefox is our main productivity tool that they have decided to break or cripple over the last year leading up to putting it to death for us with Firefox 57. Since I have been going through this over the last year I am not seeing add-on's we use updated to work with newer versions of Firefox. So your post is woefully inaccurate.

Most crucial to me for years now is using the Firebug add-on along with it's numerous Firebug add-ons that many other developers provide. It is an absolutely crucial add-on for myself and my team. These Firebug add-on's are all legacy now, with no plans for an update and Firebug has discontinued it in favor of FF Developer Tools. However the FF Developer Tools UI pretty add-on is an unwieldy to a point of being complete and utter shit. Simple tasks take seconds to a minute longer using it's cumbersome UI rather than what the instantaneous Firebug and it's numerous tool shortcuts provided. So it really is not an option or point in using the developer tools in place of Firebug. So those of us that came to rely on Firebug and it's many add-on are screwed now.

So here he had for years Firefox and it's many add-on's providing an amazing product tool being completely crippled, and for what?

Re:Tab Groups!! Re:Moving to Chrome...

[TemporalBeing]

I'm the same. TabGroups is very hard for me to live without.

Did you find anything usable for Chrome? I'm trying out TabsFolder currently, but the inability to move tabs around between existing groups is making it barely useful for me.

I have not. Nothing provides the same kind of functionality. Best I found in Chrome is Chrome's native "pin" tab functionality, but then the window gets overloaded with tabs very easy and there's no easy means (like with TabGroups) to switch to a tab. TabGroup's tab manager and the fact that each group is loaded/unloaded are really the keys to the success of TabGroups. About the only way to improve TabGroups is to manage multiple windows enabling multiple groups to be loaded simultaneously.

I use TabGroups to context-switch between different work projects, different personal research projects, etc. It makes my work day SO MUCH easier to handle.

I'd be open to totally different approaches to my problem - how to stop using a bunch of websites, easily switch to doing something different, and easily switch back later. And move things from one group/context/session/whatever to another. It doesn't have to look or feel like TabGroups as long as I can switch contexts relatively efficiently. It doesn't necessarily have to preserve per-tab history, though that is sometimes convenient.

I do the same kind of thing. Each tab group is a context/activity. The same URL might be opened in a few different tab groups. Works wonders to keep me down to a single window, and keep things well organized.

Also, Firefox's native "don't load tab until clicked" is far superior to the extension in Chrome that enables the same thing.

Re:Actually try Servo. I did, and I think it's shi

[caitriona81]

Servo doesn't even attempt to be a good experience and probably never will. That's not the point. It's a testbed and a technology preview. It is ONLY meant to be useful to developers, as it provides the framework to be able to build and test extremely experemental code apart from Firefox before that code is turned into stable components to be used in Firefox.

Everybody watching from the outside thought the plan was to make Servo a replacement for Firefox. If you've actually followed the project, you'd know that's not how it's working - Servo is nothing more than a set of scaffolding for them. Firefox won't be replaced by servo, it will be rewritten one subsystem at a time.

Oh, and by the way, as many of those pieces have been matured in Servo, they've begun to include them in firefox and it's already produced huge performance wins, most of which are only in nightly right now. Take a look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quant... and the presentation there, and try Nightly with the Stylo subsystem (new CSS backend) enabled and see how much faster it is :)

Check out The BRAVE browser!

[cutefatbird]

If your a Long time Firefox user like me. (Value your privacy.) Brave Browser is worth a look. Project is led by the co-founder of the Mozilla Project and creator of JavaScript, Brendan Eich and it is FAST. Like faster than Chrome and Firefox - has https everywhere and add blocking built in like never seen before. This thing is revolutionary keep an eye on it.

Re:Check out The BRAVE browser!

[JohnFen]

I have a serious issue with the Brave browser: the ad swapping. That seems dishonest to me, and I can't support that behavior.

How to live??

[Anonymous Coward]

"I just cannot live without" I haven't read through all the comments yet, but I'm sure this part is being rightly savaged.

I rarely ever use any plugin/extensions. I live, and I'm certain you will, too.

Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't used Firefox in a long time. i only keep it around because of the addons. Now that I know youtube-dl works for many other sites other than youtube, I don't need Firefox anymore.

Don't upgrade

[xenobyte]

I use DownThemAll daily and they can't upgrade as many of the OS/filesystem related functions they need simply don't exist in the new API, so I'm staying with 56 no matter what.

Totally unchanged

[JohnStock]

Like the vast majority of users, I use Chrome anyway.

The Better Browser...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the one which confines every major or minor feature to a User-controlled module (Javascript, plugins/extensions, videos, sounds, images, CSS, Canvas, Fonts, even Text - you name it, I should be able to disable it when browsing your website), is very simply written (with at least the intent to be verifiably secure, even if it means only text, input fields, and interpreted-mode JavaScript).

And is not beholden to the interests of the drive-by malware & advertising distribution industry.

If this browser intends to keep me secure against threats by warning me about how everyone other than BrowserDeveloper is a lousy developer and that I should not permit them access because I might compromise my bank account, fine. Let it be a pre-defined mode of operation and be done with it.

16 for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I just did the count, I have 16 extensions, most of which are features that got removed and anyone who complained got told "you'll just have to use an add-on for that".

Of those 16, two of them are non-essential.

Of those 16 extensions, three are web extensions, the other 13 will stop working. This of course includes "get this Chrome UI out of my view", aka. Classic Theme Restorer.

And even better: The three that exist as web extensions... Two of them are the ones that I could probably live without.

On a positive note, I gave Pale Moon another try, and the number of extensions that work or have replacements is almost double of last time I tried. The only one I'm really missing now is Video Download Helper.

Re:16 for me

[thegreatbob]

searching the PM plugins interface yields VideoDownloadHelper 4.9.24.1-signed, is this not what you're after?

One Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Fork!

Most users will benefit greatly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Does no one think to look up actual statistics anymore? Here's some (old) stats:

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2011/06/21/firefox-4-add-on-users/

The average user has 5 extensions. The bar graph doesn't even go past 25, must less to 35+. You are atypical. You're a small, insignificant, snowflake of a user. With Firefox struggling to maintain or grow its user base, can you blame them for not catering to your needs?

There are 14,076 extensions available for Firefox 52. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=&appver=52.0&platform=
There are 7,994 extensions available for Firefox 57. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=&appver=57.0&platform=

That's at least 50% of the extensions ARE compatible. And also, will someone recognize how AWESOME it is that Firefox can run Chrome extensions? That's a huge number of *new* extensions that this change enabled.

Re:ESR and Developer Edition don't check signature

[WoodstockJeff]

Using ESR only delays the issue until the ESR runs out.

I have three different add-ons to allow security camera monitoring. All three developers have decided the FF market is too small to jump through hoops, so they recommend migrating to IE.

Re:Ummm....So what will you do less than a year fr

[bobf0648]

"if your life is affected by a browser, you need to re-evaluate your life."

it's probably because your browser provider has just sold your personal information to some hacker, who has just assumed your identity and sold your house, told your employer you are quitting your job because the company stinks, divorced and deported your wife, and sold your kids into slavery.

AMEN!

Non-Firefox Firebug Replacement Solution?

[mike2006]

Anyone find a replacement for Firebug and it's many add-ons?

Most crucial to me for years now is using the Firebug add-on along with it's numerous third party Firebug add-ons that many other developers provide. It is an absolutely crucial add-on for myself and my team. These Firebug add-on's are all legacy now, with no plans for an update and Firebug has discontinued it in favor of Firefox Developer Tools.

However the Firefox Developer Tools UI pretty add-on is an unwieldy to a point of being complete and utter shit. Simple tasks take seconds to a minute longer using it's slow and cumbersome UI rather than the instantaneous shortcuts and speed that Firebug provided. Many features and add-ons we had with Firebug are no longer available with the Firefox Developer Tools. So it really is not an option or any point in using the Firefox developer tools in place of Firebug.

Those of us that came to rely on Firebug and it's many add-on are screwed now. So here we had for years Firefox and it's many add-on's providing an amazing product tool being completely crippled, and for what?

Just a data point

[therealbev]

I'm sticking at 52ESR. With every update I've lost something I really missed. No more.

Use chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

because I can't imagine surfing without NoScript. I only use FF for xbrowser testing anyway

A Chrome clone written in Rust

[Anonymous Coward]

The short-term future for Firefox is that it'll become a clone of Chrome written in Rust. If Rust is a big enough improvement over other possible languages like C++ and JS, then Firefox might become a serious contender again in the longer run. It looks like right now, Firefox will be shedding much of its users.

Re:A Chrome clone written in Rust

[Anonymous Coward]

The short-term future for Firefox is that it'll become a clone of Chrome written in Rust. If Rust is a big enough improvement over other possible languages like C++ and JS, then Firefox might become a serious contender again in the longer run. It looks like right now, Firefox will be shedding much of its users.

Another direction Firefox could've gone in is making the browser more modular and more extension-driven. Firefox already has a lot of powerful add-ons, so that would've been a logical alternative to the route they've chosen now. Instead, as I said in the above post, they've chosen to work on a Chrome clone written in a safe and performant language.

I'm done

[Anonymous Coward]

On the MacOS platform, Firefox has continued to be slow, without much improvement for some time. I finally got frustrated enough that I moved almost exclusively to Chrome. Disabling all these useful plugins is probably not a great idea. Hm...what are they doing there at Mozilla, besides not fixing this damn browser :-) I'm done.

Use Pale Moon, and keep updating my own Addons

[RealRaven2000]

Not much choice here. I have 2 indispensable addons (Tabmix plus and ADblocl Plus) plus three more I have written myself.

QuickPasswords - for maintaining passwords and quickly accessing them using the built in password manager. includes import / export and SSO change. This one is pretty impossible to port to a web extension, plus I feel it would actually make it less secure. I don't know whether firefox is going to completely remove the ability to display modeless windows (xul based dialogs) so I don't feel very motivated to rewrite it. Chances are that some of its functionality is eventually going to be offered by Firefox itself but I am not holding my breath.
Zombie Keys - for entering Umlauts and other non English diacritics without remembering Unicode numbers this one also works neatly in Thunderbird. Works both in the pages as also in every "chrome" input box such as the search box. Probably the most likely candidate for turning into a web extension, but I do like the fact that it currently runs in browser elements (such as the search box) without having to exclusively live within the browser window
Menu On Top - just a styling thing, I like it though as it give a mini bookmark menu and a nice personalisation of all my profiles (who doesn't love LOL chibis and Pepes) which somehow overcomes the blandness of modern "minimal" UIs. Guess this is going to go the way of the dodo, just as full themes will.

Overall, not too happy about the process of having a faster better browser with much less functionality. Not going to switch to chrome, because its just the same experience anyway, just shilled out by an even larger corporation. Also entering something in the search box and then being impolitely redirected to a different GUI element somewhere else on the screen, not a good or safe user experience. I don't like the philosophy "the web is the platform", I prefer my programs running on my desktop and the web being just merely content.

Re:Some, not all, of those extensions are migratin

[q4Fry]

uBlock Origin already works, as does HTTPS Everywhere, and Privacy Badger.

I guess it's time to use a fork

[Khashishi]

The number 1 feature of Firefox over its rivals is the availability of plugins that let you work how you like to work. When plugins stop working, there's no reason to Firefox.

It's Already Happening

[jman.org]

What I'll be doing less than a year from now is not updating FF.

Of the couple of dozen or so add-ons installed over the years, I only use a handful on a regular basis, and one of those (probably in the minority here) is Tab Groups. The author has already stated he's not converting it to the new system, and has released the source, but the voluminous free time it would take for me to do the port is not alas in my current repertoire.

If Mozilla wants even a chance at staying relevant, they should let the program run both WebExtension or XUML as needed.

No sense completely alienating your customer base; especially when you're no longer #1.

Try Iridium

[NewYork]

I'm happy with downloads.iridiumbrowser.de

Use less Palemoon

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit of a different kind:

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=16504

Note whether the users have a say in this decision, and how the message is delivered. Do you want to become part of a userbase which the dev regards as a kind of hostages?

Thanks.

[Futurepower(R)]

I made a note of that in my list. Thanks.