Firefox - Version 57.0 and later, Your experiences, Issues & Recommendations

[therx9x]

So apparently, Mozilla has completely, and for no obvious reason, (e.g. not security, not particularly archaic, etc), cut out a whole and very common means for add-ons to interface with FF 57 leaving users probably numbering in the 10s of millions, (one addon alone has about 1.5 mil users that who had it this morning that don't have it tonight), just screwed. This isn't a simple fix and there's no sort of legacy interface translator program or patch. The addon developers, many/most of whom make their money elsewhere and occasionally get a few bucks off their addon work, have been fighting with Mozilla for months over this but so far it appears that they have lost. Some of them have told Mozilla to fuck off and some of them are trying to rebuild their stuff with the newer interface that Mozilla has left them as the only reasonable portal.
The Addon crowd has known for some time that this change was coming but, since they don't get paid much for their work, (and obviously don't get a penny from Mozilla), and the fix to changeover to the required interface is seriously non-trivial, AND the old interface module is much more easily meshed with the FF57 code once that it is with most of the hundreds of programs that would have to be rewritten, I'm totally with the coders on this one. They have been somewhere between screaming and begging Mozilla to do the right thing and I guess they were under the misapprehension that reason might prevail in the age of Trump... All the Firefox folks had to do was to actually be as community and developer friendly as they make themselves out to be and just kept a portion of the stuff that they ALREADY HAD FOR YEARS and there wouldn't be a problem.
So... to sum up... Mozilla, probably out of laziness and poor leadership, has decided to bling up the browser and hope that millions of people who've come to count on FF and stuck with them out of loyalty to their mission and/or comfort with the customized browser that each has created using these screwed addons won't care that much and won't get the word that they've also screwed the creators and coders who have worked for mostly peanuts to give FF this marvelous flexibility, who I guess they feel the customer/users will ultimately blame. (Can you tell I got this from coders?). The addon folks are pissed and now I'm pissed.
Mozilla does it again. In trying to staunch the flow of users heading over to Chrome, they've gone with the bling and forgotten the substance and so probably made their problems worse. I hope that people bitch loud and long over this one. Mozilla doesn't make it easy. Under the guise of being a non-profit, they basically hide behind volunteer "staffed" help forums. I did Google "Contact Mozilla via email" and found a chat that I hadn't seen before but they sent me a $5 Groupon or coupon, (I was so disgusted with that that I deleted it too quickly to see what it was...), for a pay to play helpline. Obviously there's nothing they can really do other than absorb the rage of the users who only know that their shit don't work, (how pissed would they be if they knew that Mozilla just punted on them..?), and placate them with some pre-written bullshit. Still, if people just bitch at them non-stop for a bit and take the developer's side and thereaten to go to Chrome, etc., perhaps we'll get more reasonable treatment.
So go bitch loudly and for as long as you can. If it was baseball season, I'd go in to the city early before a game and get off the trolly and and just yell in their lobby until game-time but it's November, so I'm doing my yelling online.

My best to everyone, therx9x

PS You Europeans will no doubt that sometime next year there is a tentative plan for Mozilla to sell browsing info to some outfit in Germany. This is supposed to start with a pilot program including about 1% of their users in Europe and the UK and build from there. Of course Chrome has done this from the start since they're Google, but that was why we were so taken with Firefox and now they're acting more and more like a for pay enterprise every day. Ain't life grand?

[Ace1965]

I got the 57 update 2 days ago and the Windows 10 Creators update the day before so I've been double whammied here.

The first thing I noticed about the Firefox update was that I had an add on called "No Small Text" and that made all of the text in the tabs, side menus like the bookmark menu, all in nice bold print so I could read them easily. Now that's gone with no replacement.

Someone in the Windows 10 forum is trying to step me through a procedure to add a file to the Chrome folder inside the user files that's supposed to restore the bigger text. But so far I've messed up his instructions and it's not working.

**EDIT** I figured it out. He just had to show me the first steps he took to get to those options. I guess he must have thought "well surely he knows how to get there" and that was his mistake because no I do not. If a string of instructions has 8 steps to it, you can't start at step 4 with me. I need 1, 2, 3, and 4 regardless of how trivial they are.

[Rommelbommel]

Originally Posted by therx9x

A whole dramatic novel

Dude, chill

[Buschi]

noscript has been updated to version 10.1.1 and works with ff 57 now

[beepollen]

Anyone else notice ZIP and RAR files no longer will open automatically even with your preference that they should?

[Madcap12]

Originally Posted by Al Gebra

Well, I'm using now uMatrix and uBlock Origin (as an equivalent to Adblock Plus). Not sure yet if they're reliable as well.

I'm still looking for equivalent (free) download helpers like DownThemAll or ImageHost Grabber!

I used BatchDownload to open a selection of images links in full size on one page. Very useful for VEF, it goes without saying. A bit frustrated for now Did anybody find an alternative ?

[Stroking_it]

Originally Posted by Buschi

noscript has been updated to version 10.1.1 and works with ff 57 now

I just uninstalled it. The user interface is totally different and (IMHO) not as simple as before, making it much harder to see exactly which sites are trying to run scripts and what you need to do to enable only enough functionality to make a site work. Also, for me it breaks Facebook, especially the messenger function, even when set to "trusted".

I'm sticking to PaleMoon and old school NoScript until they get it sorted.

[Buschi]

U can check
https://hackademix.net/
for the latest news by the developer of noscript

[buttsie]

Anyone with a legacy add-on should really bypass the mozilla add-on page and go straight to the developers home page


Down Them All - was gone in December 2016

Great rant that explains exactly what Mozilla are up to from a developers POV

Re: DownThemAll and WebExtensions [… or why I am done with mozilla]
December 14, 2016

The whole story is that WebExtensions APIs explicitly are supposed to be
high level APIs, while tons of add-ons actually want, nay need low level
APIs to implement their functionality.

Hence why many add-ons wont ever be seen again on FF

https://www.downthemall.net/re-downt...-with-mozilla/


11 months later 10th Nov 2017

Under news - delays

DTA Lite will take another month at least. I hope I’ll get to a point where I can release a beta version for early adopters/testers in 2-3 weeks and then 1-2 weeks after that a stable full release.

In the mean time, there is still the full DownThemAll! which can be used with at least the pre-Quantium Firefox (such as the ESR)*.

I’d also really like to rant how stupid and limited most of the WebExtensions APIs are,
but I feel I ranted too much already.

https://www.downthemall.net/



In the short term the only real alternative is other browsers
that will run the same add-ons or previous versions of FF

IHGs developer has said for eons he was going over to palemoon .org

Image Host Grabber - IHGSupport 9/2017
http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/sho...01&postcount=5

[rlg118]

85 responses so far.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016...d-ons-in-2017/