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

[LASER_oneXM]

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

On November 14 Mozilla will take the biggest gamble in its long history when the organization will ship Firefox 57, the first version of its browser that will stop supporting legacy Firefox add-ons.

This means that starting with Firefox 57 the browser will support only new add-ons written on top of the newer WebExtensions SDK.

All legacy Firefox add-ons written on the old XUL-based Add-Ons SDK will stop working.

Old legacy add-ons will still exist on AMO
In a blog post last week, Mozilla said it will continue to allow developers to upload and list legacy Firefox add-ons on its add-ons portal (AMO), but they'll only show up for users with older browsers and buried in search results under newer WebExtensions-compatible add-ons.

Changes are already being rolled out to AMO and Firefox 57 (currently Firefox's Nightly edition).

The release of Firefox 57 is the end of a two-year-long project that started in August 2015 when Mozilla announced the new WebExtensions API that would eventually replace the older Add-Ons SDK.

The new WebExtensions SDK is also compatible with the universal WebExtensions SDK implemented in Chromium and related browsers such as Brave, Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi.

 

[frogboy]

Yikes I am not so sure this a good thing at all. But then again a fresh start may be better after all.

 

[mlnevese]

Does that mean that if a given extension exists both for Firefox and Chrome and the Firefox version is not updated I can just point it to the Chrome Store and download it from there?

 

[monkeylove]

I switched to Cyberfox, and after that Waterfox. There are some details here:

Waterfox dev has big plans for the browser - gHacks Tech News

 

[Fritz]

Fritz will kill his Firefox Installation in exactly three months

The abundance of Firefox's add-ons was one of the main reasons for using it in the first place. And from the looks of it, it'll also be the last.
First they had to copy Chrome's version numbers in a silly attempt to feel right up there, now it's Chrome's extensions as well. Which I can use just fine with Chrome.

It'll never cease to amaze me how and why folks nominate themselves for the Darwin Award of their own accord. It's almost hilarious watching it.

 

[brambedkar59]

I do believe removing 'legacy' add-ons will improve FF. At least they have the courage to do something which improves security and performance. I know older Add-ones were more powerful (than WebExtensions), but with power comes great responsibility and those add-ones were mostly the cause of FF slowdown and crashes. I would miss some of my legacy add-ones but overall I am happy.

 

[LASER_oneXM]

i guess i (also) will 'lose' most of my add-ons.... ...many developers already informed their users that they will discontinue their add-ons with the release of Firefox 57....
I found a link with informations about add-ons their 'future':
source: Firefox Add-ons WebExtensions State July 2017 - gHacks Tech News

...quotes from the article:

Back in the end of April 2017, 2273 add-ons were listed to be compatible with Firefox 57. While the methodology may miss add-ons, it is the best indicator that we have right now.

If you load firefox57 :: Tag :: Add-ons for Firefox right now, you get 3252 add-ons that are listed as compatible with Firefox 57, an increase of about 50% in two months.

Top Firefox Add-ons and their WebExtension Status

I checked the status of top Firefox in the second article. I checked add-ons with the most users, the highest rating, and the top featured add-ons for that. Note that the listing is in flux all the time. I decided to concentrate on the add-ons listed in March as it allows me to compare the progress.

Back in March 2017 and April 2017 we published two articles about Firefox add-ons and the progress that was made towards WebExtensions compatibility.

This article is a follow up to those previous articles. It analyzes the situation in July three and two months after we published the initial articles.

Mozilla plans to release Firefox 57 as a WebExtensions supporting browser only in regards to add-ons. This means that any add-on that is not a WebExtension by that time will stop working. Firefox 57 will be released on November 14, 2017 according to the schedule of Firefox releases.

Legacy add-ons include all classic browser extensions but also themes and some other types of add-ons for the browser.

Note: While Firefox 57 is the target, the change may be postponed by Mozilla, for instance to hit the browser after the next major ESR release in March 2018.

 

[Antimalware18]

I stopped using firefox years ago and recently stopped using chrome. Now, I'm using Opera and I'm quite happy.

 

[insanity]

I've just learned that one of my favourite add-ons, DownThemAll, is not going to move to WebExtension. One less reason for me to use Firefox.

 

[frogboy]

Surley this is going to cause Firefox to lose a lot of the few remaining users left.

 

[Fritz]

At least they have the courage to do something which improves security and performance.

Yes, that's basically how they try to excuse it. Reminds me of Apple telling us how much courage it took to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone.

Instead of being able to do it silently in the background, basically every single addon now tells me that it will read my URLs as well as access and manipulate the content to an undisclosed extent, which I can take or leave. In the end I still have to trust that the community will find out if something is fishy if I decide to use it.

So we're back at square one with less functionality. Great job Mozilla.

 

[ispx]

I do believe removing 'legacy' add-ons will improve FF.

agree

At least they have the courage to do something which improves security and performance.

i if i was you, instead of courage i would have rather used a word starting with B & ending with S

I know older Add-ones were more powerful (than WebExtensions), but with power comes great responsibility and those add-ones were mostly the cause of FF slowdown and crashes.

the wise air bender speaks

I would miss some of my legacy add-ones but overall I am happy.

mozilla will make firefox great again

 

[SHvFl]

If they don't want to be the next internet explorer they need to drastically improve and keep up with the times. Maybe this will help them move to the right direction even though i believe it's too late. Haven't seen someone use Firefox in ages when it used to be what most of the people i interact with using it.

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

Tor Browser uses Firefox ESR... So I will stay a little bit longer Let's see.

 

[Windows Defender Shill]

Ublock Orgin is listed as legacy

I hope they update in time.

 

[brambedkar59]

Ublock Orgin is listed as legacy

I hope they update in time.

Don't worry the WebExtension version of Ublock origin is already in development. It's having some performance issues but overall it's functional.

Edit: It's working fine on FF57 Nightly.

 

[212eta]

How to enable legacy extensions in Firefox 57 - gHacks Tech News

 

[AlanOstaszewski]

How to enable legacy extensions in Firefox 57 - gHacks Tech News

This will work to the 14th November.

 

[kev216]

Again some authenticity of firefox is lost. Next step is abandoning gecko and servo to adopt chromium and the circle is round. Mozilla should invent, innovate, not using the simple copy solution.

 

[brambedkar59]

Next step is abandoning gecko and servo to adopt chromium and the circle is round.

I hope that never happens, cause Servo is pretty promising, especially now with Quantum Compositor and WebRenderer (using gpu to render the webpage).
WebRenderer is available in FF57 Nightly (but disabled by default), but is still a work in progress.