Is there a way to remove the bright yellow LEGACY warning?

[c627627]

It is a 100% fact that quite a few extensions will *never* be updated, nor do they have any modern equivalents on the internet that accomplish the same thing on Firefox. Therefore, for personal, private use of Firefox, for people who accept the risks of continued use of Legacy products, who accept that they may interfere with "proper" functioning of Firefox... is it possible to remove the bright yellow LEGACY warning Firefox 55+ now prominently displays in the Extensions TAB?

Related question: is this some sort of a first step to completely blocking our old extensions, will they stop working all together soon, if so when will that happen? The yellow LEGACY warning can be interpreted as an eerie suggestion that they are being marked for extermination, but that's just a personal opinion.

If there is a way to remove the yellow warning, please post what it is.

EDIT: SOLUTION, courtesy of Frank Lion:

File [Your User Profile]\CHROME\userContent.css

needs to contain:

/*Franks Get Rid of Yellow Thing...*/
.legacy-warning,.legacy-warning-container {
display: none !important;
}

[TheVisitor]

Why bother ? Legacy will stop working altogether soon enough and won't work, so no need to remove the label IMO.

[allande]

I don't know about removing the warning, but the rest may address your questions. Yes, this is the first step to removing old extensions, Firefox 57 is expected to end support for old extensions, going forward only webextensions will be supported. Firefox 57 will be released in November. This link has a lengthy discussion of the issue http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3025513
In summary, though, there are three things you should know:
1. The easiest fix for the moment is to run Firefox ESR, which was based on Firefox 52, which will get security fixes for a bit longer, until a few months into 2018, at which time more new webextensions should be available.
2. Since you have run Firefox 55, your profile is broken for going back to older versions (as documented in the Firefox 55 release notes https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/5 ... easenotes/ ) Hopefully you have a backup of your profile from before you updated to 55 which you can use with ESR. If you don't, there are instructions at the end of the first linked thread in how to migrate over, but you will lose your browsing history (you will keep bookmarks if you transfer them properly).
3. If you are curious what webextensions are likely to exist in the long run, the general rule is - if the extension is meant to do anything to the appearance of the UI (non-webpage parts of Firefox), it will likely never come back as a webextension. Most other extensions, that alter webpages, block ads, or download things, can likely can be done as a webextension, but will need to be rewritten or a similar one made by someone else.

[RobertJ]

3. If you are curious what webextensions are likely to exist in the long run,

Almost nothing useful.

.

[madmudmob]

Could someone tell me please what Firefox ESR is and where I would find it to install it? Am presently on 54.0.1 64-bit but there is a notification to update to 55 so I feel it is act now or miss out on those extra few months:.

[allande]

Firefox ESR stands for Firefox extended support release. It was intended for large organizations which prefer stability over new features. Its update pattern is explained here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/o ... tions/faq/ Each ESR version gets security updates for about a year, then it switches to the current Firefox release version. The download button is on this page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

[madmudmob]

Thankyou

[c627627]

Yes, ESR version numbers are not the same. There is no corresponding Firefox ESR 55 to just released Firefox 55.
Official ESR versions which include the latest security updates are: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/o ... tions/all/


Thank you allande.
I do backup my profiles at some intervals, but I just recovered the most recent Firefox 54 Profile out of the Recycle Bin thanks to your post! Thank you.
For whatever reason, many of the extensions I use will never be rewritten to be officially compatible, they stopped officially being compatible a long time ago when Firefox developers originally "went to war" with old extensions and disabled them.

But there was a way to make them work! They have worked *to this day* - even though for whatever reason posting or talking about that is really frowned upon on the forums so I am trying to be careful when asking this so that my posts are not deleted:

Will there be code, switches or anything that would allow the so called LEGACY extensions to function on future versions of Firefox for testing/comparison purposes, and if so, what will those be, if known?


The old way to manually make them work is still in effect on Firefox 55 for many of the extensions I use. All this time and they still work, have *never* caused any problems, I used them for personal use. They are not used by people who post a lot on the forums - therefore they are "not useful" and I understand that.

It took a long time to figure out how to make them work last time, and I remember posts about this being systematically deleted from the forum because people feel like old extensions should not be re-enabled even for private use. But if it's okay with the moderators, may I ask if there is / will be anything that would re-enable old extensions once they are disabled in Firefox 57, just like there was the last time this happened?

I mean, so much time has passed, and officially incompatible extensions which were force-disabled by Firefox versions from a long time ago *still work on Firefox 55* after being manually edited.
So much effort was made by some frequent posters on the forums to discourage re-enabling them, to discourage any talk about how to do that in the past, I hope this time around we can at least talk about that? If it can't be done - so be it. But I mean, we are on Firefox 55 as of today and after all this time so much use was gotten out of the extensions that had to be re-anbled manually and they work without any problems whatsoever, to this day.

Maybe not for long -- but will there be a code or a switch to make them work longer?

[allande]

Making the old extensions work before was related to them being unsigned, when Firefox started to require signing. I believe the frequent posters and moderators were actually trying to *help* people who wanted to use unsigned extensions, by being discreet and deleting some talk about how to do it. Firefox required signing as a security measure to reduce browser hijacking which was where random software would sneak things into Firefox, for the most part to change your search engine and either use that as a path for malware or to get referral clicks. I believe the fear / reason for discretion here was that if it was too widely known or findable about how to run unsigned extensions, that the developers of Firefox would feel that the browser hijackers or other nasties would use it or would take advantage of the users who had set things up that way if there were too many of them. In the end, the result could have been that the Firefox would have plugged the hole and made running unsigned even harder. By keeping it more secret, the people who really needed it might find it but without the Firefox developers blocking it.

This time, with Firefox 57, security is not the only reason for old extension removal. Firefox is rolling out e10s (browsing with multiple processes), and some old extensions are simply incompatible with multiprocess. Also, Firefox intends to redo much of the whole rendering engine of Firefox, basing it on Servo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servo_(layout_engine) Making big changes like that are easier if you don't have to try to keep compatibility. So, the intention of the developers this time is much more serious, killing off old extensions is not just a small security issue but will be a "way of life" for the new browser.

There are rumors of ways to test extensions that are similar to old extensions in versions 57 and up, but in my opinion this time it is really the end. To see evidence in this direction yourself, you could force-enable e10s (multiprocess) even in Firefox 52 or Firefox ESR - and you will see that it breaks many old extensions.

[c627627]

Thank you for explaining that.
I am grateful to the developers for leaving a way for us to use old extensions up until now.

I was doing a web search and came upon this thread which says:
"Firefox 57 Nightly (7-Aug-2017 to 25-Sep-2017) will have legacy extensions supported by using a special switch. The idea is to allow legacy extensions for performance comparisons."
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r314672 ... -55-0-beta

I am guessing that has no effect on your post because by the time Firefox 57 final comes out, they will force block all old extensions with no way to use the switch, or am I wrong?

[Brummelchen]

maybe further in nightly - but not in beta or final. any usable legacy extension is minimal e10s capable, older are dropped. but you should not count on that too much - the end for legacy is near, 6 weeks to the early beta and you dream is over.

[allande]

No inside knowledge, but I think this time switches or workarounds will not last for long, or actual incompatibilities will make more extensions not work even with switches. Maybe 57 will have a switch, but it could be gone by 58, or it might not work very well. As long as Firefox 52 ESR it supported for security, I think that is the best way to go if you have interest in old extensions. When it reaches its end, assess the situation.

[c627627]

Okay so going to ESR is obviously the only solution.
When is the ESR scheduled to kill old extensions, will it be much into 2018?


I have been a Firefox user since Firefox 0.x Beta. There are three reasons I never even considered looking at other browsers in all this time: extensions, extensions and extensions.
When Firefox kills old extensions, all browsers will be equal as far as extension options go... So after all these years, other browsers are legitimate alternatives all of a sudden.

[RobertJ]

.
Un-verified but likely any userChrome.css tweaks will likely die at some point.

The only alternative is SeaMonkey but time will tell how long that lasts.

If userChrome.css tweaks die and SeaMonkey follows FF; there will be no reason, IMO, to stick with FF. [13 of my 14 FF extensions look to die]

I have been looking at the alternatives and most suck. I'm on a MAC.

.

[madmudmob]

Novice question: Is it as simple please as downloading and installing the ESR version over my present one?