My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocalypse

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
KRL
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Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by KRL »

Sorry, but Firefox is fast enough as is. The TOP value of Firefox to the majority of users has always been all the incredible customization we could do via the vast addons library.

Out of touch with your loyal users....
Vitesse
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Joined: April 21st, 2011, 6:03 pm

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by Vitesse »

KRL: you have posted the same thing in several threads. You've been a member here for twelve years and yet you don't seem to have read this:
mozillaZine is an independent Mozilla community and advocacy site. We're not affiliated or endorsed by the Mozilla Corporation but we love them just the same.
You can moan as much as you like, but you're effectively wasting your time, because you're moaning to the wrong people.
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mightyglydd
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Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by mightyglydd »

Frank Lion wrote: Fitt's Law also gets broken by those silly tab scroll arrows on either side of the screen that you are expected to swing from one to another with when you have many tabs open.
..and by their continuing to have the Find Bar, which like Chrome should be at the top beneath the address bar, at the bottom with the close button on the far right. :roll:
#KeepFightingMichael and Alex.
flaneurb
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Joined: December 10th, 2011, 3:50 am

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by flaneurb »

mightyglydd wrote:
Frank Lion wrote:... the close button on the far right. :roll:
I just press Esc.
ianas
Posts: 51
Joined: April 11th, 2012, 3:14 pm

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by ianas »

my Firefox 57 addons rant sorry if it breaks any rules

the Firefox addons I'll miss are ScrapBook DownThemAll! and QuickNote as they all write data to disk and this has been disallowed by the new Firefox webext api
apparently the DownThemAll! dev is working on a port (new addon really) but seeing how the new MEGA addon works in order to bypass the no disk access for addons it downloads the whole file in RAM (and decrypts it) and then passes it to Firefox to be downloaded locally from your RAM! this is extremely RAM intensive and crashes Firefox when RAM is low, I use to download my Linux ISO's with DTA as it had a buldin hash checker and meta-mirror support
dam you mozilla for killing a working addon echo system and replacing it with a pale copy of Chrome's if I wanted Chrome extensions I'd run Chrome (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
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Gingerbread Man
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Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by Gingerbread Man »

ianas wrote:QuickNote
I've always thought Clippings is better.
harhar
Posts: 78
Joined: April 27th, 2012, 4:28 pm

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by harhar »

Here's my rant:

For me the only two things that I really need are mouse gestures and how I visited the pages in my bookmarks previously.

For the mouse gestures, I tried to use that new "FoxyGestures" addon, but gave up after a while and tried to live with keyboard shortcuts.

Today I tried an external program for mouse gestures instead of a Firefox extension, and it turns out that works great and can replace the old gesture addons. With an external program, things work fine everywhere, like on the New Tab page, Preferences page, etc., which is not possible anymore with extensions in FF v57. I didn't yet look at what mouse gesture programs there are for Windows, just tried "Easystroke" on Linux and that one is a pretty good experience, perhaps better than Firefox addons were previously. I make that Easystroke thingy send key presses to Firefox like Ctrl-T, Ctrl-Shift-T, Ctrl-W, etc. The gestures I use are all very simple, mainly just straight lines up/down/left/right or just slightly more complicated like first up and then right.

What I'm battling with right now is translating how I previously used bookmarks to FF 57. In the past I used a really simple addon that listed the contents of a certain bookmarks folder in the middle of the Home page and the New Tab page. I had no bookmarks toolbar or sidebar visible on screen. When I wanted to visit a different page from my bookmarks, I opened a new tab or went back to the Home page. I did this through a mouse gesture in the middle of the window, and then bookmarks showed up also in the middle of the window where the mouse pointer already was. I could click on a bookmark and look at that website, then use the back button on the mouse or open a new tab, click on another bookmark, etc.

Right now I try to train myself to use a mouse gesture that executes Ctrl-B to enable/disable the bookmarks sidebar. I think what I'd like would be if the sidebar would show up automatically on the New Tab page. I could then use the sidebar as a replacement for how I worked earlier. I could find userChrome.css tweaks that make stuff hide/unhide on the New Tab page, but that's not quite good enough because I sometimes do want to keep the sidebar open continually.
jsjag
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Joined: March 31st, 2005, 7:34 am

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by jsjag »

I relied a lot on ReminderFox. I'm walking on thin ice if I complain (moderators have warned me). But for years many of us made choices to use add-ons because they added functionality to our daily lives. Not sure why 57 made this choice but to take time out of my workday to search for replacement add-ons isn't something I am ready to do.

I rolled back to 56.
Vitesse wrote:Quite a few of my extensions will stop working, but I can probably live without them and/or find replacements.

The one I'm really sorry to see go is Reminderfox and had almost resigned myself to using Google Calendar, which for my purposes is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. However, I have found a suitable freeware alternative with almost identical functionality to Reminderfox - although it's not a Firefox extension.

UK's Kalendar: http://www.ukrebs-software.de/

The only downside for me is that you can't import calendars from other programs ... but luckily I don't have all that much to copy over that isn't a recurring reminder!

I'll miss that cute little fox in my toolbar though. *sniff* :cry:

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schmibble
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Joined: October 10th, 2007, 5:43 pm

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by schmibble »

jsjag wrote:I rolled back to 56.
Me too. Need Hide Tab Bar With One Tab, Reminderfox, downthemall, NoScript, and VideoDownloadHelper. Maybe could live without the latter as there are replacements (though none working the exact way I like--and I don't mind the donation popups; all you have to do is ignore them). And surely Noscript will be back with us soon, and apparently the DTA author is having a change of heart and is working on a port. But trivial as it may sound to some, I've got to have Hide Tab Bar, and I can't live without the rest either (except NoScript, as its benefits aren't in functionality). Tried for three days, then simply had to roll back. Hopefully we'll get the replacements and ports soon. I'll be staying with 56 for as long as it takes.
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Gingerbread Man
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Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by Gingerbread Man »

@schmibble
katoda
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Joined: June 5th, 2007, 12:40 pm

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by katoda »

schmibble wrote:I can't live without the rest either (except NoScript, as its benefits aren't in functionality)
I was in the same situation regarding NoScript. For the moment I switched to uMatrix and found it much more easy and convenient to use.
Brummelchen
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Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by Brummelchen »

if you use an additional script blocker then uBlock could be the right choice - it blocks ads and scripts (and some more).

for blocking cookies there exist currently nothing - only firefox itself settings or uMatrix with its cookie column (not tested).
Vitesse
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Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by Vitesse »

Reminderfox will not be coming back in a WE version. This is what Tom, who developed it, said back in January:
We have no plans to rewrite ReminderFox. The codebase is quite complex and very UI dependent, so most of it would need to be rewritten entirely. As this is a passion project done in our spare time, we don't have the time currently to do a complete rewrite.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/r ... 0S50LhEAAJ

Apart from various helpers for Google Calendar, there seems to be nothing available for Fx 57 which even comes close. But as I posted above, UK's Kalendar does just about everything Reminderfox could do. It's just not a Firefox extension.
schmibble
Posts: 10
Joined: October 10th, 2007, 5:43 pm

Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by schmibble »

@Vitesse: I'm checking out UK Kalender as I write--also the Java BORG calendar.

@Katoda:
switched to uMatrix and found it much more easy and convenient to use
Really? 'Cuz with NoScript's taskbar line where all you have to do to temporarily or even permanently allow a site to function is do one click, I can't think of any way to design easier operation. But OK, I'll look into it.

@Gingerbread: Thx especially for the Hide Bar link; I'll C/O. Maybe try the others too.

D---, though, that's a lot of evaluation. I hate change on this scale. Totally screws up my workflow and I hemorrhage time for ca. two weeks. ](*,)

If it's necessary for FF's continuing competitiveness and security, though, I'll deal. Better this than submit to dictatorship from Redmond.
Brummelchen
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Re: My experience preparing for the Firefox 57 add-on apocal

Post by Brummelchen »

umatrix is easier than noscript, umatrix extends ublock.
gorhill himself stated ublock as a replacement for noscript, not umatrix.
ublock is more granular when filtering scripts and some other stuff, incl. ads
it is not recommend to use ublock with other ad-blockers, although it may work it is not usefull.
umatrix is able to filter cookies (reading out), XHR, css, media in one-click.
ublock can do parts of that, but not in that simple way, it creates a rule in "my filters"

noscript 10 is upcoming if you miss it.
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