All my legacy add-ons are working now.

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StanH
Posts: 110
Joined: March 5th, 2005, 2:29 pm
Location: North St Paul MN

All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by StanH »

Almost all my legacy add-ons are incompatible with Firefox v57. Many important add-on developers have completely given up. Many add-ons will not be fixed because their developers have moved on to other interests. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/commen ... s_and_why/

My most important failed add-ons are:
Xmarks,
Session Manager,
Show Parent Folder,
Go Parent Folder,
and many others to a lesser extent.

So fixing Xmarks alone will not fix the problem. I blame Firefox for a making a design change that downgrades my capabilities. I understand why Firefox developers must be driven by a vision of a better program in the future. But I need to be effective in my work right now.

So I have reconfigured my Firefox program to work like it did before Firefox changed. I list the steps here for those who, for now, don't want to wait. My solution was to:

1 Reinstalled 56.0.2(32) over 57.0.1(64) (I didn't have to uninstall Firefox 57.0.1)
2 In [tools][options] turned off the option 'Use a background service to install updates'
3 In [tools][options] selected "Never check for updates (not recommended)"
4 Added the Firefox add-on: "Add-on Update Checker" to prevent automatic change to existing legacy add-ons.
5 Prevented my Kaspersky Internet Security 2017 from automatically updating Firefox 56.0.2 to 57. This before restarting Firefox.

I am now running Firefox 56.0.2(32 bit) with all my legacy add-ons working. Other situations are: NoScript is v5.1.8.1 and Xmarks is v4.5.0.8.
This arrangement seems to be working.
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Reflective
Posts: 2283
Joined: February 15th, 2007, 11:13 am

Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by Reflective »

You're putting your machine at risk by using an older browser and would be better off installing Firefox ESR which will be supported until June 26, 2018.
StanH
Posts: 110
Joined: March 5th, 2005, 2:29 pm
Location: North St Paul MN

Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by StanH »

I will try Firefox ESR on one of my my laptops. It has Windows 10 64bit but the automatic update of Firefox was to 57.0.2 32bit.

For Firefox ESR, should I download the 32bit or 64bit version. What is the difference in the way they run?


*** EDIT -- Never mind. After googling this issue, I have downloaded the 64bit version of Firefox ESR.
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James
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Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by James »

For Windows, the advantage on using 32-bit Firefox 52 ESR is you can use other NPAPI Plugins besides the Flash Player and Silverlight Plugins that is only allowed to run in Win64 Firefox 52 ESR.
StanH
Posts: 110
Joined: March 5th, 2005, 2:29 pm
Location: North St Paul MN

Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by StanH »

I have a problem finding the legacy add-ons I want in 52.5.2 ESR 64bit. I was encouraged that I can get and use "Session Manager" - a legacy add-on. But I can't find to download "Show Parent Folder" and "Go Parent Folder" and others.

Q1 - Why does session manager work in ESR but not the other legacy add-ons?

Q2 - Does ESR use web extensions?
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RobertJ
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Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by RobertJ »

StanH wrote: Q2 - Does ESR use web extensions?
Not the current one. That will change in the summer of 2018 when ESR goes to FF59. At that time NO legacy extensions will work any longer, only WebExtensions.

.
FF 92.0 - TB 78.13 - Mac OSX 10.13.6
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Reflective
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Joined: February 15th, 2007, 11:13 am

Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by Reflective »

StanH wrote:But I can't find to download "Show Parent Folder" and "Go Parent Folder" and others.
Those two have both been removed by the developer.

I suspect this is likely to occur more often with extensions which aren't going to be ported to WebExtensions so keep a copy of your Firefox profile because you can drag and drop the XPI file from the "extensions" folder into a new browser or a new profile instead of downloading them from the AMO site.

The good news is that there are a couple of Firefox forks which will support legacy extensions indefinitely. You'll find details in the Third Party/Unofficial Builds forum on this site. I'm using one of them now called Basilisk.
StanH
Posts: 110
Joined: March 5th, 2005, 2:29 pm
Location: North St Paul MN

Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by StanH »

It appears then that the fact that the other legacy add-ons don't appear are not found when the add-on site is searched is simply a decision by Firefox to exclude them.

They are likely not incompatible with ESR.
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RobertJ
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Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by RobertJ »

StanH wrote:It appears then that the fact that the other legacy add-ons don't appear are not found when the add-on site is searched is simply a decision by Firefox to exclude them.
Not true. In most cases the developer has chosen to remove. That is the case for three developers that I used to test their extensions on the Mac platform.

.
FF 92.0 - TB 78.13 - Mac OSX 10.13.6
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James
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Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by James »

StanH wrote:It appears then that the fact that the other legacy add-ons don't appear are not found when the add-on site is searched is simply a decision by Firefox to exclude them.

They are likely not incompatible with ESR.
The addons.mozilla.org site still has a huge list of Extensions that have not been maintained for a long while. There may be different reasons why they get removed whether by the author or Mozilla may have had a valid reason to do so at some point. Also make sure if you are searching for a Firefox version it is not for Firefox 57.0 as that would exclude extensions marked as only for 56.0 and earlier to not show up in results.

Firefox is the name of the web browser and not a company or such as that would be Mozilla.
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Reflective
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Joined: February 15th, 2007, 11:13 am

Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by Reflective »

StanH wrote:They are likely not incompatible with ESR.
Now and again you'll come across a notice that a given extension is no longer compatible with ESR. That's because it's already been ported to a WebExtension. But that doesn't mean you can't install it. The trick here is to look at the link to "Previous versions" further down the page on the left and then find a legacy version of it.

One other thing you should do is to disable Automatic Updates in the Add-ons Manager That way you'll avoid updates which have had features removed to accommodate the WebExtension version. You can still check for updates manually and then review them to see what's changed before installing them, if at all.
StanH
Posts: 110
Joined: March 5th, 2005, 2:29 pm
Location: North St Paul MN

Re: All my legacy add-ons are working now.

Post by StanH »

I had forgotten, but I remember now how I got Session Manager for ESR. The developer has a "previous versions" page that I downloaded/installed it from.
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