Firefox 57, which is slated for release on November 14, will "only run WebExtensions", according to Mozilla.
This is expected to break compatibility with many existing Firefox extensions, and in many cases there aren't WebExtensions-compatible alternatives available for these extensions.
During some recent discussion at Slashdot, it became clear that some users have nearly all of their extensions classified as "legacy", and susceptible to breakage.
Members of the SoylentNews community, if you use Firefox, how many of your extensions are set to no longer work with Firefox in the near future?
If Firefox 57 breaks compatibility with your existing extensions, will this finally be enough for you to discard Firefox and find an alternative browser to use?
Will this extension breakage, and subsequent loss of users, effectively end the viability of Firefox as a modern web browser?
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:28PM (4 children)
Learning that Firefox planned to break extension compatibility + seeing extension developers say [mozilla.org] that their extensions are "dependent on XUL overlay" was enough to impel me to switch.
I ended up on Pale Moon, which is free software, cross platform, very firefoxy and works nicely with extensions.
Worst side effect of using Pale Moon: Some sites (banks, but other random sites too) are designed and/or run by brain dead morons (or zombies, in past their depth?) that check for a shortlist of user agents before artificially declaring that their site won't work on your "unsupported browser." Extension "User Agent Switcher" is required to get around this.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by J_Darnley on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:59PM
> past tense of "yes"
Ha. Me too. I abandoned Firefox when I got a new computer. I had been using Firefox v3.6 for years on the old one after it was "unsupported". I didn't want to deal with Australis (the new UI introduced in Firefox v28 or v29) on the new one so I did move to Pale Moon too.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 14 2017, @02:58AM (2 children)
Tip on user agent switcher and user agent strings?
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 14 2017, @01:39PM (1 child)
I use the one simply called "User Agent Switcher" with Pale Moon.
The extremely imperfect system goes as follows:
I suppose it would be nicer to have a user agent switcher that remembered user agents on a per-site basis, but in looking at what I have set up, I am apparently not that organized.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 14 2017, @02:15PM
Update: UA Control 0.1.3.1.1 provides per-site user agent spoofing in Pale Moon.
User Agent Switcher has a nice list of user agents to choose from; UA Control just lets you paste what you want, meaning you have to find the user agent of the browser(s) you want to spoof. Still and all, tested and working here; I logged into online banking successfully with Pale Moon.
For what it's worth, here's the user agent that unlocked access to my online banking: