[Legacy add-ons] - XUL/XPCOM support ends with Firefox 57 - add-ons like CTR will stop working - add-ons will be 'disabled' in October 2018 and won't be publically available anymore on AMO #299
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So...firefox is dead? How about porting it to palemoon? There is a lot of theme stuff that needs to be fixed there even if they dont have australized... |
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Palemoon does not need CTR. All important CTR features are part of Palemoon by default, because Palemoon never switched to Fx29+ UI. |
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Well, I kind of disagree. There is a lot wrong with palemoon that CTR has fixed in firefox. Sure there are some stand alone addons that may work, but they don't come close to covering all the bases. For example everything from tab width to how the palemoon button doesn't move nor it is possible to change it to an icon as far as I can see. To help explain, here is a semi-recent scrot of my firefox. Your position is fully understandable, but bluntly I feel like I been given the short end of the stick and then mozilla snatched it back just to break it in half... |
Aris-t2
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Thank you for your work @Aris-t2, mozilla has wasted your time and will annoy many users. |
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CTR made Firefox usable for me despite Australis. My sincere thanks to you for having created and maintained it so diligently. |
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@kyodev To be blunt, online petitions are bullshit. I do not recall a single instance where an online petition did achieve something. Also, developers of very popular addons (DownThemAll, CTR, QuickSaver and a few others) have been throwing their weight at that decision, and have been either ignored or told that the plan will be executed as planned. Combined these addons have millions of users (maybe even tens of millions), and now Mozilla should care about an online petition with 100 signatures? |
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you know what? I think you're right ... :( |
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Well, fuck. I was just customizing a new Firefox installation when I noticed this message. Finding the out add-on will go away because of yet another terrible decision by Mozilla is baffling and disappointing. And concerning too, because I've become super comfortable with how I can get Firefox to look and behave and now I have no idea what browser I'm going to have to switch to in the future. It's just completely unusable for me without the add ons. |
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@kyodev To clarify. I do believe that people can make change happen if they want to, however, I do not believe that slapping your name on an online list and being done with it will do anything, anywhere, anytime. If you want a change, look up if somebody else requested it already and what the state is, if not, state your case to the right people (firefox-dev and dev-addons mailing list, in this case). But don't believe that slapping your name on an online petition will achieve anything (just like slapping "+1" on a feature request will not make the coder go faster, or saying "this software is terrible" will magically make the software better with the next version). For everyone else, Mozilla seems to beg down a little in this regard, as they are hinting that there will be APIs in the future to change the appearance of Firefox from addons, I wouldn't hold my breath, though. My question on the dev-addons list can be found here. |
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"Some kind of theming" will be possible even after Firefox 57 arrives, but it will be highly restricted. No "I can do what I want" anymore with CSS, JavaScript or XML/XUL-similar stuff. No more moving around stuff Mozilla does not want you to move around (buttons in titlebar, location bar, status area etc.). Changing toolbar, tab and icon colors (maybe even icons later -> unknown) and using squared tabs will be possible. Look at current Nightly builds and the available "Compact" themes for example.
This however still means add-ons like CTR won't survive and rebuilding something that has two or three of over 400 features just seems wrong and not worthy of being called CTR. |
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I've used CTR since Mozilla introduced Australis and took away a lot of the old features I liked. I install it on every computer I use Firefox on. This may be a dumb question, but I am sure it will be possible to stay on Firefox 56 for as long as I want, just like many Opera users did when they killed that browser too. Therefore, it will still be possible to use the final released version of this addon, correct? I know the browser will grow more out of date every day, but I imagine I will cross that bridge when it arrives, like many people. I'm sure the people here already agree completely, but I don't think I can ever use Firefox once they kill off these old addons. I absolutely HATE the new search in particular, and without CTR to change back to the dropdown search, I would be better off just using Chrome at that point. That is Mozilla's goal I guess =]. |
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perhaps, it would be better to swith to firefox 52esr (issue in avril 2017) |
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Another nail in the FF coffin. Mozilla seem determined to continue to ruin Firefox till no one uses it - apart from fanboys. |
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Wait some time, what happens after the release. I guess there will be many extension developers and their users, which try to revolt against the change, when their favourite extensions suddenly become useless. Something will happen. I think there will be quite a few forks of firefox, but i see that it's too hard to maintain a firefox fork for most people. I see with palemoon, that they probably won't keep up, if they aren't already vulnerable to things fixed in recent firefox. But with such a breaking change, there is a chance, that quite a few volunteers from the mozilla community organize and make more possible than the people, which were just annoyed by a ugly default theme. When the last ESR becomes unsupported we will see what has developed until then, which forks, patchsets, etc. are available as alternative. I still do not believe, that the many many extension developers and power users will silently accept the change. Which doesn't mean, that WebExtensions are bad. E10S, Multiprocess and WebExtensions are great and XUL is probably not the best solution for making a gui extendable without breaking extensions on major changes in the gui. But the solution is to abandon it, after there are WebExtension APIs, which allow the same amount of customization. Which is quite possible, but seems unwanted at the moment. |
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When Firefox switched to Australis, I started to use your CTR addon and that was the only reason I kept on with Firefox. I can't stand Chrome look-alike interface. Firefox used to be synonym for freedom which is lesser and lesser case. |
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Per this doc (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Firefox57) old extensions will still work in Nightly (even not e10s compatibile), but how long I don't know. Maybe there will be some workaround turn them on also for beta / release (like we have for unsigned addon). |
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Only in theory. The massive changes will break them anyway. |
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Once CTR and the ability to customize stop working I will stop using Firefox. Totally dislike Australis and anything flat or "Chromish". And CTR is the only reason I stuck with FF since it came out, essentially.. Too many changes made just to make them.. |
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The scrapping of the BEST PART of Firefox the, "XUL/XPCOM " based extension system for SOMETHING TOTALLY INFERIOR TO IT... THIS IS THE DARKEST DAY IN Firefox's ENTIRE HISTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! X( X( X( X( I heard they even fired their original CEO... My entire LIFE revolves around Firefox.. so I will NOT be able to upgrade beyond FF v56 probable for the rest of my natural life... MOZILLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IDIOTS!! end rant! loi ;p |
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Rapid release cycles were theoretically a good process improvement, but the turning point for Mozilla as a whole. Australis was the straw that broke my back. For anyone still on Firefox, I recommend you start now building up/getting comfortable with a profile in Pale Moon or some other suitable alternative. (By my estimation, Pale Moon is the closest approximation of Firefox when it was best at its core competencies, i.e. meaningful customization and catering to advanced users.) However, do not rush to stop using Firefox before XUL/XPCOM support is removed. It's not likely to have an impact, but short-term usage metrics should clearly demonstrate the impact this has on their active user base. Words failed, so make Mozilla know they'll be the sole occupants of their brave new world by your actions. |
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@evan-king Something will happen. I think there will be a lot of forks, where most are dying pretty soon. Possibly some will survive. The problem is, XUL may be hard to support without mozilla paying for a lot of manpower. And somebody will sooner or later need to exchange gecko for servo. |
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The petition is dead and will be dead. 240 sigs in 3 months. Nobody knows, nobody cares and will keep on not caring until everything breaks. Browsers nowadays are treated like phone OSs. What you do matters not, what matters is "apps". What can you do, what can't you do, how buttery smooth you are. Soon, all the "apps" are gonna break and when they do Firefox is going to be gone. Market share is declining because the addons keep dying, I think I lost all my favorites in the last couple years. When it finally kills them and it simplifies the look, it will finally be the poor man's Chrome they always wanted and finally be laid to rest because nobody wants a poor man's Chrome when Chrome is free. IMO, Firefox started dying off when they opted to take away my manual history limit because people's histories made Firefox slow. The shift in mentality is what broke Firefox. You make history faster, you don't make my history "automatic". Videos auto-play? Get an addon or something. Crashes? Addon memory collection. Memory usage too large? 64 bit. To heck with fixing, we need VR support STAT! Ah well. You know you're doing bad when Safari takes your market share. Le roi est mort, vive le roi. |
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All Thunderbird add-ons will be moved to a different location in the near future. It was announced to add-on devs in an email in November 2017. A "classic-Mozilla-addons.org" would be nice for Waterfox and Besilisk users, but who would host and maintain such a project? |
Reddit too often fails to find what's sought :-(
See What’s new in Waterfox 56.0? in Waterfox 56 Release (2017-11-30) but please note that corrections are in the pipeline.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/7sjykj/firefox_58_released_whats_the_timetable_alex/dt5cjcx/ |
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@hawkeye116477 thanks, no need to apologise |
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I know this issue tracker is not supposed to be used for that, but I'd like to thank you for developing this extension and enabling me to keep my firefox looking like Firefox 2.0 for these short little years, before Mozilla ruined everything. I made everything workout in the end with userChrome.css and one webextension, but I'm already seeing rumors that even userChrome.css is probably going to be removed at some point in the future too. The fact that firefox is not the browser that has high customizability + the shady deals Mozilla has been making might finally force me to migrate to something else, but I'd like you to know that your extension kept me here a little longer. And kept my firefox looking like firefox instead of a poor man's version of chrome. |
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"If you are on Firefox ESR 52.7, you should get an offer to upgrade to Firefox ESR 60.0 on 2018-05-08. If you decline that offer, Firefox will just update to Firefox ESR 52.8." In fact what happened with my upgrade today from Firefox ESR 52.7.3 is that I hit "Check for updates" in "Help" --> "About Firefox", and it just said "Update to ESR 52.8." I re-started and am now at ESR 52.8.0. There was no offer to upgrade to ESR 60.0, and that's fine with me. I'm mostly using Waterfox at this point anyway, though Waterfox has just a very few minor bugs still to work out. But for all intents & purposes I've reproduced my entire FF environment & all the extensions I use over to Waterfox. This is what I'll use going forward, but if I can keep FF ESR going until 2018-08-28, I will (since I still use FF 10-20% of the time). Oh, and thank you for CTR. It continues to be a life-saver on both FF and WF. |
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@watchpocket: I couldn't find a source for this, but I'm pretty sure Waterfox is going to update its codebase to Firefox 60, whenever that becomes the ESR version. Edit: Just read some posts above mine, there are some links that discuss this. |
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So what are you saying are the consequences of that? Sure, Waterfox probably will update its codebase, but the important thing to me about Waterfox is that it will not abandon the XUL customizations that are so essential to all of us who for years have run very customized FF setups with lots of extensions -- the extensions that Firefox has now thrown to the trash heap, throwing a whole lot of sophisticated browser users away with them. Waterfox's creator is committed to keeping that. |
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The results of switching to Fx60 codebase while keeping xul compatibility might benefit everyone. I guess the idea behind this is having everything up to date feature wise from browser side and still being able to use legacy add-ons. We will see, if this requires rewriting add-ons or not once Waterfox 60 is out. |
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I like that idea... Waterfox could benefit from the faster quantum engine(s) in Firefox v57+ |
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Also, Waterfox is also considering implementing my Gecko Elevated WebExtensions specification (ExE‑Boss/specifications#2) |
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CRITICAL NOTE: Firefox Is still Open Souce |
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@ExE-Boss Yay! |
Aris-t2
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Aris-t2
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OK, ESR FF release is now version 60 and your great plugin dont work. What have we do?? Do you (or anybody) have some alternative?! Thanks. |
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@HarryhoInfo you could also change over to Waterfox which is holding on to XUL extension system.. |
Thank you very much, I am trying it! |
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Basilisk will have an add-ons site in the future, so it might be the new home for CTR. demo |
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Sure, once possible, I will submit latest CTR there too. |
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I am using Fox ESR 52.2.0 as secondary browser. In a moment of need I made it the primary browser. If you want to use classic Fox never make it default browser, else Mozilla hijacks your PC and over rides any preferences to "never update". One workaround might be to block Fox phoning home ? PORTABLE VERSIONS SourceForge (PortableApps.com) -- Windows only INSTALLERS |
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@bawldiggle you could just switch over to use Waterfox |
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Thanks to everyone for lots of valuable information! |
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hello. |
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Aris, Alex was able to get some extensions working on Waterfox 68 Alpha. I'd have personally gone in and looked to see what code they changed though I don't have the time and the only responses I received were "Go figure it out yourself" however it seems possible. Once the pressure is off of me this is my absolute highest priority though it likely won't be for months at best. Any chance that you could please take a crack at it and see if even some of CTR will work with the alpha? |
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In theory CTR might work, if it gets rewritten to an restartless/bootstraped add-on like what "Classic Toolbar Buttons" add-on is/was or what "CustomizeMyBird" add-on currently is for Thunderbird 52.x-60.x. However I spend hundreds of hours in creating CTR over time and I have no plans to recreate it again from the scratch. The scripts/styles for the Fx68 based browser version are present within my CustomCSSforFx and CustomJSforFx repositories here on Github and I do not have the time or the will to put them into an add-on again. My time supporting Mozilla products through add-ons came to an end for Firefox with the release of Fx 57 and will end for Thunderbird with the release of Tb 68. Seamonkey seems to be dead for a while too. |
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SeaMonkey and Thunderbird just want to ride on Firefox release cycle. I'd suggest @Aris-t2 to submit CTR and CMB to Pale Moon and Basilisk add-ons sites, and to Interlink Mail & News add-ons site, respectively. Don't believe in FUD being spread about these projects (debunked by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). To quote Matt A. Tobin, developer of Unified XUL Platform:
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@smnthermes yeah I heard about Waterfox's sellout too on his blog... he makes it sound like its a good thing... idk... |
and others
If you want to use Classic Theme Restorer (and other legacy add-ons) up to summer 2018, I suggest to switch to Firefox ESR channel. Firefox 52 ESR gets all security updates default Firefox gets without changing base code and without new add-on breaking changes. From 2018-06-26 on there won't be any official up-to-date Firefox, that runs legacy add-ons anymore.
Moving to Firefox 52 ESR after installing Firefox 55/56 might break your browser profile. It is recommended to move to Firefox 52 ESR before Firefox 55 release (2017-08-08).
Waterfox and Basilisk browsers (based on Firefox code) will keep legacy add-on support.
Release schedule update: Fx 60 will become ESR instead of 59.
Difference between Extended Support Release channel and default channel:
Fx 52.0 ESR = Firefox 52 (first major code changes since Firefox 45.0 ESR)
Fx 52.1 ESR = Firefox 53 (without major code changes since Fx 52, but with security updates from Fx 53)
Fx 52.2 ESR = Firefox 54 (without major code changes since Fx 52, but with security updates from Fx 54)
...
Fx 52.7 ESR = Firefox 59 (without major code changes since Fx 52, but with security updates from Fx 59)
Fx 52.8 ESR = Firefox 60 (without major code changes since Fx 52, but with security updates from Fx 60)
Fx 52.9 ESR = Firefox 61 (without major code changes since Fx 52, but with security updates from Fx 61)
Fx 60.0 ESR = Firefox 60 (first major code changes since Firefox 52.0 ESR)
Fx 60.1 ESR = Firefox 61 (without major code changes since Fx 60, but with security updates from Fx 61)
...
Release dates:
[2018-01-23] Firefox 58 / ESR 52.6
[2018-03-13] Firefox 59 / ESR 52.7
[2018-05-08] Firefox 60 / ESR 52.8 / ESR 60
[2018-07-03] Firefox 61 / ESR 52.9 / ESR 60.1
[2018-08-28] Firefox 62 / ESR 60.2 -> end of life for legacy add-ons
Note:
If you are on Firefox ESR 52.7, you should get an offer to upgrade to Firefox ESR 60.0 on 2018-05-08. If you decline that offer, Firefox will just update to Firefox ESR 52.8.
This will be repeated for one more cycle (Firefox ESR 52.9). From 2018-08-28 Firefox ESR 60.2 will be the only up-to-date and "secure" ESR version of Firefox and ESR 52.x will be deprecated.
Note:
CTR and other legacy add-ons will stop working on Firefox 57 when WebExtension will replace legacy add-ons and XUL/XPCOM support will be removed for add-ons completely. CTR (and all of my other Firefox add-ons on AMO) can not survive this change.
Even if it will be possible to port some of CTRs currently over 400 tweaks/options/features to WebExtensions one day (currently none of them would work in a XUL free environment), I have no plans to do that. The outcome would not be CTR anymore.
At the moment more and more Firefox 57 features land on Firefox Nightly. As a result some CTR features stopped working on Firefox 55/56 Nightly. They work on Firefox 55 beta and also might work on Firefox 56 beta and on Firefox 55/56 release builds.
CTR had to drop support so far for:
WebExtensions may be the future for web content add-ons (according to Mozilla), but losing powerful ui customization ability on user level is definitively the biggest step back Firefox ever made. It loses the only advantage it has over ALL other browsers.
Additional explanation to this statement: On some comments areas on various websites protectionists of WebExtensions claim by quoting the previous sentences I have not understood how future development of applications works, blabbing applications have to drop "old ballast" in order to reinvent themselves and offer new technologies and other nonsense. Those ignorant protectionists (like Hauro) fail to understand, that CTR was and still is fully compatible to all so-called modern technologies added through time to Firefox like multi-process architecture, 64Bit architecture etc...
The only reason why CTR does not work in Firefox 57+ is Mozillas decision to take away add-ons almighty power over the browser, not because add-on features are incompatible to modern techniques or Firefox 57+ in general. A simple CSS loader would allow over 80% of CTRs features to be available for Firefox 57+. This is proven by all userChrome.css/userContent.css tweaks available here.
This also applies to my other add-ons like Classic Toolbar Buttons, NoiaButtons and GlassMyFox. NoiaButtons for example could be fully ported to userChrome.css and is working in Firefox 57+ just fine.
For now I will only try to keep my add-ons "alive" till the end of Fx 52 ESR, if I'm still allowed to upload updated legacy add-ons to AMO.
CTR and other add-ons should still work on Firefox 52 ESR until Firefox 59 ESR replaces it in 2018 (~Q2). Waterfox should also support legacy add-ons indefinitely.
Are we WebExtensions yet? http://arewewebextensionsyet.com
APIs > Legend > complete
In case you are wondering why some add-ons have to go: according to Mozilla and Firefox devs they [add-ons, APIs] are not worth bothering with.
Add-ons in 2017
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/11/23/add-ons-in-2017/
Classic Theme Restorer may be dead by the end of 2017
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/11/26/classic-theme-restorer-may-be-dead-by-the-end-of-2017/
Old Firefox Extensions Will Stop Working in Firefox 57
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3025513
The Dev-addons Archives
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/dev-addons/
Bug 1328244 - [WebExtensions] Firefox customization API request - WONTFIXed by Mozilla
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1328244
The Road to Firefox 57 – Compatibility Milestones
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/04/05/compatibility-firefox-54/#comment-223852
Keep in mind: Mozilla decided to end current powerful browser customization not the add-on developers! It is still unknown what will be possible with upcoming APIs in the future.
Firefox 57+ tweaks
As long as userChrome.css is supported, we can get rid of Photon UI by modifying existing stuff. We can not add anything new to the UI though.
Promo of what I have tested so far (on Win7 with AeroBlue colors, possible on other OSs too)
More here: #365
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