Firefox breaking many add-ons soon

[cellio]

I found out today, via a notice provided by one of my add-ons (Stylish), that the next version of Firefox (57) is going to break most add-ons, which they are now designating "legacy". Firefox, like Chrome, automatically updates itself (I'm not sure that can be turned off any more), and these changes are coming "in November". I found this blog post from Mozilla from August, but I never received any sort of notification as a user and I don't make a habit of seeking out blog posts from vendors of software I use.

Why the hell didn't I get some sort of notification from Firefox? Is this news to you, too?

So now, the hunt for replacements commences. Gee thanks, guys.

Here's what I've found so far, untested unless otherwise noted:

• Stylish replacement (notice pushed by Stylish, apparently): Stylus. Listed as beta. I don't know whether styles will just work (after being manually imported, it appears) or if changes will be needed. ETA: I needed to rework one style, which had several blocks applying to different sets of (related) sites. I had to break that up. The style I was using to make tooltips bigger doesn't work (not supported by Mozilla's new API), but I found a workaround. The day after I got all this migrated to Stylus, I got a Stylish update -- but it couldn't read my existing scripts either, so I would have had to migrate to it in exactly the same way I'd just migrated to Stylus. (The UI was even the same.) So I punted that; I've already got Stylus working.

• Greasemonkey: Google led me to ViolentMonkey. Ditto about not knowing if things just work or require adjustments. ETA: ViolentMonkey is slow and times out about a third of the time for me, but TamperMonkey (which I already know from Chrome) exists and works fine. I had to manually add each of my scripts (to either), but I didn't need to modify them.

• NoScript: it looks like they're migrating, but I don't know if I'll have to do anything. ETA:* Seems to be broken in 57; supposedly they're working on it.

• Session Manager: is this built into Firefox now? It's very important that when I restart Firefox, I get the tabs and windows I had before. Can anybody who doesn't use an add-on for that confirm whether that works out of the box now?

• AdBlock Plus: this is my one extension not listed as legacy, so I assume it will keep working.

• Classic Theme Restorer: um, I found this github repository; haven't waded too far into the readme yet. ETA: this page explains how to move the tabs below the URL/extensions bar where they belong. The other look&feel stuff it did isn't as critical. (One could make a good argument that the URL bar belongs below the tabs, but all the other stuff the browser puts in that horizontal slice is more global, and having those reversed confuses me.)

Comments

[marahmarie]

(see ETA at end: 57+ nightlys and "unbranded" betas will run legacy add-ons; "branded" betas and release candidates won't, unless "Signed by Mozilla internally")

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I haven't tracked down when or why this change was made, if it was ever formally announced, and so on, but according to an older blog post I found tonight, legacy add-ons will still work in 57+ (if I'm reading things right; hopefully I am). To keep this comment brief, I quote the Mozilla post in question here: https://marahmarie.dreamwidth.org/358969.html

It's very confusing to find out when/why the decision was made when the blog post I'm quoting just says Update at the top, twice, but doesn't give a precise date/dates. Talk about not wanting you to know.

Also/also, there is supposed to be some sort of functionality in the add-on manager to sort of IFTTT the legacy add-ons (a recommendation engine Mozilla created to help those of us whose fave add-ons are sunsetting entirely, at least for now).

But for one, I can't find it and for another, I think it's kind of a slap in the face to private add-on devs who can't update fast enough owing to Mozilla's lacking the APIs for them to refer those add-on users to other (mostly lesser) add-ons, so I don't know....I just think they're going about many parts of this all wrong.

ETA: just did another search and came up with this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Firefox57 which indicates - weirdly enough - that once 57's released, legacy add-ons won't be compatible in the "branded" betas or release versions (unless "Signed by Mozilla internally"), but will be compatible in nightlys and "unbranded" betas going forward, which is sort of the exact opposite behavior I would expect, but OK then, very well *sigh*.

Will add an ETA to my own post soon to reflect this added...