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Firefox Legacy Add-on removal from Mozilla AMO


vissha

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Mozilla revealed plans today to remove so-called legacy add-ons from the organization's repository site for extensions Mozilla AMO.

 

Mozilla AMO hosts legacy add-ons and WebExtensions currently; going forward, Mozilla wants to purge legacy add-ons from the site as those are no longer compatible with any supported version of the Firefox web browser.

 

Legacy add-ons is a broad term that refers to extensions, themes, and other content that is no longer supported by recent versions of the Firefox web browser.

Mozilla switched from the classic add-ons system for Firefox to a system that is based on WebExtensions with the release of Firefox 57.

 

Currently, Firefox ESR 52.x is the only supported version of the Firefox web browser that supports legacy add-ons. All other Firefox versions that Mozilla supports, be it Stable, Beta, or Nightly, support only WebExtensions.

 

With no supported version of Firefox still supporting legacy add-ons, Mozilla will remove these extensions from the site to streamline it.

 

Third-party browsers based on Firefox code may continue to support Firefox legacy add-ons, and some users of Firefox made the decision to block browser updates to avoid having legacy add-ons disabled automatically by new versions of the browser.

 

firefox legacy addons recommendations

 

The timeline the organization published today is as follows:

  • September 6, 2018 -- Submissions for new legacy add-on versions are disabled. Mozilla does not accept submissions for new add-ons that use legacy add-on systems already. The change affects extension updates.
  • Early October 2018 -- All legacy add-ons are disabled. Disabled means that they won't show up anymore on Mozilla AMO but are still available in the backend.

Since the extensions are still listed on AMO, add-on developers may publish updates that transform their legacy add-ons into WebExtensions. The extensions would get published on the add-ons store again when that happens and users who had these installed -- and not removed yet -- will receive the updates so that they can use the extension once again.

 

Attempts are underway to preserve the classic add-ons archive. These projects have about six weeks to create an archive of all legacy add-ons still available on Mozilla AMO to preserve it.

 

Statistics about the purging would be interesting; how many legacy add-ons, separated into extensions and themes, are removed in October 2018, and how many WebExtensions remain in Store.

Closing Words

The removal of legacy add-ons from Mozilla Add-ons marks an end of an era. While some long standing extensions have been migrated to WebExtensions, lots of extensions were not for a variety of reasons.

 

Some are abandoned, others can't be ported because the provided APIs don't allow certain functionality, and some extension developers may have decided not to port their extensions.

 

Whatever the reason, the removal marks the end of extensions such as Classic Theme Restorer, DownThemAll, ChatZilla or FirefFTP, and all full themes released for the web browser.

 

It makes sense from Mozilla's perspective to hide these add-ons from Mozilla AMO to avoid user confusion; still, a part of web history and Firefox's history is removed by the move.

 

Related articles

 

Source

 

Update from Waterfox Author:

 

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Mozilla burying the bodies...

 

For those of us who really miss Classic Theme Restorer, its developer Aris has made a really nice set of CSS that brings much of CTR's functionality back again... https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

 

Am using it to bring tabs to the bottom (tabs show just above the content), and multi tab rows. Works well, though I've heard that Mozilla is planning on getting rid of UserChrome.css. Not really surprising, they want no pesky users altering their horrible UI and besides, Chrome doesn't allow it so Firefox isn't going to allow it either.

 

Nearly ready to move from 56.0.2 to Quantum...

 

uBlock Origin replaces both AdBlock Plus and Element Hiding Helper. uO allows the import (via copy/paste) of filters from both of those "legacy" addons.

 

Aris's CSS mods (link above) replaces Classic Theme Restorer.

 

The web-extension version of NoScript works pretty much like the original, despite the big change in UI forced by the web-extension API.

 

Using TamperMonkey instead of GreaseMonkey.

 

Will continue using FoxReplace, Torrentz2 Magnet Links +, and Video DownloadHelper since their web-extension versions work just as well.

 

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Message from Waterfox Author Alex on Classic / Legacy Add-ons:

Quote
  • All legacy extensions have been backed up ?

  • I've dropped an email to JustOff with a link to the mirror

  • Am integrating into Waterfox

  • Will probably show Waterfox as version 57 on the AMO from now on.

 

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They should officially host it somewhere else though.

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On 8/26/2018 at 1:58 AM, DKT27 said:

They should officially host it somewhere else though.

A lot of addons are hosted somewhere else the ones that matter are anyway..  Waterfox dont require they be signed

CTR

https://github.com/Aris-t2/ClassicThemeRestorer/releases

 

Flashgot

https://flashgot.net/getit#direct

 

uBlock Origin

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases

 

uMatrix

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

 

Old versions  of  Grease Monkey and ABP

https://www.filepuma.com/software/firefox_add_ons_plugins-20/

 

As far as user scripts many of the ones i use dont work right in legacy Grease Monkey no way only reason i be using Waterfox on Linux is so i can use Flashgot  addon  on Windows i dont need  it as i use IDM  mostly  .

 

Firefox dont even have any good user scripts for anti adblock killer  no more so I been using with Tampermonkey

 

 

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  • 10 months later...
On 8/22/2018 at 8:51 AM, Karlston said:

Will continue using FoxReplace, Torrentz2 Magnet Links +, and Video DownloadHelper since their web-extension versions work just as well.

Bit old topic, but seems to fit 🙂

 

Was using DownloadHelper years ago before the move from legacy to web-extension.

The latest stable versions look rather outdated (v7.3.5 8/1/2018 for FF and v2.0.1.0 12/20/2016 for chrome), are they still working fine nowadays?

In case, would you recommend an alternative downloader for web media?

(Quoted @Karlston, but any nsane's forumer is welcome to comment 😊)

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1 hour ago, mp68terr said:

The latest stable versions look rather outdated (v7.3.5 8/1/2018 for FF and v2.0.1.0 12/20/2016 for chrome), are they still working fine nowadays?

 

For Firefox I see v7.3.7 dated only 12 days ago here...  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/

 

Haven’t used it for a while, but it’s always worked well for me.

 

I’ve been using Free Download Manager to get YouTube videos directly from the video URL. Like the addon, FDM lets you choose the quality to download. https://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

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29 minutes ago, Karlston said:

For Firefox I see v7.3.7 dated only 12 days ago here...

Oh! I checked directly on DownloadHelper site. Still updated is a good news.

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