Firefox 57 — 2

I have not yet updated to the Quantum series of Firefox, instead clinging to the 52 ESR version. I decided to peek at what add-ons I lose when moving to the Quantum series of Firefox.

I have a virtual machine (VM) running Slackware Current, which contains Firefox 58. I copied the add-ons I use in 52 ESR to the VM. I launched Firefox.

Some of the existing add-ons are compatible with both XUL and WebExtensions. Firefox tagged the following add-ons as legacy:

    Activate Reader View
    Classic Theme Restorer
    Clean Links
    Decentraleyes
    FindBar Tweak
    Global FindBar
    Neo Diggler
    NewsFox
    No Resource URI Leak
    NoScript
    Open in Browser
    Read Easily
    Refcontrol
    ReminderFox
    SMPlayer View
    Status-4-Evar
    Tab Mix Plus
    Text Link

I had already confronted the loss of NewsFox and ReminderFox. I knew that Classic Theme Restorer and Tab Mix Plus would have no easy replacements.

Some add-ons had different versions to support WebExtensions. I needed only install the WebExtensions version. This reduced the incompatible list:

    Classic Theme Restorer
    Clean Links
    FindBar Tweak
    Global FindBar
    Neo Diggler
    No Resource URI Leak
    Read Easily
    Refcontrol
    SMPlayer View
    Status-4-Evar
    Tab Mix Plus

For replacements Firefox found Referer Modifier as a candidate for Refcontrol. That's all. Not a helpful search feature. I found Smart Referer as another candidate.

For Clean Links possibly ClearURLs might suffice.

A feature I liked about Status-4-Evar is placing add-on icons there rather than cluttering the navigation bar. The Firefox developers solution for that is some kind of idiotic Overflow Menu. I have plenty of room on my Bookmark Toolbar. I will test moving the icons from the status bar to there.

Looks like the No Resource URI Leak add-on is not be needed in Quantum.

SMPlayer View is valuable to me to avoid using Flash and HTML 5 videos as well as auto-play nonsense. Something like youtube-dl could work, but the beauty of SMPlayer View is a single context menu without the additional steps. The Open in VLC media player add-on might be a replacement.

Possibly I can mix-and-match other add-ons to fill the gap. I am not excited or pleased about this transition or the work required.

Posted: February 28, 2018 Category: Usability Tagged: Firefox

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