Kitz ADSL Broadband Information
adsl spacer  
Support this site
Home Broadband ISPs Tech Routers Wiki Forum
 
     
   Compare ISP   Rate your ISP
   Glossary   Glossary
 
Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions  (Read 8634 times)

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« on: December 17, 2015, 09:44:40 AM »

Firefox in my opinion is well on the way to shooting itself in the foot. This latest update WILL disable ANY extensions you use which are unsigned. On install it disabled my uBlock and FBP extensions which are unsigned. You can for now override this in about:config by changing the xpinstall option which says signatures required from true to false. Apparently Mozilla are adamant that even this will be remove in FF 44 and above which will mean that all extensions will have to be signed and I know there are some authors who object to this and refuse to do it. Also according to some stuff on the Mozilla forum even extensions will become a thing of the past with even more things being disallowed.

So now the search is on for me for a new browser to use, however Chrome is NOT an option.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP

roseway

  • Administrator
  • Senior Kitizen
  • *
  • Posts: 43467
  • Penguins CAN fly
    • DSLstats
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2015, 10:29:52 AM »

I've been looking at Palemoon recently. This is a slimmed-down fork of Firefox 25.x, which precedes the most irritating user interface changes in more recent versions of FF. It supports many of the FF extensions, and in addition has some of its own. I'm close to the point where I'll dump FF in favour of PM.
Logged
  Eric

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2015, 12:17:25 PM »

I initially looked at Seamonkey but I'm not sure about that yet. I'll take a look at Palemoon as well.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP

jack21

  • Reg Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 144
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2015, 01:31:10 PM »

@roseway......Nice tip Eric, I'd recently tried Midori and Opera as alternatives to Firefox, but various issues made me move back. Palemoon seems just the ticket for what I need from a browser (after just a few hours dabbling with it).
Logged

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #4 on: December 17, 2015, 05:42:04 PM »

I have been playing with Palemoon some more today and although I do like it there are so far two issues I have with it. The first is a Linux issue in that it crashes every time I try to use any of the drop-down menu items, this is a bug in the Oxygen theme I use however it is only Palemoon that crashes, I can solve it by changing from the Oxygen theme but my problem is I prefer this theme to any other I've tried. The other bigger issue is that so far I've not been able to find any way to successfully import my usernames and passwords from FF 43 (or 42). Password exporter extension will not install in Palemoon as it thinks it is an old FF which is not supported. I might be able to find an old version of the extension and see if that works but from my point of view developing a browser without a facility such as this is not a good idea since everyone will be trying to migrate. I also dont want anything which will se the cloud for storing my passwords as I simply dont feel the cloud is secure enough for this information.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP

roseway

  • Administrator
  • Senior Kitizen
  • *
  • Posts: 43467
  • Penguins CAN fly
    • DSLstats
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #5 on: December 17, 2015, 06:52:24 PM »

I don't use Oxygen, and I didn't try to import usernames and passwords (I prefer to enter them as needed) so neither issue affected me. There is a Palemoon forum, so it might be worth asking about those issues there.
Logged
  Eric

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2015, 09:37:02 PM »

There is a Palemoon forum, so it might be worth asking about those issues there.

I have asked about the passwords there, the crash issue is well documented on there.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #7 on: December 18, 2015, 08:25:31 AM »

Although I've not had any answer to my Palemoon forum question I have solved my username/password issue. There is an archive of older versions of many FF extensions on the official site and I was able to find a version of Password Exporter which would install OK in Palemoon and it also imported the FF43 exported data fine because the export is in XML or CSV format and not FF dependant (note I did not obfuscate the passwords when exporting - just in case!).

Now to see if I can set it all up as I want.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #8 on: December 21, 2015, 03:05:11 PM »

Discovered today that there is another FF clone at least for Linux called Iceweasel (on Debian) and IceCat on Fedora which might be of interest to some. So far Palemoon has been OK although it wont run the Norad Tracks Santa or the Google equivalent both of which do run on FF, apparently there are some errors on these websites which Palemoon barfs at.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP

jelv

  • Helpful
  • Kitizen
  • *
  • Posts: 2054
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #9 on: December 21, 2015, 08:30:08 PM »

I've upgraded to the 64bit Firefox 43.0.1 (64 bit is now now officially released). None of the 20+ extensions I use were disabled. Whilst some people may be affected I reckon there may have been a little of an over-reaction to this.
Logged
Broadband and Line rental: Zen Unlimited Fibre 2, Mobile: Vodaphone
Router: Fritz!Box 7530

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #10 on: December 21, 2015, 08:38:48 PM »

I've upgraded to the 64bit Firefox 43.0.1 (64 bit is now now officially released). None of the 20+ extensions I use were disabled. Whilst some people may be affected I reckon there may have been a little of an over-reaction to this.

I think this is just one issue and perhaps for some not a huge one but this combined with the declared direction of FF and the change to the theme a while ago has driven much of the dissatisfaction with FF. They are planning to remove much of the functionality which allows add-ons to work, apparently they think add-ons and supporting them is something which only pleases a very small minority of users. They believe the vast majority use FF completely native with no add-ons at all. It is becoming more and more difficult for some people to be able to continue with FF in the way they want which is why some of these alternatives based on pre-Autralis versions of FF are around now and gaining popularity.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP

Dray

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 2361
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #11 on: December 21, 2015, 08:47:17 PM »

I thought FF were simply removing NPAPI support and replacing it with builtin web API support.
Logged

ejs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 2078
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #12 on: December 21, 2015, 08:52:59 PM »

They should know what proportion of users have however many add-ons installed from the data collected and uploaded in the Firefox health report, except for people who switched that off of course.
Logged

Chrysalis

  • Content Team
  • Addicted Kitizen
  • *
  • Posts: 7382
  • VM Gig1 - AAISP L2TP
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #13 on: December 22, 2015, 10:06:14 AM »

try cyberfox i think the dev said he will allow unsigned

Sent from my SM-G901F using Tapatalk

Logged

broadstairs

  • Kitizen
  • ****
  • Posts: 3697
Re: Firefox 43 release will disable any unsigned extensions
« Reply #14 on: December 22, 2015, 02:29:18 PM »

try cyberfox i think the dev said he will allow unsigned

Sent from my SM-G901F using Tapatalk

Cyberfox is Windows only I'm afraid so no good for me.

Stuart
Logged
ISP:Vodafone Router:Vodafone Wi-Fi hub FTTP
Pages: [1] 2
 

anything