NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#31

Post by vesinisa » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

uMatrix is a replacement extension from the creator, and compatible with, uBlock. uMatrix migrated to Quantum leveraging the existing Chrome codebase already about a month ago: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Some learning curve is required compared to NoScript since uMatrix allows even finer grained control (not just scripts, but images, cookies, iframes and XHR as well), but I personally migrated about a year ago successfully. Very happy with uMatrix so far with the latest Firefox.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#32

Post by TheDong » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #26

I've always used YesScript, it has a much simpler UI -> basically a single button which remembers if JS is on/off for a given site. It's always been puzzling to me why YesScript is less popular... And yes, it's available for the latest FF as YesScript2 [1] [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yesscript2/

"YesScript" is significantly less secure and powerful.

Most importantly, with NoScript I can block tracking and ad-related javascript while still running the page's first-party javascript.

With yesscript, I don't get that granularity.

Perhaps that's why it's less popular. I also believe that it came out later and thus hasn't had the time to gather such a following as noscript has (though who would use a worse version of noscript instead?)

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#33

Post by brador » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:41 PM UTC

Endy wrote: post #29

mrich wrote: post #14

The plugin breakage is the only downside of the new Firefox, the rest is just awesome. I'm still looking for a new auto form filler that can have multiple profiles and fills in all fields at once with a hotkey. This is useful for filling in bugzilla bug reports where some fields always get the same data.

"The only downside" Sure. Aside from the number of other extensions that simply won't work in new Firefox. And the lack of any user control to make the browser not work like or look like Chrome.

And Telemetry that's difficult/impossible to remove.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#34

Post by amenod » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:44 PM UTC

I upgraded to Firefox 57 only to find all 4 of my extensions missing... I can live without others, but being without NoScript felt like walking on streets naked. So the first thing I did was downgrade to Firefox ESR, then I started looking for alternatives. Turns out that uMatrix fills this role perfectly (for me of course). Not only can I block/allow JS, CSS and similar resources, but I can do it based on domain / 3rd party domain matrix... Nice, I always hated that when I allow `gstatic.com` in NoScript for some domain it is allowed globally (for all domains). I will test uMatrix for a few more days just to see if I feel comfortable without NoScript, then I'll upgrade back to FF 57. It looks like this might have a silver lining after all. :)

(for the record: I hate it that they broke compatibility with older extensions, and I hate that they changed UI, but if that gives FF greater market share, then I'm all for it)

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#35

Post by mnl » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

And no MAFF nor MHTML support in Quantum... as MAFF is/was great, now I have to keep yet another browser just to read my old files.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#36

Post by noisem4ker » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #9

gdulli wrote: post #3

The utility of the long tail of Firefox plugins was what gave it its value. I've been using a hybrid of Pale Moon and Firefox since the last round of losing plugins and now don't see a reason to keep Firefox at all.

I'd value a resource with a simple explanation of the changes that prevent a compatibility layer from enabling all the old plugins?

Part of the breakage is precisely due to the explicit intention to drop all the legacy APIs and the respective shims that have become too much of a burden to maintain over time.

One major technical change would be the deprecation plan of XUL/XBL (the toolkit used to build the interface, which could be freely accessed by addons) in favor of a wholly HTML future.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#37

Post by csdreamer7 » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

ryuuchin wrote: post #20

uBlock Origin and uMatrix can both do the same thing and are compatible. This is just my opinion but both have better and more intuitive interfaces as well.

Love uBlock Origin. The author made it compatible months ago.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#38

Post by solnyshok » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:57 PM UTC

ryuuchin wrote: post #20

uBlock Origin and uMatrix can both do the same thing and are compatible. This is just my opinion but both have better and more intuitive interfaces as well.

one more vote for uBo. Since I discovered its advanced script blocking interface, I went and disabled NoScript.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#39

Post by noisem4ker » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 8:59 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #17

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd value a resource with a simple explanation of the changes that prevent a compatibility layer from enabling all the old plugins?

In one sentence, the move to more aggressive multithreading and sandboxing. The old extension model conflicts with the boundaries that had to be established for both these things.

They used to provide shims to ease making old addons compatible with multiprocessing, although with serious performance implications.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#40

Post by jchw » Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 9:00 PM UTC

amenod wrote: post #34

I upgraded to Firefox 57 only to find all 4 of my extensions missing... I can live without others, but being without NoScript felt like walking on streets naked. So the first thing I did was downgrade to Firefox ESR, then I started looking for alternatives. Turns out that uMatrix fills this role perfectly (for me of course). Not only can I block/allow JS, CSS and similar resources, but I can do it based on domain / 3…

Killing the old extension API is a painful, but important, step.

From a security standpoint, WebExtensions are a lot better, since they are sandboxed and require explicit permissions to be granted for many things.

From a developer standpoint, they are easier to deal with, being JavaScript, and since Chrome and Edge support similar APIs, developers will no longer need multiple codebases to support their extensions on multiple browsers.

They also work better with a highly concurrent browser. They use asynchronous APIs that don't directly call into browser APIs. FFs old extensions were known for leaking memory, which is a lot less of an issue with WebExtensions.

Compatibility is another huge thing. With old Firefox extensions, compatibility was just an extension author saying, "Yep, the APIs still work the way I'm using them." They often broke in subtle ways and you could get them partially working by overriding the versions supported in the extension manifest. Not so great imo. WebExtension APIs are more or less like JavaScript APIs and compatibility is mostly going to be limited by support for capabilities. Like, I'm sure Firefox does not support the USB API that Chrome does.

There's so much to be gained from getting rid of the old extension system for concurrency, extension compatibility, and the health of the ecosystem and individual browser installations. Many will be angry and stick to ESRs and others will be mildly upset but I think in the long run this will have been one of the better Mozilla decisions that make Quantum a success.