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NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

noscript.net

41–50 of 84 posts

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#41
post #29
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 the lack of any user control to make the browser not work like or look like Chrome.

How is that? The omnibox is toggle-able. The entire browser UI is drag-n-drop customizable. I literally don't know of a single thing that is less customizable in 57 than 56, but I'm curious to hear more about what you're referring to?

And downvoted for asking someone to explain their handwaving false criticisms. Hope this place never changes.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#42
post #27
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.

Yes for awesome, and the new Web Extension API which now breaks things will make cross-browser browser extension development possible (as far as I have read!). I can very well live in default-land for a couple of weeks for that. Also, this extension-breakage taking place right now seems to be mostly the extension developers' fault, since they've known well in advance that this is coming. (Not judging, just saying --…

I have a small extension (~100 users) that I forgot to upgrade until 57 landed and broke it. I hastily threw together a WebExt version and pushed on Wednesday night, but forgot to set the strict_min_version flag correctly (which was, unfortunately, Firefox 57).

The new version worked fine for people on 57, but for anyone that was on ESR or a slightly out-of-date version of firefox and updated they got a broken WebExtension that I couldn't push another update to to fix it - Firefox doesn't let you "downgrade" from a WebExtension to a native extension. Thankfully a user emailed me about it and I had it fixed in less than 48 hours, but it was still a mess. All I could do was add a note to the addon description and disable the bad versions and anyone that got broke had to manually downgrade.

The new Webextensions are nice, but it was definitely easy to shoot yourself in the foot with the transition. I know that NoScript also needs the same API that I was using (the ability to inspect response bodies), FWIW.

The extension is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gpsdetect/ for those curious

EDIT: brevity

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#43

The correct title should be "NoScript Not YET Available for Latest Firefox"

I thought about making the title something like that, but I didn't want it to seem as if the author should be maligned for not having it finished yet and I felt that it would have that connotation. I thought the title as written would be more neutral in that respect.

I personally consider NoScript an absolute must for security reasons, so I am not updating most of my machines until it is available. I thought that would be newsworthy for other people who have a similar mindset.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#44
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.

I love FF57 performance, but I'm having a hard time without Vimperator.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#45

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.

uMatrix felt like a lot of work. But I finally took the plunge and I love it. It is insightful how different websites are pieced together.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#46
post #11

Brave Browser has "Shield" mechanism where you can block ads/trackers and JS. It's built-in feature, you can set it up to be enabled by default or per-domain.

Switching browsers just because some extension does not work for a few days after an upgrade seems like blowing it waaaay out of proportion.

People stuck with Firefox because of the old, potent, extension framework.

Now they have no reason to stick with Firefox because the extension framework is just another Chrome clone, so why not switch to an actual Chrome clone?

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#47
post #40
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…

> 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.

I personally think that while it's clearly great for security and possibly good for Firefox in general, it's also terrible for the extension ecosystem. The set of possible extensions is being reduced from "literally anything computable" to "what the API supports." Sure, (some) popular extensions are basically being grandfathered in by having APIs added just for them, but that doesn't help the extensions that aren't written yet and will now never be written.

Essentially, a major selling point of Firefox has been sacrificed in the hope that the increased security, better perf, and greater development velocity leads to greater marketshare. Well, I hope so, but I think the jury will be out on that for a while.

Other than that, Quantum seems great. I did lose all my tabs when it updated (boo - that's never happened before), and I think the whole-window-width address bar dropdown is bizarre and ugly, but other than that it's great. I suppose the only long-term concern is that default merger of the address bar and search bar - configurable options have a habit of eventually being dropped, and I think a world of omnibars is less usable and less privacy-conscious.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#48
post #44
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.

I love FF57 performance, but I'm having a hard time without Vimperator.

Saka keys provides a slice of vimperators functionality, might be worth trying. It's far from vimperator but better than nothing.

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#49

It's probably better to go straight to the blog post about the migration: https://hackademix.net/2017/11/14/double-noscript/ Basically, the work to adapt NoScript and correspondingly expand the WebExtensions API has been going on for years, the original plan was to have a smooth transition when Firefox 57 came out, but there were some delays in the final days leading up to the release. Not recommended to stay on Fire…

Moving to Firefox 52 isn't really an option for me because it's a pig compared to 55/56 (it consumes almost 5GBs of RAM compared to 1GB for 56).

Re: NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

#50
post #40
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…

From a usability standpoint, WebExtensions have a lot less control of the browser and some use cases are completely closed off. The Webex version of Tree Style Tabs, for instance, requires you to have a redundant tab bar on top because it's not allowed to hide the main one. Pentadactyl can't have it's sub-buffer anymore. Download managers/scrapers like DownThemAll can't even do their main function anymore. On and on and on.

Part of security is availability - the most secure system is one that is unplugged and unusable. Mozilla has taken the step of putting covers on all the outlets (damn those who want to plug something in), bubble-wrapping all the knives (damn those who want to cut something), and essentially baby proofing the browser (damn those who are adults), making it far less usable in the process.

Firefox was the extensible browser. That was its differentiation. Now it's yet another Chrome clone (hang the technical differences, those are not what I refer to) with an extension system to match, but it's not made by Google, so that's a positive, I guess?

If I sound upset, it's because Mozilla took what was a big part of my daily life, an amazing and infinitely versatile tool that I'd grown with and customized over the years until it was like a comfortable pair of shoes and just completely fucked it in the most thorough way possible. Sure, an extension broke every upgrade or two, but it was survivable. This? This is not.

Okay, it's faster. Neat. Whatever. I didn't use Firefox because of it's blazing speed.

As of this moment, there are no good browsers. There is nothing out there that matches what Firefox was. (And ESR is just prolonging the inevitable).

This is legitimately saddening for me and many others - and no amount of insisting this is better despite the many more important ways its worse will change that. Mozilla's target user at some point stopped being me and started being someone else . I can accept that. What I can't accept is this constant, infuriating, paternalistic posturing that it's for my own good.

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