On the other hand, the new version of addons.mozilla.org is easier to navigate.
“block animation” mostly yields adblockers, and a couple video blockers; that’s not enough.
Configuration Mania hasn’t been updated for Firefox 57. Not sure if it can be.
uBlock Origin may have been updated. YesScript hasn’t been updated, though YesScript 2 might work.
QuickJava and an alternative called Prefbar can’t be updated.
Kill Button has disappeared. SuperStop seems to remain, but it can’t do as much.
Flashstopper and alternatives such as Flashstop haven’t been updated. Not sure if they can be.
Refresh Blocker hasn’t been updated. Some sites flash due to frequent refreshes.
No Small Text hasn’t been updated.
Activate Reader View hasn’t been updated.
GreaseMonkey and Stylish have been updated, but not all styles work. If I knew more about programming, I’d probably convert all styles so I had working duplicates, and update one of the extensions to see which styles break.
The only place I see that is above the tab I’ve got currently open, which is also white instead of black, so it is now easy for multiple reasons to figure out which tab I’m on at any given time. I really like it!
Although, “glowing” blue? It’s just a very thin medium blue at the top of the tab on my screen.
And, of course, shortly after I post that, the NoScript dev posts an update:
here’s my update: the week, at least in Italy, finishes on Sunday night, there’s no “disaster recovery” going on, and NoScript 10’s delay on Firefox 57’s release is still going to be measured in days, not weeks.
From a user’s point of view, they “still” work, but I understand the issues that made the upgrade necessary, and appreciate the work involved in making both Firefox and the extensions better.
By coincidence this happened a week after I got a new computer, so I’m hassling with learning Windows 10 and a new version of Paintshop Pro, and all the other upgrades required.
That’s where it is, shortening just the one step in the staircase as it were. How glowing it seems I guess depends on your computer – a lot on the one I use at work, less on mine at home, though it still feels like something that needs adjustment but won’t go away.
It’s nice it helps you, and I imagine when they made the change you’re the case they had in mind. This time I wasn’t, and so got to abruptly lose an already-frustrating afternoon figuring out whether it’s possible to have my browser not feel like a warning indicator. It’s nice to imagine Firefox gets it; again, all I can say is that’s not what their actions told me this week.
That’s a serious issue - combining functionality changes with security fixes leads people to turn off or avoid updates. And when people avoid updates, botnets break out. So companies move to a forced auto-update model so that old versions of their software won’t be implicated in the future. Which leads to people finding ways to block the forced auto-updates. (I had to do that on my Windows 7 PC due to updates completely breaking some programs.)
But, as a developer, I also see the other side. It’s extremely difficult to maintain several separate codebases with different streams of updates ported between them as the codebases diverge over time. In the olden days, when a new version would mean a couple of years or more and be purchased and installed/upgraded, it was different. Nowadays, with the drive (and ability) to push updates monthly or even weekly, it becomes even more critical to keep everyone on the same codebase. And we adjust. Every time Facebook screws up their UI, the rage flows, but people keep using it anyway because they want what it provides. After a bit, they forget how much better the UI used to be.
Unless you have a Flash-based site that’s important to you, it would be easiest just to remove Flash entirely. I haven’t had it on my system for over a year. Aside from some old web games and video chat sites that haven’t updated, it’s not really used anymore.
But, as someone who has worked as a developer, I know there are ways to mitigate that if you only care to try.
For instance, I know Firefox has a really customizable interface for someone who knows the system. It took me a while to find something to take the edge off the one change, but it certainly didn’t require a new codebase. The update could have easily come with guidance on rather than just press copy about the differences, if not a theme to minimize them. But nope.
They also knew that this version was going to break a lot of add-ons. So just in case someone really needed one, you could offer the option of deferring this specific update. You may not want two codebases – though it seems Pale Moon devs do – but you can still give people a chance to find workarounds or alternatives. Even if they ultimately can’t, it’s much less awful than turning on your computer one day and finding tools broken on you. But nope.
Sure, a company like Facebook can trust it will gaslight everyone into forgetting what worked better. It’s awful for and infuriates users, but so long as enough stay or can be replaced, it’s not like it matters to them. The devs save a little time, the business still gets what it needs, and you never have to worry about working on something that almost nobody chooses to adopt.
But I don’t buy that a company dedicated to helping make things accessible to its users, and knowing abrupt changes can cause problems for people, can’t manage any better than imposing them just the same. And if spending an afternoon undoing what they picked for you is annoying, being told that’s somehow them understanding and helping you out is more so.
That’s because it uses Adobe’s own installer/uninstaller. If you want to completely get rid of it, then in your OS, you can go to the “add/remove programs” or “apps and features” (or whatever it is for your OS), and uninstall “Adobe Flash NPAPI [somethingorother]”.
[edit]One important note I just saw in one of the dev’s comment responses:
“NoScript 10.1.1 is not tested on Android and is very unlikely to work on it without more tweaks, since the API there is even more limited. But it’s definitely a target for 58.”
There apparently is also currently a possible bug preventing it from working in incognito mode.
