Mozilla Delays Add-Ons Signing in Firefox Once Again

[Batu69]

From Firefox 42, add-on signing gets pushed to Firefox 46

The Mozilla team has announced, yet again, it will be delaying the implementation of mandatory add-ons signing in Firefox.

Add-on signing is the process through which Mozilla reviews each add-on and gives it its official seal of approval.

According to the new timeline, starting with Firefox 46, users won't be able to unsigned add-ons anymore.

Mozilla devs introduced this "feature" in Firefox 41 as an optional setting and was set to become live with Firefox 42.

With every new version of Firefox, the feature got pushed back, and in Firefox 43 it became semi-official when add-on signing started being enforced.

Currently, by tweaking with an option in the about:config Firefox settings page, users can still disable this feature and install unsigned add-ons.

The Firefox team planned to remove this workaround with Firefox 44 and prevent users from installing unsigned add-ons altogether.

New add-ons signing deadline: Firefox 46

This decision has now been pushed back to Firefox 46, proving once again that add-on signing, despite its security benefits, is a terrible idea.

This is because some users might feel alienated when they'll have to give up on using their favorite add-ons, which despite being abandoned by their developers, continued to work just fine.

Mozilla devs justified this delay by two reasons:

1) "We’re adding a feature in Firefox 45 that allows temporarily loading unsigned restartless add-ons in release, which will allow developers of those add-ons to use Firefox for testing, and we’d like this option to be available when we remove the preference."

2) "We also want to ensure that developers have adequate time to finish the transition to signed add-ons."

Recently, Mozilla has been trying to give Firefox a complete facelift, something to which most users weren't that supportive. If Mozilla screws up in any way the add-on signing process, we might see hoards of Firefox users migrate to Chrome or alternative Firefox projects like Pale Moon.

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[steven36]

I already have palemoon  setup  and I us Firefox 38 ESR  because version 43 already started breaking some my addons and power user hacks . Id rather use and outdated addon and not use one  at all.  They need to learn to leave stuff alone that we always had there as bad as Microsoft . Example I use Firefox 38 ESR and palemoon because of Mozilla's dumb changes  , And I use Windows 8.1 because Microsoft's dumb changes with Win 10.

[vibranium]

To force signing is a good idea. Unsigned add-ons is for security gurus only, not recommended for regular users !!

[steven36]

14 minutes ago, vibranium said:

To force signing is a good idea. Unsigned add-ons is for security gurus only, not recommended for regular users !!

Not always true  , I have one addon  RAS  the signed version is crippleware . Also for Apps  like IDM  it makes  it very easy to break browser integration on updates . The need for signed addons is because  of people who should not be installing software to begin with they dont have a clue about pcs..Firefox has been around  many years and they never needed them before .But  signing addons its not the big problem its when they plain to switch to WebExtensions  its going break many addons  regardless  if there signed or not its a oxymoron .

[vibranium]

You are the exception that proves the rule, my friend.

[DKT27]

I think they should keep that about:config option. If not an option in about:config then they should allow one to manually add an entry into it.

[steven36]

43 minutes ago, vibranium said:

You are the exception that proves the rule, my friend.

The thing is many  developers  have stop updating there addons  already  because there going switch to WebExtensions  so it dont matter  when they enable signed addons most developers  who developed addons for them for many moons  have ceased to develop They already  have ruined  there addon ecosystem just by telling the developers there going to switch over.

 

Thing is if they switch  to WebExtensions  i will just use a Chromium based browser and palemoon I will have no need for Firefox  once they break  old addons.

 

If you look at netmarketshare more people use  not listed browsers more anything else these days .

 

[davmil]

3 hours ago, steven36 said:

The thing is many  developers  have stop updating there addons  already  because there going switch to WebExtensions  so it dont matter  when they enable signed addons most developers  who developed addons for them for many moons  have ceased to develop They already  have ruined  there addon ecosystem just by telling the developers there going to switch over.

 

Thing is if they switch  to WebExtensions  i will just use a Chromium based browser and palemoon I will have no need for Firefox  once they break  old addons.

 

If you look at netmarketshare more people use  not listed browsers more anything else these days .

 

Huh?  Looks like name brand browsers are 100-28 to me =72% with IE being nearly 50%.  Maybe I'm not following your point.

Can't I just disable updates and live with my configuration for the time being?  I like FF just the way I've got it tweaked out and don't want either them or the extensions to change unless there's a pretty compelling reason (meaning, not their development roadmap).

 

[steven36]

1 hour ago, davmil said:

Can't I just disable updates and live with my configuration for the time being?  I like FF just the way I've got it tweaked out and don't want either them or the extensions to change unless there's a pretty compelling reason (meaning, not their development roadmap).

 

If you're not worried about security  updates you can do that . Id rather use v38 ESR  for now  and get security  updates without things changing for awhile  .

Firefox 38.6 ESR will be out tomorrow i guess

 

Even when Firefox 45.2 ESR  comes out 2016-05-31 and I need to update versions  i still will be able to use it a year and not have worry about them changing addons too much and get security  updates i hope they keep delaying it .

https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

[Holmes]

I would normally say no ill just keep using firefox I tried that with opera then they moved to chromium based browser and now I hardly ever use opera I think add-ons signing is a good idea if something goes wrong I may decide to use a firefox browser that does what firefox did before add-ons signing to begin with.  I was going to stop using opera and use the one browser its like the old opera uses gecko and I loved the old opera I may continue to do that (I dont know what Im going to do yet).

[CODYQX4]

8 hours ago, steven36 said:

The thing is many  developers  have stop updating there addons  already  because there going switch to WebExtensions  so it dont matter  when they enable signed addons most developers  who developed addons for them for many moons  have ceased to develop They already  have ruined  there addon ecosystem just by telling the developers there going to switch over.

 

Thing is if they switch  to WebExtensions  i will just use a Chromium based browser and palemoon I will have no need for Firefox  once they break  old addons.

 

If you look at netmarketshare more people use  not listed browsers more anything else these days .

 

Exactly. I can do most of what I did with Firefox, at least the most important things, even if it was a half-assed implementation (sidebar addons on Chrome are ugly hacked in HTML crap).

 

If Firefox nukes their existing add-on system they have no advantage to exist vs Chrome. Why use a browser with the same limitations with none of the addons, based on much older code that is going through so much new code churn now that it is destined to be less stable than Chrome forever?

 

PS: Those "not listed/Other" browsers could be mobile browsers. I don't see Safari at all there, so no iPhones or iPads, which I remember statistics saying for some reason most mobile web traffic was coming from iOS despite the much higher marketshare of Android? There isn't a snowball's chance in hell "Other" is forks and obscure browsers that 99% of people have never heard of, especially when a lot of those use similar enough User-Agents to pass as the mainline browser they forked from.

[steven36]

12 hours ago, CODYQX4 said:

Exactly. I can do most of what I did with Firefox, at least the most important things, even if it was a half-assed implementation (sidebar addons on Chrome are ugly hacked in HTML crap).

 

If Firefox nukes their existing add-on system they have no advantage to exist vs Chrome. Why use a browser with the same limitations with none of the addons, based on much older code that is going through so much new code churn now that it is destined to be less stable than Chrome forever?

 

PS: Those "not listed/Other" browsers could be mobile browsers. I don't see Safari at all there, so no iPhones or iPads, which I remember statistics saying for some reason most mobile web traffic was coming from iOS despite the much higher marketshare of Android? There isn't a snowball's chance in hell "Other" is forks and obscure browsers that 99% of people have never heard of, especially when a lot of those use similar enough User-Agents to pass as the mainline browser they forked from.

no its for desktop only in mobile only even more use other browsers  Safari 2  different versions  counts for about 4 % of that 27. 72 %

 

As far as user as those other browsers  what it really proves that a whole lot of people are using outdated browsers  bro. now you can add all IEs  below version 11 to that  millions  of people dont even do security updates anymore.

 

Moonchild  said back in 2014 that

Quote

palemoon.org currently generates about 7.5 million http requests per week  Pale Moon can always be identified by the user agent containing PaleMoon/{version} at any rate. I'm not sure if GA will allow you to filter on that specifically, to begin with, as I think it lumps PM together with FF.

Im sure  its much more than that now that many are leaving Firefox . 

[pc71520]

When v46 comes out,

we will know 'what tomorrow brings'

for Firefox users...