It appears that Mozilla removed all classic extensions from Firefox Add-ons

[Karlston]

We knew that the day would come on which Mozilla would remove all classic extensions, Mozilla calls them legacy, from the organization's AMO website.

 

Legacy extensions are not compatible with recent versions of the Firefox web browser.

 

The website returns "page not found" errors for any legacy extension that you might still have a link for; search has been updated already to return only those extensions compatible with recent versions of the Firefox web browser.

 

 

Mozilla switched to a new extensions system in Firefox 57 which it released to the stable channel in 2017; only new extensions, called WebExtensions, are supported in recent versions of Firefox.

Firefox ESR, the Extended Support Release, was the last version of the Firefox web browser that supported legacy extensions. The Firefox 62 updates, released in September 2018, moved Firefox ESR installations from the legacy extension supporting 52.x version to the WebExtensions exclusive 60.x version.

 

Mozilla planned to remove legacy extensions in October initially but October passed without action. Mozilla wanted to remove legacy add-ons from the frontend Store only so that they would not appear in Search or listings anymore. The extensions would still be available in the backend so that developers could update the listings and publish new (WebExtensions) versions of extensions that were removed from Mozilla AMO.

 

No version of Firefox that is officially supported supports legacy extensions anymore. Browsers based on Firefox code, e.g. Pale Moon or Waterfox, support legacy extensions and will continue to do so at least for the foreseeable future.

 

Those users may use project-specific extension repositories, if they exist, or an add-on like Classic Add-ons Archive.

Closing Words

It makes sense from a usability point of view to hide or remove extensions that Firefox users can't install anymore in any supported version of the browser. It is still a sad day to see that many extensions, many excellent, removed from the Internet.

 

While you may be able to use the Wayback Machine, the classic Add-ons archive, and other preservation services to look them up, it would have been a nice gesture if Mozilla would have created a read-only archive of legacy extensions on its site that would be separate from the actual extensions Store.

 

I have to comb through all Firefox extension reviews of the past 15 years or so to remove any link or even the review from this site. Our list of the best Firefox extensions will shrink to a third of its current size once I'm done with it.

 

Source: It appears that Mozilla removed all classic extensions from Firefox Add-ons (ghacks - Martin Brinkmann)

[steven36]

JustOff  has most all of them  at Classic Add-ons Archive for Waterfox and SeaMonkey

 

https://github.com/JustOff/ca-archive/releases

 

Quote

• There is now a complete backup of all classic add-ons from the Mozilla Add-On Store, mirrored on the Waterfox CDN. You can use the Classic add-on Archive add-on to view the catalogue. This will be integrated into the next minor Waterfox version (56.3).

The next generation of Waterfox is progressing nicely; you should expect all the performance benefits of modern Firefox with all the customisability of Waterfox and classic Firefox!

 

 

https://blog.waterfoxproject.org/waterfox-56.2.5-release-download

 

The fact is ghacks posted about it before  but made no mention  that they are for waterfox and hosted on there cdn.

[BimBamSmash]

My oh my that is so very tempting. Still web browser is too tricky a subject for me to want be adventurous about, I try to resist.

[steven36]

On Windows i'm fine with new  web addons  because i use IDM  mostly  but on Linux FlashGot works best   to integrate  my download mangers  plus i get to use Goodies like Classic Theme Restorer  with waterfox.  I have  Firefox on Linux as well  but don't use it very much.

[Karlston]

Another site mentioned in the comments of the above article is... thereisonlyxul.org

 

If anyone misses Classic Theme Restorer (I did), its author Aris has developed some CSS to bring back many of CTR's features to FF Quantum... https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

Am using it in FF Quantum for tabs below the navigation toolbar and multi-row tabs.

 

Other extensions...

 

Using uBlock Origin instead of Adblock Plus/Element Hiding Helper.

NoScript web extension works fine, just a different UI that's quick to get used to.

Other extensions had a working web extension version or there were acceptable alternatives.

[steven36]

1 minute ago, Karlston said:

NoScript web extension works fine, just a different UI that's quick to get used to.

Other extensions had a working web extension version or there were acceptable alternatives.

The same dev  makes Flashgot he said

 

Quote

 

I'd really like to allocate some work time to a FlashGot Quantum, because in many instances I've found myself in need of writing ad-hoc scripts to accomplish tasks I previously used it for.

Unfortunately putting NoScript back on its rails proved to be a much more time and energy consuming endeavor than I could ever imagine one year ago, and the limitations of the WebExtensions API doesn't make the other side of this equation any easier.

I don't want to give up yet, but if you find any surrogate let me know, because I too could use it myself in the meanwhile.

 

https://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24979&sid=e3159e4920b4b7ea814d0428e24189f9&start=15#p99082

 

[Karlston]

Yep, common complaint from developers (and cluey users) that Mozilla didn't provide good enough API's when they dumped Quantum on users.

 

Sadly, Giorgio also copped a lot of unfair abuse from users who blamed him for the new NS UI. They had no idea that he was doing the best he could given the limitations Mozilla forced on developers.

[DKT27]

I believe some APIs were marked as to be released already. Either developers are not using them or Mozilla has just marked them to be released and not released yet or those APIs are not enough and more are required for them to be working correctly there.