You may have noticed the yellow boxes next to many add-ons in Firefox’s add-ons manager which say “Legacy”. As of November when Firefox version 57 is released those extensions will no longer work with the new Firefox engine called Quantum. There are literally thousands of plugins which will no longer work when the update occurs.
In order to make it less painful to transition I’m starting early with installing new compatible extensions with equivalent, sometimes better, and sometimes less functionality than legacy extensions. You can use this very useful online Extension Finder tool to search for extensions similar to legacy ones.
Here is my list of noteworthy new and existing Firefox extensions compatible with the upcoming version 57:
Cookie AutoDelete
Control your cookies! This WebExtension is inspired by Self Destructing Cookies. When a tab closes, any cookies not being used are automatically deleted. Whitelist the ones you trust while deleting the rest. Support for Container Tabs (Firefox 53+).
I love Self Destructing Cookies. It automatically deletes cookies from a site when its tab is closed. I then only whitelist certain sites that I trust. This plugin seems equal or better than Self Destructing Cookies.
Also available for Chrome and Vivaldi.
Flash Block (Plus)
Provides control over Flash content
Stop websites from cramming unwanted flash video content down your throat. It may be better to install YouTube no Buffer (no autoplay) below.
Also available for Chrome and Vivaldi.
Lastpass
LastPass, an award-winning password manager, saves your passwords and gives you secure access from every computer and mobile device.
LastPass is not yet listed as being compatible with Firefox 57 but they are stating that a compatible version will be released on time.
Also available for Chrome and Vivaldi.
Open Tabs Next to Current
Open new tabs always to the right of the current one.
This extension does what it says. As of this writing this plugin seems to be a little odd. It works as intended but when a new tab is opened the tab bar jerks around as the new tab initially appears to get placed at the default last position on the tab bar, and then it immediately gets repositioned to next to the current tab. I’m also missing a the fine granularity tab tweaking options provided by Tab Mix Plus.
ScrollAnywhere
Grab and drag your scrollbar with your middle mouse button anywhere on the page.
Replaces functionality of the Grab and Drag extension which provides hand-tool functionality to the mouse. In order for this to work you have to enable the Grab and drag option in the extension’s settings. I also recommend disabling momentum. Is equal or better to the extension it replaces.
Also available for Chrome and Vivaldi.
Speed Dial (Lite)
Access to your favorite websites via an stylish speed dial!
Replaces functionality of legacy Speed Dial extension. Now is a good time to install this side-by-side with Speed Dial and start transferring dials over.
Available for Chrome and Vivaldi. On both of these I’m now using Speed Dial [FVD] which has more features.
Stylus
Redesign the web with Stylus, a user styles manager. Stylus allows you to easily install themes and skins for many popular sites.
Replaces functionality of the Stylish extension.
On Chrome and Vivaldi I still use Stylish.
Tab Center Redux
Move your tabs to the side of your browser window.
Considered as partially providing functionality similar to that with legacy Tab Mix Plus but not really the same.
Tampermonkey
Tampermonkey is the world’s most popular userscript manager.
I use this with the development release of YouTubeCenter. YouTubeCenter requires that YouTube be set to legacy mode which is a pain because it keeps reverting back to non-legacy mode and then the whole site stops working and you have to disable YouTubeCenter in Tampermonkey to get to the setting to re-enable legacy mode. But there are some other YouTube download Firefox 57-compatible extensions listed so maybe YouTubeCenter will not be necessary.
Available for Chrome and Vivaldi.
uBlock Origin
Finally, an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory.
🙂
Also available for Chrome and Vivaldi including uBlock Origin Extra.
Undo Close Tab
Reopens the last closed tab.
Right-click and it displays a list of recently closed tabs which can be selected.
YouTube no Buffer (no autoplay)
Prevents YouTube HTML5 and Flash players from auto-buffering (auto-playing) videos
Available for Chrome and Vivaldi
Zoom Page WE
Zoom web pages (either per-site or per-tab) using full-page zoom, text-only zoom, automatic fit-to-width and minimum font size.
Suggested alternative to legacy Zoom Page extension. Equal or better functionality.
Note this is also available for Chrome and Vivaldi.
List of things to do:
1. Start copying your dials from legacy Speed Dial over to the new Speed Dial (Lite). You can have both extensions installed simultaneously. There is an icon on the toolbar which you can use to open Speed Dial (Lite).
2. Copy any user styles from legacy Stylish to Stylus.
3. Try to disable legacy extensions you really don’t need. Then try to disable even more. Think about the possibility of giving up the functionality of an extension if there’s no suitable replacement and ask yourself if you really need that functionality or if there might be a better way to do things.
4. Check out the new Compact Lite theme and Compact Dark themes included with Firefox. Very nice.
5. Be patient. A lot of people are involved in this process at many levels and most things should work out over time.
6. There’s a cool page devoted to Firefox CSS on Reddit which has useful info related to customizing Firefox 57.
7. Although a compatible update for Tab Mix Plus has not been released Firefox developers have indicated that “tab APIs are regarded as a very high priority for the add-on team”, so it really looks like a lot of the functionality provided by Tab Mix Plus will be appearing in the not-too-distant future.
Also see:
support.mozilla.org: Frequently asked questions – Firefox add-on technology is modernizing
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