Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

Firefox users see through this feel-good marketing nonsense from Mozilla.

They've seen Firefox's UI change for the worse in so many ways, even in the face of wide opposition.

They've seen unwanted bloat, like Hello and Pocket, forced upon them, again in the face of wide opposition.

They've seen their requests for bug fixes and performance improvements go unheeded, sometimes for years.

The easy use of extensions has been the only thing keeping many of these people using Firefox. They've been using many extensions to undo, as much as is possible, the unwanted changes that Mozilla has made.

I use Firefox Nightly, and was recently surprised when, after an update, some custom extensions I had written myself were not loading, and could not be easily enabled. When I found out it was due to this, and I had to start adjusting about:config settings, it was nearly the last straw for me.

I don't want to use another browser, but it's like Mozilla is doing everything in its power to make using Firefox a bad experience for me. I know I'm not alone. We've already seen Firefox' share of the browser market drop from well over 30% to a level of around 10% today, if it isn't actually lower than that.

It's truly sad to see what's happening to what was once such a great browser.

Some people hate the UI changes. A lot of people are just fine with them.

Hello and Pocket are just two buttons in a toolbar which you can remove.

You're being pretty grim. Hello is fucking awesome, and while I don't use Pocket it isn't the end of the world. Firefox isn't Lynx, but even as a Unix guy I enjoy and appreciate it. I also appreciate that they're trying to be more attractive to the masses, which is societally beneficial.

True. However what I have found in general is that I have been spending more and more time tweaking and fiddling Firefox to make it work the way I want it to, i.e similar to the way it was in the past with no Pocket for instance.

It is really annoying to have to watch the Firefox news and other channels to get this kind of information, reason about it, and then make my choice regarding what to do.

Browsers for me are a tool to get my work done, and I don't want to spend my time shaping my browser every time some people in Mozilla decide to change something.

There are two solutions I see: 1. The cynical/pessimistic one: the web is broken, all browsers fail to various extents, and one needs to pick one's poison - Firefox is the least of evils, hence I will continue using it with increasing dissatisfaction.

2. The optimistic one: Firefox and Mozilla will eventually get back on track, and revisit their old values - I find this harder to believe as time passes by.

Im a firefox user on all devices and am fine with the ui and dont know what Hello or Pocket are. It has gone through periods of bad choices and bloat before but has been cleaned up over time. I fully expect this to happen again with more annoyances greater than this one. And i still prefer to use it because i support its aims and it supports mine.

I don't understand why Mozilla is trying to control the ecosystem. It's an open source product. Why does it need to be locked down like this? Who do they think they are protecting, or even helping, with this?

Their users?

I'm not sure what you're asking. It's trivial to remove the block for open source contributors, and in fact Iceweasel etc likely won't have it.

But for people who download Windows binaries (or get automatically updated) it's a godsend.

> Hello and Pocket are just two buttons in a toolbar which you can remove.

I would have preferred to see bugs fixed, rather than features that undeniably belong in extensions. Even if it'd been issues that don't even affect me.

As you do, I have a lot of programs and extensions installed on my machine. How about you install them all on yours? Come on! Don't be grim! They are fucking awesome and if you don't use them it's not like it is the end of the world :^)

I don't remember Firefox being well over 30%. The highest I've seen them had been 27%.

That said I can see how users don't like Mozilla's attitude. I've actually noticed it as far back as Firefox 3.5. I know users didn't like the changes post Firefox 2.0. It's too bad Firefox wasn't componentized enough to separate UI from the layout engine and JavaScript engine.

I myself like Australis but I'm also someone who's loved Chrome from the beginning. That said I think it was a mistake to turn Firefox into Chrome. They should've released Australis as a separate browser like they did with Firefox in the Mozilla Internet Suite days. That way they wouldn't have alienated so many users and their core user base would've been secure while they experiment with big user facing changes.

These days I'm more disappointed in what they didn't add to the browser like built-in ad-blocking and tracker blocking. I understand they have this view that the web needs ads but that doesn't mean it needs third-party ad networks. Just like popups they degrade the user's experience. More importantly they also compromise the security and privacy of the user. Clearly they are a practice that should be fought against. That they haven't tells me they are no longer an advocate of the user but the site owners.

See, therein lies the problem. I use Firefox because of our mutual views (and the extensions) and there is no competition in that field. Chromium is too pared-down (no sidebar is basically a killer) and I don't want to support a webkit-centered internet.

> tracker blocking

Try opening a private browsing window in Nightly and see what you get... ;-)

Edit: Here's a screenshot for folks without Nightly handy. http://imgur.com/5khKObb. This is still a work in progress, but we're getting there.

> features that undeniably belong in extensions

At least in the case of Pocket, the current browser marketplace seems to disagree: Chrome is the only major browser without a built-in reading list. When it came time to add similar functionality to Firefox, we could either build and maintain our own service and integrations, or we could partner with an established player with sane privacy and data access policies.

We chose the latter. Pocket is already integrated into literally hundreds of applications, and it started life as a Firefox add-on. Embracing that is a reasonable choice in terms of utility and sustainability, as Pocket themselves are already maintaining SDKs and applications on all major platforms.

(Why this is built into the code and not shipped as an add-on was, iirc, an architectural quirk that will hopefully be rectified.)

Had to look it up since I'm not on Nightly or a desktop. I assume your talking about this:

https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2015/07/user-study-of-tracking-p...

Do you know when this will make it to the stable release or when it will be on by default?

I am grateful for Hello now that MS owns Skype.

It's funny, one of the other top comments here is about how many features Firefox is removing. Vital, core stuff, like setting being able to set custom user agents for specific domains...

I think the real reason many people are angry is that their demographic isn't catered to. I'm part of that demographic, and it does annoy me sometimes. However, unlike Debian/systemd, I find the tradeoff definitely worthwhile.