Why on earth would you break virtually every add-on and plug-in I use?
I updated to Firefox 57 because of the great speed and memory advantages it promised. But it BROKE virtually every plug-in I used in previous versions. Some of these were less important, but the ability to change fonts in the toolbar and especially SESSION MANAGER are very important to me. I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but V57 is simply unusable for me. V57 refused to fully load some websites as well, mostly those used by my employer that I suspect are Microsoft centric. Still, Safari manages to load them without issue. Sorry guys, but I'm on the verge of ditching Firefox, my favorite browser for more than a decade and a half!
Wšykne wótegrona (6)
Mozilla doesn't control how Addon works and that is the creators to update or resolve if their Addon doesn't work.
Wót WestEnd změnjony
Hi bummedout, some of the background is in this article: Firefox add-on technology is modernizing; but really, you just want solutions.
- Ability to change fonts in the toolbar: you can use custom style rules to assign a different type face and font size if the Theme Font and Size Changer isn't working. What is your preference?
- Session Manager: the old version worked directly with local files on disk, which isn't allowed for new extensions unless they also integrate with something called a "native application." So while there are ways to get your old sessions listed out or, with additional steps, loaded, you'll need to evaluate a new extension such as one of these (reviews seem mixed):
- V57 refused to fully load some websites as well, mostly those used by my employer that I suspect are Microsoft centric. Can you give links to those or are they login-only? What was the last version of Firefox that worked with them?
On the topic of sessions: Firefox has a built-in session restore feature, but it only saves your immediately previous session, so it doesn't have the flexibility of a session manager add-on. I have a tool you can use to extract out your previous sessions to a clickable list of links. Might be a useful backup in case you can't get the whole session loaded.
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html
To find the old session files:
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Show in Finder" button.
Firefox's Session History Files
Double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location (i.e., some place Firefox won't replace them).
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:
- recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
- recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
- previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
- upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
Session Manager Files
Back in the profile folder, double-click in the Sessions folder. Here you will find numerous files with a .session extension.
bummedout said
...every plug-in I used in previous versions.
So in fifteen years you still think of Extensions as Plugins?. The word Plugins refers to say Flash Player from adobe which is the only Plugin that runs in Firefox since 52.0 Release.
https://addons.mozilla.org/faq https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/npapi-plugins
Wót James změnjony
James said
bummedout said...every plug-in I used in previous versions.So in fifteen years you still think of Extensions as Plugins?. The word Plugins refers to say Flash Player from adobe which is the only Plugin that runs in Firefox since 52.0 Release.
https://addons.mozilla.org/faq https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/npapi-plugins
Plug-ins, Add-ons, Extensions ... I'm a user, and I'll freely admit my understanding of Firefox's architecture may be lacking. But perhaps you can provide a helpful answer instead of a snide one.
WestEnd said
FYI. This isn't a Mozilla fault blame your Addon creator for not doing their job. EOD
Thanks for being unhelpful ...
jscher2000 said
Hi bummedout, some of the background is in this article: Firefox add-on technology is modernizing; but really, you just want solutions.
- Ability to change fonts in the toolbar: you can use custom style rules to assign a different type face and font size if the Theme Font and Size Changer isn't working. What is your preference?
- Session Manager: the old version worked directly with local files on disk, which isn't allowed for new extensions unless they also integrate with something called a "native application." So while there are ways to get your old sessions listed out or, with additional steps, loaded, you'll need to evaluate a new extension such as one of these (reviews seem mixed):
- V57 refused to fully load some websites as well, mostly those used by my employer that I suspect are Microsoft centric. Can you give links to those or are they login-only? What was the last version of Firefox that worked with them?
On the topic of sessions: Firefox has a built-in session restore feature, but it only saves your immediately previous session, so it doesn't have the flexibility of a session manager add-on. I have a tool you can use to extract out your previous sessions to a clickable list of links. Might be a useful backup in case you can't get the whole session loaded.
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html
To find the old session files:
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Show in Finder" button.
Firefox's Session History Files
Double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location (i.e., some place Firefox won't replace them).
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:
- recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
- recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
- previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
- upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
Session Manager Files
Back in the profile folder, double-click in the Sessions folder. Here you will find numerous files with a .session extension.
jscher2000, thank you very much, you seem to be the only one so far with a response that actually helps the average user instead of making one feel unwelcome. The websites I refer to are, unfortunately, log in only. But like I stated, I suspect that non-standard design of the sites is more at fault than Firefox. In fact, Firefox on a Win7 machine and various linux machines seem to do better.
I found Tab Session Manager to be at least a partial solution. The ability to save the last session in Firefox was a feature of which I was unaware, and I'll look into using that as well ... most of my saves were only to preserve the last session before restarts anyway.
I greatly appreciate the time and effort you put into your response, I found it very helpful!