Not sure if you're aware of the Extended Support Release of FF but it seems better than staying on 56: Firefox 52 ESR will continue getting security patches up through June 2018.
I suspect I'll be on 56 for a very long time as well. I ran on nightlies for many, many years but that ended at 57. At a bare minimum, noScript must be shown to be fully and consistently functional. But I have quite a few other extensions that appear to have been dead ended - self-destructing cookies and session manager are just two.
I think mozilla failed to understand that extensions were the prime differentiator and that a faster Chrome is far down the list of requirements.
The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.
IMO Gutting your developer base is seldom good.
The web developer base is far more interesting and relevant to Mozilla's mission than the extension developer base, and Quantum is the only shot Mozilla has at regaining mindshare there. Looks like it's working, though.
Here's the thing though. Developers understand the technical differences between Chrome and Firefox. To 95% of general users they don't see why they are different. They look about the same and hey, I get Chrome offered to me every time I visit Google so why not use that? The average user doesn't see the difference that gives them any reason to want Firefox. Now the extensions base will be essentially the same, stripping away those that were truly unique. The extensive UI control is disappearing. Firefox (IMO) is slowly stripping away the things that make it unique to 90% of its user base who just see the UI.
Tgis is not true The extension base is not the same. Firefox 57 will have tree style tabs, for example.
What developer base? 99% of new addons are Chrome first/only (like uBlock, uMatrix). And most of the legacy addons were abandoned long ago.
Re:Firefox 56: Last Stop Before Quantum
by 51Cards on Saturday October 07, 2017 @06:06AM
(#15423139)
I use several legacy addons and most of those haven't been abandoned? They are about to be though.
Indeed. Just look at PocketPC vs Mobile/Phone/whatever.
Of all companies one would have thought Microsoft understood the value of backwards compatibility...
If I was an affected extension developer I would be walking away now. My user base is about to crumble and the best I can do is maybe offer a pale version of my extension in the new system along with a bunch of excuses out of my control. If perhaps WE does get the features I need, why go to the work to re-write? My users will be long gone.
Quantum is great, don't get me wrong. But the new APIs are too immature to be shutting down a huge number of mature extensions and the users that rely on them. It really makes me question the leadership decisions happening at Mozilla in general.