Are add-ons keeping you on Firefox 3.6?

1. rob64rock wrote on May 24, 2012 at 12:05 pm:

   The Add-on (Organize Status Bar) still has usefulness,

   Regarding the add-on (Organize Status Bar) for those that have moved on to Fx4+ or newer, but continued to use their incompatible add-ons that work on Fx4+ without problems. (Organize Status Bar) is useful in rearranging the order of those add-ons with old status-bar icons that haven’t been converted to movable toolbar buttons.To my knowledge there still isn’t any alternative add-on that allows you rearrange the order of those old status-bar icons on the Add-on bar’s status-bar compatibility shim.

   1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 24, 2012 at 12:41 pm:

      I don’t think it’s possible to create such an add-on, since you would either need to limit the customizable area to the statusbar compatibility shim, or figure out a way to mix statusbar buttons with Add-on Bar buttons, which would be really difficult to do.

      I would expect most add-ons to have migrated to the new way of placing buttons below the content, though ironically my own add-on still doesn’t do this :(.

      1. rob64rock wrote on May 24, 2012 at 2:20 pm:

         Yes, your add-on (Fire.fm) is one add-on that I still prefer to use it’s old status-bar icons since they’re simply more compact which doesn’t take up to much toolbar space than the alternative toolbar buttons on the Fire.fm toolbar.

         Using add-on (UI Fixer) allows me to move the (old status-bar compatibility shim) to what ever toolbar I choose and add-on (Organize Status Bar) allows me to rearrange those old status-bar icons in the order of my choosing.

         Now if someone could combined both above add-on features into one add-on, I would have one less add-on to worry about.

         Note: I just hope you will never remove the old status-bar icons from Fire.fm any time soon.

         1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 24, 2012 at 2:37 pm:

            If we ever update Fire.fm again, and I hope we do, fixing the icons is our top priority. The icons would be smaller as the current toolbar icons, but probably bigger than the current statusbar icons.

2. Stephen wrote on May 24, 2012 at 12:41 pm:

   Add-on for xforms and compatibility with slingplayer is keeping me at 3.6.

   1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 24, 2012 at 12:58 pm:

      For XForms, there is a beta version available that works on Firefox 4 but not on later versions. The add-on and the idea behind it have been abandoned. I don’t know anything about slingplayer, though. What does it do? Is it an extension or a plugin?

      1. Philipp wrote on May 26, 2012 at 7:07 am:

         I can only second Jorge, the Mozilla XForms addon will not be developed any further (and fixing it for the current Firefox versions proved to be way too much work). Server-side solutions such as Orbeon or BetterForms or different client-side solutions such as XSLTForms are better and more future-proof alternatives.

3. Jojo wrote on May 24, 2012 at 1:10 pm:

   In those times I used the Fission add-on. It gave me the impression of to be moderately popular. For Firefox 4 and later, Status-4-Evar can to be the same work.

4. Michael Kaply wrote on May 24, 2012 at 2:03 pm:

   My daughter is quite unhappy that KidZui no longer works.

   1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 24, 2012 at 2:39 pm:

      Is KidZui K2 a whole different product? I can’t really tell from the descriptions.

      Addendum: I just noticed it has binary components and it stopped working around Firefox 9… I don’t think there’s much that can be done there. I see a couple of alternatives (KIDO’Z and Kid Mode), but I can’t tell from the reviews which would be better, or good.

5. — wrote on May 24, 2012 at 4:08 pm:

   Rest In Peace Ubiquity.

   1. quamis wrote on May 24, 2012 at 11:33 pm:

      Man, just tried Ubiquity, this stuff rocks. Why is it discontinued?

      1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 25, 2012 at 7:57 am:

         The Mozilla Labs team decided to focus on other projects, and there wasn’t enough developer interest to keep it alive. If a developer was willing to take over the add-on and update it to modern Firefox versions, I think we would all be very happy to accept those patches.

6. Caspy7 wrote on May 24, 2012 at 10:44 pm:

   Would be awesome if a user visited a page for an addon not compatible with the latest Firefox (or if they could be notified even more conveniently) that there were recommendations for similar addons.
   Hmm, what about an ‘Alternatives’ Group where people create groups that contain alternative addons & if you’re visiting that addon it pops up? Dunno if this is possible…

   1. Lozzy wrote on May 25, 2012 at 1:26 am:

      +1. I’m not sure why AMO doesn’t already have a feature for user suggested alternatives.

   2. Gervase Markham wrote on May 28, 2012 at 3:27 am:

      Seconded. This should be a built-in feature of AMO, where Mozilla can recommend an add-on as an alternative to one which has not been updated for e.g. 3 releases. If the addon author doesn’t like the recommendation, they can update their add-on or provide their own recommendation.

      Gerv

   3. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 7:57 am:

      That’d the nice to have, certainly, though I suspect in many cases there would be no user-provided recommendations because there are none. FWIW, I did modify the descriptions of most add-ons listed in this post to point to the recommended alternatives (after notifying the developers, of course).

      1. Ken Saunders wrote on May 28, 2012 at 9:51 am:

         Well, perhaps one way to handle this if something were to be done at all would be to add a “Search for similar add-ons” link/feature to add-ons marked as incompatible. Maybe pull from the add-on’s description, keywords, category, and/or tags (if they have any)?
         It’s probably the only way to offer generated alternatives and least it isn’t a solid dead end for users. Besides, it just isn’t realistic to expect an exact alternative since most add-ons are unique.

         The site’s search suggestions function works well in my experience so encouraging the use of it and even more so, bringing back advanced search would be helpful.

         It took me a long time to get into this mindset, but unless an add-on is massively popular, then they all have the possibility of being temporary. It’s just due to the fluid nature of Firefox.

         I do appreciate the value of bootstrapped add-ons now. I just wish that there were more options like adding XUL overlays and more documentation and examples. Like with XUL School. 🙂

7. pingswap wrote on May 24, 2012 at 11:47 pm:

   I’m quite unhappy that the keywordManager add-on (http://caspar.regis.free.fr/kwm/) doesn’t work in current firefox versions. There doesn’t seem to be an alternative (do you know one?) and besides I can’t believe this isn’t an out-of-the-box functionality.

   1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 25, 2012 at 8:07 am:

      I looked around and couldn’t find an equivalent add-on. To be honest, I don’t see how this add-on is all that useful. You can group all of your keywords in on Places folder, or tag them so that they are easy to locate and manage. Judging by its usage stats, it isn’t very heavily used, so I don’t think it warrants being a shipped feature.

8. Lozzy wrote on May 25, 2012 at 1:23 am:

   RIP Mouse Gestures Redox too. That’s the one addon I really miss, Firegestures doesn’t hold a candle to it.

   1. nrj wrote on May 26, 2012 at 6:19 am:

      The most recent Mouse Gestures Redox nightly still works just fine for Firefox 7 and up (on 13 right now). The main site is down so I can’t find an XPI to install for you but I’m sure there’s a copy out there.

   2. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 7:59 am:

      I should point out that the add-on was removed from AMO due to security vulnerabilities related to how they manage their custom gestures handlers. I think the add-on was safe to use as long as you didn’t install untrusted custom handlers from the web.

9. Ken Saunders wrote on May 25, 2012 at 5:12 am:

   Jorge, it was -really- cool of you to take the time to do this.

   @Caspy7 and Lozzy, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for someone, or some people to volunteer to do that.
   It could be as simple as creating an add-on collection or, an entire site/blog/community dedicated to it and also perhaps to finding people to take over the development of abandoned add-ons that don’t have alternatives. I would do it personally, because it’s a good idea and there’s a need for it, but I don’t have the time.

   I started a site with some other volunteers to provide a specific service to a particular segment of Firefox users because I saw a need for it and didn’t expect Mozilla to do it because they/it have many other things to focus on.
   In fact, people do this sort of thing all of the time.
   http://www.mozilla.org/community/directory.html

10. David wrote on May 25, 2012 at 8:16 pm:

    Can somebody update platypus? It was one of my favorite addons, and it hasn’t been supported for a very long time

    1. Zaid wrote on June 1, 2012 at 5:54 pm:

       I second this suggestion. Platypus is a great addon, I really wish it can be revived or forked.

       For CuteMenus – Crystal SVG, there is “CuteButtons – Crystal SVG” as it’s closest alternative.

11. Maarten wrote on May 26, 2012 at 2:55 am:

    Thanks for the info! Another unmentioned extension is Moonlight (http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/). Moonlight is the silverlight-alternative for linux/unix clients to access video’s and other rich applications. As far as I know there is no alternative and maintenance (Novell) is poor. I think we have to wait for a broader acceptance for HTML5…

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 8:18 am:

       It’s possible that you just need to rebuild the add-on with a new version of the SDK for it to work with a recent version of Firefox. The main problem would be to get the devs to accept it and publish it, I guess.

12. HarzG wrote on May 26, 2012 at 4:27 am:

    I use EasyGestures, but there are no recent activities on his site http://easygestures.mozdev.org/index.html unfortunately. The great advantage of eG is that I can forget all gestures like LRD etc. for any actions because the pie show me what I can do. The list of features is very long imho, but I can also use a part of them by downsizing the visible ones.
    It’s a pity that there isn’t an active developer or an “assistant to” for eG. But I can understand any developer who decided to quit -> Mozilla’s choice to start a very rapid development. Anybody who has other priorities (like work, family, house) can’t spent every month a lot of time to beta-test a new FF/TB-version with his add-on.

    I read that Mozilla let add-ons work if they won’t crash the application.
    But I know also that the “let it work, if …” could be a security issue to accept older add-ons (third party or former Moz-listed) if they are no (longer) listed on the Mozilla-add-on-site.
    Maybe Mozilla should warn anytime about any “founded, but not Moz-listed” add-on (even if the rdf-info told the installer 500.0.*) to tell users again “it’s not from Mozilla, do you know enough about the risc’s?”

    Some people like me used in the past q&d-hacks to let an add-on work as usual. So I edited a time ago some install.rdf-files and made “my own” add-ons installable for the new TB/FF-releases.
    Use Mozilla by any upgrade a “not Moz-listed”-control even if the “third party”-add-on tell FF/TB about a larger in the rdf-file than the Mozilla-release is?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 8:16 am:

       Default to Compatible works for both Mozilla-listed and non-listed add-ons. The main “if” that we have is that the add-on can’t have binary components, because those break with every new release. Binary components are very common for non-listed add-on, which is why it looks like we don’t allow non-listed add-ons to be compatible by default. However, we do.

13. chiaro wrote on May 26, 2012 at 4:34 pm:

    One of the reasons that users may chose to stay with Firefox 3.* is that there is a documented Bug in all later Versions of Firefox (post Firefox 3.”)

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627626

    It would be a great incentive for users to use later Versions of Firefox if this Bug were addressed.

    Even without a test case, the bug is quite clear and there was a previous test case with an identical issue

    It would be a great step forward (and incentive to use later versions of Firefox) if this Bug could be resolved

    Many thanks

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 8:20 am:

       I doubt it. If this were a major bug, there would be tons of people piling up on that bug, or similar ones. Furthermore, you were asked to provide a test case more than a year ago and none was provided. If you want the bug to be fixed, you need to help us get it fixed.

14. rostam a wrote on May 27, 2012 at 9:36 am:

    yes

15. Marlies wrote on May 27, 2012 at 1:08 pm:

    I need the add on “Reload Every”. That’s the reason why I still use Firefox 3.6
    Can this also be made for Firefox 12.0???
    I can not work without this add on.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 8:21 am:

       As far as I can tell, ReloadEvery works with all recent versions of Firefox.

    2. Yakeshinu wrote on June 2, 2012 at 9:41 am:

       Also, TabMix Plus contains a “Reload every…” feature.

16. B. Moore wrote on May 27, 2012 at 10:56 pm:

    the slow upgrade isn’t about add-on compatibility between versions of firefox, the problem is all your installed add-ons get reset so to speak for the most part.

    all your buttons and layouts on your toolbars get DESTROYED on the upgrade.

    your better off starting with a fresh profile with your bookmark imported over and instal every dam add-on 1 by 1 praying you able you export individual add-on prefs from 3.6 and import in to 12 or some how ripping the individual add-on pref from about:config entries.

    Its not even funny how much of a pain in the ass this to do.

    and yes i’ve tried upgrading so many different ways don’t bother mentioning things like febe, mozbakup, profilemanager, collections…. i can go on and on.

    its been like this since day one of firefox when using lots of add-on.
    1 by 1 is the only way to get it right.

17. FFalways wrote on May 28, 2012 at 1:28 am:

    “Forecastfox Weather.” – it’s a bad joke. The accuweather is very poor!

    I still use 1-click weather – the modified version that works on FF12.

    Anyway I would like to use Forecastfox l10n (http://extensions.geckozone.org/Forecastfox). But I can’t make to run correctly from FF4.
    If you look closer at this extensions you’ll see that the features that was on him are amazing.

    Until an weather addon that works like Forecastfox l10n and have behind the service from Weather.com I will remain with 1-click weather.

    PS: MAYBE THERE IS SOMEONE THAT WILL CONTINUE Forecastfox l10n PROJECT.

    Regards,

18. Steve Brown wrote on May 28, 2012 at 6:00 am:

    Hey, I’m using an addon called Signature on FF 3.6. It’s no longer supported so I tried updating the install.rdp to version 12.xxx (which worked for the change from FF 2 to 3) but it still says the addon is not compatible!

    http://signature.mozdev.org/

    Cheers
    Steve

    1. Steve Brown wrote on May 28, 2012 at 6:05 am:

       Also, Search by Image (by Google) 1.0.4 is not supported, apparently 🙁

       1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 8:30 am:

          As an alternative to Signature, have you tried WiseStamp or any of the other signature add-ons on AMO?

          I’m not sure which Search by Image add-on you are using, but I see at least 2 available options on AMO (the first 2 results) that do what you want and are compatible with new versions of Firefox.

          1. Steve Brown wrote on May 29, 2012 at 7:47 am:

             Thanks Gorge – sorted! 🙂

19. Grantwhy wrote on May 28, 2012 at 7:25 am:

    Firefox Throttle

    I upgraded from 3.6 a while ago, but Firefox Throttle was the one add-on that made leaving 3.6 hard.

    Firefox Throttle allowed the user to limit Firefox’s download and upload speeds.

    As someone who often shares a internet connection, it was a very easy to use way of ‘playing nice’ and not using all the download/upload bandwidths while surfing the ‘net, especially when using the PortableApps Firefox (3.6) Portable on other peoples connections.

    I’ve looked for similar a add-on to no avail. I guess there is not much of a demand for a way to slow down websurfing with Firefox :-p

    Jorge, thank you for this blog/post and for asking us about our favourite add-ons that didn’t make it past 3.6.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 8:42 am:

       There are a bunch of add-ons listed on AMO that help you keep track of your bandwidth usage. However, they are mostly tied to specific ISPs. Some, like Minimeter, support a wide variety of ISPs, so maybe it’ll work for you.

       I didn’t find any add-ons that could throttle the upload / download speeds, though. Actually, I wonder how Firefox Throttle works, because I can’t imagine what you could do to accomplish that.

20. boris wrote on May 28, 2012 at 11:24 am:

    You are wrong that Organize statusbar no longer needed. There are still some extensions that display statusbar icons only. I am using two of them: Fasterfox lite and SelectiveCookies Delete.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 28, 2012 at 2:00 pm:

       My point about it is that extensions that support recent versions of Firefox should be able to use the Add-on Bar instead of the Statusbar shim (though I am myself guilty of this). I recommend that you encourage the developers to switch to the Add-on Bar, which should be relatively easy to do.

21. Guenter wrote on May 29, 2012 at 2:17 pm:

    For extension development I’m missing Chromebug. Yes, I know it’s not a FX3.6 problem, it’s an issue because of missing manpower at the developer side.

    Any alternatives beyond Venkman and DOMi?

    This is true for Thunderbird also!

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 29, 2012 at 2:56 pm:

       I don’t know any alternatives. I know the Developer Tools team is working on a debugger, but chrome debugging will always be a low priority. Have you tried the latest Chromebug versions? Maybe one of them works at least in Firefox 4…

22. Guenter wrote on May 29, 2012 at 3:47 pm:

    The only way would be to work with an old FX/TB version which is compatible with latest CB.

    Sounds a bit strange and in many cases newer features and security fixes of the targeting app will not work.

    On one side we hear the Mozilla eco system of app and extensions is important and a main differentiator, and the many Mozilla development requests have to be respected by the extension developers (eg. fast startup) then on the other side, why have tools for extension development such a low priority?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 29, 2012 at 4:17 pm:

       Yeah, I agree with you 100% that we need to do a much better job when it comes to add-on developer tools. That’s definitely something we’re aware of and we try to improve on. Coming up with a debugger is quite a project though, and it’s hard to justify that amount of work ony for add-on development (vs. web development which is much more prevalent).

23. Kohei Yoshino wrote on May 30, 2012 at 2:50 am:

    One popular add-on missing on the list: Google Toolbar.
    http://support.google.com/toolbar/bin/answer.py?answer=1342452

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 30, 2012 at 8:59 am:

       Well, that one was dropped in Firefox 4, not 3.6. I did consider including it at some point, but the list was already too long.

24. Chris wrote on May 30, 2012 at 9:49 am:

    I’ve been waiting for an update on Group/Sort Tabs addon:
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/groupsort-tabs/?src=search

    I was just wondering if Mozilla would consider integrating this feature officially? Sorting tabs by the URL seems like a very simple feature – yet it becomes very useful when using 20+ tabs.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on May 30, 2012 at 4:30 pm:

       I doubt this will be added as a Firefox feature since it is more of a power user utility. For tab grouping, you might want to try the Panorama feature that is already part of modern versions of Firefox.

       I also found Sort Tabs, which works on tab titles. There are also very powerful add-ons like Tab Mix Plus which may have what you need, among a ton of other tab features.

25. Fran wrote on May 30, 2012 at 11:33 am:

    I am still using MR Tech Toolkit beta (6.0.4.9000). I use the chrome editor, some of the extra toolbar buttons, My Config, and Extension Options (in Firefox – does not work in Thunderbird) in Tools menu, the about:* items in Help menu, Restart Firefox in File menu.
    I wonder why the max version was not bumped up to a usable version number for Thunderbird, since everything I use in Firefox works in Thunderbird except Extension Options. I had to extract the .xpi file from Extensions in the Firefox profile, rename it (to recognize it), increase the max version for Tbird in install.rdf, then install that in Thunderbird. Why could that have not been made simply downloadable as an .xpi file?
    I find the about:config button especially useful as a quick way to launch that dialog. I used to use the throbber to do that, but one cannot do that any more.

26. Pierre wrote on May 30, 2012 at 12:26 pm:

    I still use the following MR Tech Toolkit features:
    – about:* entries in the Help Menu (especially config and plugins thanks to the keyboard shortcuts)
    – “Tools > Options” keyboard shortcut
    – “My Config” exports
    – “Close all child windows” option
    – “Window Title” customization

27. Q Mark wrote on May 30, 2012 at 7:41 pm:

    Add-on anycolor’s compatible alternative:Colorlicious

    I have tried Colorlicious and it really is nothing and I mean nothing compared to anycolor. I DO NOT RECOMMEND Colorlicious. If possible, I would give Colorlicious minus 2 stars.

    If I could/knew how, I would’ve made anycolor compatible with ff 9,12,15, etc (whatever ver.) a long time ago.

28. Roy wrote on May 31, 2012 at 5:40 pm:

    Linky. It lets you open selected links in tabs. You can unselect already visited links. That makes visiting new links on Daily Rotation or any site with links to visit much easier to use. About half of linky’s features still work in FF4 or newer.

    If there was any add-on that does that, I would update to the new FF on all my machines.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 1, 2012 at 10:02 am:

       Is this the Linky you’re referring to? It’s marked as compatible with all versions of Firefox. If it is, what doesn’t work now?

       1. Roy wrote on June 1, 2012 at 4:43 pm:

          Go to a web page with links with the newest FF.
          Click on a few links.
          Go back to that page.
          Now right click on the page and pick “Linky/Open all links in tabs.”
          Uncheck “Select already visited links.” None of the links will be unselected.”
          Click on “Commands” and select “Enter pattern to match” or “Enter pattern not to match.” Neither will be applied to the link list.

          This should get you started. Most of the common stuff works, but the unique and useful items do not. At least the one’s I use.

          Now repeat with FF 3.6 or older. The above will work.

29. Argaen wrote on June 1, 2012 at 8:06 am:

    I still miss Firesomething from time to time, it was hilarious sometimes (I still remeber the face on some friends as they watch me browsing in Mozilla Hypnollama).

30. Jon wrote on June 1, 2012 at 9:10 am:

    I’m actively looking for a replacement for CookiePie. In working in a IT support role, having multiple email inboxes open in the same browser saves screen real estate.

    I’ve tried the multilogin for gmail/hosted mail, but that requires you to switch inboxes in the active tab.

    Any suggestions?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 1, 2012 at 10:11 am:

       Interesting add-on… I looked around and only found CookieSwap. It’s the same deal, though, you need to reload the active tab after swapping cookies.

    2. Majken “Lucy” Connor wrote on June 16, 2012 at 11:46 am:

       I believe you can do this with gmail. I have had my inboxes open in two different tabs. But maybe I’m misunderstanding the problem.

31. jay wrote on June 1, 2012 at 9:25 am:

    what about Firedownload? this is the only extension which actually drastically improved my download speed, and no DOwnthemall don’t even help

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 1, 2012 at 10:13 am:

       FireDownload was updated recently to support modern versions of Firefox. I mentioned it near the end of the post. Version 3.0.2 should work just fine.

32. Nico wrote on June 1, 2012 at 10:01 am:

    Jorge, I left a post in the AMO forum relevant to the question how to deal with bugfix versions for Addons working with outdated Firefox versions. Sadly nobody answered my post. Maybe you can help?

    https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=10743

33. Nathan wrote on June 1, 2012 at 10:31 pm:

    Great article. I’m of the opinion that great and even good extensions will be kept up to date, and even if they aren’t, the very nature of the open source community will ensure that the idea is ported forward.

    I’d just like to point out that I actually don’t use Firefox. I use Pale Moon, because while Firefox is offered as optimized for Linux and OS X on those platforms, and 64-bit binaries are available, Firefox for Windows is rather bland. No optimization and no 64-bit. Truth be told I don’t see real-world benefit, so I don’t blame Mozilla, but it’s nice to know.

    I took Coloricious from your list and added it. I don’t think I’ll keep it for very long, but right now, the green theme I made is nice.

    A potential better alternative to CuteMenus is Mar Mod. It adds the icons, but it does a lot more than that.

    Anyone who wants a splash screen can pick up Portable Firefox from PortableApps.com. They sometimes take up to a week to get browser updates out, but sometimes they’re out the next day. Pale Moon users can similarly use Pale Moon Portable, from the official Pale Moon site. Both Portable browsers get a splash screen, and I think you can configure both by poking around in the launcher files. “Portable” browsers are not meant to be used as regular ones, but nothing stops you from doing so. (Just know that you have to manually move or copy your profile to the portable browser’s directory, and copy the various plugins, like Flash, to the appropriate directory.) Also, Portable Firefox removes the profile manager. Not sure about Pale Moon. I don’t think they add a delay, they just get tossed up when the launcher starts. The launcher itself may add a delay, but if it does, it isn’t noticeable on three computers I’ve used it on. A couple old Intels (Pentium 4 HT and Pentium D) and a (semi) modern AMD dual core.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 19, 2012 at 9:57 am:

       Thanks!

34. em28 wrote on June 2, 2012 at 1:05 am:

    TabSidebar was my favorite add-on on FF3.6.
    It is an extension that puts tabs thumbnails on sidebar
    and let u handle it from there (stop/refresh, close/open, back/forward).

    As FF4.0+ got into our life TabSideBar has broken.

    I was very happy when ElectronPlumber took it under his hand
    and pulished TabSidebar Reloaded 1.0.
    He released it once on AMO but it was removed from there for some reason.

    I’ve crossed the net to find a working link to the extesion and i found it.

    now everyone can enjoy it:
    http://mac.softpedia.com/progDownload/Tab-Sidebar-Reloaded-Download-111440.html

35. Tracie wrote on June 2, 2012 at 9:48 am:

    The addon I miss most is WebExposed 1.0.7. It was a terrific ultra-lightweight SEO analysis tool that I used constantly because the continuous basic info ran in my status bar (now have Status4evar) as I browsed and one click would pop a sidebar with all the info that I personally prefer to see when doing a quick check of a site. I loved how it ran constantly with info in the status bar because you never know when you’re going to cross a site, while generally browsing, whose info could be really useful but you would never realize it without the “starter clues” flowing by in the bottom.

    It was perfect!!! And no one has made anything comparable to it that I can find; they’re all either too heavy to continuously run while browsing, or too scant on info, or require taking additional steps to get info everytime you realize you want to check a site…and none of them run the same way as Web Exposed with any/all the same selections of useful info.

    I contacted the developer a few months ago to ask if he was going to update and he said he was not continuing support. He was thinking of putting the addon up for sale to anyone that wanted to buy it & update it themselves. I sincerely hope someone does and that FireFox will notify us about the update!

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 4, 2012 at 4:42 pm:

       There are several SEO add-ons on AMO, many of which display their info in the Add-on Bar. I see that you’ve looked into them already. Is there anyone that is close to what you need? Have you tried contacting any of their developers?

36. para wrote on June 2, 2012 at 10:34 pm:

    if i didnt care about add-ons, i’d be using chrome; its faster. add-ons are WHY i use firefox. yet, add-on compatibility has been a constant problem! why do you guys keep breaking my add-ons!!!!?!?!?!?! >:( >:( >:(

    still using ff 3.5.2 with compatibility checking turned off.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 4, 2012 at 4:43 pm:

       Which of your add-ons are broken in recent versions of Firefox?

       1. para wrote on June 15, 2012 at 2:26 pm:

          most/all of them?

          http://www2.picturepush.com/photo/a/8504805/img/Anonymous/untitled.png

          1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 15, 2012 at 3:06 pm:

             Most of those appear to still work in recent releases, but I don’t have the time to check all of them. I see a couple that were mentioned in this post, so perhaps you should switch to the alternatives to minimize the compatibility impact.

             As for the rest, if you can tell me which ones are necessary for you and don’t work in Firefox 12 or 13, I can look into alternatives for you.

             1. para wrote on June 28, 2012 at 4:14 am:

                i dont know which don’t work in Firefox 12 or 13. i quit trying to update firefox long ago because of addon incompatibility.
                which ones are necessary? i suppose they are all necessary and none of them are necessary, but i uninstall the ones i don’t use.

                we could look for alternatives, but then how long till they become incompatible as well?
                what i want to know is why firefox does this? how many hundreds or thousands of hours of addon programming have they destroyed? why cant they stop? cant they release updates themselves in the form of an addon?

             2. para wrote on June 28, 2012 at 4:51 am:

                and most importantly, when will they stop making updates that break addons – so i know what verson i can finally update to.

             3. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 28, 2012 at 7:56 am:

                Most add-ons that were updated past version 4 will continue to be compatible for a very long time, since every new Firefox version is a very small, incremental change that breaks very few things in terms of add-on compatibility.

                Also, Firefox now assumes add-ons are compatible and doesn’t check their compatibility metadata, so developers don’t need to update their add-ons all the time just to declare them as compatible. This is why I think it would be better for you to look for alternatives now, instead of sticking with an unsupported and insecure version of Firefox.

37. njw wrote on June 8, 2012 at 8:12 pm:

    I was completely stuck on Firefox 3.5x as I used an add-on call BookMark Previews (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bookmark-previews-6271/)
    that was not compatible with any later versions.

    There is absolutely no alternative addon at all that has the “carousel” view of the bookmark thumbnail images.

    I so desperately needed this addon, that I actually edited it to get it to work on FF12. I have put the details of my edit on the addons page, but I don’t have the ability to tidy it up to release as an official addon on Mozilla

38. Arden wrote on June 8, 2012 at 10:11 pm:

    I have graphics missing, my home page won’t stay put and browser is even SLOWER than when I was avoiding FF12. In former times, updating eliminated the slowdown. I have faded portions of site addresses as well. Moving the symbols around on my toolbar is not appreciated.
    I feel for all these folks whose add-ons are gone. I thought it was bad enough to lose Real Player.

39. Katryne wrote on June 9, 2012 at 1:23 pm:

    Hello !
    I miss php lang editor. Do you know an alternative ?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 11, 2012 at 1:36 pm:

       There’s a new version in the developer’s homepage. It was submitted some time ago to AMO, but was rejected due to a relatively minor issue. I’m trying to contact the developer to get this fixed and get the new version up on AMO.

40. David wrote on June 9, 2012 at 4:52 pm:

    A while back I fell for one of the suggestions to upgrade to Firefox 4.0 and was quickly sorry. One of my most-used add-ons, cookie swap. was not compatible with ver 4.0. I had a devil of a time getting rid of 4.0 and switching back to 3.6. Now I am leery of any upgrades.

41. nurain wrote on June 10, 2012 at 10:55 am:

    am happy

42. James wrote on June 12, 2012 at 8:46 am:

    No, add-ons were not, but my development schedule and work needs were. at work I am the admin for Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence and we are running on versions that are not supported on Firefox higher than 3.6. We had plans to upgrade but now you’ve broken our usage of FF within our organization.

    My company also creates web applications and we have to plan testing and development changes accordingly. We cannot just absorb browser updates when you decide it was mandatory. It was annoying that i could not suppress the “do you want to upgrade now” messages and now that you’ve just forced the upgrade on me is incomprehensible.

    You have now taken down my employees usage of firefox, I can not allow them to run an unsupported browser either in our development testing and specifically not with . What gall, dare I even say Microsoft doesn’t force me to upgrade the browser until I am ready.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 12, 2012 at 9:32 am:

       You can continue using 3.6, as long as you disable automatic updates.

43. Charles wrote on June 12, 2012 at 11:31 am:

    No. It is the terrible use of memory that all versions of FF after 3.6 suffer from! I use basically three add-ons (Adblock Plus, Tabs Mix Plus, Forecast Fox). Those three I must have! I would love to use more but, every post on some forum about how slow FF is, or how much of a hog FF is, or some similar complaint is met with the pat answer “start by disabling your add-ons, then one-by-one enable them to identify the culprit.”

    What a load of BS — it’s FireFox, not the add-ons. Tab Candy causes the browser to crash without fail — I don’t even try to use it anymore. 8-10 tabs seems to be the limit with FF 12. With 3.6 I could easily open 20 tabs. FF 12 with MS Security Essentials = constant HDD use and a high-pitched noise. Kill either one and the noise would stop. Kill MSE and I could use FF again.

    I just upgraded to 12.0 and now it wants to upgrade to 13.0 — seriously?!? When does 19 come out – next Tuesday? I am going back to 3.6!

    This browser is a tool – not a toy!

    1. Majken “Lucy” Connor wrote on June 16, 2012 at 11:54 am:

       Sorry to see you’re having these problems, but I can assure you that it’s not the normal experience for these versions of Firefox. Which is good news because it means there should be something to do to fix it. If you haven’t already, head over to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new and create a support request. Make sure to include the crash IDs (there should be instructions on the site).

       If you already have done that, please reply with the link to your thread so I can make sure it gets attention.

44. Ken Saunders wrote on June 13, 2012 at 8:10 am:

    “Browser Speed Tests: Chrome 19, Firefox 13, Internet Explorer 9, and Opera 11.64”

    “Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs Open) Winner: Firefox!”
    “Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs and Five Extensions) Winner: Firefox!”

    Overall Scores
    #1 Firefox: 75%
    #2 Chrome and Opera: 66%
    #3 Internet Explorer: 45%

    http://lifehacker.com/5917714/browser-speed-tests-chrome-19-firefox-13-internet-explorer-9-and-opera-1164

    I have 52 add-ons enabled, usually more (this is a new profile), they’re not lightweight ones by any means and I usually have 10-18 tabs open and Firefox (13) is fast and responsive on a very modest computer with an awful OS.
    Does it use a lot of memory? Sure, but it uses it wisely, it’s much less than Chrome, I don’t stare at the numbers, and I can still run 3 different versions of Firefox -at the same time- as well as other applications like Thunderbird, Inkscape, Photoshop, and my PC runs just fine.

    The Internet is always moving forward. You can choose to stay behind with old, obsolete software, but you’d be vulnerable and missing out on new technology.
    As far as updates, a new version of Firefox is released every 6 weeks now. The majority of people have already gotten used to it and appreciate the benefits. Add-ons are compatible by default now so there’s less breakage with new versions of Firefox.

    It may be a radical change going from 3.6 to the latest, but at some point, you’ll have to just rip the band-aid off and go for it and adjust.

45. impippo49 wrote on June 14, 2012 at 1:38 pm:

    I hate this new product.. I lost access to the Options controls and all the familiar other parts of 3.6.
    3.6 worked fine for me and I kept pushing off updating until it finally did without my direct desire.

    thanks Mozilla for pushing me to Chrome.

    b

46. George Cumbus wrote on June 14, 2012 at 2:15 pm:

    My current ver of Firefox is 13.0
    Have updated Java, QuickTime, & Adobe FlashPlayer.
    I cannot get my email on http://www.charter.net when I use Firefox.
    Charter says that my QuickTime plugin needs updated, But I have updated QuickTime to latest.
    However, I can get my email using browser IE8 or Google Chrome.
    So apparently there is some problem with Firefox.
    I’ve used Firefox for probably 8-10 years and would like to continue.
    So I need some assistance from Firefox to fix the problem.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 15, 2012 at 10:37 am:

       Can you please ask for help on our support site? I don’t know if this is a known issue.

47. cec wrote on June 14, 2012 at 2:35 pm:

    “Send page by email” is a much missed add-on. There is and never was anything like it. Plenty of extensions that send text from webpages, or a link to it etc, but nothing as far as I know that actually sent the whole page via email to whoever you wanted – indispensable for providing a record of what a page said. I would change browsers for anything with this functionality (well, anything except for IE)

48. paperman wrote on June 14, 2012 at 3:16 pm:

    Since i have updated to the latest version of Firefox i cannot play videos, play any games on Facebook, before the update Firefox was great, i really like Firefox but you have forced me to go back to Explorer, why would you force your clients to go to another server, Firefox was much better back when you started, i agree improvements are good and nescesscary but this new update is not an improvement, it is a disappointment….

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 15, 2012 at 10:33 am:

       Did you recently update the Flash Player plugin? It appears that this update is causing several problems and we’re trying to get it fixed. See here for more information.

49. Debo Debod wrote on June 14, 2012 at 11:57 pm:

    YOU STILL HAVEN’T FIX THE NEW FIREFOX TO WORK WITH MY “GOOGLE-TOOL-BAR” WITH “SPELL-CHECK” AS IT’S WAY BETTER THAN YOUR SPELL-CHECK!!! I WILL NOT UP-GRADE UNTIL YOU FIX IT SO I CAN KEEP MY ADD-ON’S I HAVE!! I’M USING GOOGLE CHROME AND SAFARI NOW MOST OF THE TIME!!! FIX IT!!!

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 19, 2012 at 10:01 am:

       The Google Toolbar was discontinued. That page has some recommendations for alternatives, in case you’re interested.

50. camroc wrote on June 15, 2012 at 10:51 am:

    FX currency converter is vital to me. I won’t upgrade until it works beyond 3.x versions of firefox. I wish you would stop trying to force upgrades on me until you get the currency converter upgraded along with them.

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on June 15, 2012 at 3:07 pm:

       There are a bunch of alternatives available on our site. Have you given them a try?

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