Timeline for disabling legacy add-ons on addons.mozilla.org

Caitlin Neiman

7 responses

Mozilla will stop supporting Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) 52, the final release that is compatible with legacy add-ons, on September 5, 2018.

As no supported versions of Firefox will be compatible with legacy add-ons after this date, we will start the process of disabling legacy add-on versions on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) in September. On September 6, 2018, submissions for new legacy add-on versions will be disabled.  All legacy add-on versions will be disabled in early October, 2018. Once this happens, users will no longer be able to find your extension on AMO.

After legacy add-ons are disabled, developers will still be able to port their extensions to the WebExtensions APIs. Once a new version is submitted to AMO, users who have installed the legacy version will automatically receive the update and the add-on’s listing will appear in the gallery.

For more information about porting legacy extensions to the WebExtensions API is available on MDN.  We encourage legacy add-on developers to visit our wiki for more information about upcoming development work and ways to get in touch with our team for help.

7 responses

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  1. zakius wrote on :

    “For more information about porting legacy extensions to the WebExtensions API is available on MDN. We encourage legacy add-on developers to visit our wiki for more information about upcoming development work and ways to get in touch with our team for help”
    sure, where exactly can I find information how to properly implement mouse gestures and keyboard hotkeys? working on each and every possible page, working on userchrome, aware of context (executing different action if performed over website area, different over sidebar, different over tab bar etc.)?
    and while we are at it: when can I find help in providing native user interface, using the same colors and shapes users know and feel confident with for interface elements?

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    1. jase wrote on :

      I couldn’t answer your first question, but as for the second one, following the Photon design guidelines (https://design.firefox.com/photon/welcome.html) should be sufficient to making your extension blend in nicely with the Firefox UI. The site also provides a wealth of Photon-style SVG icons you can use, as well as instructions for making your own. Examples using the context-fill and context-fill-opacity properties should be available, too.

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      1. zakius wrote on :

        The thing is
        1. Photon is terrible in terms of both usability and looks
        2. I meant systemwide consistency across all browsers (since WE is pretty much Chromium Extensions API and there is polyfill allowing WE to run in Chromium)

        and to be honest: I was being salty as both things are impossible in WE

        additionally XUL exposed many nice interface components that are not available currently (maybe web components will change this some day…)

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  2. Peter Bhat Harkins wrote on :

    I got an email saying I had an account and active add-on. It’s possible, but I don’t remember it. I tried to reset a password on my account and was told I don’t have one. What gives?

    Sorry to use your blog for a support request, but when I responded to an email it linked to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons#Getting_in_touch. Nothing here talks about account/developer support and this doesn’t mean signing up for yet another user account. Thanks for any help.

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  3. kwerboom wrote on :

    Could you at least archive the last version of legacy add-ons the way you archive older versions of Firefox so that people have a safe, official repository for these add-ons should we need them for an older machine we are trying to get running on a network? You do realize Firefox is the last and most recent web browser to support both Windows XP and Vista.

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  4. glandium wrote on :

    What about Thunderbird and Seamonkey? When is their last release with support for legacy addons, and does that match your timeline?

    Reply

  5. sjjdkwoa0xoem wrote on :

    It’s just throwing the labour of people into junk.

    When companies collect, stockpile and store indefinitely personal data of people, they don’t cry “we have too little disk space”. But when companies can delete something they don’t need, like legacy ff addons, or coursera videos, they just do it, and they don’t care that it is cheap not to delete this data.

    Mozilla, I insist that you should keep all the source code of all the old addons available. It doesn’t matter that they cannot be run on current firefox. It is large amount of code people have spent their holydays creating. It is still valuable, it still can be used for education purposes. If you claim that you don’t have space to store them, you can create a new org on GitHub, convert each old addon release history into a git repo and put there, so GH would store them, not you. This legacy mustn’t disappear.

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