With Firefox 57, scheduled for release in November 14, 2017, Mozilla will end support for legacy extensions, and only support newer WebExtensions. Here’s how to check if your extensions will stop working—and how to keep using them after November, if you need to.
Why XUL Extensions Are Going Away
All traditional extensions, including XUL extensions, are being discontinued. They were very powerful, but that was both a strength and a weakness. The sheer power of these extensions meant they could modify Firefox’s browser code, which could lead to instability and innocent-looking malware add-ons.
Instead, Mozilla has been working on WebExtensions, which are similar to Chrome and Edge’s add-ons. These are the future of Firefox extensions. Because these add-ons have to work in a more standard way and can’t mess with Firefox’s internal code, they should cause fewer problems. It should also be easier for developers to port add-ons from Chrome to Firefox.
Currently, Firefox supports both traditional (legacy) extensions and WebExtensions. With Firefox 57, the older extensions will stop working, and only newer WebExtensions will work. This change is already live in Firefox Nightly, the leading edge development version of Firefox. Developers have been pushed to upgrade their extensions, but not all have—which leads us to the problem.
How to See if Your Extensions Will Stop Working
if you use Firefox today, you can check to see which of your extensions will stop working in version 57.
To check, click menu > Add-ons and select the “Extensions” category.Older extensions that will stop working are labeled with a “Legacy” tag if…
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