Firefox 22 breaks a large number of Add-Ons and renders them unfixable

[c627627]

Add-Ons are the one and only reason some of us did not switch to Chrome yet. The changes introduced in Firefox 22 make Add-On creators have to rewrite their programs from scratch. Many of them have real jobs, so the add-ons just die. So people are going to be asking, if I neither Firefox nor Chrome have my Add-on, why stay with Firefox? Everybody has an Add-On not available on Chrome that they stayed with Firefox for.

Mine is PlainOldFavorites which adds Windows Favorites folder to Firefox. Whoever started maintaining their Favorites under Windows 95 knows how important this is.


The author is getting inundated with people thinking this is just a fix that's needed. But it's more like a complete rewrite, which is unlikely to happen for many Add-Ons.



Does anyone know where the statistics are that say how many people are on Firefox 21 vs Firefox 22, it'll be interesting to see how long people stay on Firefox 21 because of the Add-Ons.

 

[zzzzzzzzzz]

My clients am currently using Firefox 10.0.12 as my main browser; I use it for most web browsing. The 10 version series no longer receives updates, but it is the best available alternative at the moment.

I dislike the Rapid Release Cycle and its side-effects, but unfortunately there do not appear to better browser alternatives at the moment (I am have done much searching).

I currently use only 8 extensions. Six of the 8 are to make available features that were removed in previous version series. The other two extension add basic functionality that is important to have in a browser (file download time-stamping and simple window/tab cloning)

Do note, if you have not already, that there is also a Firefox "ESR" channel that is currently and for the near future offering Firefox 17 series with update. The ESR download page is available at: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html
Unfortunately, there is precedence that Mozilla Foundation prefers to focus resources on development of new changes (for new series) rather than fixing non-security problems of current series.