The brand new Firefox 57 – which is right now only available as Nightly Alpha version – is a very fast browser. The speed increase is obvious with a naked eye and very welcome.Firefox was becoming slower and slower, partly because of it’s support to older technologies. One of those are add-ons which enabled magical things that add-ons for other browsers can not do. However, that made them also vulnerable and many of them slowed down Firefox.
Two years of development…
It was time to change this. In the last two years there was lots of work with Firefox and especially “Project Electrolysis” or “e10s” and “Project Quantum“. The first one brought multi process architecture where Firefox runs as several processes instead of one. However, each new process means higher memory usage. In order not to consume too much memory, Firefox uses just right amount of processes to make things fast. The second, Project Quantum, is bringing a completely new web engine to show the web pages and apps to the user.
Firefox 57 is fast
Together Electrolysis and Quantum make a completely new, faster and better browsing experience. It’s totally worth it, but it comes with a price. Some of the older add-ons are not compatible with the new system. Add-on authors had a lot of time to update their add-ons, but the process wasn’t easy. In many cases where they relied on previously mentioned “magical” features the add-ons can’t really be re-created in the new system. The upside is that the new add-ons are compatible (at least partly) with add-ons in Chrome. The developers now need to develop their add-ons only once and users can use them in different browsers.
Find extension replacements for Firefox 57
If you relied on an old add-on then it’s time to find replacements. After Firefox 57 is released (it should happen in November 2017) you will not be able to use to old add-ons at all. They will be moved to “Unsupported” section of Add-ons. The new add-ons will be available in “Extensions” section.
List of my extensions
Here is a list of my favourite old unsupported extensions. I’m searching for new supported extensions with similar functionalities and I’ll post them together with the list. The list is being populated as I find new extensions, so please save this page and visit back. If you found an extension that does the job well, please let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to the list.
1. Text Link
Text Link is an invisible extension that enabled the user to click on any text that was an URL but not a link. A double click on the txt opened the link in a new tab.
Old: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/text-link/ – already updated to Quantum compatibility
New: Text Link WE: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/text-link-we/
2. Print Edit
Print Edit did a very nice thing – it let you edit the preview of a website before printing it out. You could remove ads, notices or large photos from the printout just before printing and doing it visually. Neat.
Old: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit/
New: Print Edit WE: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-edit-we/
3. FaviconizeTab
By double clicking on a tab user could make the tab smaller, that is the size of only the favicon tab. A neat way of showing more tabs on the screen.
Old: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/faviconizetab/
New: Still searching…
4. Lazarus: Form Recovery
Remembers what you type in forms. This can be useful for when you want to submit the same data again or when the browser or a website crashes.
Old: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-recovery/
New: Still searching…
5. Link Alert
A simple add-on that visually shows you what a link will do. On mouse over the link it displays an icon over the link showing if you’ll open a script, document, secure site, new window,…
Old: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/link-alert/ – already updated to Quantum
New: Still searching… The author of the old add-on wrote that it’s working on a new version, but that was in 2016.
6. Session Manager
Remembers your session better than Firefox and can revive them even after long time. It enabled me never to lose a precious tab.
Old: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-manager/
New: Still searching…
7. Selenium IDE
IDE for Selenium, an integrated environment that would allow recording and playing back actions on a website. It’s useful for testing, but also to automate repeated actions on a web site like entering data or selection options.
Old: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/selenium-ide/
New: Still searching…
8. Mouse gestures
Use mouse gestures to move between tabs, scroll page, open new tabs and many other actions.
There were many add-ons before, I personally used Mouse Gestures (Redox) which was dead long before, but it still worked.
Old: many, including Firegestures, All-in-One Gestures, Mouse Gestures Suite
New: also many, but for me Gesturefy works the best: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gesturefy/
Any extensions I have left out…?
Please let me know in the comments if you find and other compatible extension or if you think I left out an important one. And enjoy using the fast Firefox 57 when you get it!
