addons.mozilla.org needs an override for installing incompatible addons
There is a major issue regarding the addons.mozilla.org method of addon compatibility checking. The problem is that when a addon is detected as incompatible based on version number it becomes impossible to attempt to install it even if the add on it's self is compatible.
The example I am going to use here are unofficial forks of firefox that support both web extensions and npapi plugins. Because some of these forks use quantum version numbers it disables the ability to install the npapi legacy addons (which are still fully compatible)
It is IMPERATIVE that advanced users are provided with an INSTALL ANYWAY button because frankly its a bit stupid and completely broken to prevent advanced users from installing an add on just because of a version number mismatch.
This needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed yesterday.
I included a image displaying a mockup of how I expect the site to behave instead of simply disabling the addon
All Replies (5)
The current version of the insert Extension at AMO may be for Firefox 57.0 and later.
If you require a old version of the Extension from when it supported Firefox 56 and earlier then click on the "Version History > See all versions" and it will show the past versions along with current. May need to scroll down to a version that says it supports versions before 57.0.
AMO does not host any NPAPI Plugins.
Firefox 52.0 and later Releases only allowed the Flash Player Plugin to run so this is not a Firefox 57.0+ or Quantum thing. The Firefox 52 ESR did allow other NPAPI Plugins to run though Windows users needed 32-bit to use Plugins besides Flash and Silverlight. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/npapi-plugins
Now that the Firefox 52 ESR is EOL as of 52.9.0esr as of Sept 5th, the Legacy Extensions will soon be disabled on AMO.
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/08/21/timeline-for-disabling-legacy-firefox-add-ons/
I am not referring to the normal builds of Firefox but rather forks of the source code with non standard add on support. The version reported by the build does not always reflect it's capabilities especially if the fork is using versioning that does not follow the same numerical progression as the Mozilla builds.
Actually i found that add on from an alternate download source and can confirm it works perfectly fine but you clearly did not read my OP because I explicitly stated
For those of us !!! USING UNOFFICIAL BUILDS !!!
we need a way to override these compatibility warnings and install the plugins manually.
With the button to install them disabled in the page source there is no method for us to download the addon so it also becomes impossible to side load it. Essentially the website is arbitrarily denying us access to the files for very bad reasons even though we are using alternate builds of FF with expanded addon capabilities
Okulungisiwe ngu Mike_Loeven
hi, mozilla plans to remove legacy addons that are no longer compatible with firefox quantum (57 & above) like the one you've referenced from AMO in the coming days: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/08/21/timeline-for-disabling-legacy-firefox-add-ons/
Mike_Loeven said
I am not referring to the normal builds of Firefox but rather forks of the source code with non standard add on support. The version reported by the build does not always reflect it's capabilities especially if the fork is using versioning that does not follow the same numerical progression as the Mozilla builds. Actually i found that add on from an alternate download source and can confirm it works perfectly fine but you clearly did not read my OP because I explicitly stated For those of us !!! USING UNOFFICIAL BUILDS !!! we need a way to override these compatibility warnings and install the plugins manually. With the button to install them disabled in the page source there is no method for us to download the addon so it also becomes impossible to side load it. Essentially the website is arbitrarily denying us access to the files for very bad reasons even though we are using alternate builds of FF with expanded addon capabilities
Maybe I did read and understood. Your reply again shows that you are not quite understanding this fully.
I understand that you are using a third-party build which is Waterfox. It is based on the source of the old Firefox 56.0 Release but with changes and updates made by the author.
Your UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:56.0; Waterfox) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.2.3
The problem may be due to the not standard useragent. It has Waterfox in it and the 56.2.3 is not a actual Firefox version as you can see on https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/releases/. Firefox Releases since 16.0.2 do not show the minor version increases whether on Release or ESR. For example the current Firefox Release is 62.0.2 but it shows as 62.0 in UA. For Firefox ESR the current is 60.2.1esr but it shows as 60.0 in UA.
The proper useragent of this may work for legacy extensions looking for Firefox 56.0 and earlier. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
The use of word Plugins in your reply is incorrect in this case as Plugins refers to say the NPAPI Flash Player Plugin from Adobe. What you want to install are Extensions.
Addons is a general term that just groups together the separate Extensions, Plugins, Themes (complete and image), Dictionaries, search engines and language packs. Mozilla should have just kept things simple and separate as it was before Firefox 3.0.
Mozilla is not likely going to make any site adjustments on addons.mozilla.org now since the legacy Extensions on site will soon be disabled anyways as I linked to the blog post about this.
Besides if you still have a complaint about the addons.mozilla.org site then the place to bring it up is at https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/add-ons
Okulungisiwe ngu James
Try this, even when get the red slash & circle for "blocked" or "no" appears on cursor hover; if you think an add-on is compatible with the 3rd party build that you are using ..... right-click the Add to Firefox button and use Save Link as ... and save the XPI file to disk. Then to install that extension simply use File > Open File ... from the browser menu to manually install it. Or you can just "drag" the XPI file into the browser window to manually install it, too. I have been doing that since long before AMO even existed. I have a ton of extensions going back to Phoenix 0.4 sitting on a few LS-120 "floppies" and my last LS-120 drive just about died completely over ten years ago; with patience and some luck the "read" worked the last time I used it but the "write" part broke back in 2005 or 2006. I used the LS-120 media to store so much data that I wore out 5 different drives; they lasted about a year each for me. The LS-120 is a "Zip-type" drive that reads / writes to both 3.5 floppies (1.2 to 1.44 Mb only) and the 120Mb LS-120 "floppies" - that was from before USB interfaces became common and long before "Flash-sticks" existed. Very fragile internal drives that used external media for 100x storage of what a floppy disk would hold.
But you have to act fast for all the Legacy extensions that you want to use; save them all to disk --- before Mozilla removes that old extensions from the AMO website! Once they are gone from AMO, all users will have is what they saved to disk or maybe from another website that may have "scraped" them from the AMO website to archive those Legacy extensions.