Upcoming changes to Pale Moon's Add-on System
The Pale Moon team plans to remove support for Mozilla AMO (Add-ons Mozilla Org) from the web browser on May 8th, 2018.
Pale Moon is largely based on Firefox code, but compatibility took a hit recently when Mozilla switched the add-on system of Firefox to support WebExtensions exclusively while Pale Moon stayed with the what Mozilla calls legacy add-on system.
Only Firefox 52 ESR supports the legacy add-on system right now, and that support is removed with the release of Firefox 60 ESR. Starting with Firefox 60 ESR, no official version of the Firefox web browser will support legacy add-ons.
Mozilla announced plans to remove legacy add-ons from the official Firefox add-on repository after the launch of Firefox 60 ESR.
This decision impacts the Pale Moon browser in several ways as Mozilla AMO is integrated into current browser versions.
Pale Moon users can run searches on the browser's about:addons website and install add-ons directly from the interface. Add-ons installed from Mozilla AMO use Mozilla's automatic update service to check for add-on updates and install any that are found.
External add-on listings on the official Pale Moon add-ons repository, addons.palemoon.org, may point to Mozilla AMO as well.
The functionality breaks if Mozilla removes legacy add-ons from AMO. Pale Moon does not support the WebExtensions format. The development team of Pale Moon decided to remove support for Mozilla AMO from Pale Moon as a consequence.
What it means for Pale Moon users
First the good news. While Pale Moon won't support searching about:addons for add-ons hosted on Mozilla AMO anymore, users of the browser may still install legacy add-ons from AMO directly.
Installing add-ons hosted on AMO works only for as long as classic add-ons remain hosted on Mozilla's website. One downside is that add-ons won't update automatically anymore because of the removal of the automatic update service that takes care of Mozilla hosted add-ons.
The removal means that Pale Moon users will have to visit the add-on pages manually to find out about updates and install them if that is the case.
Add-ons from AMO installed in Pale Moon already will be affected in the same way. They continue to function normally, but they won't be updated automatically anymore.
Tip: Check whether the add-on is hosted at the Pale Moon add-on repository. If it is, install it from there instead. Add-ons installed from the official repository use Pale Moon's automatic update service. You may also want to consider downloading any add-on from Mozilla AMO before Mozilla starts the removal of legacy add-ons.
Developers may upload their add-ons to Pale Moon's add-on repository to keep it available online. There is also the possibility that add-ons may get forked before they are pulled from Mozilla AMO.
There is also an effort underway to archive all classic add-ons of the Firefox web browser.
Closing Words
Mozilla will pull classic add-ons from the Firefox add-ons site eventually at which point several built-in features of Pale Moon will stop functioning correctly that rely on it. The removal of these features is the only logical consequence. While users may not be thrilled about that, there is no doubt that this is the only option available.
Pale Moon users can install classic add-ons from AMO afterward until the add-ons get removed by Mozilla. It seems unlikely that many add-on developers will support legacy add-ons after the release of Firefox 60 ESR anyway.
Now You: are you affected by the change?
Related articles
- Firefox 57 release overview
- How to move Firefox legacy extensions to another browser
- Pale Moon team releases first version of Basilisk browser
- The future of programs that share code with Firefox
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.