Firefox accidentally disables all add ons

Probably the worst thing that a Firefox update has ever done has happened:

It accidentally disabled all user's addons in a patch that was meant to prep add on developers to the new security requirements

Worse, the plugin website installer seemed to break at the same time when people went there on the browser's recommendation.

The Mozilla.org had to scramble to tell people stop using workarounds from reddit, etc.

They managed to push a beta hotfix last night if you turned the option on to allow FF to run studies.

This morning they have pushed a fix.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/06/…roken-add-ons/

I've got to say, its pretty shocking how much garbage websites deploy - its like they double and tripple down on people who try to have a decent internet experience.

Its like if Jolt ran every website, not just my former favourite,

Happened on May 4th had to download a hotfix to enable the add-ons again. Otherwise you got can't download or not authorized for each one. What a pain in the ass.

Reminds me of when MS allowed gear of war certificate to expire….

Happened to me as well. Just focused on chrome and didn't bother…until…my parents poked me that evening who experienced the same issue.
After seeing that Mozilla was working on it, I just told them to wait.

Firefox makes problems for me for quite a bit (e.g. logging in on youtube doesnt work) for a while, so…just another reason to stick to chrome.

No problems at my side.
Then again I allowed only one addon ever: uBlock Origin. Firefox didn't kill it.

Originally Posted by joxer
No problems at my side.
Then again I allowed only one addon ever: uBlock Origin. Firefox didn't kill it.

Yes it did as I use both uBlock Origin and Adblock Plus.

Man, I have no idea what's adblock+ and my RAM is thankful for it.
As I said, in my case Firefox runs only one addon and nothing happened with either firefox or that addon whatsoever.

It's still possible I just didn't notice something is going on as they apparently fixed it fast and I'm not 24/7 in front of the screen.
Then again, the article linked says people were without addons for 3 days. I would notice if uBlock wasn't running in 3 days as I check stuff at least once daily.

Apparently it's not the worst thing they've ever done. It's been named Armag-addon 2.0 - because they've done it before! Come on now, lads - this is very sloppy.

Originally Posted by joxer
Man, I have no idea what's adblock+ and my RAM is thankful for it.
As I said, in my case Firefox runs only one addon and nothing happened with either firefox or that addon whatsoever.

It's still possible I just didn't notice something is going on as they apparently fixed it fast and I'm not 24/7 in front of the screen.

Took two days to fix it actually before they updated FireFox, and they offered a terrible solution as you had to allow them access to your PC with that studies telemetry crap.

Also nothing wrong with AdBlock+ it's the largest adblocker on the net.

Just on that sidenote - I'd recommend uBlock Origins over Adblock+. Adblock had some questionable commercial entanglements, and i'd say uBlock is the preferred community-run solution these days.

I use both as some sites are a bitch with ads.

As one add-on only blocks certain things.

That's not counting how many sites block or cripple your browser if you use them.

Originally Posted by joxer
No problems at my side.
Then again I allowed only one addon ever: uBlock Origin. Firefox didn't kill it.

Its possible you have the "studies" flag turned on under options and privacy and are sending back info to them. This is what Mozilla used to issue a beta fix before putting out the update.

Originally Posted by Ripper
Just on that sidenote - I'd recommend uBlock Origins over Adblock+. Adblock had some questionable commercial entanglements, and i'd say uBlock is the preferred community-run solution these days.

I do too, but for different reasons.

I dumped adBlock because it turned out to seriously slow down my browsing speed. Their technique was apparently good at first but its list is so big now it became terrible. uBlock uses a different technique that is much more efficient.

adBlock has confirmed it whitelists certain websites if they pay them $1m which is what Google and MS do. I believe this is the reason that Chrome has adblocking built in as well as some forks of Firefox and this is a plan for Edge (though I don't think its working to well for them yet). Its really about a payoff to get whitelisted just like WHQL certificates - does NVidia still not certify with MS?

I think you can still block some whitelisted sites with adBlock, but I'm not sure.

uBlock whitelists some sites that are "fair" by default annoying but you can turn this off. It would be nice if they blocked nags by Google and Wikipedia by default too but they don't consider them ads.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
Probably the worst thing that a Firefox update has ever done has happened:

It accidentally disabled all user's addons in a patch that was meant to prep add on developers to the new security requirements

There was no update or anything accidental that caused the addon problem. It was caused by a certificate that just expired on its own. For some reason, nobody at Mozilla thought to deal with that before it expired.

This is the first issue i've had with Firefox in a long time. Easy work around. Just signed out of sync, and copied in a previous backup of my addons folder. Then just waited for the update. I only use Chrome for work now.

Originally Posted by Stingray
There was no update or anything accidental that caused the addon problem. It was caused by a certificate that just expired on its own. For some reason, nobody at Mozilla thought to deal with that before it expired.

Maybe not an update, but certainly an accident. They are taking responsibility for it.

As for bad updates, I would say Quantum arguably, and the various Chromifications of FF that have happened over the past few years are all pretty bad. Worst being the inability to keep the tabs on the bottom where they should be even when you set the flag in the about:config.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
Maybe not an update, but certainly an accident. They are taking responsibility for it.

Only an accident in that they failed to take action before the certificate expired. It wasn't anything they did that caused the problem, rather it was something they didn't do.

As for bad updates, I would say Quantum arguably, and the various Chromifications of FF that have happened over the past few years are all pretty bad. Worst being the inability to keep the tabs on the bottom where they should be even when you set the flag in the about:config.

Indeed, the lack of control over tabs-related stuff now is awful. As far as I'm concerned, the tab bar needs to be hidden when there's only one tab present, and now it's impossible to do that with an addon. I've had to resort to using a custom userChrome.css file to make it happen.

Question here…I've switched to Firefox, faster, but it has this annoying habbit of constantly sidetracking any pages ( to some bizarre, usually some buy this/company/etc mumbo jumbo)
Anyway to turn this off?

Firefox lost its way big-time. The management/developers became really authoritarian and made a lot of dumb decisions. Lots of former users of Firefox have given it up completely. Not surprised at this level of incompetence of this latest incident.

Waterfox is a nice alternative and based on when Firefox was actually good. All those great old extensions are still available and it is kept up to date. Unfortunately, new versions of waterfox will apparently be based on the new firefox, but for now, they said they will maintain a "classic version".

Try it out here - https://www.waterfox.net/

Another great alternative and one that still replicates the great features of Firefox is the Pale Moon browser. I use this one a lot too. Excellent browser and highly recommended. http://www.palemoon.org/

Originally Posted by BoboTheMighty
Question here…I've switched to Firefox, faster, but it has this annoying habbit of constantly sidetracking any pages ( to some bizarre, usually some buy this/company/etc mumbo jumbo)
Anyway to turn this off?

Two options:
1. Avoid gledalica
2. uBlock Origin. Turn it off when on rpgwatch (just once, it'll remember) and you're good to go.

Originally Posted by BoboTheMighty
Question here…I've switched to Firefox, faster, but it has this annoying habbit of constantly sidetracking any pages ( to some bizarre, usually some buy this/company/etc mumbo jumbo)
Anyway to turn this off?

That actually sounds like you got adware installed. Try to get rid of it via the cleaner from malwarebytes:
https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner/?lr