Warning: Firefox version 56

If you upgrade to the latest version 56 of Firefox, Adobe Flash Player, Silverlight and another one that I forgot, will NO Longer Work, so if you use sites that require these 2 (3) Add Ons you can forget about it.

I Know, I made the mistake of upgrading and I could no longer use sites requiring these add ons so I had to download the older version, Uninstall the recent version of Firefox and then re-install the older version.

For those of you who do not need sites with these add ons no big deal.

Preventing Firefox from automatically updating itself as soon as you go back to the older version may be tricky.

In the past there was a version of Firefox that insisted on putting black text on my dark theme (so it was invisible) where all other versions put white text on the dark theme. I opted to skip that update until they fixed the problem, but it took some doing to prevent it from starting to automatically download the defective version as soon as I opened it.

I think I had to enter about:config in the address bar, click past the warning, search for app.update and set
app.update.auto
and
app.update.enabled
to "false"

Thanks for the Info Jenny100, I checked the about:config and all is good..... so far.

The strange thing with this version I downloaded and installed is when I check the Help tab to see what version installed I also got this statement:



Hmm, don't know what that means and how I got this.

I'm not sure what that means, but I found this about EME-free versions
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1118889

Thanks Jenny100,
I appreciate you taking the time from your busy schedule to supply me with the info and the link, I have read through it and I now understand.

Again, thanks and take care.
Ray

I just read it's even getting worse with Firefox 57, which will be released in November 2017. That is, as far as compatibility with old add-ons is concerned.

It was quite annoying as it used to be, when your add-ons, plug-ins and other scripts, even the essential security ones from your anti-virus application and related, wouldn't work a lot of the time, because Firefox would issue updates every six weeks or so, and the add-on updates would always lag behind, rendering them of little use.

Now for security and compatibility reasons, Firefox is being completely retooled, and old add-ons will have to be replaced with the new standard of 'WebExtensions'. This means all old add-ons will stop working as of November, unless the developers have completely revised them. Firefox say that in the end, it will be a good thing, as nearly all "extensions created with the new standard won’t break in new Firefox releases".

But as it is, three-quarters of my add-ons are currently labelled 'Legacy' (= outdated), which has me wondering how many replacements I will have to be looking for!

Full announcement: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-add-technology-modernizing

Best,

Rich

I tried one of my legacy add ons, it still seems to function.

I was talking about version 57, however, which won't be out till November.

Best,

Rich