Firefox signed addons

#1

Mozilla just protected their browser from unsigned addons. If you are using an unsigned addon, it will suddenly not work. There is no way around it. All addon developers will have to use the official Mozilla process for signing their work.

Now, this is a great idea. Really. I don’t want some useful addon to start making unnoticed changes to my system settings or injecting ads.

However, for the nonce, it is irritating because ABSOLUTELY NONE of the addons I use are signed. Language libraries, canvas blockers, ad blockers, Gmail denhancements … none of it.

Of course, I stumbled upon this because I started to play a YouTube video and actually saw an ad for the first time in years. I mean, WTF?

This is a huge issue, and there is no way around it aside from using nightly/dev builds of the browser where you can turn signing off using xpinstall.signatures.required in about:config. The community is a bit upset, as you can well imagine.

Please share any fixes you come across and/or decent addons you find that work. The ones I’m mostly looking for are:
CanvasBlocker
BitDefender Wallet
Ebates
Google Translator
Reverse Image Search
Search Preview
Simplify Gmail
Social Fixer
uBlock Origin

#2

The issue so much that they’re requiring everything be signed, but that Mozilla let the certificate expire which caused every add-on to be broken.

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/05/04/update-regarding-add-ons-in-firefox/

1 Like
#3

Someone in the comments linked to a fix to this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19826903

#4

Oh, my god. I never realized how many ads there were for the average user until today.

#5

Rather than using work-arounds, which can lead to issues later on, we strongly recommend that you continue to wait.

That isn’t a fix. I mean, it hopefully will be a fix. Eventually.

#6

You should put a Pi-Hole on your network. Then you won’t be 100% dependent upon browser-based blocking.

#7

Mozilla has released an update to Firefox which resolves the issue.

#8

I went into the options and restarted for the new update and everything is back to the way it was.

WHEW!

#9

I feel like I’m missing out, I don’t run a single addon.

Are they worth the trouble?

#10

Install uBlock Origin and then visit YouTube and let me know.
You can always remove it later if you don’t like it.

#11

Oh, without a doubt.

AdBlockPlus strips off almost all of the moving/wiggling/flashing/crazy colored ads… well, it removes almost all of them, but the obtrusive ones are the main reason I use it.

I also use NoScript, which means I’m a little safer if I visit (or am forcibly redirected to) a less-than-savory site, since JavaScript is what is used to do automated actions in your browser.

#12

That was interesting. The update process uninstalled Firefox but didn’t start a reinstall. After manually reinstalling, first thing I noticed is that it wiped out my selected home page. Minor, but a glitch I hadn’t seen happen before.

#13

I use “New Tab Homepage” to bypass the stupidity FFox forces on the home page… I want a blank, damn it!

Since the broken extension and FFox update, when I create a new tab the URL is not selected - it used to be. So I could type , and immediately start typing a URL.
No longer… or maybe I should say… not today. Add a between the old and the URL.

Breaks my muscle memory!