Firefox 60 ESR is replacing Add-ons with WebExtensions

Updated -

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Environment
  3. Known Issues
  4. Additional Resources

Introduction

Mozilla Firefox has been known for its extendability, and has grown a large ecosystem of native add-ons which add or modify its features and behavior. As of Firefox 60 ESR, this add-on technology is modernizing and switching to a new format, WebExtensions, which has been used by Chrome and Chromium. As part of this change, support for classic Add-Ons that use the XUL technology will be removed in the May/June 2018 timeframe.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Firefox 60 ESR

Known Issues

Add-ons

Either of the followings scenarios are known to result in issues:

  • One or more publicly available add-ons from Firefox Add-ons are in use, which are based on the XUL technology, and those add-ons have not been ported to the new format.
  • Custom add-ons that use the XUL technology have been implemented, and these add-ons have not been ported to the WebExtensions format yet.

Plugins

In addition to the add-on changes, Firefox 60 ESR is discontinuing support for NPAPI plugins, such as the Java JRE plugin. The only supported plugin will be the Adobe Flash plugin, which will be supported until 2020.

A list of the more common plugins can be found here.

Additional Resources

Direct documentation references are available for both add-ons and plugins, as seen below.

Add-ons

Plugins

  • Product
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • Component
  • firefox