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I had a totally different experience. I'm still running FF 56.0.2 because I can't live without Tab Mix Plus. The official line was to wait for the update but

I had a totally different experience. I'm still running FF 56.0.2 because I can't live without Tab Mix Plus. The official line was to wait for the update but about:studies never came up with anything even after 24 hours of waiting and everyone was saying it was fixed but it wasn't for me, I presume because nobody cares about the refugees stuck on pre-add-on breaking versions. So it was completely broken until I finally found a reddit thread that described how to use the developer console to manually import the certificate extracted from the fix. That worked, but it enabled all my add-ons, even ones that were previously disabled. Bloody irritating. I didn't even know that it was possible to break things remotely like this.

y-satellite 7y ago
You realize, I hope, that 56.0.2 is riddled with security holes at this point? I get the attachment to old addons, but 129 CVEs (including multiple severe memory corruption bugs) affect that version now. It's not really reasonable to expect Mozilla to keep maintaining it.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  I don't expect them to maintain it, but I do expect them not to break it for no reason. Also they could have mentioned in their post that their fix did not do anything for older versions, instead of specifically telling everyone to just keep waiting. xpinstall.signatures.required = false didn't fix it. I'll be very happy to update when there's a version that has a good tab manager. I'm on the latest version at home and it regularly loses whole windows full of tabs, even though it is set to restore my session on startup. And there's no way to manually save sessions. It's hopeless.
  - y-satellite 7y ago
    In this day and age you're living on borrowed time using an old version of a web browser. This state of affairs has its good and bad, but your modern-day browser vendors don't typically maintain branches of old versions to make security and bug fixes (especially when they change things for security reasons, as with this case of old-style addons being removed). If you're going to insist on using an old unsupported version you have to accept the risk of things eventually breaking and the inconvenience of workarounds like the one you described.
    - brokenmachine 7y ago
      Well I've just been educated on a new mechanism by which things can be remotely broken.
      - sciurus 7y ago
        Just to be clear: supported version or not, this sucks, and I hope we'll have a fix for you. I wanted to point out this wasn't remotely broken, however. Even if you had no internet connection, your addons would have stopped working when the certificate expired. (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
        brokenmachine 7y ago
        Well that's reassuring! :-) I've fixed it now anyway, in the way I specifically read that I wasn't meant to do. Maybe you guys could inform us unsupported old version users what we should do instead of waiting for an update that can't come? It's ok, thanks for your post. I know stuff is complicated and shit happens. I'm much more disappointed that the latest Firefox doesn't have a working session manager than I am about this mixup. IMO that should be a core browser function.
        sciurus 7y ago
        In case it still helps you or someone else: A fix for Firefox 52 through 56 is available now at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disabled-add-on-fix-52-56/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disabled-add-... (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
        brokenmachine 7y ago
        Great. Thank you. Would you mind please telling whoever you need to that we need automatic session saving/restoring to work properly, and then lots of people like me will happily update.
        EdSharkey 7y ago
SeanDav 7y ago
I too am a Tab Mix Plus fan. I was using an ESR version to try to maintain better security while still using my favourite add-on. Now seemingly not possible. I am quite prepared to put up with security vulnerabilities for my personal use of browsers. I use sandboxing/ firewalls / VM's to protect myself. Not happy that an older version of Firefox was broken. I don't expect a company to maintain older versions forever, I do expect them to not deliberately or accidentally break them. Give me back my Tab Mix Plus!

y-satellite 7y ago

You realize, I hope, that 56.0.2 is riddled with security holes at this point? I get the attachment to old addons, but 129 CVEs (including multiple severe memory corruption bugs) affect that version now. It's not really reasonable to expect Mozilla to keep maintaining it.

brokenmachine 7y ago
I don't expect them to maintain it, but I do expect them not to break it for no reason. Also they could have mentioned in their post that their fix did not do anything for older versions, instead of specifically telling everyone to just keep waiting. xpinstall.signatures.required = false didn't fix it. I'll be very happy to update when there's a version that has a good tab manager. I'm on the latest version at home and it regularly loses whole windows full of tabs, even though it is set to restore my session on startup. And there's no way to manually save sessions. It's hopeless.
- y-satellite 7y ago
  In this day and age you're living on borrowed time using an old version of a web browser. This state of affairs has its good and bad, but your modern-day browser vendors don't typically maintain branches of old versions to make security and bug fixes (especially when they change things for security reasons, as with this case of old-style addons being removed). If you're going to insist on using an old unsupported version you have to accept the risk of things eventually breaking and the inconvenience of workarounds like the one you described.
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    Well I've just been educated on a new mechanism by which things can be remotely broken.
    - sciurus 7y ago
      Just to be clear: supported version or not, this sucks, and I hope we'll have a fix for you. I wanted to point out this wasn't remotely broken, however. Even if you had no internet connection, your addons would have stopped working when the certificate expired. (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
      - brokenmachine 7y ago
        Well that's reassuring! :-) I've fixed it now anyway, in the way I specifically read that I wasn't meant to do. Maybe you guys could inform us unsupported old version users what we should do instead of waiting for an update that can't come? It's ok, thanks for your post. I know stuff is complicated and shit happens. I'm much more disappointed that the latest Firefox doesn't have a working session manager than I am about this mixup. IMO that should be a core browser function.
        sciurus 7y ago
        In case it still helps you or someone else: A fix for Firefox 52 through 56 is available now at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disabled-add-on-fix-52-56/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disabled-add-... (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)
        brokenmachine 7y ago
        Great. Thank you. Would you mind please telling whoever you need to that we need automatic session saving/restoring to work properly, and then lots of people like me will happily update.
      - EdSharkey 7y ago

SeanDav 7y ago

I too am a Tab Mix Plus fan. I was using an ESR version to try to maintain better security while still using my favourite add-on. Now seemingly not possible. I am quite prepared to put up with security vulnerabilities for my personal use of browsers. I use sandboxing/ firewalls / VM's to protect myself. Not happy that an older version of Firefox was broken. I don't expect a company to maintain older versions forever, I do expect them to not deliberately or accidentally break them. Give me back my Tab Mix Plus!