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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

The Post-Mortem result for me is that I have xpinstall.signatures.required permanently disabled.

I'm stuck running an old version of Firefox because I have too much data in Tab Groups, and I haven't be able to migrate it yet.

I'll have to find the time someday, since Google Sheets no longer works.

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> I'm stuck running an old version of Firefox because I have too much data in Tab Groups

Yikes! You're running a years-old version of Firefox without security updates? And you're browsing public websites?

I think there are some supported add-ons for tab groups that work with current Firefox. Please, please don't run an insecure browser on the public internet.

There are no working tab group addons post XUL, I've tried them all and they are all completely broken. While I agree that you shouldn't run without updates, please don't tell people that there is a working substitute for this functionality.

Before posting that comment, I searched not only for such addons but for the last updates to those addons and for reviews of those addons, which seemed to suggest that they work as Web Extensions and function as at least some people want. That said, I can't vouch for them personally, and I appreciate you providing some firsthand experience.

I used to use the XUL version and now use a replacement, and it fully fulfils the function the XUL version did for me.

Accepting anti-features in exchange for security hotfixes isn't going to win everyone over.

Posts that assume everyone considers certain changes to Firefox "anti-features" aren't going to win everyone over, either.

There are good reasons for the move to Web Extensions, the deprecation of XUL, more careful checking/validation of extensions, and other such changes.

Right, so we fork.

> Posts that assume everyone considers certain changes to Firefox "anti-features" aren't going to win everyone over, either.

This seems like a bad faith characterisation. The discussion was about ars's activities, and I think it is reasonable to assume silversconfused was guessing at ars's opinions on these changes, not at "everyone's" opinions.

That setting is an inert toggle in branded Release builds.

>The Post-Mortem result for me is that I have xpinstall.signatures.required permanently disabled.

Firefox has been ignoring that preference since 2016, when it broke my workflow in the middle of the day and I wrote this Hitler parody:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taGARf8K5J8

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