Pale Moon 29.2.0 does not support legacy Firefox extensions anymore that are not port

[harlan4096]

When Mozilla switched from its legacy add-on system to WebExtensions, Firefox forks such as Pale Moon saw an increase in users who wanted to keep using extensions that Mozilla's new system did not support anymore. Not all extensions did work, but many did, and users could continue using these extensions.

The release of Pale Moon 29.2.0 changes the browser's extension compatibility in a major way, as it removes support for legacy Firefox extensions that are not adjusted to work with the Pale Moon browser. About 230 extensions are currently available for Pale Moon on the official Pale Moon Add-ons website, including popular extensions such as Decentraleyes, uBlock Origin (Legacy), or FoxyProxy.

According to a forum post by Moonchild, Pale Moon project owner, support for Firefox extensions was always considered temporary by the development team. Classic Firefox extensions may not install at all in Pale Moon or may introduce compatibility issues, and that is one of the main reasons for blocking classic Firefox extensions in Pale Moon 29.2.0.

Extensions that are not compatible may be ported to make them compatible with the Pale Moon browser, but who is going to do it? For the Pale Moon project team, the answer is clear. It is the community that needs to step up to ensure that extensions that they use remain compatible with the browser.

Realistically, most browser users don't know how to create browser extensions or modify them to make them work. The Pale Moon team cannot port the majority of browser extensions to the browser either, which leaves a small group of community members with the skills and time to port some of the extensions to the browser.

A thread is available on the official Pale Moon forum to post critical Firefox-only extensions.

Pale Moon users may stay on version 29.1.1 of the browser as a temporary measure to keep on using extensions that would otherwise be disabled in Pale Moon 29.2.0 or later. A good option to test compatibility is to use a portable copy of Pale Moon 29.2.0 and test extension compatibility in that version to see which of the installed extensions remain compatibility and which do not. Downgrading to an earlier version of Pale Moon after installation of the 29.2.0 upgrade is not advised as it may introduce profile compatibility issues.

Pale Moon 29.2.0 was released on April 27. 2021.

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