To Gary H: Very sad? Yes, but you have alternatives, if you want to look for them, to know one alternative (a very good one, IMHO), please read the rest. Some add-ons or features may not be yet available because of the nature of ESR releases. Please note though that Firefox 45.x ESR may not support certain features yet that Mozilla implemented in Firefox 46 to 51. The new installation will pick up the profile that you used up until now.
The release is on March 7, 2017.Īnother option that you have is to install Firefox ESR directly on your system, and start using it. Mike notes that you should make the change as close to the release of Firefox 52 ESR as possible. C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox.ĪCCEPTED_MAR_CHANNEL_IDS=firefox-mozilla-releaseĪCCEPTED_MAR_CHANNEL_IDS=firefox-mozilla-esr It is located in the root folder of the Firefox installation, e.g. The second file that you need to modify is update-settings.ini. Pref("", "esr") Step 2: Modify update-settings.ini Open the file in a plain text editor, and replace the line C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\prefs\channel-prefs.js You find the file under defaults\prefs\, e.g.
Step 1: Update channel-prefs.jsįirst thing you do is update the file channel-prefs.js.
Mike Kaply published a guide recently that explains how to switch the update channel from Firefox Stable to Firefox ESR.
If you think you’ll need a little longer to transition away from such plugins you should download Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release), where NPAPI plugins will continue to work for another year.Another option that you have is to install a Firefox ESR release next to Firefox Stable, and use it exclusively for sites and services that require plugins. Consider this a short-term, stop gap solution. In Firefox 53, Mozilla will remove this workaround. That’s it assuming your NPAPI plugins are installed correctly they should work as before. “But there is a way to enable Java, Silverlight etc NPAPI plugins in Firefox 52 using an about:config setting. Add new Boolean string "plugin.load_flash_only" and set it to false. You can’t work with government if no Java plugin is present,” he explains. “This is important, because some websites are still using Java plug-ins, like for example our government site for signing documents. If there’s a particular NPAPI plugin that you rely on there is (for now) a way to override Firefox defaults and re-enable NPAPI support. Renable NPAPI Plugin Support in Firefox 52 Google Chrome ditched NPAPI support back in 2014 (and the version of Flash that ships pre-bundled uses the newer PPAPI tech).īut it is in Firefox 52, with Mozilla’s first step towards total removal of the technology from its browser, that is likely to impact Linux users the most. Whatever bonuses these plugins, Flash, Silverlight and Java among them, offered have been long since outweighed by the inherent security flaws manipulated to malicious ends. This is a good move in the round as NPAPI is a terribly outdated technology (over 20 years old, in fact). Firefox 52 began its roll out yesterday, bringing a bunch of small iterative improvements to the fore.Īmong the most significant change in the release is the decision to disable support for all NPAPI plugins bar Adobe Flash by default.