NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

https://noscript.net/

by Amezarak • 9 years ago

66 83 9 years ago

noscript.net

andrei_says_2• 9 years ago

The title of this post is incorrect.

Seems like it is available, just in the old extension format.

From the noscript site:

Please be patient: if you feel naked while you're waiting for the "brand new" NoScript, you can still use the "regular" NoScript 5.x (and all the other extensions of yours) on Firefox 52 ESR, which will receive security updates until June 2018. See you soon!

Edit: my statement is incorrect, the noscript page refers to the ESR version of firefox.

authors suggest to use ESR, which is Extended Support Release, not the latest firefox.

ycmbntrthrwaway• 9 years ago

It is not, authors suggest to use ESR, which is Extended Support Release, not the latest firefox.

andrei_says_2• 9 years ago

I see, my bad.

pbhjpbhj2• 9 years ago

Latest Firefox is 57.0 "Quantum", for which it's not available, as in the title.

I feel the way addons were handled in the upgrade was wrong, most of mine were just removed rather than being listed and marked as "incompatible". That seems wrong to me.

zython• 9 years ago

Or you know, "if you feel unsafe" you can always downgrade to 56 or chromium.

mariuolo• 9 years ago

Or ESR if you are willing to re-create your profile. It's based on 52.x and is going to be supported until March 2018.

Webextensions should have been sorted out by then. Hopefully.

gdulli• 9 years ago

The utility of the long tail of Firefox plugins was what gave it its value. I've been using a hybrid of Pale Moon and Firefox since the last round of losing plugins and now don't see a reason to keep Firefox at all.

Etheryte• 9 years ago

While I definitely see where you’re coming from, I certainly prefer building for better peformance as opposed to supporting everything forever. Analogous to Windows, supporting all the old things gave them a strong edge in their business, but they also paid a very hefty price on it (performance issues, security loopholes, BSODs to name a few).

pbhjpbhj2• 9 years ago

I'd value a resource with a simple explanation of the changes that prevent a compatibility layer from enabling all the old plugins?

majewsky3• 9 years ago

In one sentence, the move to more aggressive multithreading and sandboxing. The old extension model conflicts with the boundaries that had to be established for both these things.

noisem4ker2• 9 years ago

Part of the breakage is precisely due to the explicit intention to drop all the legacy APIs and the respective shims that have become too much of a burden to maintain over time.

One major technical change would be the deprecation plan of XUL/XBL (the toolkit used to build the interface, which could be freely accessed by addons) in favor of a wholly HTML future.

forapurpose4• 9 years ago

AFAIK, the old add-ons could interface with Firefox in any way they wanted; they had carte blanche. You can imagine the dependency hell and security risks; it's not desirable to duplicate that.

K0nserv• 9 years ago

I use UBlock Origin to achieve pretty much the same behaviour as NoScript. Haven't found a reason to use NoScript since I started doing that.

notanote• 9 years ago

Yes, once you turn on the "I am an advanced user" setting, you can fine tune script blocking in Ublock Origin. It's called dynamic filtering.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu...

jszymborski• 9 years ago

I've used NoScript for quite a while, and was sad to let it go when I switched to Quantum in Beta a while back.

I tried using uMatrix, which is from the same folks that made uBlock Origin, and I have to say I'm supperr happy with it. It applies the same heuristics that I usually apply manually (namely, allow 1st-party scripts automatically, allow 3rd-party manually as required).

I'm going to install NoScript when the WebExt version comes out, mainly for the excellent XSS/Canvas/misc. support. It remains to be seen which I'll use for blocking scripts, but I'm glad to have options.

topspin• 9 years ago

I use UBlock on mobile hardware where I want more aggressive filtering and Ghostery on the desktop. Both work in FF 57. I used NoScript in Chrome for many years and for a long time it worked very well, but the web evolved and I found myself forever wading through blocked scripts and unblocking or disabling NoScript altogether to get sites to function properly.

ehllo• 9 years ago

I use also UBlock Origin and there is really clear difference. With NoScript you can Browse most of the Sites without Javascript-Gimmicks like Parallax-News-Scrolling (for example Bloomberg) or On-Site-Embeded-Advertisemet (no JS no Ads). UBlock is nice but without NoScript it is not good enough for my personal taste.

forapurpose4• 9 years ago

There's a lot of overlap, but uMatrix doesn't replace NoScript.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730800

smegel• 9 years ago

NoScript's unique whitelist based pre-emptive script blocking approach

Is that unique apart from what Chrome has built in by default? (obviously you still need to opt-in).

akerro2• 9 years ago

Brave Browser has "Shield" mechanism where you can block ads/trackers and JS. It's built-in feature, you can set it up to be enabled by default or per-domain.

majewsky3• 9 years ago

Switching browsers just because some extension does not work for a few days after an upgrade seems like blowing it waaaay out of proportion.

digi_owl• 9 years ago

People stuck with Firefox because of the old, potent, extension framework.

Now they have no reason to stick with Firefox because the extension framework is just another Chrome clone, so why not switch to an actual Chrome clone?

babuskov2• 9 years ago

does not work for a few days after an upgrade

"A few days" is an understatement. Extension developers have known for months that these changes would break. If they hadn't created compatible versions by now, they certainly won't be able to do some in just a couple of days.

0xcde4c3db• 9 years ago

It's probably better to go straight to the blog post about the migration:

https://hackademix.net/2017/11/14/double-noscript/

Basically, the work to adapt NoScript and correspondingly expand the WebExtensions API has been going on for years, the original plan was to have a smooth transition when Firefox 57 came out, but there were some delays in the final days leading up to the release. Not recommended to stay on Firefox 56 because it won't get security patches; move to 52 ESR instead.

shock• 9 years ago

Moving to Firefox 52 isn't really an option for me because it's a pig compared to 55/56 (it consumes almost 5GBs of RAM compared to 1GB for 56).

sp3322• 9 years ago

I think you can switch to an unbranded build of 57, and enable legacy addons. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#Latest_Bu... You could also install the Developer Edition or a Nightly build. They're slightly less stable (usually pretty good for me) but they have the same option. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/

user98793728364• 9 years ago

The correct title should be "NoScript Not YET Available for Latest Firefox"

el_benhameen• 9 years ago

Yeah, when I saw the title and that the link was to the noscript site, I thought there must be some bad blood or something between Mozilla and noscript. Instead it’s just a polite “hey everyone, working hard!”. Which is great, but not really what the title indicates.

Amezarak3• 9 years ago

I thought about making the title something like that, but I didn't want it to seem as if the author should be maligned for not having it finished yet and I felt that it would have that connotation. I thought the title as written would be more neutral in that respect.

I personally consider NoScript an absolute must for security reasons, so I am not updating most of my machines until it is available. I thought that would be newsworthy for other people who have a similar mindset.

mrich• 9 years ago

The plugin breakage is the only downside of the new Firefox, the rest is just awesome.

I'm still looking for a new auto form filler that can have multiple profiles and fills in all fields at once with a hotkey. This is useful for filling in bugzilla bug reports where some fields always get the same data.

kreetx• 9 years ago

Yes for awesome, and the new Web Extension API which now breaks things will make cross-browser browser extension development possible (as far as I have read!). I can very well live in default-land for a couple of weeks for that.

Also, this extension-breakage taking place right now seems to be mostly the extension developers' fault, since they've known well in advance that this is coming. (Not judging, just saying -- many/most extensions are probably hobby projects, and porting them appears to take a non-trivial effort.)

EDIT: removed a word from a wrong place :) Definitely not a spelling mistake, not wording either, hmm, what should I write here.

awirth• 9 years ago

I have a small extension (~100 users) that I forgot to upgrade until 57 landed and broke it. I hastily threw together a WebExt version and pushed on Wednesday night, but forgot to set the strict_min_version flag correctly (which was, unfortunately, Firefox 57).

The new version worked fine for people on 57, but for anyone that was on ESR or a slightly out-of-date version of firefox and updated they got a broken WebExtension that I couldn't push another update to to fix it - Firefox doesn't let you "downgrade" from a WebExtension to a native extension. Thankfully a user emailed me about it and I had it fixed in less than 48 hours, but it was still a mess. All I could do was add a note to the addon description and disable the bad versions and anyone that got broke had to manually downgrade.

The new Webextensions are nice, but it was definitely easy to shoot yourself in the foot with the transition. I know that NoScript also needs the same API that I was using (the ability to inspect response bodies), FWIW.

The extension is https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gpsdetect/ for those curious

EDIT: brevity

tempestn• 9 years ago

Can do that with Lastpass fwiw, but being as it's not a primary feature it's probably a bit clunkier than a dedicated tool. Mostly intended for filling in mailing addresses.

Endy• 9 years ago

"The only downside" Sure. Aside from the number of other extensions that simply won't work in new Firefox. And the lack of any user control to make the browser not work like or look like Chrome.

brador• 9 years ago

And Telemetry that's difficult/impossible to remove.

colemickens• 9 years ago

And the lack of any user control to make the browser not work like or look like Chrome.

How is that? The omnibox is toggle-able. The entire browser UI is drag-n-drop customizable. I literally don't know of a single thing that is less customizable in 57 than 56, but I'm curious to hear more about what you're referring to?

And downvoted for asking someone to explain their handwaving false criticisms. Hope this place never changes.

babuskov2• 9 years ago

And the fact that today was the first time I have seen Firefox crash after 3+ years of heavy everyday usage. Luckily I didn't "upgrade" Firefox on my main machine. I'm staying away from 57 until they get it together.

arnvidr2• 9 years ago

For Classic Theme Restorer withdrawal, try custom userChrome.css code.

https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

pera• 9 years ago

I love FF57 performance, but I'm having a hard time without Vimperator.

gfodor• 9 years ago

Saka keys provides a slice of vimperators functionality, might be worth trying. It's far from vimperator but better than nothing.

staticassertion• 9 years ago

I just use uMatrix.

benjaminjackman• 9 years ago

Anyone know if xmarks is going to end up working with it? It works in Chrome and has for a long time, so it should be pretty straightforward to port, though xmarks doesn't get a lot of development at all (not even sure it needs it).

If not is there an alternative sync bookmarks between chrome and firefox solution anyone can recommend?

ryuuchin• 9 years ago

uBlock Origin and uMatrix can both do the same thing and are compatible.

This is just my opinion but both have better and more intuitive interfaces as well.

csdreamer7• 9 years ago

Love uBlock Origin. The author made it compatible months ago.

solnyshok• 9 years ago

one more vote for uBo. Since I discovered its advanced script blocking interface, I went and disabled NoScript.

milofeynman• 9 years ago

uMatrix felt like a lot of work. But I finally took the plunge and I love it. It is insightful how different websites are pieced together.

forapurpose4• 9 years ago

They do some of the same things, but there's a lot they don't do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15730800

old-gregg• 9 years ago

I've always used YesScript, it has a much simpler UI -> basically a single button which remembers if JS is on/off for a given site. It's always been puzzling to me why YesScript is less popular... And yes, it's available for the latest FF as YesScript2 [1]

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yesscript2/

TheDong• 9 years ago

"YesScript" is significantly less secure and powerful.

Most importantly, with NoScript I can block tracking and ad-related javascript while still running the page's first-party javascript.

With yesscript, I don't get that granularity.

Perhaps that's why it's less popular. I also believe that it came out later and thus hasn't had the time to gather such a following as noscript has (though who would use a worse version of noscript instead?)

log69• 9 years ago

Hi, I'm the developer of YesScript2 and I've just released a new version with 3 state blocking that makes it even better alternative I believe because you have 3 options: 1) no blocking (grey icon) 2) half blocking (allowing internal scripts and blocking external, blue icon, so you can allow now first-party Javascript as you mentioned) and full blocking (blocking internal and external scripts too, red icon).

ufo• 9 years ago

BTW, is anyone here knowledgeable enough about NoScript's development to know whether their "until the end of this week" prediction is solid or if it is more vague like ValveTime?

vesinisa2• 9 years ago

uMatrix is a replacement extension from the creator, and compatible with, uBlock. uMatrix migrated to Quantum leveraging the existing Chrome codebase already about a month ago: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Some learning curve is required compared to NoScript since uMatrix allows even finer grained control (not just scripts, but images, cookies, iframes and XHR as well), but I personally migrated about a year ago successfully. Very happy with uMatrix so far with the latest Firefox.

forapurpose4• 9 years ago

To add some important points:

uMatrix is a replacement extension from the creator, and compatible with, uBlock.

To avoid any confusion, I think the parent means, 'from the creator of ... uBlock'. uMatrix is not by the creator of NoScript.

Also, blocking just JavaScript is quicker and easier in uMatrix (at least easier than the current NoScript; I don't know about the upcoming version). The UI is far more efficient, and you configure it by origin/remote pairs (e.g., on foo.example.com allow googleapis.com; on other example.com hosts, block it; on example.org allow it everywhere).

But NoScript does far more than block JavaScript; it's a sophisticated firewall, in some ways. Look through the options menus and lookup the features, such as ABE; it's impressive. uMatrix doesn't replace much of that functionality.

vesinisa2• 9 years ago

Thank you, dropped an of there indeed.

For me personally, #1 reason for using NoScript was controlling which domains can execute JS. uMatrix delivers that superbly, and more.

Sadly, ever since NoScript started pushing malware[1] to users with every update, I lost all confidence with the author for securing my browsing experience.

[1] https://liltinkerer.surge.sh/noscript.html

amenod• 9 years ago

I upgraded to Firefox 57 only to find all 4 of my extensions missing... I can live without others, but being without NoScript felt like walking on streets naked. So the first thing I did was downgrade to Firefox ESR, then I started looking for alternatives. Turns out that uMatrix fills this role perfectly (for me of course). Not only can I block/allow JS, CSS and similar resources, but I can do it based on domain / 3rd party domain matrix... Nice, I always hated that when I allow `gstatic.com` in NoScript for some domain it is allowed globally (for all domains). I will test uMatrix for a few more days just to see if I feel comfortable without NoScript, then I'll upgrade back to FF 57. It looks like this might have a silver lining after all. :)

(for the record: I hate it that they broke compatibility with older extensions, and I hate that they changed UI, but if that gives FF greater market share, then I'm all for it)

jchw2• 9 years ago

Killing the old extension API is a painful, but important, step.

From a security standpoint, WebExtensions are a lot better, since they are sandboxed and require explicit permissions to be granted for many things.

From a developer standpoint, they are easier to deal with, being JavaScript, and since Chrome and Edge support similar APIs, developers will no longer need multiple codebases to support their extensions on multiple browsers.

They also work better with a highly concurrent browser. They use asynchronous APIs that don't directly call into browser APIs. FFs old extensions were known for leaking memory, which is a lot less of an issue with WebExtensions.

Compatibility is another huge thing. With old Firefox extensions, compatibility was just an extension author saying, "Yep, the APIs still work the way I'm using them." They often broke in subtle ways and you could get them partially working by overriding the versions supported in the extension manifest. Not so great imo. WebExtension APIs are more or less like JavaScript APIs and compatibility is mostly going to be limited by support for capabilities. Like, I'm sure Firefox does not support the USB API that Chrome does.

There's so much to be gained from getting rid of the old extension system for concurrency, extension compatibility, and the health of the ecosystem and individual browser installations. Many will be angry and stick to ESRs and others will be mildly upset but I think in the long run this will have been one of the better Mozilla decisions that make Quantum a success.

Amezarak3• 9 years ago

There's so much to be gained from getting rid of the old extension system for concurrency, extension compatibility, and the health of the ecosystem and individual browser installations.

I personally think that while it's clearly great for security and possibly good for Firefox in general, it's also terrible for the extension ecosystem. The set of possible extensions is being reduced from "literally anything computable" to "what the API supports." Sure, (some) popular extensions are basically being grandfathered in by having APIs added just for them, but that doesn't help the extensions that aren't written yet and will now never be written.

Essentially, a major selling point of Firefox has been sacrificed in the hope that the increased security, better perf, and greater development velocity leads to greater marketshare. Well, I hope so, but I think the jury will be out on that for a while.

Other than that, Quantum seems great. I did lose all my tabs when it updated (boo - that's never happened before), and I think the whole-window-width address bar dropdown is bizarre and ugly, but other than that it's great. I suppose the only long-term concern is that default merger of the address bar and search bar - configurable options have a habit of eventually being dropped, and I think a world of omnibars is less usable and less privacy-conscious.

Karunamon• 9 years ago

From a usability standpoint, WebExtensions have a lot less control of the browser and some use cases are completely closed off. The Webex version of Tree Style Tabs, for instance, requires you to have a redundant tab bar on top because it's not allowed to hide the main one. Pentadactyl can't have it's sub-buffer anymore. Download managers/scrapers like DownThemAll can't even do their main function anymore. On and on and on.

Part of security is availability - the most secure system is one that is unplugged and unusable. Mozilla has taken the step of putting covers on all the outlets (damn those who want to plug something in), bubble-wrapping all the knives (damn those who want to cut something), and essentially baby proofing the browser (damn those who are adults), making it far less usable in the process.

Firefox was the extensible browser. That was its differentiation. Now it's yet another Chrome clone (hang the technical differences, those are not what I refer to) with an extension system to match, but it's not made by Google, so that's a positive, I guess?

If I sound upset, it's because Mozilla took what was a big part of my daily life, an amazing and infinitely versatile tool that I'd grown with and customized over the years until it was like a comfortable pair of shoes and just completely fucked it in the most thorough way possible. Sure, an extension broke every upgrade or two, but it was survivable. This? This is not.

Okay, it's faster. Neat. Whatever. I didn't use Firefox because of it's blazing speed.

As of this moment, there are no good browsers. There is nothing out there that matches what Firefox was. (And ESR is just prolonging the inevitable).

This is legitimately saddening for me and many others - and no amount of insisting this is better despite the many more important ways its worse will change that. Mozilla's target user at some point stopped being me and started being someone else . I can accept that. What I can't accept is this constant, infuriating, paternalistic posturing that it's for my own good.

eadmund3• 9 years ago

From a security standpoint, WebExtensions are a lot better, since they are sandboxed

In a sandbox even I, as the owner of the computer, can't let them out of. That's not cool.

From a developer standpoint, they are easier to deal with, being JavaScript, and since Chrome and Edge support similar APIs, developers will no longer need multiple codebases to support their extensions on multiple browsers.

In the sense that it's no longer possible to do the things one could do with a Firefox codebase.

I own my computer, and my browser; Mozilla have taken away the ability for me to extend my computing environment (without reïmplementing it all myself).

ynezz• 9 years ago

felt like walking on streets naked

So browsing on the phone is not evoking similar feeling? :-)

eadmund3• 9 years ago

Firefox runs fine on my phone. In fact, I've now got the newest Firefox running there, and it's awesome.

mnl• 9 years ago

And no MAFF nor MHTML support in Quantum... as MAFF is/was great, now I have to keep yet another browser just to read my old files.

Asdfbla• 9 years ago

While I can understand that the switch to the new system was necessary, I hope they improve the new extension functionality a bit further.

One negative thing that I noticed that extensions don't seem to be able to interact with the tabs before those have largely (or completely?) loaded - for instance I can't use mouse gestures in a tab that's currently loading or interact with the vimperator replacement (Vim Vixen). Is that inherent to the new system with the extension system having lower priority than the page rendering or is it just those specific extensions I use?

Another thing that would be nice to fix is extensions (at least those that I have tested) seemingly not working in Firefox-internal pages like about:addons.

Crontab• 9 years ago

Yeah, I leapt right in, and had to revert to Firefox ESR when I realized that RequestPolicy Continued doesn't yet work.

(BTW - thanks to @fghtr for letting me know about it this extension.)

Master_of_Lemon• 9 years ago

Seamonkey is thankfully not affected by this. Running the latest Seamonkey with NoScript still working

seba_dos1• 9 years ago

And it's available now: https://noscript.net/getit

NoScript Not Available for Latest Firefox

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