Firefox 48

[Anupam]

Firefox 48 has been released and is available for download on the Mozilla site.

Offline setup can be downloaded here:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/

Release notes:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/

There are some major changes in this version.

Add-ons that are not signed will not load from now on.

This release introduces multi-process architecture, but will be pushed only to those users who don't use any add-ons.

There is increased security in downloads.

Details of these changes in this Ghacks article:

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/08/01/firefox-48-release/

[trainman261]

Great. One of the major reasons I'm using Firefox now gone - no more unsigned add-ons. Mozilla, have you gone completely insane?
The irony of it is it goes against everything Mozilla claims to stand for. It is lacking of any decency at best.
OK, so my next question: how do we bypass this? Because I am definitely not ditching my unsigned add-ons.
Extremely angry about this. Anupam, you ruined my morning

[Anupam]

Sorry for ruining your morning

You cannot disable this feature starting from this version. In versions earlier to 48, you could. But, now you cannot. This will not be possible in stable and beta channels.

In my personal opinion, it is a good move by Mozilla to prevent installation of add-ons that might be malware. Since there are so many add-ons, something had to be done in order to make them safe for the users.

Sufficient time had been given to developers to make their add-ons signed. The add-ons which I use had been signed earlier on when this was announced by Mozilla.

[trainman261]

The problem I have with this is that there's no way of bypassing it. I can understand them disabling unsigned add-ons by default, so that my grandma doesn't install something bad by mistake. My problem is with them not allowing a way of bypassing it. It's my computer, not Mozilla's, I should be able to decide what to install on them, not them. There's a reason why I don't use Apple devices, why I ditched Chrome when it didn't allow add-ons from outside the Chrome Web Store, and why i don't use Windows 10. I thought Mozilla was going to stay on a moral high ground on this one...
Now the argument has been made that malware could somehow flip that switch, but then, if malware already has control over the system, then something like this won't do much anymore... it's like putting sandbags behind the great wall of China. If they've already scaled the wall, the sandbags really won't do much.
The problem is I do have some unsigned add-ons, one of them really important to me - the ThinkVantage password manager plug-in. It connects to the password manager and lets me simply scan my fingerprint to log into a website - far easier than entering a master password, never mind remembering every last password to every website I log into. Exactly why it isn't signed isn't something I don't know, although it doesn't seem to have been developed much in the last while.

[Anupam]

According to this page:

http://support.lenovo.com/in/en/downloads/ds031504

Thinkvantage Password Manager was updated in April, 2016. So, it's not that long back.

In the last version, they write that it supports Firefox 44. So, if you do not have the latest version, you can update to it, and see if that solves the problem.

Otherwise, you could write to Lenovo, asking for an update, or to atleast sign the plugin.

I had a similar problem with XMarks add-on, and I had written to them. They replied that they had already released a signed version, and I just had to re-install it. The version number had not changed, and therefore, it was not showing in the updates when I tried to look for updates to add-ons via Firefox add-on page. I reinstalled the add-on and it worked great, since they had signed it.

[trainman261]

OK, haven't tried that yet. For now, I've just switched to the unbranded version, where the switch can still be used to allow unsigned add-ons. I'll have to try the update at some point, I still seem to be on version 4.0.
Still aggravating on a matter of principle.

[Anupam]

trainman261, this might make you happy. Here is the procedure to install unsigned add-ons, from Ghacks:

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/08/14/ove...g-requirement/

[trainman261]

Aha, thank you so much! I spent hours looking for something like this when Firefox 48 came out originally. This looks like it should work. I'll give it a try the next time I restart my Firefox and report back here.

[Anupam]

Firefox updated to 48.0.1. This is a bug fix release which fixes many bugs.

Release notes:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/

[Anupam]

Firefox updated to 48.0.2. Fixes a bug.

Release notes: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo.../releasenotes/