I'm on some mailing lists with folks whose complaint is "I have my system set up the way I like it, and just want to keep doing what I currently do, the way I currently do it!" I sympathize, but that's probably not
possible. Windows gets new versions, applications get new versions, and things don't work like they used to and you have to learn new stuff to deal with it.
I expect that sort of change and stay current but there are limits to everything.
I use Firefox as my production browser. I started using it back in the early days when most folks installed it because it was more secure. It was, but that wasn't why I chose it. It was the first browser to have the now common capability of adding extensions to customize how it looked and acted, and add additional capabilities it didn't have out of the box, I currently have about 50 installed, and about 30 of those are standard kit I always install.
Mozilla has decreed that henceforth, extensions shall all be built using the Web Extensions API, and "legacy" extensions will simply stop working in Firefox 57. (Firefox release is at 55.3, Firefox Developer Edition is at 56, and I think Nightly is now at 57.)
Just about everything I use is a legacy extension, and I've already gotten notices from authors of some of them saying "What my extension does can't be
done in just Web Extensions unless the API significantly expands. Sorry, but development is now formally ended."
I'm poking around using a fresh profile and seeing what can be done with only extensions using the WebEx API, and the relults aren't encouraging.
So I bit the bullet and installed the Firefox Extended Support Release. This is a version intended for corporate users who need control and can't just upgrade every all FF installations when something new comes out, especially since Mozilla went to a rapid release model a while back where therye would be a new major version every three months. The ESR release will get security fixes, but not get the sweeping other changes that will bite me. It's currently based on FF 52.3. Everything I use now works in it, and nothing in it breaks my profile, so it's where I'm staying.
I still have the current production and Developer edition releases install, and can run them to see what changed, but I'll use a different profile for testing.
I'm not happy about having to do this, but it's the lesser of evils.
My question is various places to Mozilla is "You are steadily changing Firefox to look and act like Chrome. Tell me why I should not just switrch to Chrome and drop Firefox? You are removing all the reasons I ran Firefox to begin with..." I do not expect to get a meaningful answer.
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Dennis