Chrome/New Firefox extensions vs. Waterfox/Old Firefox addons

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I am looking into moving on to the Waterfox or Firefox.  I want to know what is the difference in performance between the extensions and addons.

What I means is that I have read that Legacy addons are more powerful and dug deeper into the browser.  So I am wondering what is the difference if you use something like Adblock or UBlock origins as addon or extension?  Please treat me as ignorant IE user with occasionally Chrome use (not by choice) when explaining the difference.

Do you have any suggestions for good addons or extension for either Waterfox or Firefox?  It is for online security and privacy. Any advice?

Thank you for your help 😀

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I use Firefox Quantum and Waterfox. The only extensions I use on both them are AdblockPlus, Disconnect, and NoScript. I use these as my main browsers on both Windows and MacOS. The browsers are fast enough for me. The ad and script blocking don’t seem to interfere with browsing.

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Alternatively, you could use Firefox ESR that comes with less bloat and still has the extensions for security et al. There’s AKB3000003 on how to shore up security in Firefox further for either version.
Extensions are plentyful and some crucial for additional browser security like NoScript, uBlock Origin, uMatrix, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger etc..

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/
and for more info:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

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anonymous wrote:

What I means is that I have read that Legacy addons are more powerful and dug deeper into the browser.

Yes, that’s very true.  Because they essentially become part of the browser, they’re able to do anything the browser itself can do– and that has trade-offs, like everything else.  A malicious addon can do more damage than a WebExtensions addon, just like malware can do more damage to a rooted phone than an unrooted one.  It’s just something to be aware of when you are going to be using legacy-type addons.  I still find the legacy addons indispensible– while most of the addons I use in Waterfox are WebExtensions, the handful that are still legacy are heavy hitters that I really don’t want to give up.

If you’ve ever used a video downloader addon in the past, you may have noticed that you need to download a bit of native code to run on the OS itself for certain tasks, like format conversion.  This wasn’t necessary with legacy addons, which could do the conversion themselves without anyone having to download any code from non-Mozilla sources.  In the name of safety, now you’re asked to download code from a third party site and install it in order to make the addon work properly!

So I am wondering what is the difference if you use something like Adblock or UBlock origins as addon or extension?

The legacy versions of NoScript and uBlock Origin have additional features that cannot be added to the newer WebExtensions versions.  The authors of both of those addons still update the legacy versions for that reason, and I am using them both on the browser I am using now to write this (Waterfox).  I’m thinking that one of the differences in NoScript was that ABE (application boundary enforcer) isn’t possible in WebExtensions, and there were similar things in uBlock, though I don’t remember precisely what they were. That said, I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I had to use the WebExtensions versions, as the most important features are still intact.

The addons that I don’t want to give up that can’t be reasonably replicated in WebExtensions are things like Classic Theme Restorer, Status-4-Evar, Tab Mix Plus (a WebExtensions version is under development, but a lot of what the old one did is not going to be possible), and QuickPasswords.  These four and the legacy versions of NoScript and uBlock Origin are the reasons I use Waterfox.  I have more legacy addons than that, but they’re relatively minor, and I can probably find WebExtensions versions of them if I looked.

Do you have any suggestions for good addons or extension for either Waterfox or Firefox? It is for online security and privacy. Any advice? Thank you for your help

There are so many addons that do so many things that it is really hard to recommend any of them without knowing what you want to do.  The ones listed above are the ones I find important, since I have a very specific way I like the UI to be set up.  Classic Theme restorer gives you a massive number of customization options… the one addon alone has probably five or ten times more options than the whole of Vivaldi, the Chromium-based browser that is meant to have a ton of options ’cause it’s for power users.  Status-4-Evar (unfortunate though its name may be) puts the beloved status bar back, and Tab Mix Plus gives the user all kinds of options for tabbed browsing that would not otherwise exist.  QuickPasswords extends the stock password management for those sites that go out of their way to block password auto fills (which also blocks the strong, unique, high-entropy passwords that are made possible by password managers.  Having to type them in manually is why people use “1234” or “password” for their passwords on every site they visit!).  I have never even seen most of my passwords… I use another legacy addon to generate them randomly when I visit a new site, then I paste that into the password field (twice), where it looks like a bunch of asterisks.  I never even see it.

By using these extensions, I can make the browser look and behave just as I want it to… but that may not be what you are after in a browser.  If you find a certain thing you want it to do, please feel free to ask in this forum, and someone here should be able to suggest something.

The legacy addons have recently been removed from the Firefox repository, but the Waterfox dev is almost finished with a separate Waterfox repo that mirrors all of the legacy addons as they were before they were taken down, as I understand.  I believe that work is done, and all he needs now is to add the support to the next Waterfox release.

It will be up to the devs to decide whether they wish to keep developing them for Waterfox as they once did for Firefox.  I hope they do, of course.  Waterfox is as yet the only browser I have used since the release of Quantum that does everything I want a browser to do.  Pale Moon is close, and has the advantage of a “classic” pre-Australis UI, but it lacks e10s support, and it’s noticeably less smooth when scrolling and such because of that.  Waterfox smooth scrolling is just glassy smooth on all of my PCs, and after having lived with the stutters and judders of pre-e10s Firefox for so long, it’s nice to see the smoothness.  It’s also noticeably smoother than the Chromium-based browsers I have tested.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
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I also use Waterfox, both in my Windows 7 Pro, x64 PC and in my MacPro Book, and runs very nicely in both. I have Chrome and FireFox in both machines as well, besides the browsers that come with those two OS (Safari and IE11), but my experience is that Waterfox works best for me. It is fast, sleek and, at least as I understand it, also less prone to broadcasting one’s personal information than other browsers.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Thank you for your answer 😀  It has been helpful to me.

One thing I am curious about is uMatrix vs NoScript.  I heard that uMatrix has less steep learning curve and cleaner GPU but I also seen some people swear by NoScript over uMatrix.  What is up with it?  Anyway, what is recommended minimum setting on either addon/extension?  I would like to do that at start before learning/working with it to see what is the best fit for me.

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anonymous wrote:

One thing I am curious about is uMatrix vs NoScript.

Yes — “youth wants to know” this also!  🙂

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I heard all of the raving about uMatrix, but I never could get it fine tuned to work in a satisfactory way. There are a lot of choices to make, and I couldn’t figure it out.

On the other hand, NoScript is simplicity. There’s basically nothing to it — you install it, and it defaults to blocking all scripts. As you surf, you click on the NoScript button in the upper right of the screen to see what is trying to run. You then allow it or block it. Simple.

It takes some time to get all of the websites you visit set up in NoScript. Until that happens, you have one or two clicks to make on a new website. As you visit more and more websites and fine tune NoScript, it becomes almost automatic for you.

Some must-have websites won’t work with NoScript running. For those you can either disable NoScript or install an alternate browser – I use Opera for those websites.

As an added bonus, NoScript allows you to easily see what is trying to run on each website that you visit. You will quickly find that 99.99% of all websites are running Google scripts in the background.

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