More Firefox Questions

ronaldlees

ronaldlees

Apparently, recent versions of FF come with pre-installed or bootstrapped versions of several extensions: aushelper (application helper), e10srollout (multi-process staged rollout), getPocket, and WebCompat. Some of these (from what I seem to have sensed by reading random internet posts) - can make changes to your preferences.

These config items were among the number of items seemingly changed:

  • extensions.hotfix.certs.1.sha1Fingerprint
  • extensions.hotfix.certs.2.sha1Fingerprint

Can anybody shed some light on what those are doing? I guess I don't know for sure that any of the pre-installed or bootstrapped "system" extensions were responsible for the changed prefs, so am open to enlightenment. Perhaps the items simply reflect what was found, but then why use a "hotfix" reference?

I didn't want the extensions (I never want extensions), so I deleted /usr/lib/firefox/browser/features/*.xpi (basically all of the "features") that I hadn't installed. I don't know if there is a downside to deleting those, especially the e10srollout extension. But, I like my prefs left alone. Has anybody done this and experienced any downside to the removal?

If you look at the FF about:support tab, you can see which extensions have been pre-installed or bootstrapped. FF seems to be operating OK without the add-ons, but - I don't know if I may have caused any issues by deleting them, so this isn't advice to follow. I guess I don't know for sure that any of the pre-installed or bootstrapped "system" extensions were responsible for the changed prefs. I have all auto-updates turned off.

Does anybody have anything to say about these extensions in general? I.E. - what they do?
 
Believe it or not, I actually like the FF browser. It's the only full-bloat browser (which is sometimes unavoidably needed) - that even has (very many) changeable prefs.
 
Still using Firefox-esr so I don't know what are you talking about :); I won't migrate to Firefox quantum till they don't have all my extensions and they are quite a lot.
 
www/firefox from ports:
Code: 
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=BUNDLED_CAIRO
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=CANBERRA
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=DBUS
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=DEBUG
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=DTRACE
OPTIONS_FILE_SET+=FFMPEG
OPTIONS_FILE_SET+=GCONF
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=INTEGER_SAMPLES
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=LIBPROXY
OPTIONS_FILE_SET+=OPTIMIZED_CFLAGS
OPTIONS_FILE_SET+=PROFILE
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=TEST
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=ALSA
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=JACK
OPTIONS_FILE_UNSET+=PULSEAUDIO
OPTIONS_FILE_SET+=SNDIO
 
I have been reading about the system add-ons on mozilla:

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/addon-manager/SystemAddons.html

Maybe I picked up these add-ons "dynamically" - but I definitely didn't install them. Two of them are listed as system add-ons on the above referenced page. The claim is that they cannot be disabled, but deleting them seems to have had that effect :).

On the same page, I see a reference to a "hotfix" - such as what I noticed in my installation, but used in a different way. It looks like this system-add-on push thing is the wave of the future.

It does mention on that page that the system add-ons do not appear in about:addons. But, on my installation, they DO appear in about:support.
 
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