Re: Firefox extension "Org-capture" stopped working after update

[Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net>]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> the title text says it all.  Anybody can confirm that?  How to configure
> capture in FF now?

Hi Marcin,

I'm not sure if you mean updating Firefox or Org.  But if it's Firefox,
well, Mozilla is killing off XUL extensions, and that probably includes
the Org-Capture extension.  I doubt that it is possible to rewrite it as
a WebExtension.

Firefox 56 is supposed to be the last version that supports XUL
extensions.  After Firefox 57 is released, that leaves you with a few
options:

1.  Try to build and install it as an XUL extension in a Firefox
"developer edition" build.  Supposedly that will remain possible, for a
while at least, but I don't know if they have confirmed that or
documented it.  I expect it would be unsupported, anyway.

2.  Use a ESR release of Firefox, which will keep supporting XUL until
an ESR based on Firefox >= 57 is released.

3.  Dump Firefox.  The bottom line is that they don't care about users
like us anymore.  I've been using Firefox since it was Phoenix beta, but
they aren't interested in retaining loyal users anymore; they just want
to chase Chrome users by making Firefox into Chrome.  (Of course, why
would content Chrome users switch from actual Chrome to Firefox Chrome?
Mozilla doesn't seem to grok this.  I suspect Mozilla will be dead or no
longer developing Firefox within a few years.)

For this option, probably the thing to do is try out Pale Moon.  Its
developers have committed to supporting XUL.  This is not my preferred
option, but I think it's the only viable one for those of us who want to
keep using XUL extensions; I've been using Pentadactyl for years and I
have no desire to give it up.  I hope Pale Moon will be added to
Debian/Ubuntu someday, because I don't want to have to build or install
it manually; but it is probably worth it anyway.

4.  If you continue using Firefox, you can replace most of the
functionality of the Org-Capture extension by using the
org-protocol-capture-html package.  The bookmarklets listed in its
readme let you easily capture pages or parts of pages to Org.

Hope this helps.