(Solved) It's All Text vs. Textern in Firefox 57

[Volker Wysk]

Hi!

I'm writing this message for folks, which encounter the same problem with Firefox 57, that I did.

You heard of it: There is a big retrofit to Firefox in Version 57. This means that many addons don't work any longer and need to be ported to the new firefox version. (Addons now need to use the WebExtensions API).

There's the It's All Text addon, which I've used up to firefox version 56. It has been used to launch an external text editor for editing text areas. It doesn't work with Firefox 57. But there's the Textern addon, which is supposed to fill in the gap.

I've carefully followed the install instructions. It's not completely trivial, since an external launcher app needs to be installed for Textern. It can't operate entirely from within the browser (like It's All Text). I couldn't get it to work. When you press Ctrl-Shift-E (for launching the editor), then nothing happens. If you press it again, you get an error message, saying that the editor has already been launched.

I really need that functionality.

I've searched for a way to contact the maintainer of Textern, but couldn't find any. 

So I tried to revert back to Firefox 56. The new version has been installed lately, and I don't know where to find the package of the old version on packages.ubuntu.com. Only version 57 is available.

Then I got the idea that the .deb package might still be in the APT package cache in /var/cache/apt/archives/. I was right, it was still there, and I was able to successfully install it again (with "dpkg -i firefox_56.0+build6-0ubuntu0.16.04.2_amd64.deb"). And now It's All Text works as expected again.

If you have installed firefox version 56, and want to stick to it, you should execute the "apt-mark hold firefox" command. Otherwise, it might get removed for the newest version, when you upgrade your system. Use "apt-mark showhold" to see that it has worked. You also should save the deb package for future use.

Cheers,
Volker