Mozilla’s New WebExtension API Will Kill Thousands Of Firefox Add-Ons

Megalith

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This is very bad news for Firefox users like myself who enjoy the browser for its vast library of add-ons, which tend to provide far more functionality than Chrome’s simplistic extensions. Some of the staples that will be broken include NoScript, Tab Mix Plus, and my favorite download manager, DownThemAll!. I think this is a terrible mistake that doesn’t benefit Firefox developers one bit, and people seem to agree.

Firefox add-on developers need to rewrite their add-ons, while Chrome developers can easily port their extensions to Firefox browser with small changes to their code. Who’s benefiting here Chrome developers. This is a huge change, their market share can further decline and Firefox may lose all its loyal users using because of popular add-ons which may not work with the new WebExtensions API.
 
I think Edge is taking a similar approach in that chrome extensions can be easily ported to that browser.
 
I'm pretty sure the addons that are being actively developed/maintained will change to conform to the new standard. I use NoScript and I certainly hope it continues to work.
 
No Script .... no Firefox. End of story.

Nothing like fixing the doesn't need to be fixed.

Hey Mozilla, schmucks, how about a Flash/Silverlight to HTML5 on the fly converter so we can put a rapid end to those abortions forever. Spend your time on shit that matters. :rolleyes::eek:
 
Yeah they do this i'll have to skip firefox. it's really not that fast and sorta bloated and sluggish to load/close. But browsing was fast enough and the extensions were awesome.
 
Hey Mozilla, schmucks, how about a Flash/Silverlight to HTML5 on the fly converter so we can put a rapid end to those abortions forever.

Amen to that. It's bad enough to have to worry about Windows OS vulnerabilities, but adding to that an Adobe extension, with their track record, it's the stuff of nightmares. MS should have given up on Silverlight long ago.

I'd hate to see an end to many of my favorite add-ons due to the creators not wanting to spend the time rewriting.
 
why is it that they feel compelled to keep fucking up Firefox? I guess the time to stop updating my browser is rapidly approaching.
 
It seems like for the past few years everyone makjng decisions in the personal computing realm has turned into a retarded Asshole intent on ruining the entire world. Did Obama put Monsanto in charge of personal computing as well as the FDA?
 
doesn't really matter. I set disabled auto update and will continue to use whatever FF version that works with the addons
 
I think Chrome has something similar to noscript but it is not as good. I use noscript in FF too and if that goes then I will be annoyed for sure.
 
Do bear in mind that they're planning to depreciate the XPCOM interface in a YEAR. In that time, there will be a LOT of revisions to WebExtension to bring the same functionality that XPCOM does.
 
This 12-18 months away. That's plenty of time for the big guys to port to the new API, especially if get help from Mozilla.

I can see reasons this is bad (makes it easier to port stuff to Chrome) and reasons to do it (makes it easier to port to Mozilla). The other thing to keep in mind is that deprecated doesn't mean it doesn't work. APIs are often deprecated for years before they're removed (see all of the programs that used deprecated APIs in XP at launch that didn't quit working until Vista -- I'm looking at you Intuit!
 
Just when you think the mental midgets at the Mozilla Foundation couldn't possibly do anything stupider than Australis, firing Eich, or any of the other number of stupid decisions they have made, they go and do this.

This is not only a horrible idea but it will ensure that Firefox loses whatever remaining users it has. The *ONLY* reason to use Firefox over Chrome these days is the fact that Firefox addons are far more powerful and can do much more than Chrome extensions primarily due to the fact that they have low level access to the browser. There is simply no way that the WebExtension API can ever hope to replicate all of that functionality without allowing the same low-level access to modify the browser. Things like FireFTP, FireBug and DownThemAll would simply not be possible using a Chrome-like extensions API no matter how much they extend it.

Unfortunately, Mozilla stopped caring about actually making a decent browser a long time ago, when they took the decision making process away from the technical people and put people like Mitchell Baker in charge. They care only about their ideological purity and about pushing the views of SJWs.
 
Cover your ears. Mods, please be understanding.

Mozilla, you are and have been for a good while now a fucking living advertisment for a combination of cocaine, benadryl and a plastic bag with glue.

If you aren't trying to keep up with google bumping the version number without even taking the time to actually develop a working silent updater that doesn't have to be updated every week, you are fucking things up for the plugin developers.

The very people that gave you the breath of life.

Tabmixplus broken? You god damn bastards pulling a Microsoft on us? You sure you know better? it's either your way or the highway?

What in the hell is your agenda? Do you even bother to check your developers' affiliation with your competition? Because for the last few years you have done nothing but prove us otherwise. Your browser is nothing short of a playground for saboteurs.

If you aren't breaking drag-and-drop to the bookmark bar, you're hiding it altogether.

I had to fucking toss my overclocked Q9550 and SSD because it apparently just wasn't enough for your super advanced state of the art code.

Your abomination of a once model piece of software seems to be the Crysis of basic utility software, grinding to a halt almost every computing device you can successfully install yourself on.

Why in the bloody hell do you insist on resetting my settings? Why are you hiding tools that are essential for basic navigation? This is not 1999, we have more screen real-estate we need and yet you found yourself in a manic craze of minimalism.

What madness drives you to spend so much time throwing menu items around, constantly reinventing the wheel while gradually making your product a chore to work with?

And you have the audacity to constantly push some hippy idea that I'm being liberated from something? That you're healing the world and making the internet a better place? You are a fucking browser, nothing more. I don't see MS Word playing the national anthem everytime I manage to type a sentence without making a spelling mistake.

You're freeing the internet, eh? We're free to do as you tell us?

Have you actually used your own shit enough to notice the only way to exit is via task manager? And even then it's battling a mythical hydra because your stupid plugin container seems to live its own life?

And you won't even let us restart the god damn thing right after it crashes, instead just spit out 'firefox is already running but not responding' . And the guessing game begins - can I turn it on now? no? how about now?

You made a html5 based video player and a half-assed PDF reader that barely works - whooptie doo. Now clean your noses, take a nap and fix them.

You are a friggin html rendering engine, quit trying to steal the show by outright shoving your code-turds into our workflow!

Stop shitting yourself everytime a plugin activation is requested, even when I explicitly agreed to this twenty times today.

How about you block your own damn code instead of sabotaging your greatest strength?

You brought us security and tabbed browsing. You spawned a legion of people doing YOUR JOB. And, truthfully, doing it better than you.

Now get out of the fucking way and let people browse the internet.
 
I'm kinda confused as to why they have to drop one API to support the other. Couldn't they keep the existing API around for a few years until everything is ported to the new one?
 
All the add-ons I use are actively supported, so I doubt they won't get updated. Still kinda a dick move, but might of been necessary.
 
Like many others, the only reason why I still use FF over Chrome is because of the extensions.

Break extensions, and that ends FF's usefulness to me.
 
I'm just going to leave this link here: Pale Moon.

It's like the old Firefox: a browser that isn't obsessed with becoming Chrome.

I switched over to it a few weeks ago, and it works well for my needs.
 
I just have a few things I'd like clarification on.

The developers claim that this move is required in order to implement major technical advancements to firefox. Things like "Electrolysis" which is supposed to make firefox more multi-threaded. It seems to me that these are good changes, and in some cases, even changes that directly address some of the concerns people have expressed in this very thread. I don't think firefox can really afford not to be pushing things on the technical side. For those who are against the move, how would you have them proceed?

For those who are going to move to another browser due to this, what are you going to choose? Going to chrome or something like opera seems silly as they use the same extensions API. IE11 and Edge don't really seem like viable options. Pale Moon looks interesting, but what kind of support does an obscure browser like that really have? Does it even have any of it's own extensions or does it just bank on being compatible with firefox extensions? If that is the case, i'd imagine they will have to take another road once all those extensions are depreciated, in which case it's a temporary solution at best.
 
You're looking at it the wrong way. Why use some tryhard working to be like Chrome when we can just use Chrome? All these changes won't magically make Firefox faster or more secure than Chrome. These changes will just make more people move to Chrome, hastening Mozilla's decline in marketshare.

I put up with the sluggishness and occasional crashing for the extensions, like many people here. But I'll just use Chrome exclusively once this is put in place. Pale Moon does look interesting and I definitely want to try it out.
 
You're looking at it the wrong way. Why use some tryhard working to be like Chrome when we can just use Chrome?

Because right now it's the most widely supported browser that isn't directly controlled by a mega-corp. I feel like running a browser made by Google or Microsoft is a conflict of interest at best.
 
The only reason to use Firefox is the immense control plugins give to the user. If that control goes away or is equally available in Chrome or Edge Firefox will have put itself out of business.
 
It's like the old Firefox: a browser that isn't obsessed with becoming Chrome.

I've noticed this too. I started using ff before it was even named firefox, but for a couple years now it seems firefox has lost its way. they've become a browser that i just tolerate b/c i don't like the alternatives vs one i used to really liked everything about.

but after firefox 4.x they started to shift more towards a chrome clone. even the gui looks very similar to chrome now. I still use ff daily, but i detest chrome, and yet here is ff moving more and more towards being near indistinguishable from it.

Also the numbering scheme (another copy of chrome) is getting ridiculous. they release a major number update for the smallest things. by the end of the year it'll probably be firefox version 50! seriously??
 
Addon compatibility is one of the things delaying Electrolysis I think. Staying backward compatible forever causes problems. But if the old api still works then old addons should keep working.
 
I will eat _some_ of my words if plugin developers actually welcome this and it will indeed yield progress (especially in the security and performance areas).
 
Sadly I had to quit FF about 3 years ago, been using Pale Moon since. It has the occasional qwerks but works everywhere I go. Not all FF plugins will work with Pale Moon but the most popular ones have workarounds.
 
I just have a few things I'd like clarification on.

The developers claim that this move is required in order to implement major technical advancements to firefox. Things like "Electrolysis" which is supposed to make firefox more multi-threaded. It seems to me that these are good changes, and in some cases, even changes that directly address some of the concerns people have expressed in this very thread. I don't think firefox can really afford not to be pushing things on the technical side. For those who are against the move, how would you have them proceed?

For those who are going to move to another browser due to this, what are you going to choose? Going to chrome or something like opera seems silly as they use the same extensions API. IE11 and Edge don't really seem like viable options. Pale Moon looks interesting, but what kind of support does an obscure browser like that really have? Does it even have any of it's own extensions or does it just bank on being compatible with firefox extensions? If that is the case, i'd imagine they will have to take another road once all those extensions are depreciated, in which case it's a temporary solution at best.

Pale Moon has already diverged significantly from Firefox to the point where it breaks addon compatibility in a number of instances. The community has responded by forking those addons and maintaining their own versions.

Pale Moon isn't simply Firefox with an old interface anymore; there are significant changes under the hood.
 
That's a very old article, cira late 07 thus the information is out of date.

If I remember correctly, the Mozilla foundation ended its relationship with google late last year.

Your right. She now makes $800,000 a year instead of $500,000.
 
why is it that they feel compelled to keep fucking up Firefox? I guess the time to stop updating my browser is rapidly approaching.

Same reason they felt compelled to SJW Brendan Eich.
 
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