12 ms·

WebExtensions in Firefox 45

148 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

pcx 11y ago
This is great news! Especially the part where Web Extensions are going work in Chrome without any changes!
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  With minimal changes, I think. IIRC Firefox has a slightly different packaging format.
- amelius 11y ago
  Now if only Firefox would support NativeClient.
MozillaEx 11y ago
I worked closely with Mozilla during the first few years of Firefox. It's only the same in name and logo these days. The hard truth is internal and external politics in the organization were so toxic senior-level programmers who were more risk averse were pushed out. Imagine taking C++ pros who advised in the creation of W3C/IEEE/etc drafts, and tossing them out in favor of node.js programmers. The gray hairs were betrayed in favor of node hipsters. Whatever happened to respecting those who made you. This hits hard. The truth is Mozilla's days of glory are numbered. Over the coming years the decline will come to eventually wrestle Firefox out of Mozilla's hands and into a normal open source project. Was all this office backstabbing worth it? This is what happens when you lose the hacker ethic. It's disappointing.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  I think, if you really want to say something, it'd be more appropriate with your real name and as its own blog post, rather than trying to rain on the parade of some not-management-level Mozillians releasing a project.
  - MozillaEx 11y ago
    I want to just program without all the backstabbing and treachery. In this case, the drama at this organization in particular is so intense it manifests itself in the news. The creator of javascript, a pillar of the internet, was publicly humiliated and crucified. Why? They knew his name. They looked up his voting records. That's witchhunting. It's letting a bunch of people in the peanut gallery dictate what goes on - that's not integrity or leadership. I already suffered enough due to office politics, I feel no need to compromise my identity to voice my opinion.
    - moron4hire 11y ago
      If you just want to program, then why are you leaving comments like this? You're passive aggressive behavior is more office politics.
      - gObO 11y ago
        Maybe because he wants to raise the issue about what is going on? Fight fire with fire, kiddo.
    - matthewmacleod 11y ago
      I want to just program without all the backstabbing and treachery. I mean, for someone who just wants to program you're creating an awful lot of drama. I don't really buy your complaints, which come off as mostly baseless ranting. If I were to read a blog post that raised some of those issues in a constructive manner, I might have more confidence in your legitimacy. As it is, though… I don't really believe you.
      - Nadya 11y ago
        No comment on their specific claims or validity - but the overarching issue does exist. /r/GitInAction exists specifically to highlight what they are talking about in regards to Open Source projects and, more specifically, GitHub projects where this exact issue is occurring. A bunch of non-programmer busy-bodies opening issues about wording or grammar without so much as submitting a pull-request to fix it (likely because they don't even know how to open a pull-request, because they don't use Git, because they don't actually code using GitHub). It isn't a stretch of the imagination to think a corporation as large as Mozilla has a few of those busy-body types in it. It's turned into internal politics, raising non-issues, and creating a fuss around any wrongthinkers to get them fired or scrutinized. Rather than programming.
- ihsw 11y ago
  That was over a decade ago, things change. Firefox is more relevant now than it was before, I welcome their efforts to change with the times. They are taking massive risks now, simultaneously developing an entirely new programming language (Rust) and building an entirely new browser engine on it (Servo) is ambitious. It is clearly self-evident that it has paid off. There is nothing wrong with node.js programmers, your implication that they're inferior is a broad-sweeping and baseless generalization. The grey hairs are most certainly still around, and they're most definitely well-respected. Rust's C++ roots is evidence of this. Mozilla is flourishing, that cannot be denied. Firefox is a normal open source project, Mozilla receive's contributions from around the globe. The hacker ethic isn't gone, it matured into something better. https://github.com/mozilla/ https://github.com/mozilla/
  - Scarbutt 11y ago
    Real question, how is Mozilla flourishing when its main product, Firefox, has been declining in market share for years?
    - darklajid 11y ago
      'Declining in market share': I assume you count 'Google throws crappy internal ads at every internet user and encourages mum and pop to "upgrade your browser"', right? I find it difficult to see how that can _not_ damage a free market. Mozilla seems to flourish as far as I am concerned: Servo, Rust and Firefox are surprising me time and time again and seem very well received in all my social circles.
      - Touche 11y ago
        > 'Declining in market share': I assume you count 'Google throws crappy internal ads at every internet user and encourages mum and pop to "upgrade your browser"', right? Of course, Firefox numbers are going down, no? The reason is irrelevant.
        darklajid 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- bobajeff 11y ago
  "The hard truth is internal and external politics in the organization were so toxic senior-level programmers who were more risk averse were pushed out." I wish you'd go into a lot more detail than that.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    I'd like to see it, too. Just not in this thread.
- gObO 11y ago
  welcome to open sores, where eggplant emoticons get you banned from github and Furfox values hipster node.js developers more than the original core, c++ devs
- jonathonf 11y ago
  > Over the coming years the decline will come to eventually wrestle Firefox out of Mozilla's hands and into a normal open source project. Please fork it.
  - komontu 11y ago
    See: Pale Moon. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/
    - jonathonf 11y ago
      I was kind of after a project that could feed back upstream, or provide a little competition in the same way that Firefox does (did?) for Chromium. Palemoon, though a decent fork, doesn't (seem to) have all that much to offer upstream.
  - Grue3 11y ago
    This. Firefox NEEDS a fork before all the plugins ecosystem is destroyed. There NEEDS to exist at least one browser for hardcore users, that supports actual plugins and not glorified greasemonkey scripts. Otherwise we are screwed.
- Pr0Wolf29 11y ago
  This is what happens when you let politics get in the way of programming. There is no evidence of a project that has not lost quality due to politics. Even GNU is often cited as being more complicated and bloated to its competitors. When the previews for Australis came out, I saw far ahead what it seems like no one else saw. I said that it would become something more locked down, reflecting the authoritarian attitude of hipster webdevs, which has been shown with the diminishing customization, and add-on signing. I said it would become a crappy rip-off of Chrome, which is what Australis made it. I said the good programmers would eventually be pushed out by webdevs who were not as good, and here Mozilla is making the Rust language, which is merely a crutch for people not good enough to use C++. So far all of my predictions have come true. There is still hope with Pale Moon, staying true to good design, however my message to you all is simple. Never let politics get in the way of quality software. Thank you.
  - jmhain 11y ago
    > I said the good programmers would eventually be pushed out by webdevs who were not as good, and here Mozilla is making the Rust language, which is merely a crutch for people not good enough to use C++. And C++ is just a crutch for people not good enough to use assembly.
    - gObO 11y ago
      It would have been funny if you had used C, but you didn't so now it just sounds weird. I suggest you edit it very quickly so you don't embarrass yourself.
    - Pr0Wolf29 11y ago
      I'm not going to deny that at all lol.
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    > here Mozilla is making the Rust language, which is merely a crutch for people not good enough to use C++. There is, in my experience, zero correlation between programmer skill and frequency of vulnerabilities introduced through memory management problems. In fact, it's often the best programmers who introduce use-after-frees and such, possibly because they're more productive and write more code.
oblio 11y ago
Does anyone know if more complex extensions such as Tab Mix Plus or Tree Style Tabs will be supported?
- reitanqild 11y ago
  This. If it wasn't for the extensions I could use any modern browser I think. Yes, Firefox is really good at handling n 100 tabs, but I guess Chrome does that too.
- wittekm 11y ago
  They want to add hooks for it, noting Opera already has a sidebar API. https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future I've seen similar sentiments echoed by Mozilla devs in a reddit AMA a few weeks ago.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Sadly, they won’t add nearly enough APIs, they already announced that most of the UI won’t be customizable. I’d have preferred a full UI customization like in Vivaldi.
    - mmebane 11y ago
      That's disappointing. Do you have a reference for this? I'm curious if there were any details in the announcement.
ck2 11y ago
Still stuck on 41.0.2 Guess they are never going to fix gdocument. And then there is the matter of allowing private/local extensions. Might have to take another look at Pale Moon or Waterfox
- michaelmrose 11y ago
  "What makes Waterfox so fast? It's built with Intel's C++ compiler. One of the most powerful compilers out there. This enables us to make the fastest possible web browser for all the code changes we make. This potent combination makes for an unparalleled browsing experience." So basically a build of firefox with a different compiler with binaries available for only mac and windows. For extra fun its based on an older version of firefox and there is no reason to believe it has devs backporting fixes from higher versions nor that there is anybody with the chops to build anything useful on top of it meaning it - Is virtually guaranteed to have security vulnerabilities and bugs that have already been fixed elsewhere - It will either end up with the same flaws you don't like about firefox or alternatively it will be forever stuck at an old version while the bad guys find more and more exploits.
farresito 11y ago
Not too relevant, but Firefox has gotten significantly slower in my computer in the past few versions, to the point that I will most likely switch to Chrome again. I barely have any extensions and it's never been slower than what I have now.
- tshannon 11y ago
  I've felt the same, especially with the developer tools, but I started using Firefox developer edition, and it seems much, much faster, so I'm sure improvements are coming.
  - farresito 11y ago
    Thank you for the tip. I installed it and it does indeed seem faster. I suppose the plugin compatibility is not too bad. EDIT: Seemms like my lovely vimperator doesn't work too well.
- arm 11y ago
  Completely agree with this. The difference in resources used by Firefox 30 compared to Firefox 40 is just staggering. A netbook that used to run versions of Firefox 30 and below just fine now bogs down so much in newer versions of Firefox that the netbook is regularly left unusable for minutes at a time. It’s gotten so bad that I try to avoid opening Firefox as much as possible now and just use qutebrowser¹ instead. It’s extremely liberating to be able to open a browser and not have to wait a minute before being able to type anything in the address bar. ―――――― ¹ — http://qutebrowser.org/ http://qutebrowser.org/
  - farresito 11y ago
    I do remember reading about qutebrowser; in fact, I did try it around three or four months ago. Might give it again for a couple of weeks and see how much I like it. Thank you for the tip.
rektide 11y ago
This gives me so much hope that we might begin to grow better mobile user-agents. I know FF has had extensions ongoingly, but this really feels like it can challenge mobile Chrome's unmoving rejection of extensions.
dang 11y ago
We've closed this thread to new accounts because of trolls. If you have a new account and want to comment here, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
Eleutheria 11y ago
Please, for all that is sacred, keep collaborating in an unified standard for all major browsers. As a developer who has to build extensions for all major browsers I'd appreciate the effort.
xg15 11y ago
I understand (and applaud) the mission to make a cross-browser compatible, predictable format for extensions. What I don't understand is why Firefox is apparently introducing some of Chrome's more weird limitations with it as well: E.g., XUL add-ons were free to add as many toolbar buttons and menu items as necessary; WebExtensions are restricted to a single button. Likewise, Firefox had a well-functioning way for extensions to access page JS. This is now replaced by Chrome's awkward approach of injecting script elements, sending messages and praying that no collisions occur. Why that?
- mook 11y ago
  I believe the injecting script part is to support having the chrome and the content in different processes. I'm sad that, on the UI modification front, the new system doesn't seem nearly as powerful as XUL overlays. I worry that when Servo comes into production use, all that extensibility will be dropped (with Chrome not having it as the justification) and we'll be left without a highly customizable mainstream browser.
bsimpson 11y ago
So WebExtensions is Mozilla's name for a subset of the Chrome Extension API they'll be implementing? It's really weird to see a project named WebThing that doesn't seem to exist outside of a particular vendor's blog/wiki. I'd expect to find a public mailing list/GitHub repo/landing page without much searching. They don't even own webextensions.org.
uxcn 11y ago
I understand, and even agree with, a lot of the goals behind the WebExtensions API. I'm honestly still worried firefox isn't going to encourage plugins like pterosaur, pentadactyl, etc.. going forward. Will modifying the UI and the DOM essentially be verboten?
- Certhas 11y ago
  I think Mozilla is highly aware of the importance of the extension ecosystem. They don't want to alienate people https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-on-changes/ https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-o... https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Which_add-ons_will_stop_working_when_XUL.2FXPCOM_is_deprecated.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Which_add-ons_wil... There are also proposals for ensuring that innovation can still be driven by extension developers: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/proposal-native-js-to-embrace-extend-the-webextensions-api/3457 https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/proposal-native-js...
  - uxcn 11y ago
    Native.js is interesting. I would wonder how it plans to handle things like callbacks for various events though. As an example, a keypress in a textbox (e.g. pterosaur). I haven't looked at the WebExtensions API in detail yet, so it may already be a solved problem. More specifically, editing text seems oddly neglected, which is disappointing considering webmail, blogs, social media, stack overflow, etc... I'm glad noscript is being given special consideration.
protomyth 11y ago
Is it possible to write a DownThemAll!-like extension? I'm still a bit confused on why I should continue to use Firefox when all the features of extensions are stripped to be compatible with Chrome. What am I missing?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Unless I'm missing something, you could probably write DownThemAll as a bookmarklet. All it does is scan a page for links and download them.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    It does do a tad more than that as it has filters and works on links and embedded images with pause and resume.
    - chii 11y ago
      Yep. Also the ability to rename the downloaded files according to a pattern.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      Oh sure, but it's still not something requiring special APIs.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Alongside the XUL migration, the move to requiring extension signatures has provoked controversy. I wonder, though. Since WebExtensions have fine-grained permissions, perhaps you could permit unsigned extensions which don't do potentially nefarious things?

148 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

pcx 11y ago

This is great news! Especially the part where Web Extensions are going work in Chrome without any changes!

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
With minimal changes, I think. IIRC Firefox has a slightly different packaging format.
amelius 11y ago
Now if only Firefox would support NativeClient.

MozillaEx 11y ago

I worked closely with Mozilla during the first few years of Firefox. It's only the same in name and logo these days. The hard truth is internal and external politics in the organization were so toxic senior-level programmers who were more risk averse were pushed out. Imagine taking C++ pros who advised in the creation of W3C/IEEE/etc drafts, and tossing them out in favor of node.js programmers. The gray hairs were betrayed in favor of node hipsters. Whatever happened to respecting those who made you. This hits hard. The truth is Mozilla's days of glory are numbered. Over the coming years the decline will come to eventually wrestle Firefox out of Mozilla's hands and into a normal open source project. Was all this office backstabbing worth it? This is what happens when you lose the hacker ethic. It's disappointing.

moron4hire 11y ago
I think, if you really want to say something, it'd be more appropriate with your real name and as its own blog post, rather than trying to rain on the parade of some not-management-level Mozillians releasing a project.
- MozillaEx 11y ago
  I want to just program without all the backstabbing and treachery. In this case, the drama at this organization in particular is so intense it manifests itself in the news. The creator of javascript, a pillar of the internet, was publicly humiliated and crucified. Why? They knew his name. They looked up his voting records. That's witchhunting. It's letting a bunch of people in the peanut gallery dictate what goes on - that's not integrity or leadership. I already suffered enough due to office politics, I feel no need to compromise my identity to voice my opinion.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    If you just want to program, then why are you leaving comments like this? You're passive aggressive behavior is more office politics.
    - gObO 11y ago
      Maybe because he wants to raise the issue about what is going on? Fight fire with fire, kiddo.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    I want to just program without all the backstabbing and treachery. I mean, for someone who just wants to program you're creating an awful lot of drama. I don't really buy your complaints, which come off as mostly baseless ranting. If I were to read a blog post that raised some of those issues in a constructive manner, I might have more confidence in your legitimacy. As it is, though… I don't really believe you.
    - Nadya 11y ago
      No comment on their specific claims or validity - but the overarching issue does exist. /r/GitInAction exists specifically to highlight what they are talking about in regards to Open Source projects and, more specifically, GitHub projects where this exact issue is occurring. A bunch of non-programmer busy-bodies opening issues about wording or grammar without so much as submitting a pull-request to fix it (likely because they don't even know how to open a pull-request, because they don't use Git, because they don't actually code using GitHub). It isn't a stretch of the imagination to think a corporation as large as Mozilla has a few of those busy-body types in it. It's turned into internal politics, raising non-issues, and creating a fuss around any wrongthinkers to get them fired or scrutinized. Rather than programming.
ihsw 11y ago
That was over a decade ago, things change. Firefox is more relevant now than it was before, I welcome their efforts to change with the times. They are taking massive risks now, simultaneously developing an entirely new programming language (Rust) and building an entirely new browser engine on it (Servo) is ambitious. It is clearly self-evident that it has paid off. There is nothing wrong with node.js programmers, your implication that they're inferior is a broad-sweeping and baseless generalization. The grey hairs are most certainly still around, and they're most definitely well-respected. Rust's C++ roots is evidence of this. Mozilla is flourishing, that cannot be denied. Firefox is a normal open source project, Mozilla receive's contributions from around the globe. The hacker ethic isn't gone, it matured into something better. https://github.com/mozilla/ https://github.com/mozilla/
- Scarbutt 11y ago
  Real question, how is Mozilla flourishing when its main product, Firefox, has been declining in market share for years?
  - darklajid 11y ago
    'Declining in market share': I assume you count 'Google throws crappy internal ads at every internet user and encourages mum and pop to "upgrade your browser"', right? I find it difficult to see how that can _not_ damage a free market. Mozilla seems to flourish as far as I am concerned: Servo, Rust and Firefox are surprising me time and time again and seem very well received in all my social circles.
    - Touche 11y ago
      > 'Declining in market share': I assume you count 'Google throws crappy internal ads at every internet user and encourages mum and pop to "upgrade your browser"', right? Of course, Firefox numbers are going down, no? The reason is irrelevant.
      - darklajid 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bobajeff 11y ago
"The hard truth is internal and external politics in the organization were so toxic senior-level programmers who were more risk averse were pushed out." I wish you'd go into a lot more detail than that.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  I'd like to see it, too. Just not in this thread.
gObO 11y ago
welcome to open sores, where eggplant emoticons get you banned from github and Furfox values hipster node.js developers more than the original core, c++ devs
jonathonf 11y ago
> Over the coming years the decline will come to eventually wrestle Firefox out of Mozilla's hands and into a normal open source project. Please fork it.
- komontu 11y ago
  See: Pale Moon. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/
  - jonathonf 11y ago
    I was kind of after a project that could feed back upstream, or provide a little competition in the same way that Firefox does (did?) for Chromium. Palemoon, though a decent fork, doesn't (seem to) have all that much to offer upstream.
- Grue3 11y ago
  This. Firefox NEEDS a fork before all the plugins ecosystem is destroyed. There NEEDS to exist at least one browser for hardcore users, that supports actual plugins and not glorified greasemonkey scripts. Otherwise we are screwed.
Pr0Wolf29 11y ago
This is what happens when you let politics get in the way of programming. There is no evidence of a project that has not lost quality due to politics. Even GNU is often cited as being more complicated and bloated to its competitors. When the previews for Australis came out, I saw far ahead what it seems like no one else saw. I said that it would become something more locked down, reflecting the authoritarian attitude of hipster webdevs, which has been shown with the diminishing customization, and add-on signing. I said it would become a crappy rip-off of Chrome, which is what Australis made it. I said the good programmers would eventually be pushed out by webdevs who were not as good, and here Mozilla is making the Rust language, which is merely a crutch for people not good enough to use C++. So far all of my predictions have come true. There is still hope with Pale Moon, staying true to good design, however my message to you all is simple. Never let politics get in the way of quality software. Thank you.
- jmhain 11y ago
  > I said the good programmers would eventually be pushed out by webdevs who were not as good, and here Mozilla is making the Rust language, which is merely a crutch for people not good enough to use C++. And C++ is just a crutch for people not good enough to use assembly.
  - gObO 11y ago
    It would have been funny if you had used C, but you didn't so now it just sounds weird. I suggest you edit it very quickly so you don't embarrass yourself.
  - Pr0Wolf29 11y ago
    I'm not going to deny that at all lol.
- pcwalton 11y ago
  > here Mozilla is making the Rust language, which is merely a crutch for people not good enough to use C++. There is, in my experience, zero correlation between programmer skill and frequency of vulnerabilities introduced through memory management problems. In fact, it's often the best programmers who introduce use-after-frees and such, possibly because they're more productive and write more code.

oblio 11y ago

Does anyone know if more complex extensions such as Tab Mix Plus or Tree Style Tabs will be supported?

reitanqild 11y ago
This. If it wasn't for the extensions I could use any modern browser I think. Yes, Firefox is really good at handling n 100 tabs, but I guess Chrome does that too.
wittekm 11y ago
They want to add hooks for it, noting Opera already has a sidebar API. https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future I've seen similar sentiments echoed by Mozilla devs in a reddit AMA a few weeks ago.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Sadly, they won’t add nearly enough APIs, they already announced that most of the UI won’t be customizable. I’d have preferred a full UI customization like in Vivaldi.
  - mmebane 11y ago
    That's disappointing. Do you have a reference for this? I'm curious if there were any details in the announcement.

ck2 11y ago

Still stuck on 41.0.2 Guess they are never going to fix gdocument. And then there is the matter of allowing private/local extensions. Might have to take another look at Pale Moon or Waterfox

michaelmrose 11y ago
"What makes Waterfox so fast? It's built with Intel's C++ compiler. One of the most powerful compilers out there. This enables us to make the fastest possible web browser for all the code changes we make. This potent combination makes for an unparalleled browsing experience." So basically a build of firefox with a different compiler with binaries available for only mac and windows. For extra fun its based on an older version of firefox and there is no reason to believe it has devs backporting fixes from higher versions nor that there is anybody with the chops to build anything useful on top of it meaning it - Is virtually guaranteed to have security vulnerabilities and bugs that have already been fixed elsewhere - It will either end up with the same flaws you don't like about firefox or alternatively it will be forever stuck at an old version while the bad guys find more and more exploits.

farresito 11y ago

Not too relevant, but Firefox has gotten significantly slower in my computer in the past few versions, to the point that I will most likely switch to Chrome again. I barely have any extensions and it's never been slower than what I have now.

tshannon 11y ago
I've felt the same, especially with the developer tools, but I started using Firefox developer edition, and it seems much, much faster, so I'm sure improvements are coming.
- farresito 11y ago
  Thank you for the tip. I installed it and it does indeed seem faster. I suppose the plugin compatibility is not too bad. EDIT: Seemms like my lovely vimperator doesn't work too well.
arm 11y ago
Completely agree with this. The difference in resources used by Firefox 30 compared to Firefox 40 is just staggering. A netbook that used to run versions of Firefox 30 and below just fine now bogs down so much in newer versions of Firefox that the netbook is regularly left unusable for minutes at a time. It’s gotten so bad that I try to avoid opening Firefox as much as possible now and just use qutebrowser¹ instead. It’s extremely liberating to be able to open a browser and not have to wait a minute before being able to type anything in the address bar. ―――――― ¹ — http://qutebrowser.org/ http://qutebrowser.org/
- farresito 11y ago
  I do remember reading about qutebrowser; in fact, I did try it around three or four months ago. Might give it again for a couple of weeks and see how much I like it. Thank you for the tip.

rektide 11y ago

This gives me so much hope that we might begin to grow better mobile user-agents. I know FF has had extensions ongoingly, but this really feels like it can challenge mobile Chrome's unmoving rejection of extensions.

dang 11y ago

We've closed this thread to new accounts because of trolls. If you have a new account and want to comment here, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.

Eleutheria 11y ago

Please, for all that is sacred, keep collaborating in an unified standard for all major browsers. As a developer who has to build extensions for all major browsers I'd appreciate the effort.

xg15 11y ago

I understand (and applaud) the mission to make a cross-browser compatible, predictable format for extensions. What I don't understand is why Firefox is apparently introducing some of Chrome's more weird limitations with it as well: E.g., XUL add-ons were free to add as many toolbar buttons and menu items as necessary; WebExtensions are restricted to a single button. Likewise, Firefox had a well-functioning way for extensions to access page JS. This is now replaced by Chrome's awkward approach of injecting script elements, sending messages and praying that no collisions occur. Why that?

mook 11y ago
I believe the injecting script part is to support having the chrome and the content in different processes. I'm sad that, on the UI modification front, the new system doesn't seem nearly as powerful as XUL overlays. I worry that when Servo comes into production use, all that extensibility will be dropped (with Chrome not having it as the justification) and we'll be left without a highly customizable mainstream browser.

bsimpson 11y ago

So WebExtensions is Mozilla's name for a subset of the Chrome Extension API they'll be implementing? It's really weird to see a project named WebThing that doesn't seem to exist outside of a particular vendor's blog/wiki. I'd expect to find a public mailing list/GitHub repo/landing page without much searching. They don't even own webextensions.org.

uxcn 11y ago

I understand, and even agree with, a lot of the goals behind the WebExtensions API. I'm honestly still worried firefox isn't going to encourage plugins like pterosaur, pentadactyl, etc.. going forward. Will modifying the UI and the DOM essentially be verboten?

Certhas 11y ago
I think Mozilla is highly aware of the importance of the extension ecosystem. They don't want to alienate people https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-on-changes/ https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-o... https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Which_add-ons_will_stop_working_when_XUL.2FXPCOM_is_deprecated.3F https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/FAQ#Which_add-ons_wil... There are also proposals for ensuring that innovation can still be driven by extension developers: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/proposal-native-js-to-embrace-extend-the-webextensions-api/3457 https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/proposal-native-js...
- uxcn 11y ago
  Native.js is interesting. I would wonder how it plans to handle things like callbacks for various events though. As an example, a keypress in a textbox (e.g. pterosaur). I haven't looked at the WebExtensions API in detail yet, so it may already be a solved problem. More specifically, editing text seems oddly neglected, which is disappointing considering webmail, blogs, social media, stack overflow, etc... I'm glad noscript is being given special consideration.

protomyth 11y ago

Is it possible to write a DownThemAll!-like extension? I'm still a bit confused on why I should continue to use Firefox when all the features of extensions are stripped to be compatible with Chrome. What am I missing?

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Unless I'm missing something, you could probably write DownThemAll as a bookmarklet. All it does is scan a page for links and download them.
- protomyth 11y ago
  It does do a tad more than that as it has filters and works on links and embedded images with pause and resume.
  - chii 11y ago
    Yep. Also the ability to rename the downloaded files according to a pattern.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Oh sure, but it's still not something requiring special APIs.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

Alongside the XUL migration, the move to requiring extension signatures has provoked controversy. I wonder, though. Since WebExtensions have fine-grained permissions, perhaps you could permit unsigned extensions which don't do potentially nefarious things?