6 ms·

Yeah it's honestly pretty disgusting. Mozilla's strong add-on system has been one of their largest advertisable features for /years/. Just because a bunch of pe

by jd3 10y ago

Yeah it's honestly pretty disgusting. Mozilla's strong add-on system has been one of their largest advertisable features for /years/. Just because a bunch of people have switched to inferior webkit/blink based browsers doesn't necessarily mean that the opposition's technology is superior. If I were the head of Mozilla, I'd get rid of everyone who has suggested: removing complete themes, removing the XUL/XPCOM add-ons and SDK, cutting off support for thunderbird/SeaMonkey/etc. Servo is an interesting browser project, but it's also a /separate/ project. They need to stop focusing on stupid fluff like pocket/hello/etc; instead, focus on bug zapping and core technology improvements (HTML5, etc.) If Mozilla continues gimping their core software any more, their user base will literally be 0. Disclaimer: I am an ardent supported of the Suite (SeaMonkey) and everything Mozilla will be doing in the next year will probably completely kill it (ChatZilla, themes, add-ons, etc.) Example: by this time next year, pretty much nothing you see here will be possible in SeaMonkey anymore thanks to the idiotic decisions from the Mozilla top brass: http://i.imgur.com/g4SwoFa.png http://i.imgur.com/g4SwoFa.png http://i.imgur.com/uDHcZpw.png http://i.imgur.com/uDHcZpw.png http://i.imgur.com/fO4Qz8A.png http://i.imgur.com/fO4Qz8A.png

yuhong 10y ago
I have been thinking that the move to Servo and browser.html is a good time to do things like restore customizable toolbars, since the UI would need to be rewritten anyway.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  browser.html doesn't even have toolbars.
nwah1 10y ago
You have a misunderstanding of what is going on. Hello, for instance, is not some sort of project is draining resources and/or bloating firefox. It is essentially a WebRTC demonstration. Since WebRTC is a technology that needs to be implemented anyways, and is worth promoting, Hello becomes very interesting. It is basically just a little bit of javascript that runs on top of all the WebRTC code that they'd have to build anyways. Trying to do cross-platform screensharing, for instance, can be quite a hassle, but this will allow it to be done all without any sort of plugins, or any need for TeamViewer, GotoMeeting, etc. And as for XUL and XPCOM, they've already been moving away from it internally for years. It is horrible. Talk about bloat and security problems. And they already are needing to rewrite their APIs for things like Electrolysis, which I assume we want. So why not actually do a good job with the rewrite? The ultimate goal is to have the UI based on web standards (browser.html). This will reduce bloat and reduce the attack surface. And the UI will only get more customizable as a result.
- nathancahill 10y ago
  > the UI will only get more customizable as a result. It's not the UI, it's the APIs behind powerful addons like Firebug that made Firefox the browser that it is. Those powerful APIs are going, going, gone.
  - clouddrover 10y ago
    Firebug 3 integrates with Firefox's native DevTools so you'll still have Firebug (or you can just use Firefox's DevTools without Firebug if you want): https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integration/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integrati...
    - nathancahill 10y ago
      Firebug isn't what's at stake here. It's the level of API access to browser internals that allowed things like Firebug to be built.
      - clouddrover 10y ago
        I don't think you need to be worried. If some feature is missing from the new API then get involved with the development and get the feature added. That's what add-on authors are doing (see my other comment).
- knight17 10y ago
  The capability of addons are being gutted in the name of progress. The new trend towards addons as a toolbar button started by Google Chrome has been disastrous. Extensions like Vimperator/Pentadactyl, that makes deep changes to the way Firefox operate would not be possible under the new system. I think they don't know who their ideal users are any more. It feels like Mozilla has no imagination left. In the browser space I can see Chrome following its ideals and moving ahead. Recently Vivaldi has been making great strides with original thinking on what a browser should be. Oh, and Mozilla? We'll ape Chrome here and there and loose our identity and alienate our users. If I want Chrome, I would use it myself, I don't want bits and pieces of Chrome in something I've been using long before Chrome came. Copy features and implement them like how Android and iOS copy each other; they keep their core identity intact with the changes and features adopted. It is sad. Just look at what Microsoft has been doing to get an addon community like Firefox, and look at Mozilla throwing away all their working addons and the community to the streets.
aswan 10y ago
It's remarkable the extent to which people assume the worst every time this topic comes up. The Mozilla stance has always been that the add-on community is a huge asset but that supporting add-ons based on XUL, XPCOM, and the SDK imposes real costs in security, performance, and maintainability. The plan, intended to keep the benefits while addressing the problems, is to migrate to a new set of APIs -- web extensions. This is meant to be a migration, not a narrowing of the capabilities -- building compatibility for existing Chrome extensions is just the first step in this plan, when that foundation is in place the next steps are to extend the webextensions APIs to keep expanding the set of add-ons that can be written as webextensions. A transition like this has two halves: adding the new (performant, maintainable, secure) APIs and deprecating the old ones. Comments like the one above jump to the bizarre conclusion that Mozilla will decide to remove of the old APIs but never add the new ones. The closest thing to an explanation for why this would happen is ... uh, something about pocket and hello?
- kuschku 10y ago
  Mozilla has publicly said several times that they will NOT provide the same set of APIs. What we want is the ability to modify the whole browser chrome as if it was a website, and the ability to modify every action that happens in the browser. (For example, for tree style tabs, or a tab bar at the bottom, or stuff like redirecting some keypresses to other processes). Vivaldi does provide these things. Vivaldi allows users to literally rewrite 100% of the actual browser with simple JS addons. Mozilla should provide at least what Vivaldi provides.
- protomyth 10y ago
  > XUL, XPCOM, and the SDK imposes real costs in security, performance, and maintainability. Is there some report on the security implications of supporting XUL?
- the8472 10y ago
  In my eyes mozilla's stance on security is patronizing towards power-users because it assumes that every addon and every non-root application on the system is potentially hostile. Thus the goal is to prevent free interaction between processes or between addons and native in general (unix philosophy anyone?). Everyone has to suffer just to protect those who click on "yes, install" whenever prompted. The result are less powerful APIs in the name of security. Just look at addon signing. Mozilla refuses to add an off switch to that (and thus user control) because they fear that some other processes already running on the user's computer might inject unsigned addons. In my eyes this is a crazy kind of threat model that basically writes off the user's system security as a lost cause and tries to defend FF against that lost cause. It's elevating mozilla's needs over interoperability between applications. Imagine if awk refused to run unless the parent process is bash, signed by canonical, because they deemed some other shell's argument expansion as potentially confusing to the user or something like that. Crazy, right?
pjmlp 10y ago
> Yeah it's honestly pretty disgusting. Mozilla's strong add-on system has been one of their largest advertisable features for /years/. Just because a bunch of people have switched to inferior webkit/blink based browsers doesn't necessarily mean that the opposition's technology is superior. For me, even though I also do web development now and then, the web should have stayed as interactive hypermedia documents. What matters are network protocols. I always use native applications, when given the option. As such, I never cared for add-ons other than dictionaries. Blocking ads and nasty JavaScript sites? That is what the computer networking configuration is for.
- the8472 10y ago
  > Blocking ads and nasty JavaScript sites? That is what the computer networking configuration is for. If everything is behind cloudflare IPs and piped through TLS that gets more difficult. And you'd have to defeat all the certificate-pinning/sts/etc. security just to filter some stuff. On the other hand the browser has more knowledge about each request, e.g. whether it's actually intended to be executed as javascript or loaded as an image etc.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Yeah, but the other hand you have Adblockers selling themselves out with exceptions for partner companies.
    - the8472 10y ago
      There are a dozen content- and ad-blockers. Only one or two do what you mention.

by jd3 10y ago

yuhong 10y ago

I have been thinking that the move to Servo and browser.html is a good time to do things like restore customizable toolbars, since the UI would need to be rewritten anyway.

pcwalton 10y ago
browser.html doesn't even have toolbars.

nwah1 10y ago

You have a misunderstanding of what is going on. Hello, for instance, is not some sort of project is draining resources and/or bloating firefox. It is essentially a WebRTC demonstration. Since WebRTC is a technology that needs to be implemented anyways, and is worth promoting, Hello becomes very interesting. It is basically just a little bit of javascript that runs on top of all the WebRTC code that they'd have to build anyways. Trying to do cross-platform screensharing, for instance, can be quite a hassle, but this will allow it to be done all without any sort of plugins, or any need for TeamViewer, GotoMeeting, etc. And as for XUL and XPCOM, they've already been moving away from it internally for years. It is horrible. Talk about bloat and security problems. And they already are needing to rewrite their APIs for things like Electrolysis, which I assume we want. So why not actually do a good job with the rewrite? The ultimate goal is to have the UI based on web standards (browser.html). This will reduce bloat and reduce the attack surface. And the UI will only get more customizable as a result.

nathancahill 10y ago
> the UI will only get more customizable as a result. It's not the UI, it's the APIs behind powerful addons like Firebug that made Firefox the browser that it is. Those powerful APIs are going, going, gone.
- clouddrover 10y ago
  Firebug 3 integrates with Firefox's native DevTools so you'll still have Firebug (or you can just use Firefox's DevTools without Firebug if you want): https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integration/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/firebug-devtools-integrati...
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    Firebug isn't what's at stake here. It's the level of API access to browser internals that allowed things like Firebug to be built.
    - clouddrover 10y ago
      I don't think you need to be worried. If some feature is missing from the new API then get involved with the development and get the feature added. That's what add-on authors are doing (see my other comment).
knight17 10y ago
The capability of addons are being gutted in the name of progress. The new trend towards addons as a toolbar button started by Google Chrome has been disastrous. Extensions like Vimperator/Pentadactyl, that makes deep changes to the way Firefox operate would not be possible under the new system. I think they don't know who their ideal users are any more. It feels like Mozilla has no imagination left. In the browser space I can see Chrome following its ideals and moving ahead. Recently Vivaldi has been making great strides with original thinking on what a browser should be. Oh, and Mozilla? We'll ape Chrome here and there and loose our identity and alienate our users. If I want Chrome, I would use it myself, I don't want bits and pieces of Chrome in something I've been using long before Chrome came. Copy features and implement them like how Android and iOS copy each other; they keep their core identity intact with the changes and features adopted. It is sad. Just look at what Microsoft has been doing to get an addon community like Firefox, and look at Mozilla throwing away all their working addons and the community to the streets.

aswan 10y ago

It's remarkable the extent to which people assume the worst every time this topic comes up. The Mozilla stance has always been that the add-on community is a huge asset but that supporting add-ons based on XUL, XPCOM, and the SDK imposes real costs in security, performance, and maintainability. The plan, intended to keep the benefits while addressing the problems, is to migrate to a new set of APIs -- web extensions. This is meant to be a migration, not a narrowing of the capabilities -- building compatibility for existing Chrome extensions is just the first step in this plan, when that foundation is in place the next steps are to extend the webextensions APIs to keep expanding the set of add-ons that can be written as webextensions. A transition like this has two halves: adding the new (performant, maintainable, secure) APIs and deprecating the old ones. Comments like the one above jump to the bizarre conclusion that Mozilla will decide to remove of the old APIs but never add the new ones. The closest thing to an explanation for why this would happen is ... uh, something about pocket and hello?

kuschku 10y ago
Mozilla has publicly said several times that they will NOT provide the same set of APIs. What we want is the ability to modify the whole browser chrome as if it was a website, and the ability to modify every action that happens in the browser. (For example, for tree style tabs, or a tab bar at the bottom, or stuff like redirecting some keypresses to other processes). Vivaldi does provide these things. Vivaldi allows users to literally rewrite 100% of the actual browser with simple JS addons. Mozilla should provide at least what Vivaldi provides.
protomyth 10y ago
> XUL, XPCOM, and the SDK imposes real costs in security, performance, and maintainability. Is there some report on the security implications of supporting XUL?
the8472 10y ago
In my eyes mozilla's stance on security is patronizing towards power-users because it assumes that every addon and every non-root application on the system is potentially hostile. Thus the goal is to prevent free interaction between processes or between addons and native in general (unix philosophy anyone?). Everyone has to suffer just to protect those who click on "yes, install" whenever prompted. The result are less powerful APIs in the name of security. Just look at addon signing. Mozilla refuses to add an off switch to that (and thus user control) because they fear that some other processes already running on the user's computer might inject unsigned addons. In my eyes this is a crazy kind of threat model that basically writes off the user's system security as a lost cause and tries to defend FF against that lost cause. It's elevating mozilla's needs over interoperability between applications. Imagine if awk refused to run unless the parent process is bash, signed by canonical, because they deemed some other shell's argument expansion as potentially confusing to the user or something like that. Crazy, right?

pjmlp 10y ago

> Yeah it's honestly pretty disgusting. Mozilla's strong add-on system has been one of their largest advertisable features for /years/. Just because a bunch of people have switched to inferior webkit/blink based browsers doesn't necessarily mean that the opposition's technology is superior. For me, even though I also do web development now and then, the web should have stayed as interactive hypermedia documents. What matters are network protocols. I always use native applications, when given the option. As such, I never cared for add-ons other than dictionaries. Blocking ads and nasty JavaScript sites? That is what the computer networking configuration is for.

the8472 10y ago
> Blocking ads and nasty JavaScript sites? That is what the computer networking configuration is for. If everything is behind cloudflare IPs and piped through TLS that gets more difficult. And you'd have to defeat all the certificate-pinning/sts/etc. security just to filter some stuff. On the other hand the browser has more knowledge about each request, e.g. whether it's actually intended to be executed as javascript or loaded as an image etc.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Yeah, but the other hand you have Adblockers selling themselves out with exceptions for partner companies.
  - the8472 10y ago
    There are a dozen content- and ad-blockers. Only one or two do what you mention.