5 ms·

Maintaining a fork of a large browser is extremely difficult, especially for coordinating and merging vulnerability fixes.

stephengillie 10y ago
Do no other extension developers have this issue?
- protomyth 10y ago
  There have been a few articles submitted to HN that indicate some extension developers are giving up.
- dsr_ 10y ago
  The EPUBreader extension now notifies you on each relaunch that they need donations to fund a complete rewrite to work in future Firefox versions.
- chr1 10y ago
  They have, many of them gave up earlier, e.g. https://github.com/estivo/Instantfox/issues/129#issuecomment-250919830 https://github.com/estivo/Instantfox/issues/129#issuecomment... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/reviews/834437/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... http://www.downthemall.net/re-downthemall-and-webextensions-or-why-why-i-am-done-with-mozilla/ http://www.downthemall.net/re-downthemall-and-webextensions-...
- zyxzkz 10y ago
  Yes, I've faced similar issues in the past, and had to update my add-on to get it working again. Now it looks like it will once again break (this time permanently). I'm in the same boat with other folks. Why use Firefox if it's just a poor man's Chrome clone?
chr1 10y ago
Forking brave browser [1], or one of other electron based browsers may be a good way forward, as it will allow easy customizability of the ui, and get all the hard to maintain native parts from chromium. Mozillas browser.html project may be helpful too, but it seems to be a bit too experimental for now. [1] https://brave.com https://brave.com
- BrendanEich 10y ago
  No need to fork Brave, we will collaborate on extensions APIs as we scale. We're supporting tested chromium extensions that we curate and fetch from our own S3 (essentially a cache backed by the Chrome Web Store). For an extension to get support, we need to rank it as in-demand, and then try adding it to Brave to see what missing chrome.* APIs it might need. https://twitter.com/bravesampson https://twitter.com/bravesampson is leading this charge, using https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/projects/1 https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/projects/1 to keep track and engage with developers. For future extension APIs that go beyond the chromium ones, we won't support XUL, but I'd like to take advantage of our Muon (https://github.com/brave/muon https://github.com/brave/muon - we forked Electron, because security) React.js-based front end. In 2Q2017 I'll hope to have more to say about extensions and where we'll go. Interested extension developers are welcome now to join our https://community.brave.com/ https://community.brave.com/ discourse. Thanks.
  - chr1 10y ago
    Great to hear you are interested in colaborating on this issues. muon and react based ui is exactly why i was suggesting to use brave as a base for experimentation. I was not talking about the type of extension that allow to do some common things based on small api created specifically for that. I am more interested in extensions that get full access to existing react components, and can modify the browser ui in arbitrary ways, e.g. by adding splitview similar to what cloudy has, or adding proper tabs on mobile instead of carousel.
    - BrendanEich 10y ago
      I was chief architect of Mozilla back in the 1998 October roadmap period and onward, when we created XUL. Indeed we wanted powerful extensions, and got them. Problem is they tied Mozilla down for too long, without anyone stepping up to find a way forward that didn't just seem to signal "XUL going away... <angry dev feedback>. Oh never mind; or maybe later". Brave UX will evolve but slowly and without big changes that break too many users (Australis). Still, we need to be able to change our UX. So if we have powerful extension APIs into that UX, we can't promise never to break extensions that use those APIs in ways that become unsupportable. All we can do is try to co-evolve nicely and cooperate better. I don't see a silver bullet here, but I do see how Mozilla has burned a lot of add-on developer good will -- and we won't make that mistake at Brave.

stephengillie 10y ago

Do no other extension developers have this issue?

protomyth 10y ago
There have been a few articles submitted to HN that indicate some extension developers are giving up.
dsr_ 10y ago
The EPUBreader extension now notifies you on each relaunch that they need donations to fund a complete rewrite to work in future Firefox versions.
chr1 10y ago
They have, many of them gave up earlier, e.g. https://github.com/estivo/Instantfox/issues/129#issuecomment-250919830 https://github.com/estivo/Instantfox/issues/129#issuecomment... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/reviews/834437/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer... http://www.downthemall.net/re-downthemall-and-webextensions-or-why-why-i-am-done-with-mozilla/ http://www.downthemall.net/re-downthemall-and-webextensions-...
zyxzkz 10y ago
Yes, I've faced similar issues in the past, and had to update my add-on to get it working again. Now it looks like it will once again break (this time permanently). I'm in the same boat with other folks. Why use Firefox if it's just a poor man's Chrome clone?

chr1 10y ago

Forking brave browser [1], or one of other electron based browsers may be a good way forward, as it will allow easy customizability of the ui, and get all the hard to maintain native parts from chromium. Mozillas browser.html project may be helpful too, but it seems to be a bit too experimental for now. [1] https://brave.com https://brave.com

BrendanEich 10y ago
No need to fork Brave, we will collaborate on extensions APIs as we scale. We're supporting tested chromium extensions that we curate and fetch from our own S3 (essentially a cache backed by the Chrome Web Store). For an extension to get support, we need to rank it as in-demand, and then try adding it to Brave to see what missing chrome.* APIs it might need. https://twitter.com/bravesampson https://twitter.com/bravesampson is leading this charge, using https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/projects/1 https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/projects/1 to keep track and engage with developers. For future extension APIs that go beyond the chromium ones, we won't support XUL, but I'd like to take advantage of our Muon (https://github.com/brave/muon https://github.com/brave/muon - we forked Electron, because security) React.js-based front end. In 2Q2017 I'll hope to have more to say about extensions and where we'll go. Interested extension developers are welcome now to join our https://community.brave.com/ https://community.brave.com/ discourse. Thanks.
- chr1 10y ago
  Great to hear you are interested in colaborating on this issues. muon and react based ui is exactly why i was suggesting to use brave as a base for experimentation. I was not talking about the type of extension that allow to do some common things based on small api created specifically for that. I am more interested in extensions that get full access to existing react components, and can modify the browser ui in arbitrary ways, e.g. by adding splitview similar to what cloudy has, or adding proper tabs on mobile instead of carousel.
  - BrendanEich 10y ago
    I was chief architect of Mozilla back in the 1998 October roadmap period and onward, when we created XUL. Indeed we wanted powerful extensions, and got them. Problem is they tied Mozilla down for too long, without anyone stepping up to find a way forward that didn't just seem to signal "XUL going away... <angry dev feedback>. Oh never mind; or maybe later". Brave UX will evolve but slowly and without big changes that break too many users (Australis). Still, we need to be able to change our UX. So if we have powerful extension APIs into that UX, we can't promise never to break extensions that use those APIs in ways that become unsupportable. All we can do is try to co-evolve nicely and cooperate better. I don't see a silver bullet here, but I do see how Mozilla has burned a lot of add-on developer good will -- and we won't make that mistake at Brave.