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(a) None of the replies changes the fact that Firefox will lose users over this. A harbinger of what's to come. Too bad Mozilla's wack leadership can't solve

(a) None of the replies changes the fact that Firefox will lose users over this. A harbinger of what's to come. Too bad Mozilla's wack leadership can't solve their problems by downvoting the users who leave Firefox because they will no longer the browser that works with a rich extension ecosystem (in general). (b) If the one of the largest software companies out there, which is apparently acting in good faith here (since they intend to release a new plugin), can't keep up, then in what universe do all the rest? All that being said, who knows what it going on with the new Google Voice. While seemingly improving the UI, they made it very difficult to place outgoing calls to people one has not received calls from already. So maybe Google is getting ready to kill Voice off.

Etzos 10y ago
a. It seems you're conflating the deprecation of XUL/legacy extensions and the NPAPI plugins here. This current release removes NPAPI support which affects plugins only. Extension changes are coming in later releases. b. If they're acting in good faith why did they misrepresent when Mozilla announced they would be deprecating the NPAPI plugin API[1]? It seems more likely that they were simply lazy and instead of making the solution they used for Chrome (which already removed NPAPI support, mind you) work across the board, they waited until the last moment and realized Mozilla was actually going to go through with making the same changes they did. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plu... which is a full year before Google mentioned Mozilla made the announcement ( https://www.fxsitecompat.com/en-CA/docs/2016/plug-in-support-has-been-dropped-other-than-flash/ https://www.fxsitecompat.com/en-CA/docs/2016/plug-in-support... )
- cpeterso 10y ago
  Hangouts switched from NPAPI to WebRTC in Chrome back in 2014, but continues to use plugins (NPAPI or ActiveX) in other browsers. Hangouts depends on some non-standard WebRTC functionality in Chrome. https://plus.google.com/103171586947853434456/posts/39TCW3PcLye https://plus.google.com/103171586947853434456/posts/39TCW3Pc...
- threepipeproblm 10y ago
  Yes, I think I am conflating the issues of XUL/legacy extensions and the NPAPI plugins. All I can say is that while I didn't take a lot of time to parse this, most of the people impacted by this issue will take even less. They will just understand that Firefox worked with Google Voice and then stopped. So it does seem to me like part of an overall theme. Firefox used to let users decide what was safe, now it's decided for us.

Etzos 10y ago

a. It seems you're conflating the deprecation of XUL/legacy extensions and the NPAPI plugins here. This current release removes NPAPI support which affects plugins only. Extension changes are coming in later releases. b. If they're acting in good faith why did they misrepresent when Mozilla announced they would be deprecating the NPAPI plugin API[1]? It seems more likely that they were simply lazy and instead of making the solution they used for Chrome (which already removed NPAPI support, mind you) work across the board, they waited until the last moment and realized Mozilla was actually going to go through with making the same changes they did. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plu... which is a full year before Google mentioned Mozilla made the announcement ( https://www.fxsitecompat.com/en-CA/docs/2016/plug-in-support-has-been-dropped-other-than-flash/ https://www.fxsitecompat.com/en-CA/docs/2016/plug-in-support... )

cpeterso 10y ago
Hangouts switched from NPAPI to WebRTC in Chrome back in 2014, but continues to use plugins (NPAPI or ActiveX) in other browsers. Hangouts depends on some non-standard WebRTC functionality in Chrome. https://plus.google.com/103171586947853434456/posts/39TCW3PcLye https://plus.google.com/103171586947853434456/posts/39TCW3Pc...
threepipeproblm 10y ago
Yes, I think I am conflating the issues of XUL/legacy extensions and the NPAPI plugins. All I can say is that while I didn't take a lot of time to parse this, most of the people impacted by this issue will take even less. They will just understand that Firefox worked with Google Voice and then stopped. So it does seem to me like part of an overall theme. Firefox used to let users decide what was safe, now it's decided for us.