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The eventually goal is to fully dump XUL but that's going to take time to finish. The major point of 57 is legacy addons will no longer be supported. Think abo

The eventually goal is to fully dump XUL but that's going to take time to finish. The major point of 57 is legacy addons will no longer be supported. Think about it this way: the transition away from XUL means the UI code (and more) is going to be very unstable for awhile. Thus addon authors would need to be continually rewriting their code for each update to keep up with the changes. It's better to bite the bullet now and switch to a more stable api.

throwaway2048 9y ago
They are not transitioning away from XUL
- ksec 9y ago
  Are they not ? I thought that was the long term goal. https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml
- ChrisSD 9y ago
  Source? Last I heard from Moz, XUL was considered a maintenance burden that increasingly suffers from neglect. HTML now does a comparable job, is standardised, is widely used and needs to be implemented anyway. Maintaining two interface languages doesn't make much sense in the long term.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - 482794793792894 9y ago
    The XUL/XPCOM extension API is a massive maintenance burden. The XUL UI toolkit is something different and while it's not either magically free of maintenance cost, it's much less of a maintenance burden than the XUL/XPCOM extension API.
    - chr1 9y ago
      XUL is the same XUL both in extensions and in browser ui. XPCOM is another independent technology https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM. They are disabling the direct access from extensions to apis used by browser itself (that is access to XUL _and_ XPCOM), to be able to modify the browser ui without worrying about breaking extensions, with the goal to remove XUL eventually.
      - mintplant 9y ago
        This is correct. Or, at least, people would like to remove XUL eventually: the tractability of that is still a topic of research.
joncrocks 9y ago
Are the new APIs stable yet? I didn't think they have all the features required for some addons. There are some people (like me) who use firefox because of addons that can't be supported on other browsers due to the lack of API support, so it's a bit disappointing if they're going to pull the rug from under those addons. If they do, they might see people leave for another browser. For reference, the addon in question for me is Tabs Mix Plus.
- Sylos 9y ago
  All new APIs taken together, no, won't be stable for at least half a year still, very likely longer. They're still very much in the process of designing and implementing new APIs. But the core APIs are the same as Chrome's. The implementation might not yet always be perfect, but the APIs themselves are stable. So, for the vast majority of add-on developers, the experience will already be much less burdensome. Or it will be in the future. Yes, some add-ons will not happen or might only be possible long after the release of Firefox 57. But they're not going back on that plan. They haven't just forbidden these extensions for funsies. They've very much already used the opportunity to rip out tons of legacy code and refactor things that they could have never refactored before without breaking tons of add-ons each time. At this point, there's very few legacy extensions left that still function in Firefox Nightly, even if you tell it to load them. Not to mention that this has helped them to speed Firefox up by a significant factor. All the performance improvements since Firefox 48 would not have been made without this deprecation on the horizon. And considering that a significant chunk of Firefox users use no extension or just the obligatory ad blocker (or any set of extensions that's going to be easily replaceable with WebExtensions), this is also very much the decision that has to be made when asking yourself what's best for users. As for people possibly leaving Firefox when their favorite extensions stop working, yes, that's possible, but Firefox's market share has been growing again since Firefox 48, and there's also just the fact that Firefox is still going to be the browser with the most powerful extension API. You're not getting more extensions by switching. You'd have to be fine with even less extensions in exchange for maybe a particular feature that you like in another browser.
  - throwaway2048 9y ago

throwaway2048 9y ago

They are not transitioning away from XUL

ksec 9y ago
Are they not ? I thought that was the long term goal. https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml
ChrisSD 9y ago
Source? Last I heard from Moz, XUL was considered a maintenance burden that increasingly suffers from neglect. HTML now does a comparable job, is standardised, is widely used and needs to be implemented anyway. Maintaining two interface languages doesn't make much sense in the long term.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 482794793792894 9y ago
  The XUL/XPCOM extension API is a massive maintenance burden. The XUL UI toolkit is something different and while it's not either magically free of maintenance cost, it's much less of a maintenance burden than the XUL/XPCOM extension API.
  - chr1 9y ago
    XUL is the same XUL both in extensions and in browser ui. XPCOM is another independent technology https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XPCOM. They are disabling the direct access from extensions to apis used by browser itself (that is access to XUL _and_ XPCOM), to be able to modify the browser ui without worrying about breaking extensions, with the goal to remove XUL eventually.
    - mintplant 9y ago
      This is correct. Or, at least, people would like to remove XUL eventually: the tractability of that is still a topic of research.

joncrocks 9y ago

Are the new APIs stable yet? I didn't think they have all the features required for some addons. There are some people (like me) who use firefox because of addons that can't be supported on other browsers due to the lack of API support, so it's a bit disappointing if they're going to pull the rug from under those addons. If they do, they might see people leave for another browser. For reference, the addon in question for me is Tabs Mix Plus.

Sylos 9y ago
All new APIs taken together, no, won't be stable for at least half a year still, very likely longer. They're still very much in the process of designing and implementing new APIs. But the core APIs are the same as Chrome's. The implementation might not yet always be perfect, but the APIs themselves are stable. So, for the vast majority of add-on developers, the experience will already be much less burdensome. Or it will be in the future. Yes, some add-ons will not happen or might only be possible long after the release of Firefox 57. But they're not going back on that plan. They haven't just forbidden these extensions for funsies. They've very much already used the opportunity to rip out tons of legacy code and refactor things that they could have never refactored before without breaking tons of add-ons each time. At this point, there's very few legacy extensions left that still function in Firefox Nightly, even if you tell it to load them. Not to mention that this has helped them to speed Firefox up by a significant factor. All the performance improvements since Firefox 48 would not have been made without this deprecation on the horizon. And considering that a significant chunk of Firefox users use no extension or just the obligatory ad blocker (or any set of extensions that's going to be easily replaceable with WebExtensions), this is also very much the decision that has to be made when asking yourself what's best for users. As for people possibly leaving Firefox when their favorite extensions stop working, yes, that's possible, but Firefox's market share has been growing again since Firefox 48, and there's also just the fact that Firefox is still going to be the browser with the most powerful extension API. You're not getting more extensions by switching. You'd have to be fine with even less extensions in exchange for maybe a particular feature that you like in another browser.
- throwaway2048 9y ago