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Dear niche community using legacy extensions: We're sorry, but legacy extensions are holding back Firefox development in every way meaningful to the vast major

Dear niche community using legacy extensions: We're sorry, but legacy extensions are holding back Firefox development in every way meaningful to the vast majority of users. In order to continue to exist as a viable option for an open web, Firefox must move forward. - (What I imagine they'd say) Of the extensions you listed, the largest (Classic Theme Restorer) is only used by 333,000 people while the smallest (Edgewise) is only used by 218 people.

lucb1e 9y ago
> only used by 333,000 people doesn't sound like an "only" to me.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  Firefox has 80 million daily active users, so that's an 'only' in context. Keeping XUL around and all of its messiness to support a small niche of users at the expense of what most users want is part of why Firefox has lost so many users to less customizable, (arguably) less capable competing browsers.
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    There are a boatload of assumptions in that statement that are pretty unwarrented. The vast majority of why chrome is popular is because google.com and youtube.com push it nonstop, not any other imagined reasons.
  - Grue3 9y ago
    You're forgetting that people who want to use the features older versions had but not anymore are likely the same people who have been using Firefox for a long time. These are the same people who drive Firefox adoption by being experienced long-time users giving advice to the young'uns. If you lose that core user base, you'll lose the rest of 80 million to Google/Microsoft ads in no time.
    - Max_Mustermann 9y ago
      likely _some_ of the same people.. Plenty of those long-time users giving advice to the young-uns are more than happy yo sacrifice a small part of firefox for big improvements elsewhere.
kirillkh 9y ago
Your arguments may convince Mozilla not to port these features to WebExtensions, but what are you trying to tell me? To go fuck myself? What you're missing is there are many niches like these, and many people using many niches. It might still be a small percentage of users overall, but we're the geeks and we sit right in the center of the culture. Get rid of us, and the care-about-Mozilla temperature goes down significantly. Mozilla should find a way of moving forward while keeping the code open enough to modding. AFAIK, features offered by these extensions that I use are not implementable in WebExtensions even in principle, and that is the main problem. Break the compatibility if you must, but make it possible for someone who cares enough to step in and rewrite these extensions to the new architecture.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  The vast majority of Firefox users either don't use extensions or only use an ad blocker. I downsized to the same myself quite a while ago for performance and stability reasons in Firefox despite being one of the niche users that used to keep 10 extensions installed. Yes, there are quite a few different niches of users that use specific legacy extensions. But the legacy extension system is a mess and has been holding Firefox back for a while. Mozilla is going to fully embrace WebExtensions and keep moving it forward to enable as much functionality from old extensions as possible to serve several of those niches. I'd argue that many of the users that choose Firefox over Chrome do so for the fact that Firefox is 100% open source and isn't tied to an advertising giant trying to capture tons of extra private data from you. This won't change that. It will mean you can't change the layout of the entire Firefox window and add tons of new custom buttons and things like that. But most users don't care about that. For the niche that can't stand using a UI they can't fully customize, they're free to use a slower and less secure browser that continues to support XUL and the associated extensions while still keeping up to date with at least the slower Firefox ESR branch of renderer underneath. Pale Moon, for example.
  - kirillkh 9y ago
    Legacy extension system vs WebExtentions is actually a false dichotomy. Mozilla still can develop a low-level API in front of its new and improved subsystems. Yes, that will require more development and will be harder to maintain. But the benefits it would bring may arguably be worth it.
wtallis 9y ago
For every user of Classic Theme Restorer, there are probably a dozen more Firefox users who complain about the unnecessary UI changes but aren't aware that CTR exists to fix some of the usability regressions.

lucb1e 9y ago

> only used by 333,000 people doesn't sound like an "only" to me.

JohnTHaller 9y ago
Firefox has 80 million daily active users, so that's an 'only' in context. Keeping XUL around and all of its messiness to support a small niche of users at the expense of what most users want is part of why Firefox has lost so many users to less customizable, (arguably) less capable competing browsers.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  There are a boatload of assumptions in that statement that are pretty unwarrented. The vast majority of why chrome is popular is because google.com and youtube.com push it nonstop, not any other imagined reasons.
- Grue3 9y ago
  You're forgetting that people who want to use the features older versions had but not anymore are likely the same people who have been using Firefox for a long time. These are the same people who drive Firefox adoption by being experienced long-time users giving advice to the young'uns. If you lose that core user base, you'll lose the rest of 80 million to Google/Microsoft ads in no time.
  - Max_Mustermann 9y ago
    likely _some_ of the same people.. Plenty of those long-time users giving advice to the young-uns are more than happy yo sacrifice a small part of firefox for big improvements elsewhere.

kirillkh 9y ago

Your arguments may convince Mozilla not to port these features to WebExtensions, but what are you trying to tell me? To go fuck myself? What you're missing is there are many niches like these, and many people using many niches. It might still be a small percentage of users overall, but we're the geeks and we sit right in the center of the culture. Get rid of us, and the care-about-Mozilla temperature goes down significantly. Mozilla should find a way of moving forward while keeping the code open enough to modding. AFAIK, features offered by these extensions that I use are not implementable in WebExtensions even in principle, and that is the main problem. Break the compatibility if you must, but make it possible for someone who cares enough to step in and rewrite these extensions to the new architecture.

JohnTHaller 9y ago
The vast majority of Firefox users either don't use extensions or only use an ad blocker. I downsized to the same myself quite a while ago for performance and stability reasons in Firefox despite being one of the niche users that used to keep 10 extensions installed. Yes, there are quite a few different niches of users that use specific legacy extensions. But the legacy extension system is a mess and has been holding Firefox back for a while. Mozilla is going to fully embrace WebExtensions and keep moving it forward to enable as much functionality from old extensions as possible to serve several of those niches. I'd argue that many of the users that choose Firefox over Chrome do so for the fact that Firefox is 100% open source and isn't tied to an advertising giant trying to capture tons of extra private data from you. This won't change that. It will mean you can't change the layout of the entire Firefox window and add tons of new custom buttons and things like that. But most users don't care about that. For the niche that can't stand using a UI they can't fully customize, they're free to use a slower and less secure browser that continues to support XUL and the associated extensions while still keeping up to date with at least the slower Firefox ESR branch of renderer underneath. Pale Moon, for example.
- kirillkh 9y ago
  Legacy extension system vs WebExtentions is actually a false dichotomy. Mozilla still can develop a low-level API in front of its new and improved subsystems. Yes, that will require more development and will be harder to maintain. But the benefits it would bring may arguably be worth it.

wtallis 9y ago

For every user of Classic Theme Restorer, there are probably a dozen more Firefox users who complain about the unnecessary UI changes but aren't aware that CTR exists to fix some of the usability regressions.