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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 t

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.
  - JohnTHaller 9y ago
    Mozilla is already planning on extension WebExtensions beyond what Chrome does with it (I believe they even implemented some of it already) and are planning on adding even more to enable the functionality of some of the more popular legacy extensions (bookmark trees, tab management, etc).
    - kirillkh 9y ago
      There is an umbrella issue that aggregates proposed improvements to WebExtensions [1]. If you look at RESOLVED WONTFIX issues linked in that bug, you will find a lot of them are rejected based on political reasons. For example: [2]. So there will never be anything close to feature parity with XUL extensions. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059 [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706

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.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  Mozilla is already planning on extension WebExtensions beyond what Chrome does with it (I believe they even implemented some of it already) and are planning on adding even more to enable the functionality of some of the more popular legacy extensions (bookmark trees, tab management, etc).
  - kirillkh 9y ago
    There is an umbrella issue that aggregates proposed improvements to WebExtensions [1]. If you look at RESOLVED WONTFIX issues linked in that bug, you will find a lot of them are rejected based on political reasons. For example: [2]. So there will never be anything close to feature parity with XUL extensions. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059 [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706