4 ms·

>> but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place. The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to

by s_kilk 9y ago

>> but removing the raw access is removing what made Firefox great in the first place. The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis. Honesty I think this is a good move.

kevincox 9y ago
> The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis. This is simply not true as evidenced by the fact that Nightly still has the legacy extension API and the improved performance. That being said FF was slowing down to keep extensions compatible. This is why I think WebExtensions are a good idea. They should be the recomended path with promised future compatibility. Then FF can not worry as much about refactoring the internals as there are fewer extensions that would be broken and they "signed up" for it. I would rather have a faster FF and have to patch VimFX every couple of releases then have FF show down development for fear of breaking things. That being said loosing the extensions that gave FF it's magic is not a good tradeoff in my opinion.
- pitaj 9y ago
  The legacy API is not on nightly. I think they have a similar API in WebExtension Experiments, but in nightly, legacy add-ons do not work.
  - kevincox 9y ago
    https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Firefox57 https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Firefox57 On nightly the extensions.legacy.enabled can be set to allow instalation of legacy extensions.
    - jtgeibel 9y ago
      > To assist with performance analysis leading up Firefox 57, in Nightly only we are turning off add-ons that require shims. This was for pre-57 and doesn't apply to 57+.
      - andrewshadura 9y ago
        That isn't true, I'm running 58.0a1 nightly with legacy add-ons enabled.
        fbender 9y ago
        The point is that many APIs no longer work even though you can "enable" legacy addons. Pretty soon, this setting will be a no-op.
pferde 9y ago
So, I can't do what I need, but at least I can do what I don't need quickly. Yay progress!

by s_kilk 9y ago

kevincox 9y ago

> The raw access is also what made Firefox slow and cumbersome compared to Chrome. The recent performance improvements would have been impossible with the legacy extension apis. This is simply not true as evidenced by the fact that Nightly still has the legacy extension API and the improved performance. That being said FF was slowing down to keep extensions compatible. This is why I think WebExtensions are a good idea. They should be the recomended path with promised future compatibility. Then FF can not worry as much about refactoring the internals as there are fewer extensions that would be broken and they "signed up" for it. I would rather have a faster FF and have to patch VimFX every couple of releases then have FF show down development for fear of breaking things. That being said loosing the extensions that gave FF it's magic is not a good tradeoff in my opinion.

pitaj 9y ago
The legacy API is not on nightly. I think they have a similar API in WebExtension Experiments, but in nightly, legacy add-ons do not work.
- kevincox 9y ago
  https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Firefox57 https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Firefox57 On nightly the extensions.legacy.enabled can be set to allow instalation of legacy extensions.
  - jtgeibel 9y ago
    > To assist with performance analysis leading up Firefox 57, in Nightly only we are turning off add-ons that require shims. This was for pre-57 and doesn't apply to 57+.
    - andrewshadura 9y ago
      That isn't true, I'm running 58.0a1 nightly with legacy add-ons enabled.
      - fbender 9y ago
        The point is that many APIs no longer work even though you can "enable" legacy addons. Pretty soon, this setting will be a no-op.

pferde 9y ago

So, I can't do what I need, but at least I can do what I don't need quickly. Yay progress!