21 ms·

Extensions in Firefox 58

287 points by buovjaga 9y ago

lexicality 9y ago
And yet it still lacks the tab hiding API.
- lexicality 9y ago
  (Should you wish to follow along at home to the glorious process of Open Source you can read the related discussions here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1384515 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1384515 )
  - Sean1708 9y ago
    A better place to start might be: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding
- nicoburns 9y ago
  I'm waiting on this one too! In the meantime container tabs provide an ok-ish workaround (it's possible to unload all tabs in a container). But not nearly as nice as tabgroups was.
lkramer 9y ago
I love the new Firefox, but the fact that it killed my favourite tabtree plugin, and the alternative is less nice + plus you have to do weird css hacks to make it look seemless and hide the top tab bar is very disappointing. I'm guessing the new extension system is a lot less flexible than the old one?
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > I'm guessing the new extension system is a lot less flexible than the old one? For security reasons, yes. For people who don't want to say bye to old extensions which are not (or cannot) be ported to 57+ there is the option to stick with 52 ESR version (Extended Support Release). According to Mozilla FAQ [1] this version gets obselete in march 8 by Firefox 59 ESR. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
  - baby 9y ago
    Do you know how to install Tree Style Tabs for that version though? It looks like the plugin page only offer the last version.
    - shabble 9y ago
      There's a 'Version History - See all versions' link further down the page that points at the previous releases. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/versions/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... and look through teh list til you find something that supports FF52+ I'm a little concerned that any bugs/holes in extensions will be left open though, since it's very unlikely the extension devs are going to be backporting features/fixes.
  - thg 9y ago
    Waterfox[0] is another option. It's based on Firefox, integrates patches from upstream and will continue to support the old extension system. [0]: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/ https://www.waterfoxproject.org/
  - lizzard 9y ago
    52 ESR will still be supported until mid-June. It is supported for two release cycles after the release of 59 ESR.
- jchw 9y ago
  It's been covered to death, but it's a vastly different approach that is closer to what other browsers provide, allowing many extensions to share the vast majority of their code across Edge, Firefox and Chrome (and descendants.) It also is highly asynchronous, which has become more important as Firefox has become multi-process and multi-threaded, and more secure, both from a usability standpoint (users have more control over add-ons) and from a low level standpoint (extensions are more 'sandboxed' than before.) There's more advantages but needless to say there's no turning back, so hopefully the missing features needed to implement what people want will arrive with time. As for me, I'm just happy to be running Firefox as a daily driver again.
- DiThi 9y ago
  The css hack is probably temporary, and for me it was easy to add works very well (it looks exactly the same as before to me). Other than that, what else is "less nice"?
- scrollaway 9y ago
  I think part of the problem is that Firefox doesn't have flexible, high quality tabs. Vertical tabs, tab trees etc were really popular extensions. Personally I'd be happy to see Firefox have tab feature chrome natively has: - Scroll wheel to move between tabs (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812) - Ctrl+1 (2, 3, ...) to jump to a tab. Ctrl+0 to jump to the last tab. [Edit: This works with Alt, nvm!] - Multi-select tab management (Ctrl+Click, Shift+Click to select, drag, snap and move multiple tabs) Back when Firefox initially got a lot of market share, its killer feature was tabs. It almost feels like they forgot that :(
  - glandium 9y ago
    Alt+1, Alt+2, etc. jump to a tab in Firefox. Alt+9 is the last tab.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - scrollaway 9y ago
      Thanks!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - noisem4ker 9y ago
    Chrome parity would be good, but I think that with little effort Mozilla could make a tremendous improvement: - Multiple-row tab bar. Such an obvious improvement over tabs scrolling off the screen sides or squashing them like Chrome does, I don't know why it's not being considered. It's already been done by Tab Mix Plus (or was it Classic Theme Restorer?). They only need to copy it and polish it a little.
    - baby 9y ago
      It's not been considered because Tree Style Tab just is just the best solution to all these problems.
- DCKing 9y ago
  Reading these recurring discussions, there is a bunch of Firefox users that used FF's extensions to change everything about the browser. You could change Firefox to be a different user experience entirely. But this has become way more limited. For users that are okay with the common way browsers work, all this new stuff is great though. Firefox Quantum is so fast and it still delivers all of the mainstream add-on functionality. I'm firmly in the second camp. Give me any browser that I can install uBlock in (and hide most buttons except back and forward), and I'm good to go. With Quantum, I switched over all my browsing to Firefox. Including on Android, which hasn't even had most the Quantum improvements yet (its UI has just gotten a much needed update).
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    There's at least a third camp. Those who used extensions and have a degraded performance now too - I'm wondering if all the speed increases people are talking about are only available on the most modern hardware? It takes 12s after launch for my newtab to populate with icons -- which incidentally I dislike compared to the previous page thumbnails -- there's regular stalling when it fails to respond. I'm prepared to give some space to get acclimated to new versions, there were font problems on lots of pages (including newtab) for me which I've worked through. But I'm failing to see any benefit yet - even then turning the icon super bright has annoyed me ...
    - Sean1708 9y ago
      > only available on the most modern hardware? Obviously there's something slowing down your Firefox, but it's definitely not to do with how modern your hardware is because 57 is noticeably faster than the previous version on my 2011 MacBook.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        There is something slowing it down, but it wasn't under 56. Might be a localised issue, that's always possible.
- aldanor 9y ago
  TreeStyleTab? The new (2.*) version works quite ok though? Ditto re: weird css hacks to hide the top bar.
- baby 9y ago
  Tree Style Tab has been awfuly slow for me :( Why doesn't it get prime support?
- atomicfiredoll 9y ago
  I had previously gone back to Firefox for Panorama (Tab Groups.) But, the feature has seemed to live in a state of such flux that I eventually found myself falling back on my habit of using Chrome. Iirc, they decided to move it out of the browser and in to an add-on, which is frustrating in light of the recent changes. Don't get me wrong, I'm for the migration to WebExtensions, but it's annoying that there wasn't a better path for a feature that used to be a part of the browser. Here's hoping most of this will be resolved in the upcoming months.
- nachtigall 9y ago
  > you have to do weird css hacks to make it look seemless and hide the top tab bar is very disappointing Firefox plans to add an API for dynamically hiding the tabbar. You can follow progress here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447
rolodato 9y ago
Is there a genuine use case for changing the default search engine from an extension? Even if it has to be confirmed by the user, it still seems like a dialog that many users won't read and click on Yes anyway.
- PurpleRamen 9y ago
  I guess this means that the extension handles the searchinput local, which seems like a very legit use case. Maybe we are lucky, and it means ALL adressbarinput is handled by the extensions, in which case this supports vimperator-style interfaces. Another use case coming to mind is to compensate for the horrible bad ability to define your own searchengine. Leting a extension handle this would be an improvement.
- DiThi 9y ago
  Before you could click the icon in the search bar and select another engine. Now that's more hidden, so an extension to change to e.g. DuckDuckGo is an easy way to do that.
s_kilk 9y ago
[Meta] Do we really need to rehash the same discussion about tree-style-tabs/insert-favourite-extension-here every time Firefox is mentioned on here?
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  (Not a tree style tabs user, but ... ) Yes, because 1) Someone here might know more (updated) about when's the support going to be added for the same, 2) The Extension Author might comment on when he's going to add the support for it if possible, 3) Some of the geeks here might know a good replacement of it (because Firefox's "Find a Replacement" is not as good as it's supposed to be). 4) When people say "me too", some other Hackers around here might be inspired to write one from scratch, or Firefox people might see how important it is (I know about Bugzilla's voting system, trust me, that doesn't work) Firefox has just broken people's workflows that were set in place for years, and they are naturally concerned. Let it be.
  - bhrgunatha 9y ago
    > Firefox has just broken people's workflows that were set in place for years I don't think that is highlighted enough - the majority of the discussion is focussed on cosmetics, but it takes a lot of effort to break habits and muscle memory that have developed with daily use over many, many years (since Phoenix [1] in my case.) It's also going to take a huge amount of time and effort to research, learn and configure replacement extensions. I really don't need that stress for something as important as a browser, so I'll stick with ESR as my daily tools as long as possible and build a new profile e.g. using Nightly as time allows. It's far from a trivial exercise. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2013/05/13/milestone-phoenix-0-1-released-first-version-of-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2013/05/13/milestone-phoe...
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    >Firefox has just broken people's workflows that were set in place for years The XUL deprecation in FF57 has been public knowledge for years. The extension authors are to blame here.
piyush_soni 9y ago
Are they planning to add a local file writing API too to WebExtensions (tried to search it but couldn't find). Every browser is trying to standardize on Chrome's extension model (which already has local file writing support), but "only so much", and that's a problem.
- gear54rus 9y ago
  Also wondering about an unchained 'fetch'. Still can't get or set some headers (https://github.com/github/fetch/issues/163 https://github.com/github/fetch/issues/163).
sdfjkl 9y ago
I love firstPartyIsolate and resistFingerprinting. These should probably be on by default.
- mkbkn 9y ago
  What is firstPartyIsolate ? Could you please explain?
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    I didn't know what it was either, until I RTFA: > "This preference makes the browser associate all data (including cookies, HSTS data, cached images, and more) for any third party domains with the domain in the address bar." They even included a link you can click on to get more info on it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - sdfjkl 9y ago
    Uhm, it's explained in the article.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    fPI will isolate every first-party domain as much as the browser can, including HSTS and other security related properties. This means that if you visit example.com and then initech.com and both load a tracker from evilshit.org, then the tracker will see too completely fresh browser installs, not even HSTS will be setup if it was used. Basically, every domain you type into the URL address bar behaves as if it was a unique container.
- kbrosnan 9y ago
  While it is clear why hn folks would love those prefs. They break websites far too often to be defaults.
  - sdfjkl 9y ago
    Perhaps a sign of broken websites.
piyush_soni 9y ago
What is a good replacement for DownThemAll! ? It was such an important one for me, now lost too :(
- BenjiWiebe 9y ago
  I agree. That's the only thing holding me back from upgrading so far.
- konart 9y ago
  New version of DTA is soon to be released.
- bhrgunatha 9y ago
  DTA lite (web extension version) was planned for release along with Quantum, but was delayed. [1] I still don't know how limited it will be compared to the XUL version though. [1] https://www.downthemall.net/delays/ https://www.downthemall.net/delays/
  - piyush_soni 9y ago
    Thank you very much!
  - Sylos 9y ago
    Huh, except for the quip with calling it "Lite" and the simply factually wrong bullshit in the footnote that there would be no technical reasons, this surprises me. He was the only bigger extension dev that threw a complete tantrum over this decision, refusing to even try to work with Mozilla to get some APIs into place, so that he could maybe actually port his extension in full. And now he's doing a port anyways. Well, good on him. I do not think that his behaviour back then was entirely justified, so this remedies that.
- epage 9y ago
  DownloadStar might cover your needs.
DavideNL 9y ago
Interesting, i wonder how effective resistFingerprinting will be...? "If true, the resistFingerprinting preference makes the browser report generic spoofed information for data that's commonly used for fingerprinting. Such data includes the number of CPU cores, precision of JavaScript timers, and the local timezone. It will also disable features that are used in fingerprinting, such as GamePad support, and the WebSpeech and Navigator APIs."
- ChrisSD 9y ago
  It's basically ported from the Tor Browser so it will be similarly effective. Which is to say it makes fingerprinting harder but not necessarily impossible if you have javascript turned on.
- jcomis 9y ago
  I am also curious about this. I used several plugins in earlier FF versions to reduce fingerprinting / change security preferences and settings. None of them seem to work on 57. The answer seems to be to just flip on "resistfingerprinting". Seems almost too easy... and available information isn't exactly clear.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Sylos 9y ago
  I tested it on a fresh profile on Firefox Nightly 59.0a1 (2017-11-21), using https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/. And well, apparently it has a pretty bad bug. It spoofs my screen size from previously 1366x768, which 1 in 9.43 browsers have, to 1318x686, which by itself is already unique, because that really is just not a screen size that anyone sells. So, that's a thing. Maybe it's just isolated to Nightly, but if in doubt, maybe also just test yourself. Now where to report this...
  - bhrgunatha 9y ago
    > to 1318x686, which by itself is already unique, Is it sticky though? I don't know how the spoofing works, but if the next time, the same site gets a different size, wouldn't your profile become less identifiable across visits and other web sites.
eb0la 9y ago
Just when I thought FF57 was great. Now switching to Nightly :D
andrepd 9y ago
They're clearly adding APIs that they think are necessary, vs the ones addon developers actually need and clamour for. We've seen this in the entire process. Mozilla is not interested in listening to the actual needs of the developers. They just have their own idea of "brand new cool features" and they're gonna roll with it. Disappointing.
- DiThi 9y ago
  Part of the reason is that most users of some popular addons don't participate in the open source community, reporting bugs, commenting on them to add details or tell why are they important, etc.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Do Mozilla contact the creators of the most popular addons, they could serve as a useful proxy for trying to get direct input from inexperienced users.
    - DiThi 9y ago
      They probably do. But Firefox addons is a long tail. There are many addons that would qualify as "popular" but Mozilla wouldn't be able to contact them all. So they have to measure not only popularity, but also if the community cares about that addon. I had many addons installed that I don't use, synchronized across devices: They may count as "popular" but it doesn't reflect the actual community and usage.
  - detaro 9y ago
    And if they do, they don't communicate in the way Mozilla would like them to. Users can't say much more than "I want X to be possible", add-on developers can comment on what API they'd like, but after a short initial wave of that these things tend to be treated as noise even if they are presented very friendly, because the actual dev-work that is necessary in the end is guided by other principles these parties can't contribute much to. And it's really difficult to guide that in a way that doesn't make people feel bad.
- 9y ago
super_mario 9y ago
As far as I'm concerned Firefox is dead. I'm sticking with 56 and Pentadactyl for the times I need to do extensive research online where it is so much faster to browse and find things. Otherwise, I'm using Safari and weaning myself off of all the power of VIM like browsing. Safari also happens to be so much smoother and does not kill the battery.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I applaud Mozilla. Never had any use for extensions. For me Web browsing is all about HTML/CSS and some occasional JavaScript, everything else is better achieved via native apps.
  - super_mario 9y ago
    If your use case is so simple that essentially any browser meets your needs, why do you find it strange that others might have different needs? I never understood why people have such a hard time with choice. And why saying something no longer meets your needs evokes such reactions.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Because safety. Mozilla and others are just making the Web browsers safer. It was necessary the Internet and explosion of security exploits to realize that although plugins in-process are easier to implement, the older out-of-process architecture was safer and harder to exploit.
      - wtallis 9y ago
        > Because safety. Mozilla and others are just making the Web browsers safer. And yet they broke things like NoScript, which provided security/privacy features missing from plain Firefox and unavailable on any other browser no matter what extensions you installed. If safety was really such a high priority, they would have waited until after a full-featured NoScript WebExtension was possible to implement before deliberately breaking XUL extensions.
lenni 9y ago
I must say that Mozilla have made the right call with extensions in Firefox 57. Web extensions are probably a small part of it but I have switched back to FF after ~5 years of Chrome. I also like the redesign but the killer feature was the noticeable speed up. I consider myself a fan again!
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
  Great to see that new users are getting catered for meanwhile those of us that used Firefox the whole time get ignored.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    I have been a Firefox user since it was called Phoenix. This is the best Firefox , but I have lost a ton of extensions including my Vim extensions. So right now I use Qutebrowser and know that the new plugins will get added.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Did you check out vim-vixen? If so, what's your opinion on it?
      - baldfat 9y ago
        Yup I am now using Firefox again :)
      - ivanche 9y ago
        This looks great! Do you know is there any way to select one tab from the list I see when I type :tabopen?
        idlewan 9y ago
        You can use Tab and Ctrl+Tab, but there has been a pull request adding Ctrl+n and Ctrl+p.
frading 9y ago
The tabs.Tab.isArticle does not seem to be in chrome. Anyone know how they detect if a page is an article or not?
- frading 9y ago
  replying to myself, it simply is the html tag <article>. Didnt realise it was that simple.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    That's good to know, and I didn't think it was that simple either. Thanks!
yscik 9y ago
I'm not sure how allowing extensions to change privacy settings is going to increase user privacy. And while it's becoming easier to manipulate any website you visit, with basically nothing stopping a malicious extension from stealing user data or just taking over any online account, actually extending the browser UI, the original goal of many former extensions, is extremely limited.
- acqq 9y ago
  If you mean the stuff under "Additional Privacy Controls" you already surf without the functionality that can be turned on with this API. That means that the new API allows you more privacy, at least until you install some extension that maybe overrides the extension that turned "on" that privacy functionality. So it's like before, adding a new extension is always a security risk.
  - yscik 9y ago
    Wow, I thought the controls are exposed in browser preferences. This makes even less sense, why would these be only controllable by extensions? (Though they are accessible in about:config at least)
    - milofeynman 9y ago
      I personally have them both turned on in about:config. But It would be nice to have an extension to turn off resistfingerprinting on some sites (like firefox's extension site) because it fakes the browser's user agent which breaks things that check your user agent. I'm not sure this will allow that. It seems like it'll allow a privacy extension to easily enable / disable it for all sites with a check box.
- asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
  It is a different mindset. It comes from the idea that you should be able to trust the software that you have vetted and installed (extension) over random third party code (an arbitrary website).
- 9y ago
trqx 9y ago
Nothing new about TCP/UDP socket API? That and possibility to hide the tab bar is what I miss the most. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247628 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247628
- throwanem 9y ago
  You can hide the tab bar with userChrome.css (I think that's what it is called), although possibly not in a way that can be toggled. Should be able to hide it only in windows where only one tab is present, at least.
pmoriarty 9y ago
Firefox 57 was the version that permanently killed the extension that made Firefox usable for me: Pentadactyl (along with many other extensions). Now I'm migrating to using Qutebrowser, as it's the closest to providing a similar experience.
- mintplant 9y ago
  Have you tried Vim Vixen? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/
  - nathyong 9y ago
    I don't know where this was when I was searching for alternatives to vimperator, but thanks so much for mentioning vim-vixen. It seems like it's just a port of the parts of vimperator that still work with WebExtensions but it's so much better than the alternatives out there at the moment.
dbolgheroni 9y ago
Still no API for WebExtensions with Vimperator-like or Pentadactyl-like functionality. [0][1] For those interested, the whole discussion about adding it is here [2]. [0] https://github.com/cmcaine/keyboard-api https://github.com/cmcaine/keyboard-api [1] https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut-api https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut-api [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Vimium-FF [0] works just fine and has since I first installed FF57 Developer Edition (right after FF55 came out?) [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/
  - dbolgheroni 9y ago
    Vimium-FF is not a substitute. Very very limited compared to what Vimperator and Pentadactyl can do. Besides the features, the main problem with Vimium-FF is that it does not work on a lot of pages and, even in the pages that does work, it breaks often. During long sessions, it's common having to reload the page multiple times to get Vimium-FF working again.
  - idlewan 9y ago
    .. works just fine ... Not really. You can't yank the url (yy) in Firefox, and the search is borked sometimes when there is no match on the page. After spending a few months with vimium, I found vim-vixen, which doesn't have these problems.
y0ghur7_xxx 9y ago
I still miss a lot of extensions. One of my favourites was pwgen¹. I missed it so much I decided to write my own², but writing it I found out that the WebExtensions api is still a big work in progress. For example writing some text to the clipboard seems to be a basic thing a web extension should be able to do. BUT to do it, you have to create a textbox, set its value to something, then programmatically select the text, and then invoke document.execCommand("Copy") to copy the text. Come on! Why not something like browser.clipboard.copy('some text')? And it does not even always work like expected³. I hope the next ff versions will improve on this. Extensions are what makes the browser your own. ¹https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-password-generator/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-passwor... ²https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-reloaded/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-reloade... ³https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1344410 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1344410
- zamber 9y ago
  Clipboard and selection handling is a massive PITA in webdev. On the flipside it "enables" such creative solutions like that pesky text selection bubble on medium.
  - cbcoutinho 9y ago
    Oh man, I hate that thing on Medium so much. I'm slightly fidgety so sometimes I double click the text I'm reading. I didn't even realize how much I did it until I visited Medium and almost tweeted some random paragraph I was reading. I would love to turn that crap off.
    - stinkytaco 9y ago
      Could you block javascript on that page?
      - cesnja 9y ago
        Yes, but you probably couldn't read the post then :)
foob 9y ago
The timing on this is quite coincidental, I just published a short article this morning about adding support to Selenium for installing WebExtensions to Firefox profiles [1]. I write and use extensions frequently for web scraping and browser automation, and I've really been thrilled about what Mozilla has done with the WebExtensions API. It was a quite miserable process to write cross-browser extensions in the past, but that basically changed overnight when Mozilla first announced the WebExtensions API. I think that this is ultimately going to have an immensely positive impact on the extension ecosystem. [1] - https://intoli.com/blog/firefox-extensions-with-selenium/ https://intoli.com/blog/firefox-extensions-with-selenium/
bartkmq 9y ago
Does anyone found an alternative to "BackTrack Tab History", an extension that copies the history of the current tab to newly opened tabs? The author thinks he won't be able to port it to Quantum.
- DiThi 9y ago
  What's the difference with duplicating the tab then going to about:blank?
vermaden 9y ago
One of the extensions I miss most is UnMHT. Anyone have info about if/when it will support Quantum?
eejdoowad 9y ago
Looking forward to this update. I wonder if it will be possible to load scripts into the reader view document. Currently, it isn’t, so keybinding extensions, which rely on inserting Keyboard event listeners, don’t work in reader view. I had been prototyping a custom reader view in Saka Key using Mozilla’s Readability library to work around this issue. The Content Security Policy fix is a lifesaver. Saka Key attaches hint elements to the DOM and attaches a script tag to load common styles/fonts. Sites with the policy style-src: self (like crates.io) block script tags, which breaks hint styling and positioning.
TheRealPomax 9y ago
To me the important part is "Starting with Firefox 58, the CSP of a web page does not apply to content inserted by an extension". This was flagged as going to be a problem back when CSP was still a draft instead of a spec, and it was blatantly obvious that bookmarklets and extensions would get impaired if CSP ignored the difference between site-content-activated scripts, and browser-owner-activated scripts. I would have preferred to see this land 6 to 12 weeks after CSP handling originally landed in Firefox, but landing it now is a clear case of "better late than never".
dbrgn 9y ago
> Support for PKCS #11 Security Devices This is nice, but I'd prefer if support for FIDO U2F would be here already. But it looks like something is happening with that too: https://www.yubico.com/2017/09/firefox-nightly-enables-support-fido-u2f-security-keys/ https://www.yubico.com/2017/09/firefox-nightly-enables-suppo... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1065729 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1065729
- veeti 9y ago
  U2F support for most sites is already in stable Firefox, you just have to flip security.webauth.u2f in about:config. Unfortunately Google doesn't work yet, maybe due to missing AppID support: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1244959 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1244959
  - dbrgn 9y ago
    Whoa, TIL. Thanks!
wpdev_63 9y ago
I recently switched to firefox and I find that chrome has much better plugin support. Just browsing between the plugin stores and you can see the difference. Hopefully firefox can catch up. One plugin that I really miss in firefox is holmes[0]. I bookmark alot of useful sites and it can be a pain to find them in the bookmark list. It's a plugin that makes me really miss chrome. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/holmes/gokficnebmomagijbakglkcmhdbchbhn?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/holmes/gokficnebmo... [1] https://www.chromium.org/tab-to-search https://www.chromium.org/tab-to-search
brudgers 9y ago
Sandboxing user side javascript from the web seems like a reasonable security step. Sandboxing web side javascript from the user side javascript is removes power from users in the way that concerned Stallman 35 years ago. Unfortunately, that's the direction Mozilla is going with web extensions. It must because Mozilla's complicity to bake DRM into the browser requires giving control of the user's computer over to media interests. It requires favoring corporate interests over user freedom. The horrible thing about Quantum is it replaces the last browser that put power in the hands of users. It removes the last browser that was not constrained explicitly for media consumption.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Web Extensions have nothing to do with DRM.
  - brudgers 9y ago
    The sandbox model limits the ability of the user to interact with the contents loaded into the browser from a remote source. This is required for a robust implementation of DRM and a robust implementation of DRM is a goal for Mozilla. The sandbox model necessary for DRM is what limits the power of web extensions. DRM priority is why the sandbox model cannot be turned off by the user. Making Netflix in Chrome low risk for Netflix is why the user is no longer allowed to control their browser. The sales pitch for Quantum is that it is faster for media consumption. The developer pitch is that it is easier to write extensions for consuming content.
    - pcwalton 9y ago
      This is nonsense, sorry. The Web Extensions API is designed (1) to prevent add-ons from breaking as the Firefox browser changes; (2) to allow constraining the behavior of add-ons to limit their ability to compromise the security model of the browser. The API is not intended to prevent you from changing the software you're running on your own system. If it were, you'd see pervasive obfuscation like PatchGuard, not sandboxed EME plugins with clearly defined interfaces.
Rusky 9y ago
One thing that might release some of the pressure around addons would be to make Gecko more embeddable, the way Blink is. We've started seeing a lot of alternative Blink UIs (Brave, Vivaldi, new Opera, etc) alongside apps built on it via Electron. Those alternative UIs do things Chrome extensions can't, even including things Firefox 57 lost the ability to do. I don't know how close to that state Gecko is right now, so maybe it would be less work just to recreate the necessary APIs like they're already doing. But if not it could help bring back some of Gecko's market share, which is at least as important as that of Firefox as a whole.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  Servo was designed to be much more embeddable.
  - Rusky 9y ago
    I'm pretty excited about that but I doubt it will lead to new alternative browser UIs anytime soon.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Blink isn't very embeddable. In fact, removing the "ports" system that facilitated embeddability was one of the main goals of the Blink fork. The alternative "Blink" UIs, and Electron, are really just forks of the entire Chromium browser, soup to nuts.
  - Rusky 9y ago
    Ah fair enough. How easy then would it be for a Firefox fork to drop the chrome the way Electron does?
- LocutusOfBorges 9y ago
  I don't expect an Electron-style system to ever arise around Firefox while the engine continues to not support custom skinned scrollbars. They've become such a fundamental element of modern web apps- that so many of them just fall over and break on Firefox is alarming.
cyphar 9y ago
The privacy changes look quite cool, especially firstPartyIsolate (though it also looks like it'd break most websites -- notably YouTube and similar sites would likely break). > firstPartyIsolate – This preference makes the browser associate all data (including cookies, HSTS data, cached images, and more) for any third party domains with the domain in the address bar.
- kwoff 9y ago
  I already in v57 had to set privacy.firstparty.isolate.restrict_opener_access to false in about:config because every site is wanting me to login all the time... (At least I assume that was the reason.) I did toggle privacy.firstparty.isolate to true, though.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
I don't get the twisted priorities here. Extensions can do subversive things like change search engines but useful modifications to the UI are verboten. Blindly copying Chrome is the wrong path to head down. You end up playing into Google's game of building systems with user hostile misfeatures meant to protect ad revenue.
- sp332 9y ago
  They are not forbidden. They are just not done yet. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 Edit: better link https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding
  - Macha 9y ago
    From that wiki page: > Some of the key goals of WebExtensions are that it’s not about changing the Firefox UI in the way we used to in legacy add-ons. There’s clear limitations we need to set. However there’s so much interest around tabs and tab groups. So tab mix plus gets its APIs because people yelled hard enough, but vimperator won't?
    - sp332 9y ago
      Those are both on the list, but they are not "priorities". https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/705#issuecomment-344383643 https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/705#iss... "The WebExtension APIs offered by Firefox already contain many features that chrome lacks and I am working constructively with them to add the APIs we need to make something a lot like vimperator in Firefox."
TimLeland 9y ago
This will make it easier to port extensions from and allow developers to have one codebase. Makes it easier for me to manage my extension https://weatherextension.com https://weatherextension.com
ishbits 9y ago
Probably silly, but I pretty much only use Chrome for the custom/compact title bar on Linux. On smaller screens it gives me more vertical on the content.
- r3bl 9y ago
  That's an expected feature for Firefox as well. It landed in Nightly as a WIP feature, but it's getting there: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283299 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283299
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
  I've hidden window title bars for years, even on a full-size monitor; on a smaller screen it makes even better sense. Gives more vertical room for content in any application :-) (Btw, with title bars hidden Firefox and Chrome actually have pixel-for-pixel same size nagivation elements, at least with Ubuntu's defaults – of course only when you toggle on system title bars in Chrome.)
infogulch 9y ago
Is there an extension for 57+ that shows bookmarks in a tab? I dislike all the window-based bookmarks, downloads, etc UI ("Library"). You have a world-class extensible customizable graphical user interface system right here in the middle of the browser, use it.
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
Well isn't it just great to have a new Theme API, never even knew I missed that. And a Reader Mode API, I'm sure I'll love that too even though I've never even used that mode. Glad they got rid of the old extension system now that the new one is so feature complete. I mean who needs spellchecker API anyway, if you miss spellchecking in your language, you can always start writing in another language, no? Perhaps they could introduce a Pocket API to compensate?
TimTheTinker 9y ago
All the recent developments are really great. I’m just waiting for: - Workspace support in DevTools (i.e. unify localhost-loaded resources with an on-disk workspace to enable updating JS & CSS without reloading, editing and saving files from DevTools, etc.) - queryObjects console API method (from Chrome) - alternate DevTools themes If/when those land I’ll likely go back to using FireFox as my primary development browser (been developing on Chrome since 2009).
proee 9y ago
Regarding extensions, can we really trust random 3rd party developers that their code is 100% safe and will not steal our passwords. Giving full read/write access to an extension seems VERY dangerous to me, especially if the extension was compromised unknowingly by someone who hacked into the developers machine prior to a release.
- weaksauce 9y ago
  fwiw if you put a webextension on AMO they manually do a review of your code before it's release to make sure it's not malicious. not 100% safe but what is?
wnevets 9y ago
I just want my scroll wheel switches tabs add-on back :(
- overint 9y ago
  I missed this when chrome removed a similar addon. It was an awesome feature, would love to see it make a comeback.
phreack 9y ago
No good RSS extension yet, no mousewheel scrolling through tabs, no 'Add "run" option to download dialog'... I suddenly lost so much with Quantum, I wish they had held onto killing the old add-ons until the WebExtensions API was complete.
monsieurgaufre 9y ago
They kill many extensions, but make Pocket unremovable. That's beyond stupid. If I care about speed, I use Chrome. If I want custombility, I used to pick Firefox. Right now, it's basically a Chrome clone, so why bother. And the privacy argument is not strong enough.
- imran3740 9y ago
  You can disable Pocket. In about:config, toggle 'extensions.pocket.enabled' to false.
rockdino 9y ago
All nice feature but Firefox still doesn't support hangout or bluejeans
crispinb 9y ago
The lack of configurable keyboard shortcuts for extensions is what stops me continuing to use Firefox each time I try it. I have yet to find a usable Pinboard extension, for example. Is this an extensions API limitation or is not using the keyboard part of FF norms/culture? Even much built-in functionality (like save to Pocket) is mouse-only.

287 points by buovjaga 9y ago

lexicality 9y ago

And yet it still lacks the tab hiding API.

lexicality 9y ago
(Should you wish to follow along at home to the glorious process of Open Source you can read the related discussions here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1384515 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1384515 )
- Sean1708 9y ago
  A better place to start might be: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding
nicoburns 9y ago
I'm waiting on this one too! In the meantime container tabs provide an ok-ish workaround (it's possible to unload all tabs in a container). But not nearly as nice as tabgroups was.

lkramer 9y ago

I love the new Firefox, but the fact that it killed my favourite tabtree plugin, and the alternative is less nice + plus you have to do weird css hacks to make it look seemless and hide the top tab bar is very disappointing. I'm guessing the new extension system is a lot less flexible than the old one?

Fnoord 9y ago
> I'm guessing the new extension system is a lot less flexible than the old one? For security reasons, yes. For people who don't want to say bye to old extensions which are not (or cannot) be ported to 57+ there is the option to stick with 52 ESR version (Extended Support Release). According to Mozilla FAQ [1] this version gets obselete in march 8 by Firefox 59 ESR. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
- baby 9y ago
  Do you know how to install Tree Style Tabs for that version though? It looks like the plugin page only offer the last version.
  - shabble 9y ago
    There's a 'Version History - See all versions' link further down the page that points at the previous releases. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/versions/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... and look through teh list til you find something that supports FF52+ I'm a little concerned that any bugs/holes in extensions will be left open though, since it's very unlikely the extension devs are going to be backporting features/fixes.
- thg 9y ago
  Waterfox[0] is another option. It's based on Firefox, integrates patches from upstream and will continue to support the old extension system. [0]: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/ https://www.waterfoxproject.org/
- lizzard 9y ago
  52 ESR will still be supported until mid-June. It is supported for two release cycles after the release of 59 ESR.
jchw 9y ago
It's been covered to death, but it's a vastly different approach that is closer to what other browsers provide, allowing many extensions to share the vast majority of their code across Edge, Firefox and Chrome (and descendants.) It also is highly asynchronous, which has become more important as Firefox has become multi-process and multi-threaded, and more secure, both from a usability standpoint (users have more control over add-ons) and from a low level standpoint (extensions are more 'sandboxed' than before.) There's more advantages but needless to say there's no turning back, so hopefully the missing features needed to implement what people want will arrive with time. As for me, I'm just happy to be running Firefox as a daily driver again.
DiThi 9y ago
The css hack is probably temporary, and for me it was easy to add works very well (it looks exactly the same as before to me). Other than that, what else is "less nice"?
scrollaway 9y ago
I think part of the problem is that Firefox doesn't have flexible, high quality tabs. Vertical tabs, tab trees etc were really popular extensions. Personally I'd be happy to see Firefox have tab feature chrome natively has: - Scroll wheel to move between tabs (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812) - Ctrl+1 (2, 3, ...) to jump to a tab. Ctrl+0 to jump to the last tab. [Edit: This works with Alt, nvm!] - Multi-select tab management (Ctrl+Click, Shift+Click to select, drag, snap and move multiple tabs) Back when Firefox initially got a lot of market share, its killer feature was tabs. It almost feels like they forgot that :(
- glandium 9y ago
  Alt+1, Alt+2, etc. jump to a tab in Firefox. Alt+9 is the last tab.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    Thanks!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- noisem4ker 9y ago
  Chrome parity would be good, but I think that with little effort Mozilla could make a tremendous improvement: - Multiple-row tab bar. Such an obvious improvement over tabs scrolling off the screen sides or squashing them like Chrome does, I don't know why it's not being considered. It's already been done by Tab Mix Plus (or was it Classic Theme Restorer?). They only need to copy it and polish it a little.
  - baby 9y ago
    It's not been considered because Tree Style Tab just is just the best solution to all these problems.
DCKing 9y ago
Reading these recurring discussions, there is a bunch of Firefox users that used FF's extensions to change everything about the browser. You could change Firefox to be a different user experience entirely. But this has become way more limited. For users that are okay with the common way browsers work, all this new stuff is great though. Firefox Quantum is so fast and it still delivers all of the mainstream add-on functionality. I'm firmly in the second camp. Give me any browser that I can install uBlock in (and hide most buttons except back and forward), and I'm good to go. With Quantum, I switched over all my browsing to Firefox. Including on Android, which hasn't even had most the Quantum improvements yet (its UI has just gotten a much needed update).
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  There's at least a third camp. Those who used extensions and have a degraded performance now too - I'm wondering if all the speed increases people are talking about are only available on the most modern hardware? It takes 12s after launch for my newtab to populate with icons -- which incidentally I dislike compared to the previous page thumbnails -- there's regular stalling when it fails to respond. I'm prepared to give some space to get acclimated to new versions, there were font problems on lots of pages (including newtab) for me which I've worked through. But I'm failing to see any benefit yet - even then turning the icon super bright has annoyed me ...
  - Sean1708 9y ago
    > only available on the most modern hardware? Obviously there's something slowing down your Firefox, but it's definitely not to do with how modern your hardware is because 57 is noticeably faster than the previous version on my 2011 MacBook.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      There is something slowing it down, but it wasn't under 56. Might be a localised issue, that's always possible.
aldanor 9y ago
TreeStyleTab? The new (2.*) version works quite ok though? Ditto re: weird css hacks to hide the top bar.
baby 9y ago
Tree Style Tab has been awfuly slow for me :( Why doesn't it get prime support?
atomicfiredoll 9y ago
I had previously gone back to Firefox for Panorama (Tab Groups.) But, the feature has seemed to live in a state of such flux that I eventually found myself falling back on my habit of using Chrome. Iirc, they decided to move it out of the browser and in to an add-on, which is frustrating in light of the recent changes. Don't get me wrong, I'm for the migration to WebExtensions, but it's annoying that there wasn't a better path for a feature that used to be a part of the browser. Here's hoping most of this will be resolved in the upcoming months.
nachtigall 9y ago
> you have to do weird css hacks to make it look seemless and hide the top tab bar is very disappointing Firefox plans to add an API for dynamically hiding the tabbar. You can follow progress here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447

rolodato 9y ago

Is there a genuine use case for changing the default search engine from an extension? Even if it has to be confirmed by the user, it still seems like a dialog that many users won't read and click on Yes anyway.

PurpleRamen 9y ago
I guess this means that the extension handles the searchinput local, which seems like a very legit use case. Maybe we are lucky, and it means ALL adressbarinput is handled by the extensions, in which case this supports vimperator-style interfaces. Another use case coming to mind is to compensate for the horrible bad ability to define your own searchengine. Leting a extension handle this would be an improvement.
DiThi 9y ago
Before you could click the icon in the search bar and select another engine. Now that's more hidden, so an extension to change to e.g. DuckDuckGo is an easy way to do that.

s_kilk 9y ago

[Meta] Do we really need to rehash the same discussion about tree-style-tabs/insert-favourite-extension-here every time Firefox is mentioned on here?

piyush_soni 9y ago
(Not a tree style tabs user, but ... ) Yes, because 1) Someone here might know more (updated) about when's the support going to be added for the same, 2) The Extension Author might comment on when he's going to add the support for it if possible, 3) Some of the geeks here might know a good replacement of it (because Firefox's "Find a Replacement" is not as good as it's supposed to be). 4) When people say "me too", some other Hackers around here might be inspired to write one from scratch, or Firefox people might see how important it is (I know about Bugzilla's voting system, trust me, that doesn't work) Firefox has just broken people's workflows that were set in place for years, and they are naturally concerned. Let it be.
- bhrgunatha 9y ago
  > Firefox has just broken people's workflows that were set in place for years I don't think that is highlighted enough - the majority of the discussion is focussed on cosmetics, but it takes a lot of effort to break habits and muscle memory that have developed with daily use over many, many years (since Phoenix [1] in my case.) It's also going to take a huge amount of time and effort to research, learn and configure replacement extensions. I really don't need that stress for something as important as a browser, so I'll stick with ESR as my daily tools as long as possible and build a new profile e.g. using Nightly as time allows. It's far from a trivial exercise. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2013/05/13/milestone-phoenix-0-1-released-first-version-of-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2013/05/13/milestone-phoe...
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  >Firefox has just broken people's workflows that were set in place for years The XUL deprecation in FF57 has been public knowledge for years. The extension authors are to blame here.

piyush_soni 9y ago

Are they planning to add a local file writing API too to WebExtensions (tried to search it but couldn't find). Every browser is trying to standardize on Chrome's extension model (which already has local file writing support), but "only so much", and that's a problem.

gear54rus 9y ago
Also wondering about an unchained 'fetch'. Still can't get or set some headers (https://github.com/github/fetch/issues/163 https://github.com/github/fetch/issues/163).

sdfjkl 9y ago

I love firstPartyIsolate and resistFingerprinting. These should probably be on by default.

mkbkn 9y ago
What is firstPartyIsolate ? Could you please explain?
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  I didn't know what it was either, until I RTFA: > "This preference makes the browser associate all data (including cookies, HSTS data, cached images, and more) for any third party domains with the domain in the address bar." They even included a link you can click on to get more info on it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sdfjkl 9y ago
  Uhm, it's explained in the article.
- zaarn 9y ago
  fPI will isolate every first-party domain as much as the browser can, including HSTS and other security related properties. This means that if you visit example.com and then initech.com and both load a tracker from evilshit.org, then the tracker will see too completely fresh browser installs, not even HSTS will be setup if it was used. Basically, every domain you type into the URL address bar behaves as if it was a unique container.
kbrosnan 9y ago
While it is clear why hn folks would love those prefs. They break websites far too often to be defaults.
- sdfjkl 9y ago
  Perhaps a sign of broken websites.

piyush_soni 9y ago

What is a good replacement for DownThemAll! ? It was such an important one for me, now lost too :(

BenjiWiebe 9y ago
I agree. That's the only thing holding me back from upgrading so far.
konart 9y ago
New version of DTA is soon to be released.
bhrgunatha 9y ago
DTA lite (web extension version) was planned for release along with Quantum, but was delayed. [1] I still don't know how limited it will be compared to the XUL version though. [1] https://www.downthemall.net/delays/ https://www.downthemall.net/delays/
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  Thank you very much!
- Sylos 9y ago
  Huh, except for the quip with calling it "Lite" and the simply factually wrong bullshit in the footnote that there would be no technical reasons, this surprises me. He was the only bigger extension dev that threw a complete tantrum over this decision, refusing to even try to work with Mozilla to get some APIs into place, so that he could maybe actually port his extension in full. And now he's doing a port anyways. Well, good on him. I do not think that his behaviour back then was entirely justified, so this remedies that.
epage 9y ago
DownloadStar might cover your needs.

DavideNL 9y ago

Interesting, i wonder how effective resistFingerprinting will be...? "If true, the resistFingerprinting preference makes the browser report generic spoofed information for data that's commonly used for fingerprinting. Such data includes the number of CPU cores, precision of JavaScript timers, and the local timezone. It will also disable features that are used in fingerprinting, such as GamePad support, and the WebSpeech and Navigator APIs."

ChrisSD 9y ago
It's basically ported from the Tor Browser so it will be similarly effective. Which is to say it makes fingerprinting harder but not necessarily impossible if you have javascript turned on.
jcomis 9y ago
I am also curious about this. I used several plugins in earlier FF versions to reduce fingerprinting / change security preferences and settings. None of them seem to work on 57. The answer seems to be to just flip on "resistfingerprinting". Seems almost too easy... and available information isn't exactly clear.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Sylos 9y ago
I tested it on a fresh profile on Firefox Nightly 59.0a1 (2017-11-21), using https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/. And well, apparently it has a pretty bad bug. It spoofs my screen size from previously 1366x768, which 1 in 9.43 browsers have, to 1318x686, which by itself is already unique, because that really is just not a screen size that anyone sells. So, that's a thing. Maybe it's just isolated to Nightly, but if in doubt, maybe also just test yourself. Now where to report this...
- bhrgunatha 9y ago
  > to 1318x686, which by itself is already unique, Is it sticky though? I don't know how the spoofing works, but if the next time, the same site gets a different size, wouldn't your profile become less identifiable across visits and other web sites.

eb0la 9y ago

Just when I thought FF57 was great. Now switching to Nightly :D

andrepd 9y ago

They're clearly adding APIs that they think are necessary, vs the ones addon developers actually need and clamour for. We've seen this in the entire process. Mozilla is not interested in listening to the actual needs of the developers. They just have their own idea of "brand new cool features" and they're gonna roll with it. Disappointing.

DiThi 9y ago
Part of the reason is that most users of some popular addons don't participate in the open source community, reporting bugs, commenting on them to add details or tell why are they important, etc.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Do Mozilla contact the creators of the most popular addons, they could serve as a useful proxy for trying to get direct input from inexperienced users.
  - DiThi 9y ago
    They probably do. But Firefox addons is a long tail. There are many addons that would qualify as "popular" but Mozilla wouldn't be able to contact them all. So they have to measure not only popularity, but also if the community cares about that addon. I had many addons installed that I don't use, synchronized across devices: They may count as "popular" but it doesn't reflect the actual community and usage.
- detaro 9y ago
  And if they do, they don't communicate in the way Mozilla would like them to. Users can't say much more than "I want X to be possible", add-on developers can comment on what API they'd like, but after a short initial wave of that these things tend to be treated as noise even if they are presented very friendly, because the actual dev-work that is necessary in the end is guided by other principles these parties can't contribute much to. And it's really difficult to guide that in a way that doesn't make people feel bad.
9y ago

super_mario 9y ago

As far as I'm concerned Firefox is dead. I'm sticking with 56 and Pentadactyl for the times I need to do extensive research online where it is so much faster to browse and find things. Otherwise, I'm using Safari and weaning myself off of all the power of VIM like browsing. Safari also happens to be so much smoother and does not kill the battery.

pjmlp 9y ago
I applaud Mozilla. Never had any use for extensions. For me Web browsing is all about HTML/CSS and some occasional JavaScript, everything else is better achieved via native apps.
- super_mario 9y ago
  If your use case is so simple that essentially any browser meets your needs, why do you find it strange that others might have different needs? I never understood why people have such a hard time with choice. And why saying something no longer meets your needs evokes such reactions.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Because safety. Mozilla and others are just making the Web browsers safer. It was necessary the Internet and explosion of security exploits to realize that although plugins in-process are easier to implement, the older out-of-process architecture was safer and harder to exploit.
    - wtallis 9y ago
      > Because safety. Mozilla and others are just making the Web browsers safer. And yet they broke things like NoScript, which provided security/privacy features missing from plain Firefox and unavailable on any other browser no matter what extensions you installed. If safety was really such a high priority, they would have waited until after a full-featured NoScript WebExtension was possible to implement before deliberately breaking XUL extensions.

lenni 9y ago

I must say that Mozilla have made the right call with extensions in Firefox 57. Web extensions are probably a small part of it but I have switched back to FF after ~5 years of Chrome. I also like the redesign but the killer feature was the noticeable speed up. I consider myself a fan again!

asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
Great to see that new users are getting catered for meanwhile those of us that used Firefox the whole time get ignored.
- baldfat 9y ago
  I have been a Firefox user since it was called Phoenix. This is the best Firefox , but I have lost a ton of extensions including my Vim extensions. So right now I use Qutebrowser and know that the new plugins will get added.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Did you check out vim-vixen? If so, what's your opinion on it?
    - baldfat 9y ago
      Yup I am now using Firefox again :)
    - ivanche 9y ago
      This looks great! Do you know is there any way to select one tab from the list I see when I type :tabopen?
      - idlewan 9y ago
        You can use Tab and Ctrl+Tab, but there has been a pull request adding Ctrl+n and Ctrl+p.

frading 9y ago

The tabs.Tab.isArticle does not seem to be in chrome. Anyone know how they detect if a page is an article or not?

frading 9y ago
replying to myself, it simply is the html tag <article>. Didnt realise it was that simple.
- throwanem 9y ago
  That's good to know, and I didn't think it was that simple either. Thanks!

yscik 9y ago

I'm not sure how allowing extensions to change privacy settings is going to increase user privacy. And while it's becoming easier to manipulate any website you visit, with basically nothing stopping a malicious extension from stealing user data or just taking over any online account, actually extending the browser UI, the original goal of many former extensions, is extremely limited.

acqq 9y ago
If you mean the stuff under "Additional Privacy Controls" you already surf without the functionality that can be turned on with this API. That means that the new API allows you more privacy, at least until you install some extension that maybe overrides the extension that turned "on" that privacy functionality. So it's like before, adding a new extension is always a security risk.
- yscik 9y ago
  Wow, I thought the controls are exposed in browser preferences. This makes even less sense, why would these be only controllable by extensions? (Though they are accessible in about:config at least)
  - milofeynman 9y ago
    I personally have them both turned on in about:config. But It would be nice to have an extension to turn off resistfingerprinting on some sites (like firefox's extension site) because it fakes the browser's user agent which breaks things that check your user agent. I'm not sure this will allow that. It seems like it'll allow a privacy extension to easily enable / disable it for all sites with a check box.
asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
It is a different mindset. It comes from the idea that you should be able to trust the software that you have vetted and installed (extension) over random third party code (an arbitrary website).
9y ago

trqx 9y ago

Nothing new about TCP/UDP socket API? That and possibility to hide the tab bar is what I miss the most. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247628 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247628

throwanem 9y ago
You can hide the tab bar with userChrome.css (I think that's what it is called), although possibly not in a way that can be toggled. Should be able to hide it only in windows where only one tab is present, at least.

pmoriarty 9y ago

Firefox 57 was the version that permanently killed the extension that made Firefox usable for me: Pentadactyl (along with many other extensions). Now I'm migrating to using Qutebrowser, as it's the closest to providing a similar experience.

mintplant 9y ago
Have you tried Vim Vixen? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vim-vixen/
- nathyong 9y ago
  I don't know where this was when I was searching for alternatives to vimperator, but thanks so much for mentioning vim-vixen. It seems like it's just a port of the parts of vimperator that still work with WebExtensions but it's so much better than the alternatives out there at the moment.

dbolgheroni 9y ago

Still no API for WebExtensions with Vimperator-like or Pentadactyl-like functionality. [0][1] For those interested, the whole discussion about adding it is here [2]. [0] https://github.com/cmcaine/keyboard-api https://github.com/cmcaine/keyboard-api [1] https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut-api https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut-api [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061

jlgaddis 9y ago
Vimium-FF [0] works just fine and has since I first installed FF57 Developer Edition (right after FF55 came out?) [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/
- dbolgheroni 9y ago
  Vimium-FF is not a substitute. Very very limited compared to what Vimperator and Pentadactyl can do. Besides the features, the main problem with Vimium-FF is that it does not work on a lot of pages and, even in the pages that does work, it breaks often. During long sessions, it's common having to reload the page multiple times to get Vimium-FF working again.
- idlewan 9y ago
  .. works just fine ... Not really. You can't yank the url (yy) in Firefox, and the search is borked sometimes when there is no match on the page. After spending a few months with vimium, I found vim-vixen, which doesn't have these problems.

y0ghur7_xxx 9y ago

I still miss a lot of extensions. One of my favourites was pwgen¹. I missed it so much I decided to write my own², but writing it I found out that the WebExtensions api is still a big work in progress. For example writing some text to the clipboard seems to be a basic thing a web extension should be able to do. BUT to do it, you have to create a textbox, set its value to something, then programmatically select the text, and then invoke document.execCommand("Copy") to copy the text. Come on! Why not something like browser.clipboard.copy('some text')? And it does not even always work like expected³. I hope the next ff versions will improve on this. Extensions are what makes the browser your own. ¹https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-password-generator/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-passwor... ²https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-reloaded/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwgen-reloade... ³https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1344410 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1344410

zamber 9y ago
Clipboard and selection handling is a massive PITA in webdev. On the flipside it "enables" such creative solutions like that pesky text selection bubble on medium.
- cbcoutinho 9y ago
  Oh man, I hate that thing on Medium so much. I'm slightly fidgety so sometimes I double click the text I'm reading. I didn't even realize how much I did it until I visited Medium and almost tweeted some random paragraph I was reading. I would love to turn that crap off.
  - stinkytaco 9y ago
    Could you block javascript on that page?
    - cesnja 9y ago
      Yes, but you probably couldn't read the post then :)

foob 9y ago

The timing on this is quite coincidental, I just published a short article this morning about adding support to Selenium for installing WebExtensions to Firefox profiles [1]. I write and use extensions frequently for web scraping and browser automation, and I've really been thrilled about what Mozilla has done with the WebExtensions API. It was a quite miserable process to write cross-browser extensions in the past, but that basically changed overnight when Mozilla first announced the WebExtensions API. I think that this is ultimately going to have an immensely positive impact on the extension ecosystem. [1] - https://intoli.com/blog/firefox-extensions-with-selenium/ https://intoli.com/blog/firefox-extensions-with-selenium/

bartkmq 9y ago

Does anyone found an alternative to "BackTrack Tab History", an extension that copies the history of the current tab to newly opened tabs? The author thinks he won't be able to port it to Quantum.

DiThi 9y ago
What's the difference with duplicating the tab then going to about:blank?

vermaden 9y ago

One of the extensions I miss most is UnMHT. Anyone have info about if/when it will support Quantum?

eejdoowad 9y ago

Looking forward to this update. I wonder if it will be possible to load scripts into the reader view document. Currently, it isn’t, so keybinding extensions, which rely on inserting Keyboard event listeners, don’t work in reader view. I had been prototyping a custom reader view in Saka Key using Mozilla’s Readability library to work around this issue. The Content Security Policy fix is a lifesaver. Saka Key attaches hint elements to the DOM and attaches a script tag to load common styles/fonts. Sites with the policy style-src: self (like crates.io) block script tags, which breaks hint styling and positioning.

TheRealPomax 9y ago

To me the important part is "Starting with Firefox 58, the CSP of a web page does not apply to content inserted by an extension". This was flagged as going to be a problem back when CSP was still a draft instead of a spec, and it was blatantly obvious that bookmarklets and extensions would get impaired if CSP ignored the difference between site-content-activated scripts, and browser-owner-activated scripts. I would have preferred to see this land 6 to 12 weeks after CSP handling originally landed in Firefox, but landing it now is a clear case of "better late than never".

dbrgn 9y ago

> Support for PKCS #11 Security Devices This is nice, but I'd prefer if support for FIDO U2F would be here already. But it looks like something is happening with that too: https://www.yubico.com/2017/09/firefox-nightly-enables-support-fido-u2f-security-keys/ https://www.yubico.com/2017/09/firefox-nightly-enables-suppo... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1065729 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1065729

veeti 9y ago
U2F support for most sites is already in stable Firefox, you just have to flip security.webauth.u2f in about:config. Unfortunately Google doesn't work yet, maybe due to missing AppID support: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1244959 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1244959
- dbrgn 9y ago
  Whoa, TIL. Thanks!

wpdev_63 9y ago

I recently switched to firefox and I find that chrome has much better plugin support. Just browsing between the plugin stores and you can see the difference. Hopefully firefox can catch up. One plugin that I really miss in firefox is holmes[0]. I bookmark alot of useful sites and it can be a pain to find them in the bookmark list. It's a plugin that makes me really miss chrome. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/holmes/gokficnebmomagijbakglkcmhdbchbhn?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/holmes/gokficnebmo... [1] https://www.chromium.org/tab-to-search https://www.chromium.org/tab-to-search

brudgers 9y ago

Sandboxing user side javascript from the web seems like a reasonable security step. Sandboxing web side javascript from the user side javascript is removes power from users in the way that concerned Stallman 35 years ago. Unfortunately, that's the direction Mozilla is going with web extensions. It must because Mozilla's complicity to bake DRM into the browser requires giving control of the user's computer over to media interests. It requires favoring corporate interests over user freedom. The horrible thing about Quantum is it replaces the last browser that put power in the hands of users. It removes the last browser that was not constrained explicitly for media consumption.

pcwalton 9y ago
Web Extensions have nothing to do with DRM.
- brudgers 9y ago
  The sandbox model limits the ability of the user to interact with the contents loaded into the browser from a remote source. This is required for a robust implementation of DRM and a robust implementation of DRM is a goal for Mozilla. The sandbox model necessary for DRM is what limits the power of web extensions. DRM priority is why the sandbox model cannot be turned off by the user. Making Netflix in Chrome low risk for Netflix is why the user is no longer allowed to control their browser. The sales pitch for Quantum is that it is faster for media consumption. The developer pitch is that it is easier to write extensions for consuming content.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    This is nonsense, sorry. The Web Extensions API is designed (1) to prevent add-ons from breaking as the Firefox browser changes; (2) to allow constraining the behavior of add-ons to limit their ability to compromise the security model of the browser. The API is not intended to prevent you from changing the software you're running on your own system. If it were, you'd see pervasive obfuscation like PatchGuard, not sandboxed EME plugins with clearly defined interfaces.

Rusky 9y ago

One thing that might release some of the pressure around addons would be to make Gecko more embeddable, the way Blink is. We've started seeing a lot of alternative Blink UIs (Brave, Vivaldi, new Opera, etc) alongside apps built on it via Electron. Those alternative UIs do things Chrome extensions can't, even including things Firefox 57 lost the ability to do. I don't know how close to that state Gecko is right now, so maybe it would be less work just to recreate the necessary APIs like they're already doing. But if not it could help bring back some of Gecko's market share, which is at least as important as that of Firefox as a whole.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
Servo was designed to be much more embeddable.
- Rusky 9y ago
  I'm pretty excited about that but I doubt it will lead to new alternative browser UIs anytime soon.
pcwalton 9y ago
Blink isn't very embeddable. In fact, removing the "ports" system that facilitated embeddability was one of the main goals of the Blink fork. The alternative "Blink" UIs, and Electron, are really just forks of the entire Chromium browser, soup to nuts.
- Rusky 9y ago
  Ah fair enough. How easy then would it be for a Firefox fork to drop the chrome the way Electron does?
LocutusOfBorges 9y ago
I don't expect an Electron-style system to ever arise around Firefox while the engine continues to not support custom skinned scrollbars. They've become such a fundamental element of modern web apps- that so many of them just fall over and break on Firefox is alarming.

cyphar 9y ago

The privacy changes look quite cool, especially firstPartyIsolate (though it also looks like it'd break most websites -- notably YouTube and similar sites would likely break). > firstPartyIsolate – This preference makes the browser associate all data (including cookies, HSTS data, cached images, and more) for any third party domains with the domain in the address bar.

kwoff 9y ago
I already in v57 had to set privacy.firstparty.isolate.restrict_opener_access to false in about:config because every site is wanting me to login all the time... (At least I assume that was the reason.) I did toggle privacy.firstparty.isolate to true, though.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

I don't get the twisted priorities here. Extensions can do subversive things like change search engines but useful modifications to the UI are verboten. Blindly copying Chrome is the wrong path to head down. You end up playing into Google's game of building systems with user hostile misfeatures meant to protect ad revenue.

sp332 9y ago
They are not forbidden. They are just not done yet. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 Edit: better link https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/TabHiding
- Macha 9y ago
  From that wiki page: > Some of the key goals of WebExtensions are that it’s not about changing the Firefox UI in the way we used to in legacy add-ons. There’s clear limitations we need to set. However there’s so much interest around tabs and tab groups. So tab mix plus gets its APIs because people yelled hard enough, but vimperator won't?
  - sp332 9y ago
    Those are both on the list, but they are not "priorities". https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Future https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/705#issuecomment-344383643 https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/705#iss... "The WebExtension APIs offered by Firefox already contain many features that chrome lacks and I am working constructively with them to add the APIs we need to make something a lot like vimperator in Firefox."

TimLeland 9y ago

This will make it easier to port extensions from and allow developers to have one codebase. Makes it easier for me to manage my extension https://weatherextension.com https://weatherextension.com

ishbits 9y ago

Probably silly, but I pretty much only use Chrome for the custom/compact title bar on Linux. On smaller screens it gives me more vertical on the content.

r3bl 9y ago
That's an expected feature for Firefox as well. It landed in Nightly as a WIP feature, but it's getting there: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283299 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283299
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago
I've hidden window title bars for years, even on a full-size monitor; on a smaller screen it makes even better sense. Gives more vertical room for content in any application :-) (Btw, with title bars hidden Firefox and Chrome actually have pixel-for-pixel same size nagivation elements, at least with Ubuntu's defaults – of course only when you toggle on system title bars in Chrome.)

infogulch 9y ago

Is there an extension for 57+ that shows bookmarks in a tab? I dislike all the window-based bookmarks, downloads, etc UI ("Library"). You have a world-class extensible customizable graphical user interface system right here in the middle of the browser, use it.

YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 9y ago

Well isn't it just great to have a new Theme API, never even knew I missed that. And a Reader Mode API, I'm sure I'll love that too even though I've never even used that mode. Glad they got rid of the old extension system now that the new one is so feature complete. I mean who needs spellchecker API anyway, if you miss spellchecking in your language, you can always start writing in another language, no? Perhaps they could introduce a Pocket API to compensate?

TimTheTinker 9y ago

All the recent developments are really great. I’m just waiting for: - Workspace support in DevTools (i.e. unify localhost-loaded resources with an on-disk workspace to enable updating JS & CSS without reloading, editing and saving files from DevTools, etc.) - queryObjects console API method (from Chrome) - alternate DevTools themes If/when those land I’ll likely go back to using FireFox as my primary development browser (been developing on Chrome since 2009).

proee 9y ago

Regarding extensions, can we really trust random 3rd party developers that their code is 100% safe and will not steal our passwords. Giving full read/write access to an extension seems VERY dangerous to me, especially if the extension was compromised unknowingly by someone who hacked into the developers machine prior to a release.

weaksauce 9y ago
fwiw if you put a webextension on AMO they manually do a review of your code before it's release to make sure it's not malicious. not 100% safe but what is?

wnevets 9y ago

I just want my scroll wheel switches tabs add-on back :(

overint 9y ago
I missed this when chrome removed a similar addon. It was an awesome feature, would love to see it make a comeback.

phreack 9y ago

No good RSS extension yet, no mousewheel scrolling through tabs, no 'Add "run" option to download dialog'... I suddenly lost so much with Quantum, I wish they had held onto killing the old add-ons until the WebExtensions API was complete.

monsieurgaufre 9y ago

They kill many extensions, but make Pocket unremovable. That's beyond stupid. If I care about speed, I use Chrome. If I want custombility, I used to pick Firefox. Right now, it's basically a Chrome clone, so why bother. And the privacy argument is not strong enough.

imran3740 9y ago
You can disable Pocket. In about:config, toggle 'extensions.pocket.enabled' to false.

rockdino 9y ago

All nice feature but Firefox still doesn't support hangout or bluejeans

crispinb 9y ago

The lack of configurable keyboard shortcuts for extensions is what stops me continuing to use Firefox each time I try it. I have yet to find a usable Pinboard extension, for example. Is this an extensions API limitation or is not using the keyboard part of FF norms/culture? Even much built-in functionality (like save to Pocket) is mouse-only.