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Sadly no news on the Web-extensions front. Several of my extensions continue broken.

proaralyst 9y ago
What news are you looking for? I'm fairly sure extensions targeting the older APIs will not be supported in any future release.
- Kliment 9y ago
  We're waiting for the webextensions API to be extended with a bunch of missing functionality so that extension authors can reimplement things that were made impossible when the older APIs were deprecated. This is something that ideally should have been done before or shortly after the quantum release but was not seen as a priority.
- Crespyl 9y ago
  Old extensions won't ever really work again, but part of me is still kind of holding out hope for WebExtensions API features for things like "allow extension on 'system' pages (new tab, settings, etc)", "focus addressbar", "hide/replace address/tab bars", etc. Some of those are coming or pretty much ready (tab hiding, addressbar focus), and others I've almost given up on, given how Mozilla seems to have changed their philosophy.
Silhouette 9y ago
That's unfortunate. I finally gave up on Firefox as my main browser when 57 came out, and one of the big reasons was that so many of the useful extensions that had set Firefox above other browsers for me were broken and didn't have good replacements. In some of those cases, my understanding is that you can't currently write a direct replacement because the new API doesn't support the required functionality. I was really hoping that by two releases later these kinds of issues would have been addressed and new Firefox would at least not be worse than old Firefox in this respect. :-(
- jerheinze 9y ago
  > That's unfortunate. I finally gave up on Firefox as my main browser when 57 came out, and one of the big reasons was that so many of the useful extensions that had set Firefox above other browsers for me were broken and didn't have good replacements I never really understood this argument, you gave up Firefox since you could no longer have your XUL/XPCOM extensions in favor of serious browsers who have less WebExt APIs than Firefox and don't have those same extensions?
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    Mozilla took away perfectly good functionality and gave existing fans a big middle finger while doing so. Although I am a fan of Mozilla, it is entirely understandable to me why someone wouldn't want to keep using their products. And lets not ignore the fact that most sites are designed with Chrome as their intended target. FF simply doesn't work as well on many sites.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - esarbe 9y ago
      This is - in my opinion - one of the best reasons to use Firefox. I don't want to go back to one browser dominating the web.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    Not really. I gave up Firefox (as my main browser; I'm a web dev so use all of the major ones regularly anyway) because the main thing keeping me there was its extensibility, and that advantage went away. Firefox was and remains slower, less reliable, and less capable than Chrome, and IME has actually become worse in those respects as well since Quantum.
    - jerheinze 9y ago
      > Firefox was and remains slower Did you try out the Firefox Nightly with WebRender enabled?
jerheinze 9y ago
> Sadly no news on the Web-extensions front Did you actually read the release notes? Quoting: > Enhanced WebExtensions API including better support for decentralized protocols and the ability to dynamically register content scripts. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/01/26/extensions-firefox-59/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/01/26/extensions-firefo...
- louiz 9y ago
  Yeah, so, nothing really useful when what you’re waiting for is proper keyboard customization.

What news are you looking for? I'm fairly sure extensions targeting the older APIs will not be supported in any future release.

Kliment 9y ago
We're waiting for the webextensions API to be extended with a bunch of missing functionality so that extension authors can reimplement things that were made impossible when the older APIs were deprecated. This is something that ideally should have been done before or shortly after the quantum release but was not seen as a priority.
Crespyl 9y ago
Old extensions won't ever really work again, but part of me is still kind of holding out hope for WebExtensions API features for things like "allow extension on 'system' pages (new tab, settings, etc)", "focus addressbar", "hide/replace address/tab bars", etc. Some of those are coming or pretty much ready (tab hiding, addressbar focus), and others I've almost given up on, given how Mozilla seems to have changed their philosophy.

Silhouette 9y ago

That's unfortunate. I finally gave up on Firefox as my main browser when 57 came out, and one of the big reasons was that so many of the useful extensions that had set Firefox above other browsers for me were broken and didn't have good replacements. In some of those cases, my understanding is that you can't currently write a direct replacement because the new API doesn't support the required functionality. I was really hoping that by two releases later these kinds of issues would have been addressed and new Firefox would at least not be worse than old Firefox in this respect. :-(

jerheinze 9y ago
> That's unfortunate. I finally gave up on Firefox as my main browser when 57 came out, and one of the big reasons was that so many of the useful extensions that had set Firefox above other browsers for me were broken and didn't have good replacements I never really understood this argument, you gave up Firefox since you could no longer have your XUL/XPCOM extensions in favor of serious browsers who have less WebExt APIs than Firefox and don't have those same extensions?
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Mozilla took away perfectly good functionality and gave existing fans a big middle finger while doing so. Although I am a fan of Mozilla, it is entirely understandable to me why someone wouldn't want to keep using their products. And lets not ignore the fact that most sites are designed with Chrome as their intended target. FF simply doesn't work as well on many sites.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - esarbe 9y ago
    This is - in my opinion - one of the best reasons to use Firefox. I don't want to go back to one browser dominating the web.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  Not really. I gave up Firefox (as my main browser; I'm a web dev so use all of the major ones regularly anyway) because the main thing keeping me there was its extensibility, and that advantage went away. Firefox was and remains slower, less reliable, and less capable than Chrome, and IME has actually become worse in those respects as well since Quantum.
  - jerheinze 9y ago
    > Firefox was and remains slower Did you try out the Firefox Nightly with WebRender enabled?

jerheinze 9y ago

> Sadly no news on the Web-extensions front Did you actually read the release notes? Quoting: > Enhanced WebExtensions API including better support for decentralized protocols and the ability to dynamically register content scripts. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/01/26/extensions-firefox-59/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2018/01/26/extensions-firefo...

louiz 9y ago
Yeah, so, nothing really useful when what you’re waiting for is proper keyboard customization.