5 ms·

As a long time Firefox user I think the change in its extensions APIs is one of the greatest moves they did and I’m glad they did it. Chrome’s extensions were

As a long time Firefox user I think the change in its extensions APIs is one of the greatest moves they did and I’m glad they did it. Chrome’s extensions were isolated, easy to develop and had a permissions system in place. To this day Firefox is still lagging behind in its isolation. For example Chrome can disable extensions in Incognito, but Firefox does not. Also if you’re not paying attention, Chrome won and it’s nearly a monopoly. This means browser extensions get developed for Chrome first. Having similar APIs helps with migration. I view the change as a good thing because I can finally develop my own extensions without headaches.

JohnFen 8y ago
> As a long time Firefox user I think the change in its extensions APIs is one of the greatest moves they did and I’m glad they did it. Not me. If the new extension system didn't present a loss of important (to me) functionality, then I'd think it was a good thing. But the loss of functionality happened, and that change is what makes the new Firefox unsuitable for me, so I stopped using it (and I never used Chrome).
fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago
Isolation isn’t a benefit for extensions: the whole point of extensions, bookmarklets, etc. is to be able to modify arbitrary aspects of the browsing experience in arbitrary ways.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  It's a balance, right? If browser extensions had kernel access, I think we'd all agree that's bad. Now, that's obviously an extreme, but where is the line? Up until recently†, I'm not aware of a situation where a popular Firefox extension was unable to work in Chrome due to Google restrictions. †I'm purposefully excluding the whole adblock thing, as that's super recent and thus not relevant here.
  - MrStonedOne 8y ago
    But it's not about the popular extensions. Now there is no more middle click to submit on forms and I used that at my old job to speed up a bunch of tedious tasks.
    - ZeikJT 8y ago
      That sounds trivial to implement in an extension at least. If there isn't one already I could probably take a crack at it.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > It's a balance, right? If browser extensions had kernel access, I think we'd all agree that's bad. Now, that's obviously an extreme, but where is the line? It is, and it boils down to the usual security vs. utility tradeoff - beyond some point, more secure means less useful. Kernel access is a stretch, but then again, I could make my computing experience much more pleasant if I had a deeper ability to control and inspect the browser from external software running on my computer.
  - leshow 8y ago
    Playing devil's advocate, many firefox extensions don't work as well or at all as they used to. tree style tabs can't integrate in the same way without extra modification, all of the FF extensions that allowed you to control your browser with vim bindings no longer work. I actually still think the API design was a good idea and am glad for the added security. Still, the API change took down some popular extensions for sure.
- bad_user 8y ago
  I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust all the extensions that I want to use. Especially in Private/Incognito Mode I only want extensions for blocking ads/trackers + 1Password and that’s it. Also being able to see what the extension does is really valuable to me, because allowing an extension to read the data on all websites you visit is really suspicious for a majority of extensions. Mozilla has had a good review process in place and truth be told Chrome's Web Store has suffered from spyware and malicious extensions more than Firefox. But that's only because it is more popular and Google is known for really screwed / non-existent human support (e.g. extensions being reported as being malware with no immediate action).
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust all the extensions that I want to use. That's fair, but this dynamic drags down usefulness of the whole platform. Browsers could offer extended permissions allowing extensions arbitrary control over the browsing experience, but they can't trust extension authors not to get greedy about privileges, and can't trust regular users to be smart about it. It's what happened with Android: applications requested every possible permission, users learned to just accept it. > Also being able to see what the extension does is really valuable to me, because allowing an extension to read the data on all websites you visit is really suspicious for a majority of extensions. That's true, and I wish there was an easy way to transparently run a I/O trace on an extension, and to have super-fine-grained user-level control over its permissions. I use a bunch of extensions that modify the contents of sites; I wish I could manually restrict them to a whitelist - and sometimes blacklist. Like, e.g. I don't need Cloud2Butt to work on my banking site.
Vinnl 8y ago
> To this day Firefox is still lagging behind in its isolation. That is being worked on though: > The first batch of changes to not run extensions in private browsing mode by default landed, this is still behind a preference. https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2019/01/31/these-weeks-in-firefox-issue-52/ https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2019/01/31/these-weeks-in-f...
- bad_user 8y ago
  That's very good news.
gspetr 8y ago
Extensions are profile-specific. Solution: change profile to launch another browser instance without extensions. Go to "about:profiles" in the address bar, or configure shortcuts in your OS to launch browser with different profiles: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Multiple_profiles https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Mul...

JohnFen 8y ago

> As a long time Firefox user I think the change in its extensions APIs is one of the greatest moves they did and I’m glad they did it. Not me. If the new extension system didn't present a loss of important (to me) functionality, then I'd think it was a good thing. But the loss of functionality happened, and that change is what makes the new Firefox unsuitable for me, so I stopped using it (and I never used Chrome).

fiddlerwoaroof 8y ago

Isolation isn’t a benefit for extensions: the whole point of extensions, bookmarklets, etc. is to be able to modify arbitrary aspects of the browsing experience in arbitrary ways.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
It's a balance, right? If browser extensions had kernel access, I think we'd all agree that's bad. Now, that's obviously an extreme, but where is the line? Up until recently†, I'm not aware of a situation where a popular Firefox extension was unable to work in Chrome due to Google restrictions. †I'm purposefully excluding the whole adblock thing, as that's super recent and thus not relevant here.
- MrStonedOne 8y ago
  But it's not about the popular extensions. Now there is no more middle click to submit on forms and I used that at my old job to speed up a bunch of tedious tasks.
  - ZeikJT 8y ago
    That sounds trivial to implement in an extension at least. If there isn't one already I could probably take a crack at it.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > It's a balance, right? If browser extensions had kernel access, I think we'd all agree that's bad. Now, that's obviously an extreme, but where is the line? It is, and it boils down to the usual security vs. utility tradeoff - beyond some point, more secure means less useful. Kernel access is a stretch, but then again, I could make my computing experience much more pleasant if I had a deeper ability to control and inspect the browser from external software running on my computer.
- leshow 8y ago
  Playing devil's advocate, many firefox extensions don't work as well or at all as they used to. tree style tabs can't integrate in the same way without extra modification, all of the FF extensions that allowed you to control your browser with vim bindings no longer work. I actually still think the API design was a good idea and am glad for the added security. Still, the API change took down some popular extensions for sure.
bad_user 8y ago
I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust all the extensions that I want to use. Especially in Private/Incognito Mode I only want extensions for blocking ads/trackers + 1Password and that’s it. Also being able to see what the extension does is really valuable to me, because allowing an extension to read the data on all websites you visit is really suspicious for a majority of extensions. Mozilla has had a good review process in place and truth be told Chrome's Web Store has suffered from spyware and malicious extensions more than Firefox. But that's only because it is more popular and Google is known for really screwed / non-existent human support (e.g. extensions being reported as being malware with no immediate action).
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust all the extensions that I want to use. That's fair, but this dynamic drags down usefulness of the whole platform. Browsers could offer extended permissions allowing extensions arbitrary control over the browsing experience, but they can't trust extension authors not to get greedy about privileges, and can't trust regular users to be smart about it. It's what happened with Android: applications requested every possible permission, users learned to just accept it. > Also being able to see what the extension does is really valuable to me, because allowing an extension to read the data on all websites you visit is really suspicious for a majority of extensions. That's true, and I wish there was an easy way to transparently run a I/O trace on an extension, and to have super-fine-grained user-level control over its permissions. I use a bunch of extensions that modify the contents of sites; I wish I could manually restrict them to a whitelist - and sometimes blacklist. Like, e.g. I don't need Cloud2Butt to work on my banking site.

Vinnl 8y ago

> To this day Firefox is still lagging behind in its isolation. That is being worked on though: > The first batch of changes to not run extensions in private browsing mode by default landed, this is still behind a preference. https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2019/01/31/these-weeks-in-firefox-issue-52/ https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2019/01/31/these-weeks-in-f...

bad_user 8y ago
That's very good news.

gspetr 8y ago

Extensions are profile-specific. Solution: change profile to launch another browser instance without extensions. Go to "about:profiles" in the address bar, or configure shortcuts in your OS to launch browser with different profiles: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Multiple_profiles https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Mul...