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Yeah, projects like this give me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. NPAPI and XUL were discontinued for really good reasons. Some users say they still want them,

Yeah, projects like this give me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. NPAPI and XUL were discontinued for really good reasons. Some users say they still want them, but that's because (1) people hate change, even when it's good for them and (2) they don't really appreciate all the security baggage those old APIs were lugging around with them. Projects that assure those users that they can keep on trucking with their old plugins like there's no problem just encourage them to do dangerous things they really should not be doing.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
The problem is that the replacement is crippled and Google is clearly more interested in stripping features from the extension API. I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now.
- frenchy 7y ago
  I'm not sure what Google has to do with this, but Mozilla have been adding features to the extention API since Quantum first came out.
- sjwright 7y ago
  Being compatible with the Extension API doesn't require Mozilla to follow Google on every decision. As long as the deviations are well documented and developers perform feature detection, Mozilla won't ever have to make changes that serve the interests of Google ahead of their users.
- ronjouch 7y ago
  > "I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now" userChrome.css to the rescue: - Tree Style Tab's wiki offers tips to do exactly that: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-userchromecss https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... . - Or you can combine the address and tab bar: https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox If none is to your exact taste, https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ may help.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    That's the correct solution for now, but we can only hope Mozilla won't disable the ability to use these files. They're disabled by default in FF 69: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-and-usercontent-css-disabled-by-default/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-... And the key to reenable them has legacy in the name: toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
    - ronjouch 7y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out. I'm worried too: - At first, the discussion on bugzilla [1] is reasonable: user stylesheets off by default for performance, and there's even backward compat code enabling the pref during Firefox 68 if you are using them. All good... - ... but then comes this legacy in the pref name :-| :-| :-| I hope Mozilla keeps the feature alive, it's appreciated by many "power" users. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233 EDIT good news: re-reading recent comments, in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233#c61 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233#c61 , Florian Quèze (mozilla dev) affirms: "the word 'legacy' was used in the preference name to avoid giving the impression that with this new preference we are adding a new customization feature. I'm not aware of any plan to drop support for these files".
      - bscphil 7y ago
        That is good news, thanks.
    - abacadaba 7y ago
      Ugh, if you're gonna pull this shit make sidebar tabs first class! They knew this way before they switched, gave some lip service to make sure the most popular extensions would get the support they needed, and now however many releases later i still have to dig through hidden files and hash-named profile directories to make this work right. And still no usable alternative to tab groups last time I checked, which they took out of core with the reasoning that it should be an extension. At least adblock still works.
nieve 7y ago
http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ https://github.com/danny0838/firefox-scrapbook/wiki/Intro https://github.com/danny0838/firefox-scrapbook/wiki/Intro There's zero hope of implementing something like the unfortunately named Scrapbook Plus & Scrapbook X research addons. In-browser editing & powerful manipulation, full text search within saved pages, direct access to the saved archives, the sidebar, the specialized capture options and quite a bit more require features (XUL-based and otherwise) that Mozilla won't implement. It's the biggest thing keeping me on Waterfox beyond Mozilla continual slide into sleaziness on privacy and afaik no browser not based on pre-quantum firefox supports anything like it. Beyond research or archiving pages I think will disappear If I want to yank the content from posts across five sites, clean it up quickly, merge it into a single document and export it for conversion with calibre it's trivial with Scrapbook X and a pain with anything else I've tried. If I want to archive everything that I look at while digging into a topic or site I just turn on auto-save and start browsing. I'm fairly certain having no replacement for a major part of my workflow & browsing habits doesn't mean that I'm anti-security* or I'm scared, but that Mozilla no longer supports the tools I need. I'm grateful that Waterfox does. *It's almost a hobby: Firejail, uMatrix & NoScript in paranoid mode, rejecting all cookies by default & extensive use of containers, different vpn connections and separate profiles for different kinds of browsing, etc.
mort96 7y ago
Saying that "people hate change, even when it's good for them" has to be the most arrogant thing I've read today. If someone is most comfortable using their browser with a certain extension for which there is no good WebExtensions-based alternative, how can you say that forcing them to stop using that extension is "good for them"? Even if there is a suitable alternative, which requires re-learning a bunch of things the user is used to, how is that change "good for them"? The move away from XUL and NPAPI is great for Mozilla, it makes it easier to maintain and develop the browser, it's probably good for extension developers (except for those who now can't port their extension to the new API because it's more limited), but it's not good for users who are forced to take time out of their day to find and alternatives or users who just have to accept that what they were previously using their browser for just isn't possible anymore with Firefox. Saying that change is "good" for users even if the users don't realize it and resist, prevents us from considering the very real negative effects of introducing breaking changes or removing features of our software.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  > If someone is most comfortable using their browser with a certain extension for which there is no good WebExtensions-based alternative, how can you say that forcing them to stop using that extension is "good for them"? If supporting that extension requires exposing the user to security risks. The downside of “extensions can do anything!” is that it means extensions can do, well, anything, including things that are hostile to the user’s interests. A more restrictive API means some things extensions used to be able to do aren’t possible anymore, but that’s as true of the bad things as it is of the good. And the bad things were bad enough that it was worth losing the good ones to protect users from them. Look, I get it, it sucks to lose an extension you like and rely on. I lost a couple of these in the move myself. But the browser’s first responsibility to the user is primum non nocere: “first, do no harm.” And those old APIs, which were naïvely designed twenty years ago in a time when the Internet was far less weaponized than it is today, were exposing an awful lot of people to a great deal of harm.
  - saurik 7y ago
    > The downside of “extensions can do anything!” is that it means extensions can do, well, anything, including things that are hostile to the user’s interests. This is also arrogant: why do you think it is OK to say I can't do something I want to do because it is possible that I use that freedom to do something that harms my own interests? People fundamentally should be allowed to do things that harm them if blocking them from harm restricts their ability to do things they wanted to do; I mean, you aren't even suggesting some kind of user-controlled sandbox: you are advocating for putting the user themselves in a sandbox because you think they are too stupid to handle power.
deadbunny 7y ago
And (3) they are still having to support old broken shit at work which requires NPAPI plugins or even shudders java. Not everyone lives in a tech utopia.
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
... And (3) we lost perfectly good extensions that we were using.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago

The problem is that the replacement is crippled and Google is clearly more interested in stripping features from the extension API. I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now.

frenchy 7y ago
I'm not sure what Google has to do with this, but Mozilla have been adding features to the extention API since Quantum first came out.
sjwright 7y ago
Being compatible with the Extension API doesn't require Mozilla to follow Google on every decision. As long as the deviations are well documented and developers perform feature detection, Mozilla won't ever have to make changes that serve the interests of Google ahead of their users.
ronjouch 7y ago
> "I'm still waiting for a way to hide the tab bar which is a privileged UI feature now" userChrome.css to the rescue: - Tree Style Tab's wiki offers tips to do exactly that: https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules#for-userchromecss https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo... . - Or you can combine the address and tab bar: https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox https://github.com/rstacruz/firefox-stealthfox If none is to your exact taste, https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/ may help.
- bscphil 7y ago
  That's the correct solution for now, but we can only hope Mozilla won't disable the ability to use these files. They're disabled by default in FF 69: https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-and-usercontent-css-disabled-by-default/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/24/firefox-69-userchrome-css-... And the key to reenable them has legacy in the name: toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets
  - ronjouch 7y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. I'm worried too: - At first, the discussion on bugzilla [1] is reasonable: user stylesheets off by default for performance, and there's even backward compat code enabling the pref during Firefox 68 if you are using them. All good... - ... but then comes this legacy in the pref name :-| :-| :-| I hope Mozilla keeps the feature alive, it's appreciated by many "power" users. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233 EDIT good news: re-reading recent comments, in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233#c61 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233#c61 , Florian Quèze (mozilla dev) affirms: "the word 'legacy' was used in the preference name to avoid giving the impression that with this new preference we are adding a new customization feature. I'm not aware of any plan to drop support for these files".
    - bscphil 7y ago
      That is good news, thanks.
  - abacadaba 7y ago
    Ugh, if you're gonna pull this shit make sidebar tabs first class! They knew this way before they switched, gave some lip service to make sure the most popular extensions would get the support they needed, and now however many releases later i still have to dig through hidden files and hash-named profile directories to make this work right. And still no usable alternative to tab groups last time I checked, which they took out of core with the reasoning that it should be an extension. At least adblock still works.

nieve 7y ago

http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ http://www.xuldev.org/scrapbook/ https://github.com/danny0838/firefox-scrapbook/wiki/Intro https://github.com/danny0838/firefox-scrapbook/wiki/Intro There's zero hope of implementing something like the unfortunately named Scrapbook Plus & Scrapbook X research addons. In-browser editing & powerful manipulation, full text search within saved pages, direct access to the saved archives, the sidebar, the specialized capture options and quite a bit more require features (XUL-based and otherwise) that Mozilla won't implement. It's the biggest thing keeping me on Waterfox beyond Mozilla continual slide into sleaziness on privacy and afaik no browser not based on pre-quantum firefox supports anything like it. Beyond research or archiving pages I think will disappear If I want to yank the content from posts across five sites, clean it up quickly, merge it into a single document and export it for conversion with calibre it's trivial with Scrapbook X and a pain with anything else I've tried. If I want to archive everything that I look at while digging into a topic or site I just turn on auto-save and start browsing. I'm fairly certain having no replacement for a major part of my workflow & browsing habits doesn't mean that I'm anti-security* or I'm scared, but that Mozilla no longer supports the tools I need. I'm grateful that Waterfox does. *It's almost a hobby: Firejail, uMatrix & NoScript in paranoid mode, rejecting all cookies by default & extensive use of containers, different vpn connections and separate profiles for different kinds of browsing, etc.

mort96 7y ago

Saying that "people hate change, even when it's good for them" has to be the most arrogant thing I've read today. If someone is most comfortable using their browser with a certain extension for which there is no good WebExtensions-based alternative, how can you say that forcing them to stop using that extension is "good for them"? Even if there is a suitable alternative, which requires re-learning a bunch of things the user is used to, how is that change "good for them"? The move away from XUL and NPAPI is great for Mozilla, it makes it easier to maintain and develop the browser, it's probably good for extension developers (except for those who now can't port their extension to the new API because it's more limited), but it's not good for users who are forced to take time out of their day to find and alternatives or users who just have to accept that what they were previously using their browser for just isn't possible anymore with Firefox. Saying that change is "good" for users even if the users don't realize it and resist, prevents us from considering the very real negative effects of introducing breaking changes or removing features of our software.

smacktoward 7y ago
> If someone is most comfortable using their browser with a certain extension for which there is no good WebExtensions-based alternative, how can you say that forcing them to stop using that extension is "good for them"? If supporting that extension requires exposing the user to security risks. The downside of “extensions can do anything!” is that it means extensions can do, well, anything, including things that are hostile to the user’s interests. A more restrictive API means some things extensions used to be able to do aren’t possible anymore, but that’s as true of the bad things as it is of the good. And the bad things were bad enough that it was worth losing the good ones to protect users from them. Look, I get it, it sucks to lose an extension you like and rely on. I lost a couple of these in the move myself. But the browser’s first responsibility to the user is primum non nocere: “first, do no harm.” And those old APIs, which were naïvely designed twenty years ago in a time when the Internet was far less weaponized than it is today, were exposing an awful lot of people to a great deal of harm.
- saurik 7y ago
  > The downside of “extensions can do anything!” is that it means extensions can do, well, anything, including things that are hostile to the user’s interests. This is also arrogant: why do you think it is OK to say I can't do something I want to do because it is possible that I use that freedom to do something that harms my own interests? People fundamentally should be allowed to do things that harm them if blocking them from harm restricts their ability to do things they wanted to do; I mean, you aren't even suggesting some kind of user-controlled sandbox: you are advocating for putting the user themselves in a sandbox because you think they are too stupid to handle power.

deadbunny 7y ago

And (3) they are still having to support old broken shit at work which requires NPAPI plugins or even shudders java. Not everyone lives in a tech utopia.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago

... And (3) we lost perfectly good extensions that we were using.