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My friends and I stopped using Firefox after they broke our favourite XUL extensions. So did my parents. So did many, many developers I knew. Everyone moved to

My friends and I stopped using Firefox after they broke our favourite XUL extensions. So did my parents. So did many, many developers I knew. Everyone moved to using Chrome and never went back. Breaking XUL dropped Firefox adoption considerably. But folks who did this don't want to accept it. XUL extensions gave Firefox unique power which it lost and never regained back. Firefox chopped off its powerful , special tentacles and grew flimsy, poor hands back. Firefox defanged itself.

The_Colonel 6y ago
Your favorite XUL extension broke so you "solved" that by migrating to a completely different browser which also doesn't provide the desired functionality. Something doesn't add up.
- lenkite 6y ago
  At the time, Chrome had Chrome Apps. If you recall, several XUL extension authors quit in disgust and started developing chrome apps. Google wasn't considered 'evil' at the time... Firefox had a unique, special power which differentiated it and Mozilla chose to kill it. No wonder its browser share dropped like a stone.
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    Chrome Apps were in no way replacement for XUL. They could not change the behavior of the Chrome itself, they just opened their own window and did their thing there. Not really an extension, more of a separate app. To talk on more specific terms, which XUL extension did you replace with Chrome App?
    - lenkite 6y ago
      I finally ended up using alternate tools since even the replacement Chrome Apps were pale imitations of what Firefox offered. The good ones needed to use Nacl just to do basic stuff and still couldn't reach what XUL extensions natively supported. But I changed my browser to Chrome since Firefox lost its value proposition. It had a differentiating factor of superior experience and features that it chose to deliberately abandon.
  - sfink 6y ago
    The removal of XUL extensions triggered a large outcry among developers and power users, but I don't think it was all that relevant if you look at the graph of Firefox's declining market share. That was driven far more by Chrome's increasing share.
- chr1 6y ago
  Why do you think it doesn't add up? Before the removal you have "usefulness of firefox" + "usefulness of extensions" > "usefulness of chrome" after removal "usefulness of firefox" < "usefulness of chrome" And that's not counting disappointment/animosity towards firefox for breaking the implicit contract. I am not arguing that this was the main issue that have caused firefox usage to drop, as according to stats on AMO, extensions never had very large usage. But i personally have stopped using firefox after this, and stopped installing it on computers of friends and coworkers, so there must have been some small effect.
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    > "usefulness of firefox" < "usefulness of chrome" This was the missing hidden variable not explained in the narrative. Firefox was previously significantly behind Chrome in the technical design, now it's getting better but there is still some lag. And as explained in the article, this lag has been historically to a large degree caused by the extension model (need to keep backwards compatibility on a huge API surface, impossibility to introduce multi process architecture, need to always negotiate with extension devs on what can be changed and what not...). There were two options: 1) specialize on power users with XUL extension but lag even more behind Chrome - leads quite certainly to drop of users, slide to irrelevancy and the eventual death 2) try to catch up with Chrome in technical design, but drop historical baggage, including XUL based addons - does not guarantee success but still provides at least hope > ... and stopped installing it on computers of friends and coworkers, so there must have been some small effect. It's sad to see people supporting monopoly this way ...
    - jabirali 6y ago
      > It's sad to see people supporting monopoly this way... The realistic way to avoid monopolies and retain free-ish markets is to actively enforce anti-trust legislation. (And in the case of social media companies: force all players of a certain size to provide federation APIs, so people can leave the service and still talk to their friends and family.) There will always be some people that try to avoid monopolies for ideological reasons; but 90% of the population won't care, they just want things to work and move on with their lives, and capturing that segment still makes you a monopoly.
- 0x_rs 6y ago
  It is a combination of factors, it always is. At the time of XUL removal Firefox didn't have much else going for it in terms of performance and stability, such improvements came later on around the time Quantum released, at least in my experience with it. I would very often use XUL extentions for their unmatched capabilities, one of which I fondly remember was Norwell, unparalleled anywhere else. Once XULs were gone, to me, there was nothing noteworthy about Firefox compared to other alternatives, except perhaps allegedly being more "privacy friendly". I just kept going with it as I did for more than a decade by inertia, and can see why someone would drop it for else.
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    > At the time of XUL removal Firefox didn't have much else going for it in terms of performance and stability, such improvements came later on around the time Quantum released It was exactly Quantum release which took away XUL extensions.
    - 0x_rs 6y ago
      Ah, my memory is terribly hazy then, awful mistake that also shows my bias. Anyhow, I think it is a shame capabilities, performance and security cannot coexist yet in browsers. Wish WebExtensions would get more attention to extend their APIs, surely more powerful extentions are still a significant strong point in choosing a browser.
      - sfink 6y ago
        Quantum was the big break, but XUL extensions were getting broken with greater and greater frequency leading up to it. So your memory is probably fine! I agree that the number and power of WebExtension hooks is critical.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zuppy 6y ago
  this makes sense, but not from a technical point of view. our brain is hard wired to respond to negative actions much stronger than positive ones. this comes from the not conscious part of the brain and it happens because it was much important in our early history to respond to threats, than it was to respond to good things. consider this: how often have you stopped using a bank/restaurant/whatever else because they did something bad to you? how often have you switched just because somewhere was better, but not way better? a positive action has to be much much stronger in order to compete with a negative action.
Yoric 6y ago
(post author) Your remark is correct. However, as I attempt to explain in my blog entry, we didn't have a choice.
- Dagger2 6y ago
  You did, though. You can just add a WE permission that gives them access to |Components|, like Mozilla's own WEs can already get when they need it. You're choosing not to do that.
  - Yoric 6y ago
    Context for readers who may not know: Components = XPCOM. Technically, there were two choices: - killing this off; or - continuing to burn out add-on developers for the sake of add-ons that would progressively become impossible to port.
    - eitland 6y ago
      Since you say "we" elsewhere in this thread: I can understand moving to web extensions, but why has nobody made a programmable way to move the toolbar around? I mean, it cannot be completely impossible to do in a safe way: it exist in Vivaldi?
      - eitland 6y ago
        > I can understand moving to web extensions, but why has nobody made a programmable way to move the toolbar around? That should of course be tab bar. :-/
        Yoric 6y ago
        There are many things that WebExtensions could do, if only we found the time to add the necessary APIs. Sadly, Firefox has to race against Chromium with about 1/4 of the developers (I don't remember where I got that estimate from), so we have to focus our efforts. As you can imagine, Mozilla's comparative lack of resources (hence the recent layoffs) won't improve that.
zo1 6y ago
One other thing that is missing here is that Firefox was trying (and still is) too much to be an "app store" and "sandbox" for extensions. This is not what we should be expecting of a browser, and again goes back to another point someone else made in this discussion is that Firefox is chasing "huge" marketshare instead of focusing on its core and growing organically from there. What that metric-chasing meant is having their extension store spammed with useless extensions. I think that extension-count was a mistaken metric to chase, and no wonder they felt overwhelmed with trying to support spam-level amounts of extensions. At it's core, I think this entire debate boils down to "who is responsible if an extension breaks the browser or some other extension". A relatively small set of "complex" or "tightly integrated" extensions that enhance and extend Firefox's behavior is a good spot to be in. Rather than what we have now where all the "interesting" browser extension points are not available to the extensions to modify and we have a metric tonne of copy-paste-similar extensions that are hard to discover.
- takluyver 6y ago
  I've never seen Mozilla promoting the number of available extensions, and I've never heard that it's a significant metric they track internally. The addons site highlights a relatively small number of popular extensions, with some categories (e.g. password managers). The blog post describes how Firefox tried to focus on its 'core' - assuming you mean people heavily invested in XUL add-ons - for years before they eventually decided it was a road to nowhere.

The_Colonel 6y ago

Your favorite XUL extension broke so you "solved" that by migrating to a completely different browser which also doesn't provide the desired functionality. Something doesn't add up.

lenkite 6y ago
At the time, Chrome had Chrome Apps. If you recall, several XUL extension authors quit in disgust and started developing chrome apps. Google wasn't considered 'evil' at the time... Firefox had a unique, special power which differentiated it and Mozilla chose to kill it. No wonder its browser share dropped like a stone.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  Chrome Apps were in no way replacement for XUL. They could not change the behavior of the Chrome itself, they just opened their own window and did their thing there. Not really an extension, more of a separate app. To talk on more specific terms, which XUL extension did you replace with Chrome App?
  - lenkite 6y ago
    I finally ended up using alternate tools since even the replacement Chrome Apps were pale imitations of what Firefox offered. The good ones needed to use Nacl just to do basic stuff and still couldn't reach what XUL extensions natively supported. But I changed my browser to Chrome since Firefox lost its value proposition. It had a differentiating factor of superior experience and features that it chose to deliberately abandon.
- sfink 6y ago
  The removal of XUL extensions triggered a large outcry among developers and power users, but I don't think it was all that relevant if you look at the graph of Firefox's declining market share. That was driven far more by Chrome's increasing share.
chr1 6y ago
Why do you think it doesn't add up? Before the removal you have "usefulness of firefox" + "usefulness of extensions" > "usefulness of chrome" after removal "usefulness of firefox" < "usefulness of chrome" And that's not counting disappointment/animosity towards firefox for breaking the implicit contract. I am not arguing that this was the main issue that have caused firefox usage to drop, as according to stats on AMO, extensions never had very large usage. But i personally have stopped using firefox after this, and stopped installing it on computers of friends and coworkers, so there must have been some small effect.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > "usefulness of firefox" < "usefulness of chrome" This was the missing hidden variable not explained in the narrative. Firefox was previously significantly behind Chrome in the technical design, now it's getting better but there is still some lag. And as explained in the article, this lag has been historically to a large degree caused by the extension model (need to keep backwards compatibility on a huge API surface, impossibility to introduce multi process architecture, need to always negotiate with extension devs on what can be changed and what not...). There were two options: 1) specialize on power users with XUL extension but lag even more behind Chrome - leads quite certainly to drop of users, slide to irrelevancy and the eventual death 2) try to catch up with Chrome in technical design, but drop historical baggage, including XUL based addons - does not guarantee success but still provides at least hope > ... and stopped installing it on computers of friends and coworkers, so there must have been some small effect. It's sad to see people supporting monopoly this way ...
  - jabirali 6y ago
    > It's sad to see people supporting monopoly this way... The realistic way to avoid monopolies and retain free-ish markets is to actively enforce anti-trust legislation. (And in the case of social media companies: force all players of a certain size to provide federation APIs, so people can leave the service and still talk to their friends and family.) There will always be some people that try to avoid monopolies for ideological reasons; but 90% of the population won't care, they just want things to work and move on with their lives, and capturing that segment still makes you a monopoly.
0x_rs 6y ago
It is a combination of factors, it always is. At the time of XUL removal Firefox didn't have much else going for it in terms of performance and stability, such improvements came later on around the time Quantum released, at least in my experience with it. I would very often use XUL extentions for their unmatched capabilities, one of which I fondly remember was Norwell, unparalleled anywhere else. Once XULs were gone, to me, there was nothing noteworthy about Firefox compared to other alternatives, except perhaps allegedly being more "privacy friendly". I just kept going with it as I did for more than a decade by inertia, and can see why someone would drop it for else.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > At the time of XUL removal Firefox didn't have much else going for it in terms of performance and stability, such improvements came later on around the time Quantum released It was exactly Quantum release which took away XUL extensions.
  - 0x_rs 6y ago
    Ah, my memory is terribly hazy then, awful mistake that also shows my bias. Anyhow, I think it is a shame capabilities, performance and security cannot coexist yet in browsers. Wish WebExtensions would get more attention to extend their APIs, surely more powerful extentions are still a significant strong point in choosing a browser.
    - sfink 6y ago
      Quantum was the big break, but XUL extensions were getting broken with greater and greater frequency leading up to it. So your memory is probably fine! I agree that the number and power of WebExtension hooks is critical.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zuppy 6y ago
this makes sense, but not from a technical point of view. our brain is hard wired to respond to negative actions much stronger than positive ones. this comes from the not conscious part of the brain and it happens because it was much important in our early history to respond to threats, than it was to respond to good things. consider this: how often have you stopped using a bank/restaurant/whatever else because they did something bad to you? how often have you switched just because somewhere was better, but not way better? a positive action has to be much much stronger in order to compete with a negative action.

Yoric 6y ago

(post author) Your remark is correct. However, as I attempt to explain in my blog entry, we didn't have a choice.

Dagger2 6y ago
You did, though. You can just add a WE permission that gives them access to |Components|, like Mozilla's own WEs can already get when they need it. You're choosing not to do that.
- Yoric 6y ago
  Context for readers who may not know: Components = XPCOM. Technically, there were two choices: - killing this off; or - continuing to burn out add-on developers for the sake of add-ons that would progressively become impossible to port.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Since you say "we" elsewhere in this thread: I can understand moving to web extensions, but why has nobody made a programmable way to move the toolbar around? I mean, it cannot be completely impossible to do in a safe way: it exist in Vivaldi?
    - eitland 6y ago
      > I can understand moving to web extensions, but why has nobody made a programmable way to move the toolbar around? That should of course be tab bar. :-/
      - Yoric 6y ago
        There are many things that WebExtensions could do, if only we found the time to add the necessary APIs. Sadly, Firefox has to race against Chromium with about 1/4 of the developers (I don't remember where I got that estimate from), so we have to focus our efforts. As you can imagine, Mozilla's comparative lack of resources (hence the recent layoffs) won't improve that.

zo1 6y ago

One other thing that is missing here is that Firefox was trying (and still is) too much to be an "app store" and "sandbox" for extensions. This is not what we should be expecting of a browser, and again goes back to another point someone else made in this discussion is that Firefox is chasing "huge" marketshare instead of focusing on its core and growing organically from there. What that metric-chasing meant is having their extension store spammed with useless extensions. I think that extension-count was a mistaken metric to chase, and no wonder they felt overwhelmed with trying to support spam-level amounts of extensions. At it's core, I think this entire debate boils down to "who is responsible if an extension breaks the browser or some other extension". A relatively small set of "complex" or "tightly integrated" extensions that enhance and extend Firefox's behavior is a good spot to be in. Rather than what we have now where all the "interesting" browser extension points are not available to the extensions to modify and we have a metric tonne of copy-paste-similar extensions that are hard to discover.

takluyver 6y ago
I've never seen Mozilla promoting the number of available extensions, and I've never heard that it's a significant metric they track internally. The addons site highlights a relatively small number of popular extensions, with some categories (e.g. password managers). The blog post describes how Firefox tried to focus on its 'core' - assuming you mean people heavily invested in XUL add-ons - for years before they eventually decided it was a road to nowhere.