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(article author) Thanks for the feedback, I've just updated this part of the article to clarify it. I don't remember exact dates, though, so I won't be able to

by Yoric 6y ago

(article author) Thanks for the feedback, I've just updated this part of the article to clarify it. I don't remember exact dates, though, so I won't be able to add them. But yes, you are right, there was a time during which a number of old-style extensions were ported to be compatible with e10s. It was possible for some, impossible for others, hard when it was possible, and most add-on developers didn't port them, either because it was too difficult or because they had grown tired or the _maintenance tax_ I mention. And yet, after they had ported their add-ons to be e10s-compatible, the add-ons broke nevertheless, one by one, for all the reasons mentioned in the article. At some point, we threw the towel.

wtallis 6y ago
> At some point, we threw the towel. You threw in the towel before your most important extension developers did. Well-maintained popular extensions like NoScript and TreeStyleTab remained functional throughout the e10s transition with fixes delivered before the breaking changes in Firefox made it to stable releases, but they were irreparably harmed by the WebExtension transition. Their WebExtension versions are still not up to feature parity, despite ongoing maintenance. It's quite obvious that the WebExtension model is better for users and developers of simple extensions. But it continues to not be an adequate substitute for the kind of extensions that gave Firefox real advantages over Chrome and other browsers. It's not at all apparent why those advanced, killer app extensions had to die in order to get the bulk of the extension ecosystem moved over to WebExtensions.
- Yoric 6y ago
  The author of NoScript was part of way more meetings than me during the design of the WebExtensions API, so he would probably be able to tell you more about what happened to his add-on. I see a TreeStyleTab on AMO, so I guess it got ported: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... . It may have been harmed by the progressive disappearance of XUL, of course.

by Yoric 6y ago

wtallis 6y ago

> At some point, we threw the towel. You threw in the towel before your most important extension developers did. Well-maintained popular extensions like NoScript and TreeStyleTab remained functional throughout the e10s transition with fixes delivered before the breaking changes in Firefox made it to stable releases, but they were irreparably harmed by the WebExtension transition. Their WebExtension versions are still not up to feature parity, despite ongoing maintenance. It's quite obvious that the WebExtension model is better for users and developers of simple extensions. But it continues to not be an adequate substitute for the kind of extensions that gave Firefox real advantages over Chrome and other browsers. It's not at all apparent why those advanced, killer app extensions had to die in order to get the bulk of the extension ecosystem moved over to WebExtensions.

Yoric 6y ago
The author of NoScript was part of way more meetings than me during the design of the WebExtensions API, so he would probably be able to tell you more about what happened to his add-on. I see a TreeStyleTab on AMO, so I guess it got ported: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... . It may have been harmed by the progressive disappearance of XUL, of course.