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Firefox 3.6 Locks Out Rogue Add-ons
CWmike writes "Mozilla will add a new lockdown feature to Firefox 3.6 that will prevent developers from sneaking add-ons into the program, the company said. Dubbed 'component directory lockdown,' the feature will bar access to Firefox's 'components' directory, where most of the browser's own code is stored. Mozilla has billed the move as a way to boost the stability of its browser. 'We're doing this for stability and user control [reasons],' said Johnathan Nightingale, manager of the Firefox front-end development team. 'Dropping raw components in this way was never an officially supported way of doing things, which means it lacks things like a way to specify compatibility. When a new version of Firefox comes out that these components aren't compatible with, the result can be a real pain for our shared users ... Now that those components will be packaged like regular add-ons, they will specify the versions they are compatible with, and Firefox can disable any that it knows are likely to cause problems.'"
So what would be the effect on Add-on development? Would it make it more difficult to develop them? Would it constrain the Add-on developers?
Or is this just a method to lock out some Add-on with already known problems?
The awesome bar, and most of the other firefox bloat, should be plugins. Firefox had this great plugin architecture which everyone and their dog used- except the firefox devs.
Why doesn't firefox ship with an array of "default" plugins, all of which can be disabled? There's no need for something like awesomebar to be core, is there?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
It's an artifact of supporting system wide extension installation, rather than per user. Microsoft probably should have used per user installation of the plugin (even though .NET is arguably a system wide update). Removing the support is probably overkill, as I imagine it is useful in managed environments.
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