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Mozilla To Ditch Firefox Extensions?
An anonymous reader writes "Although some have raised concerns about how sane switching to Jetpack is, it seems that Mozilla's new gadget is bound to replace the powerful extension mechanism we know. Maybe Mozilla wants to replace all the great add-ons we use daily with gadgets that add an entry to the Tools menu, or maybe they just want to draw thousands of inexperienced developers into putting together a bunch of HTML and CSS that won't integrate in the UI. It seems to me that in light of recent decisions we've discussed before, Mozilla isn't going in the right direction. What do you think ?"
I disagree, the links seem appropriate in their respective contexts.
However, TFS' question strikes me as superfluous -- FF already has lots of extensions of questionable quality. They're simply looking to transition to a new implementation of extensions, which hopefully will bog the browser down less and create fewer security issues by sticking with simpler code. Can't see how that would be "the wrong direction", frankly...
Caveat Utilitor
Or may be they are going in the right direction. If companies such as google, litl webbook and projects such as bespin are thinking along the lines of creating a GUI/web platform its possible that their's a new direction that computing is headed. One where older heads like us may not necessarily think to go.There are many parallels in computing (PC, Minicomputer, Internet) Not saying the above is so (I find the above net GUI idea restrictive), it just pays to think about possibilities, such as a more robust GUI without the need for adding complex libraries.
...or maybe they just want to draw thousands of inexperienced developers into putting together a bunch of HTML and CSS that won't integrate in the UI...
And this is different than the current system how? Sure, there are TONS of great add-ons/plug-ins/whatever-they-are-called for FF, but honestly, the entry bar is pretty low, and for as many great ones there are, there are two crappy pieces of shit.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I actually sometimes find myself preferring Safari for actual web-browsing... especially for Slashdot! Firefox seems to slow down when loading long discussion pages, whereas Safari is quite fast. But extensions are Firefox's killer feature. AdBlock Plus, but also Zotero (citation management, only available for Firefox), Greasemonkey + DownloadThemAll... without the extensions, there's little that would make me prefer Firefox to Safari.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I have never liked the Firefox design, and I have never trusted the XPI installer mechanism. Switching to an extension mechanism that doesn't open up the whole performance and security bag of worms the Firefox extensions do would be worth trying.
WTF? What about all those extensions that change Firefox UI, like Vimperator? Or those that use XPCOM to write files and launch apps? How can you do that in HTML and pure JS?
Dilbert RSS feed
Yet the extensions I have that are specifically bound to internals are exactly the ones that provide me with the most utility. The All-in-One Sidebar, Fission, FxIF, Cookie Button, FEBE, CLEO, User Agent Switcher, Xmarks, Exif Viewer, Aging Tabs, all those are bound to specific versions of Firefox because they're doing more than simply tampering with the http stream.
Could Firefox handle the binding any better? Sure. Could the team provide a route to handle backward and forward compatibility better? Again, yes. But that's a detail in an abstraction facade, and not what it looks like jetpacks are trying to be. Jetpacks look like "Greasemonkey scripts made official" with Mozilla's blessing. (Or maybe I'm seeing them as more limited than they plan for them.)
Maybe that's it. Perhaps Mozilla should instead be looking at adopting and integrating Greasemonkey technology, instead of trying to reinvent it.
John
No it doesn't, you don't know what you're talking about.
Those are called shared libraries, and every OS worth its salt uses them. I'm sorry you think its logical for Windows to reimplement and reload a web browser in every application that uses one (which is most now days) rather than sharing them. Sadly, again, this is something that every half way decent OS does, including whatever you're fanboying for, I'm sure.
As a general rule, when I start talking about being a sysadmin, I'm well past any diagnostic capabilities the browser has and I've already probably pulled out tcpdump and/or dig. If you mean web developer tools, then sure, Firefox has some neat stuff.
Sadly, I don't think you even understand why its bloated.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
How much machine language programming do you do? Assembler? Do you use system calls for file I/O, do you roll your own TCP/IP protocol because standards are for wimps and you can get more speed without all that packet overhead? I think not. I think you are a wannabe elite.
I for one welcome our new programming partners, the unwashed masses, the hoi poloi. The more people write their own programs for their own needs, the more time I can spend on writing more challenging programs that rise to the top.
Sounds to me like you are not particularly skilled, that you want to feel elite, and it is easier for you to do so by keeping others out of your priesthood than by becoming better.
Infuriate left and right
Look, to be honest, I don't use FireFox because it is awesome, although it is pretty awesome. I use FireFox because it has AdBlock, which is the killer app for websites. Without AdBlock, the internet becomes immediately useless, with too much noise-to-signal. Other browsers have less compelling ad-blocking extensions; not compelling enough to use. My opinion of this "JetPack" thing will rise or fall with the success of AdBlock.
Learn from the masters, young padawan:
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html
To quote: ...
"Moving right along, world-class software systems always have an extension language and a plug-in system — a way for programmers to extend the base functionality of the application. Sometimes plugins are called "mods". It's a way for your users to grow the system in ways the designer didn't anticipate.
Firefox has a plugin system. It's a real piece of crap, but it has one, and one thing you'll quickly discover if you build a plug-in system is that there will always be a few crazed programmers who learn to use it and push it to its limits. This may fool you into thinking you have a good plug-in system, but in reality it has to be both easy to use and possible to use without rebooting the system; Firefox breaks both of these cardinal rules, so it's in an unstable state: either it'll get fixed, or something better will come along and everyone will switch to that."
They're simply looking to transition to a new implementation of extensions, which hopefully will bog the browser down less
Ha - firefox manages to bog itself down quite nicely already.
My biggest pet peeve: if you have a few browser windows open, and you click on a link to a new website. If the DNS response for the new link is slow, the ENTIRE application comes to a halt until the DNS server responds or times out.
Now, I can understand why 1 window pauses when you click on a new link, but why do all the others? There is no reason for this.
The first browser I used that had tabs was on Windows 3.1. It was from a company called GNN, that AOL had bought before becoming an ISP in their own right.
Opera and FF were both VERY late to the table with tabs.