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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
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