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Firefox Will Run Chrome Extensions
An anonymous reader writes: Today Mozilla announced some big changes to its extension support. Their new addon API, WebExtensions, is mostly compatible with the extension model used by Chrome and Opera. In short, this means we'll soon see cross-platform browser extensions. They say, "For some time we've heard from add-on developers that our APIs could be better documented and easier to use. In addition, we've noticed that many Firefox add-on developers also maintain a Chrome, Safari, or Opera extension with similar functionality. We would like add-on development to be more like Web development: the same code should run in multiple browsers according to behavior set by standards, with comprehensive documentation available from multiple vendors."
... Firefox will be Chrome. Anyone who cared about extensive browser customization will simply abandon their addons. Why keep recoding them on Mozilla's whim?
For anyone who still cares about this stuff, the time to jump is most certainly NOW. I don't even think SeaMonkey is good enough - Pale Moon is a totally clean break.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
to FF a few weeks ago from Chrome. Chrome just kept eating resources, getting slower and slower. How about this, turn on the "it's own resources" by default, but allow those of us that want the SPEED to turn it off.
That's very commendable. But, the fact that they are choosing to follow someone else's standard(Chrome), rather than the other way around when they were the first to implement the add-on capability speaks volumes about their future.
I'm not so much saddened by Mozilla's decline. I'm devastated that the only viable replacement is Google Chrome.
Noooooooooooo...
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
There's got to be a good reason for this. Obviously, Firefox extensions are superior to Chrome's. They can modify the browser far more than Chrome extensions. Maybe it has to do with performance?
How about they upgrade it so it can run Firefox extensions?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Interoperability means everybody will start developing extensions solely for Chrome, since it's less work to make one build for every browser. So what's the point of Firefox after that happens?
I advocate for Pale Moon and Chromium. They're both FLOSS. Firefox no longer is, because it has integrated third-party binaries (Netflix DRM, Pocket). Consequently, Firefox is now less secure (see http://it.slashdot.org/story/1... ). This is also to say nothing about the build-in advertisements that read your browsing history, and the awful performance chokes it suffers from.
I have only one question about this move:
Will AdBlock Plus and NoScript still work? Chrome's extension model simply doesn't give extensions the control necessary to implement something like NoScript, which is literally the only reason I still use Firefox. Otherwise, there's no point: Firefox is the slowest, least memory efficient browser out there. It regularly breaks several GB of memory after only a day's use. In fact, Firefox is already up to nearly 3GB of memory use, which is somewhat worrying for a 32-bit process. Looks like I'm going to have to quit and restart after this comment.
I can make do without AdBlock Plus (there's always hosts, Firefox can't kill that), but I can only imagine this move is driven by the marketers in charge of Firefox to kill extensions like NoScript and AdBlock Plus.
You are not the authors of Chrome. You do not need to make a clone of Chrome. If your browser becomes too much like Chrome, there is no reason not to use the original. Snap the fuck out of it! Now!
The sole advantage of Firefox over Chrome these days is the fact that it's add-on SDK allows addons to modify just about any part of the browser. Chrome extensions are extremely limited in what they do. How will things like FileZilla work with this new API?
I'm convinced that either the Mozilla Foundation is run by complete mental midgets or plants by Google who are determined to sabotage the browser until the whole foundation shuts down.
When I launch a new incognito/private window, I want to let some plug-ins, especially Flashcontrol or Flashblock, run by default. There's nothing like launching a new window to get around someone's X-story paywall and getting blasted with their auto-play video.
Why does Firefox use 30% CPU just sitting there doing nothing on a page with no JS?
FF is a perfect example of a project going completely off the rails. I don't hear anyone saying good things about it anymore.
I use firefox as my primary browser and it continues to serve my needs better than any of the alternatives. It's available on linux unlike IE or Safari and for my needs at least it is less buggy than Chrome. Google can't seem to stop breaking things in Chrome and while they usually fix them it's annoying in the meantime. I see no meaningful speed or performance differences between the major browsers. Firefox seldom has site compatibility issues. While I won't argue that FF is without warts, it is to my mind the best available option at this time. That may change of course but I don't see anything better out there for my needs at present.
It started as an effort to be lighter and faster than the old Mozilla suite. I actually like the mail client...
At one time I did too. However it stagnated and I move on to other things. 12 years have passed since the project was started and the web has evolved substantially since then. Things have gotten more complex and so has the software to deal with them. This isn't 2002 and expecting the software to be the same is kind of silly.
Completely lost sight of what they'd been trying to do.
What they originally were trying to do is not as relevant today. Perhaps you want a stripped down browser with minimal frills. That's fine but most of the rest of us are concerned with other things. So long as it let's me view the bits of the web I want and gives me options to configure to my particular quirks without crashing or causing problems, I don't really care if it takes up extra space or has a few features I don't use.
Both the title and content of the /. excerpt completely miss the point of TFA.
The key take-away is that Mozilla is redesigning the Firefox engine to be a clone of Chrome, thereby killing the thousands of existing add-ons, and eventually Firefox itself.
Where do so many successful corporations find such idiotic management?
Yeah, rants rants rants. No need to read, no need to understand or at least ask.
From TFA:
We plan to add our own APIs based on the needs of existing Firefox add-ons.
NoScript-type functionality. This would come in the form of extensions to webRequest and possibly contentSettings.
Sidebars. Opera already supports sidebar functionality; Chrome may soon. We would like to be able to implement Tree Style Tabs or Vertical Tabs by hiding the tab strip and showing a tab sidebar.
Toolbars. Firefox has a lot of existing toolbar add-ons.
Better keyboard shortcut support. We'd like to support Vimperator-type functionality.
Ability to add tabs to about:addons.
Ability to modify the tab strip (Tab Mix Plus).
Ability to take images of frames/tabs (like canvas.drawWindow)
At this point, I really don't understand why Mozilla doesn't throw away Firefox and just become a clone of Chrome. They could put the ads and third party services back in of course.
So we can expect NoScript in chrome? Will it run in Android Chrome too? How do you block the really annoying pop-ups in android? The screen real estate is tiny, it does not go away, it prompts back why are you deleting this popup etc.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I know everything there is to know about making software, so I will armchair critique every change (or lack thereof). I won't actually make any equivalent myself though, so as to be free from the same sort of diametrically opposed critiques from the masses.
Firefox will be going Blink.
This is great news. Firefox is my browser of choice, but having written extensions for both Firefox and Chrome I must say that Chrome is far easier to develop for.
I wasn't expecting this, but it makes sense - with Mozilla focusing on Electrolysis (their project to make Firefox multi-process) the existing API wouldn't work well because it wasn't designed with a multi-process browser in mind. I was expecting them to design a whole new API and then have to go through extensions breaking every few updates as the new API stabilised. Going with an existing API that's already mature and known to work for exactly the kind of architecture they're going for will make the transition a lot easier for both the browser devs and extension authors.
If extensions will end up being cross platform. It really makes the browser just a name. We already see so much similarities in UI of browsers. The extension capabilities are really all that set them apart. Actually if you do not use extensions you really have not cared much which browser you use. Just as long as its fast and renders web pages correctly. I really think when I see any browser comparison article it must be a slow day. The author cant think of anything to write about but how every browser out there is just about the same.
... not screw up when executing JavaScript. Probably not possible given the sheer number of JavaScript programmers out there and the bloated web sites that employ them add just one more "nifty" piece of eye candy to the site. But a guy can dream, can't he?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Already a SourceForge project, complete with installer. Fairly universal: no distro-limited "packages" needed.
Even though Google had nothing to do with this the shitheads will always find a way to blame it for something. If you don't like Mozilla's decision then take it up with them and quit trying to blame someone for your problems.
... and along with Opera, I can have three versions of Chrome running!
There are a lot of websites which demand an account to do much (pinterest).
Solution: Start putting -site:pinterest.com in your Google searches, and block the site in hosts.
Now I know that Hurd 1.0 will be released before non-beta 64-bit Firefox for Windows. Thanks!
If this is going to be such a radical shift in the way that the browser functions why not create a new project? The Phoenix/Firebird project (its name before Firefox) was born out of the need for a lightweight browser that focused on one thing. They rewrote the browser from the Mozilla suite and made it fast. The model they brought along is still close to what we have today. Now they want to overhaul and break the system radically. Just like then.
At this point why dont they create a Firefox2 or a FirefoxNG browser with all of the new features, bring over the users automatically and essentially fork the dev? Just like with Seamonkey that kept the browser suite that was Mozilla going, we can keep the old FF1v44 version going. That way the old guys like us can backport the software improvements of FF2 and keep our old extensions. I have a feeling that many of the awesome extensions that exist solely on Firefox will die out because of the loss of functionality. Without those the browser starts to look a lot less appealing.
At this point they might as well just rename it PrivacyFox and go the way of Opera, just use Blink but strip out all the tracking. Crankshaft JS could use a bunch more devs.
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
And if I want to uninstall?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!