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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."
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.
Wow, a whole year. Sorry, where's the good news?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
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.
I run Firefox because I can't run add-ons on chrome on my phone and tablet, which is where I do most of my browsing.
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.
FF is a perfect example of a project going completely off the rails. I don't hear anyone saying good things about it anymore.
It doesn't spy on you.
Seriously, there was a time a few years back when many people (including me) switched away from Firefox because it had memory leaks, and didn't work very well. Now, it's a fine browser, and I don't understand why anyone would use Chrome over Firefox. Forget that spyware.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Mozilla, for the love of god, stop breaking APIs, you morons.
That is the goal. The reason the 'API' kept breaking is because there wasn't an API at all: extensions were able to access the internal firefox code. Every time an internal function changed, it caused problems for extensions. Obviously that is bad, there needs to be a clear interface (like a wall) between the outside and the inside.
Firefox here is finally making a good interface. Their plan is to extend the Chrome API so it contains all the functionality needed for current Firefox add-ons.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Mozilla, for the love of god, stop breaking APIs, you morons.
That's actually the entire point of this move. The problem is that the current addon "API", such as it is, is literally every class in the entire freaking browser, which is an untenably huge and perpetually changing surface to maintain. The only way to keep the current API and stop breaking stuff constantly is to freeze all development on Firefox now and forever.
That's not really a viable approach.
The alternative is to come up with a more stable API surface, from the ground up, and provide a transition period for add-on developers to move from the large, unsupportable infrastructure to the stable one that won't be -- as you correctly observe -- constantly breaking.
Rather than developing a new API, the add-ons team decided to leverage the work that Chrome has already done in this space, which has the nice side effect of making life much easier for developers who want to write cross-browser add-ons.
One of the things that's getting lost in the noise here is that the portion of the API based on Chrome's current design is just the start. There will be additional API surface to enable some of the things that had been possible with the legacy wild-west-style Add-On approach. Since reading articles is not particularly trendy, I'll quote the relevant passage here:
A major challenge we face is that many Firefox add-ons cannot possibly be built using either WebExtensions or the SDK as they currently exist. Over the coming year, we will seek feedback from the development community, and will continue to develop and extend the WebExtension API to support as much of the functionality needed by the most popular Firefox extensions as possible.
You know how AdBlock only works on Chrome by hiding the ads rather than actually preventing them from being downloaded? You know why there's no Greasemonkey for Chrome, only a crippled Tampermonkey? Because the API way of doing business prevents these extensions from doing what they do. Mozilla is trying to kill off the most popular extensions because their advertising sponsors HATE them.
It's like every day the Mozilla team wakes up and thinks, "shit, we're not going to hell in this handbasket fast enough. What could we do today to further alienate our users and developers to accelerate the decline?"