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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."
If you check out NoScript itself, you'll see that it's written using an XPCOM object. This update kills XPCOM, so, no, the new API will not allow NoScript. It can't block at the same level as NoScript, because Chrome offers no method to modify the DOM before the document finishes loading, which means scripts embedded in the document can't be blocked.
So, yes, this absolutely kills NoScript in future versions of Firefox.
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."
Another nice thing about FF is that it has its own FIPS compliant data stores for passwords as well as its own separate keystore. Chrome and IE use the system's keys on Windows.
This is important, because if someone gets a bogus root CA into the Registry, Chrome and IE will happily honor it, while Firefox will stop and point it out.
FF also provides password protection for the keystore data. This way, if FF is left unattended (and a timeout is set), an intruder can't just walk away with a user's password stash.