Mozilla Will Deprecate XUL Add-ons Before the End of 2017

Artem Tashkinov writes: Mozilla has published a plan of add-ons deprecation in future Firefox releases. Firefox 53 will run in multi process mode by default for all users with some exceptions. Most add ons will continue to function, however certain add ons have already ceased to function because they don't expect multi user mode under the hood. Firefox 54-56 will introduce even more changes which will ultimately break even more addons. Firefox 57, which will be preliminarily released on the 28th of Novermber, 2017, will only run WebExtensions: which means no XUL (overlay) add ons, no bootstrapped extensions, no SDK extensions and no Embedded WebExtensions. In other words by this date the chromification of Firefox will have been completed. If you depend on XUL add ons your only choice past this date will be Pale Moon.

Comments

Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother using this bloated browser when it drops support for the incredible addon library it's accumulated over the years? Without customization, what exactly does Firefox offer over Chrome?

Re:Great.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Exactly. "If it's successful and it works, remove the feature" seems to be rather popular these days.

Re:Great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speed is NOT the problem with Firefox. The problem is that the UI keeps getting worse.

I have to have addons for putting a status bar back at the bottom, I have to have addons for putting the window title back at the top. I don't want the preferences in a tab, I want them in a window. I have zero interest in reading lists, whatever the fuck "Pocket" is, or any of the other new shit that keeps showing up and not used by anybody.

It pisses me off that plugins were intentionally broken. It pisses me off that the first thing I have to do upon install is remove Yahoo as a search engine. I usually use a Mac, but when I'm having to use Windoze, before I can do anything else, I have to turn the menu bar back on - it should never be off, it shouldn't even be possible to turn it off.

I run four extensions that are critical: Classic Theme Restorer, Status 4 Evar, Adblock Plus, and NoScript. I also typically install a video download extension, because YouTube sucks.

If those extensions break, I'll have to drop back to a LTS release and hope somebody forks Firefox.

Dump the new API, then you won't have layers upon layers, just the one that works.

An obviously bad move

[iampiti]

The justification they've given for removing classic extension support is that they depend too much on the internals of Firefox, for the same reason they also said they're a security risk.
They are valid technical reasons. Most people would agree that making extensions use a stable API decoupled from the browser's internals is a good thing for stability and compatibility in the long run.
But, and this is a very big but, that means many popular current extensions can't just be made to work with the new APIs. Also, the ones that can be adapted will probably need a good amount of work. The result is that many extension developers have said they will abandon their extensions.
Also, since those powerful extensions are one of the reasons many people keep using Firefox that will surely suppose a big hit on their maket share and that's the last thing Firefox needs.
Their stated mission is to fight to keep the web open, if nobody uses their browser they'll have no money and no influence and hence they can't fulfill their mission.
I know this must've been a hard decision to make at Mozilla but I feel it's not the right one.

In other words...

[Dracos]

This year, Mozilla Will Remove the #2 reason everyone started using Firefox in the first place.

Copying Chrome has been a bad strategy, and killing XUL is one of their worst decisions ever. I'm waiting for the announcement that Firefox will become a re-branded Chrome, like Opera. Yay for software monoculture!

Massive loss of capability.

[Gravis Zero]

The new WebExtensions API is capable of many things but there is going to be a lot of lost capabilities. There are some pages comparing the capabilities and you'll find WebExtensions is lacking in many areas.

WebExtensions versus XUL/XPCOM extensions - see "Services.jsm API" table.
WebExtensions versus Add-on SDK - see "Low-level APIs" table

I don't know if Firefox will recover from this kind of seismic shift in APIs. Let's just hope they were rarely utilized parts of the API or that they are currently developing new replacements for the parts that people loved.