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posted by janrinok on Monday November 28 2016, @07:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the replacing-working-stuff-with-unfinished-technologies dept.

Martin Brinkmann reports via gHacks:

Mozilla announced a couple of days ago that it plans to make Firefox support only WebExtensions add-ons by the end of 2017.

While that seems far far away right now, it is almost certain that things won't be ready by then. What I mean by that is that WebExtensions capabilities won't match those of Firefox's current system. While popular add-ons like NoScript will likely be ported over thanks to Mozilla working with developers actively on implementing missing API features, the same cannot be said for other add-ons.

[...] A recent post by Aris, developer of Classic Theme Restorer (CTR) and several other popular add-ons such as Classic Toolbar Buttons, NewScrollbars, or GlassMyFox, suggests that Classic Theme Restorer may be dead by the end of 2017. While Aris seems to have interest in porting over his extensions to WebExtensions, he notes that this is not possible right now.

Now [it's] real. CTR as we know it (and all my other Firefox add-ons), will be discontinued by the end of 2017. We still have no way to change [the] Firefox UI using WebExtensions and all my add-ons are about UI modifications. Seems like [it's] almost time to get used to another browser.

The end of the popular browser extension would bring the Australis design of Firefox to all users who relied on Classic Theme Restorer up until that point.

This highlights one of the main concerns that the move to WebExtensions exclusivity raises: The APIs are not there yet. In fact, a whole category of add-ons--all that modify the browser UI--cannot be ported over because of missing APIs and the situation may be similar in other areas. What makes this even more problematic than it is is that [...] no one seems to know whether the capabilities that WebExtensions APIs will deliver, once they are made available, will be sufficient to port add-ons over.

[...] Mozilla could have waited with the move until APIs are ready for the most part, but the organization decided not to do so.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 28 2016, @11:18PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday November 28 2016, @11:18PM (#434274) Journal

    In addition to the above answers:
    An MSI (microsoft installer) is the only package format supported by Microsoft's Active Directory for automated, unattended, remote installs which are commonly used in education and corporate environments. With an MSI you can install software without the user ever seeing a single dialogue box, leaving your desk, or physically interesting with the workstation. It's all done in the background and can be scripted. So if your org has 5000 PC's and you want to install Firefox, you need an MSI package. That or you manually install it on all 5000 PC's.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @03:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @03:54PM (#434509)

    One more proof that M$ is a toy operating system... No package management? You gotta be kidding me!