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Firefox Loses Yet Another High Profile Add-on Author

posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 30 2017, @05:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the soon-it'll-be-IE dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The respected Firefox add-on developer Quicksaver announced yesterday that he won't update any of his extensions anymore because of Mozilla's decision to move to WebExtensions exclusively. Quicksaver, responsible for add-ons such as Tab Groups, OmniSidebar, FindBar Tweak, Beyond Australis and Puzzle Bars, had four of his five add-ons for Firefox featured by Mozilla in the past.

If you open any of the author's add-on pages on the Mozilla Add-ons repository, you will notice an important announcement on the page. It reads:
IMPORTANT: The add-on will not receive any more updates and will stop working by next November with Firefox 57.

[...] Quicksaver posted an explanation on his website that reveals why he made the decision to stop add-on development. There are several reasons, but the core reason given is that at least four of his five add-ons rely heavily on functionality that will either not be provided by WebExtensions, or would require him to rewrite the extension almost completely.

[...] Quicksaver is not the only author who announced that he will stop working on add-ons for Firefox. Add-ons like New Tab Tools, Classic Theme Restorer, Tree Style Tabs, Open With, DownThem All, KeeFox and many others are likely also not going to make the cut.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/28/firefox-add-on-quicksaver-quits/

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Monday January 30 2017, @06:00PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday January 30 2017, @06:00PM (#460724) Journal
    Classic Firefox extensions are basically a mix of JavaScript and native code that is loaded by the browser and runs in the same address space, with the same privileges as the browser. A bug in the extension gives an attacker complete access to the entire browser (all tabs, as this model also makes the compartmentalisation of tabs into separate processes basically impossible). This is obviously a terrible idea for a modern web browser (and Firefox is slowly becoming on, in spite of being the last mainstream browser to add per-tab sandboxing). Web Extensions, in contrast, hook into the browser in fairly well-defined places and can be sandboxed.
    --
    sudo mod me up
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Informative=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   5