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Firefox 57, which is slated for release on November 14, will "only run WebExtensions", according to Mozilla.
This is expected to break compatibility with many existing Firefox extensions, and in many cases there aren't WebExtensions-compatible alternatives available for these extensions.
During some recent discussion at Slashdot, it became clear that some users have nearly all of their extensions classified as "legacy", and susceptible to breakage.
Members of the SoylentNews community, if you use Firefox, how many of your extensions are set to no longer work with Firefox in the near future?
If Firefox 57 breaks compatibility with your existing extensions, will this finally be enough for you to discard Firefox and find an alternative browser to use?
Will this extension breakage, and subsequent loss of users, effectively end the viability of Firefox as a modern web browser?
(Score: 2) by driven on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:25PM (1 child)
Much as people hate on FF for breaking extension compatibility, I think their userbase will get past it.
Looking at this interesting blog post on Firefox marketshare [andreasgal.com], two things stand out:
- Google pushes Chrome heavily through its web searches, which the majority of people use.
- Mozilla lost a lot of users by deprecating old platforms.
Not earth shattering news, but somehow hard to grasp for a lot of people.
The quickest thing Mozilla could do to win users back is reinstate support for old platforms that they've abandoned. The open web should be available to everyone, not just people with shiny phones and computer operating systems.
Mozilla also needs to cut its tether to advertising-driven companies. Then they can do some real work on privacy preserving features.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:44AM
Look who is in executive positions at Mozilla and wonder no longer.
The people involved with Mozilla are mostly cronies of existing mozilla members, and the majority aren't devs, or only worked on the 'web design' side of things, not the browser engineering side of things. Short of a major shakeup in management at Mozilla, the only that that can be done is to fork and forget (Well, forget the good parts, because the bad parts need to be remembered so as to not repeat their 20 years of mistakes.)