Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the who-is-this-company-named-mozilla dept.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody who's been paying attention the past few years, Mozilla has announced that it will be deprecating all current extensions and have all future extensions be compatible with Chrome and Opera via the new WebExtensions API.

  • We are implementing a new extension API, called WebExtensions—largely compatible with the model used by Chrome and Opera—to make it easier to develop extensions across multiple browsers.
  • A safer, faster, multi-process version of Firefox is coming soon with Electrolysis; we need developers to ensure their Firefox add-ons will be compatible with it.
  • To ensure third-party extensions provide customization without sacrificing security, performance or exposing users to malware, we will require all extensions to be validated and signed by Mozilla starting in Firefox 41, which will be released on September 22nd 2015.
  • We have decided on an approximate timeline for the deprecation of XPCOM- and XUL-based add-ons.

Maybe now we can get a sustainable fork going?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by mth on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:44AM

    by mth (2848) on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:44AM (#226172) Homepage

    I understand that migrating extensions to a new API will be a lot of work for extension developers, but in the long run isn't it better to have a standard extension API instead of several browser-specific ones?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:22AM

    by Marand (1081) on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:22AM (#226179) Journal

    I understand that migrating extensions to a new API will be a lot of work for extension developers, but in the long run isn't it better to have a standard extension API instead of several browser-specific ones?

    It sounds great in theory, until you realise that all it takes to fragment things is someone (Google) going "Nope, fuck you and your 'standards', we decided to do it our own way" and refusing to play ball for a few years. Then you either have to give up what you already had or live with the fragmentation, especially if the uncooperative party gains any sort of market share. Which Google did, by leveraging Android and constant nagging to non-Chrome users in unrelated products like gmail and it search engine.[1]

    That's how we end up with things like systemd becoming ubiquitous, and why GNOME essentially creates all the "standards" for desktop environments. If someone else creates something, like improved notifications[2], GNOME refuses to use it, creates its own, and then other environments have to either support both types or give up and remove their own implementation, because GNOME will never use something it didn't create. See also pulseaudio, which was a latecomer but became the de facto standard due to stubbornness and politicking.

    Basically, the most stubborn party wins because everyone else eventually gets tired of fighting it, and everyone except the stubborn jackass loses.

    In this case, the problem is that it's Mozilla vs. Google. Mozilla was here first, it did these things before Chrome even existed, and if there was anything resembling a standard, Mozilla already had it (like with NPAPI). That doesn't matter, though, because Google doesn't care. They have a "my way or the highway" view of everything, so they reinvent the wheel (see also PPAPI) and then you have to either give up or deal with the fragmentation until you eventually get trampled or left behind. We've seen this play out with Google's stubborn strong-arm tactics regarding NPAPI vs. PPAPI support already, and the result is that on Linux, the most popular plugin (Flash) has PPAPI support but not NPAPI.

    ---

    [1] Similar to how Microsoft gained its market share with IE.
    [2] This isn't a fictional example; the notification war thing happened with KDE4 and GNOME a few years ago and ended with KDE giving up and supporting both types due to GNOME suffering from NIH.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Marneus68 on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:31AM

    by Marneus68 (3572) on Saturday August 22 2015, @08:31AM (#226197) Homepage

    Without going into the the full-length explanation that has been brilliantly made earlier, I kinda want to add that I'm not exactly sure that standardization is great when you're aligning yourself with the lowest common denominator. In the case of the Firefox API, we will lose a lot a features in the battle...

    That said, Google, (and somehow Gnome, to take the systemd example of earlier) have "won" the right to dictate others what to do because of their position on the market. Mozilla used to be a strong voice, way before Chrome even existed, but they lost that place due to their own inactivity (and desire to invest money into non-viable projects). This whole development is sad but not surprising.

    • (Score: 2) by BananaPhone on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:12PM

      by BananaPhone (2488) on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:12PM (#226310)

      I've read some places that Adblock and NoScript will not work anymore due to missing functionality in the API.

      Palemoon or seamonkey might be the only alternatives.

      Maybe the TAILS people will pickup the torch.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @09:21PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @09:21PM (#226401)

        I'm waiting for TAILS and the TOR Browser to switch to Pale Moon. Much less of a moving target than Firefox and the others.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:48PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:48PM (#226365)

    They already had a standard Firefox extension API. A lot of the reason people used it was because it was better than Chrome's API for actually getting stuff done, I hear.

    So obviously they've got to kill it off and roll out a new Chrome-ified version as part of the ongoing march to change Firefox into Chrome in everything but name.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"