Mozilla Will Deprecate XUL Add-ons Before the End of 2017 225
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.
Great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Firefox works for me just great, and on all my devices. I just dont understand the hate.
Firefox's vast array of extensions renders it highly configurable to a user's individual tastes and needs, and it is utterly unique among browsers, so the disappearance of that flexibility understandably pisses off those of us who have come to rely on it. If Slashdot got rid of mod points, karma, thresholds, and spam ratings, and no longer permitted user-submitted stories, wouldn't you be upset? If not, then why are you here at all?
In any case getting extensiond out of firefox internals is a good thing: it is a real security risk mitigated by a proper API.
And if Mozilla hadn't wasted so much time, energy, and money making frivolou
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Look at the mindless monoculture you're advocating when you say that it's OK for Firefox to become a late-to-the-party Chrome clone.
Firefox has one feature of greater importance than any other: it is not ruled by corporate overlords whose primary goal is to invade your privacy and auction it off the highest bidder. Otherwise, Firefox differs from Chrome in many ways that I like, and some that I do not. I see it as a good thing if the latter are addressed. And even if Firefox somehow became exactly the same as Chrome, much to my distress, it would still possess that all-important quality of not being under the thumb of an evil monopolist
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Firefox works for me just great, and on all my devices. I just dont understand the hate.
I do. Google employees have a lot of time on their hands, including a lot of time for shit-posting. It's hard to imagine why anybody without an agenda would spend time and effort attacking.
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Firefox works for me just great, and on all my devices. I just dont understand the hate.
On desktop, it does for me, too. Its Android version is somewhat problematic, though. Servo is desperately needed there. Or at least some bug fixes.
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I haven't updated firefox in a long time. Sadly, it no longer even works in my corporate environment. As a long-time user though, I can hope that this is finally the act that causes share to plummet enough to make them realize that extensions are the ONLY good thing left about Firefox. If Mozilla wants to survive, it will have to cope.
Or it will die, and web will belong totally to Google.
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I haven't updated firefox in a long time. Sadly, it no longer even works in my corporate environment.
You really should give Pale Moon a try - it's our last best hope for maintaining the almost-extinct Firefox ecosystem that we've come to know, love, and rely on. And because it incorporates Firefox security updates, (at least so far), it may even work in your corporate environment.
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As a long-time user though, I can hope that this is finally the act that causes share to plummet enough to make them realize that extensions are the ONLY good thing left about Firefox.
They already realize that. From the FAQ [mozilla.org], they want to announce the intention to deprecate XUL, XPCOM[1] et al early, in order to enhance community involvement in honing the new WebExtensions model. Hopefully, WebExtensions will provide all the same functionality as the deprecated APIs, plus important advantages.
The perception issue seems to be that a plan to improve extensibility has been misinterpreted as a plan to abandon extensibility. I for one am convinced by the FAQ, but that is just a quickly formed
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Hopefully, WebExtensions will provide all the same functionality as the deprecated APIs
You can hope all you like, but not doing this is explicitly one of the goals of WEs. It's thus highly likely that they won't provide the same functionality.
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Hopefully, WebExtensions will provide all the same functionality as the deprecated APIs
this is explicitly one of the goals of WEs. It's thus highly likely that they won't provide the same functionality
Yes, the FAQ clearly states that security and privacy issues dictate that some access will not be available to plugins. It will require actual analysis rather than shoot-from-the-lip opinionating to know whether that is a good thing. Are essential capabilities are affected, and if so then does the possibility exist to recover additional functionality in some way? Maybe consider including add some informed commentary in your next post instead of hiding behind some largely content free generalization.
My princ
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Granted, most people don't care about those but I do. Anyway, I agree that the huge amount and great addons Firefox has will be a huge loss
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It still does have something: It doesn't help Google spy even more on you. It's not made by a megacorp.
Use Chromium.
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what exactly does Firefox offer over Chrome?
It's smaller, for one: smaller download, smaller installation, smaller memory footprint.
It supports extensions on the mobile version, for another. Chrome doesn't. It's true that they're changing the API, but that means that they're significantly decreasing the amount of effort that developers need to put in, to get an extension that works on both Firefox and Chrome. I'm cautiously optimistic. It'll probably be a painful transition, but you should consider that your premise is flawed. Firefox isn't goin
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Also, chrome for a couple of tabs is ok, but eats lot of cpu, uses lot of ram with many tabs. Firefox in the past was the worst in resource usage, but now is chrome!
Firefox can scale to many tab without using so much resources. Multi-process is helping more in that too.
Firefox also do not track you, quite the opposite, they are adding several tracking protection to the browser
Re:Great. (Score:5, Informative)
Because current add-on design do not work with multi-process!!
They are not ending the add-on, they must be migrated to the new API. Sadly many add-on are abandoned and will not be migrated. Others will not be allowed to do some functions, almost all of then must be rewritten. But the current add-on have fatal flaws and are doomed sooner or later.
There are several problems with the current^WOLD add-on layer
1- Old add-on have too much access to the firefox internals (security, memory leaks and performance problems)
2- Old add-ons do not know how to work with multi-process and mozilla had to simulate a pool+lock for then to work (big lock, performance problems)
3- Migrating code from Servo to Geko would break many add-on unless there are many compatibility layers (performance and code maintenance problems)
Solutions:
1-They could swap unsafe parts slowly and break many add-on on each release, forcing a slow and never ending add-on update cycle. It is much easier to just swap the API and warn that everyone must rewrite.
2-Add-ons need to be fixed or else the browser will not really use the multi-process well and worse, may be even slower because of the big lock. If they remove the compatilbity layer, add-on stop working, but postponing the removal will keep the browser slower too and the add-on may never be updated (multi-process is already a several years project and all add-ons where flagged to be updated, but many are just abandoned). So wait more is not a solution, they need to be rewrite
3-No one wants layers over layers, it is a maintenance hell, specially because the add-on have access to almost everything. Migrating to a simpler API make mozilla job much easier, firefox safer. Add-on will have to be rebuild and developers need to learn a new API. They will also be unable to do some things they can right now, but on the good side, it will much easier to port add-on between chrome and firefox and the add-on can be run in separated process, so bad add-on will be easier to stop and control.
Yes, i too would like to keep all the add-ons, but between a fast browser with fewer add-ons and a slow one with many outdated add-ons, i prefer the first one. You can not complain about firefox being slow and also complain about keeping old add-ons. To fix one, you need to fix the other too! and you can not delay this, market share is shrinking due firefox being slower.
They were making changes slowly, as they were mostly doing the last few years, and try to not break the add-ons, but you can not postpone a big internal change forever and now it is time to drop some old features, like NPAPI plugins and the old add-on interface
What i hope is that mozilla is now more open to some features, as some features will be blocked to add-ons, mozilla need to be more flexible on certain features. The google design model ("only allow features that at least 80% of people use") is bad for firefox, as many of the users of firefox are the 20% of excluded people in chrome
Re:Great. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Sounds like you want Pale Moon.
You are not typical though. Most Firefox users I know don't change any defaults. Maybe install AdBlock, that's about it.
To most people, performance matters. As other browsers improve, Firefox must keep up. Web sites will add more JavaScript as engines get faster, and for most people NoScript = broken.
Mass market products will always cater to the majority. You really want Pale Moon.
Re:Great. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, i too would like to keep all the add-ons, but between a fast browser with fewer add-ons and a slow one with many outdated add-ons, i prefer the first one.
Doesn't a fast browser with fewer addons basically describe Google Chrome? Why don't you just switch to that if speed trumps customization for you? Do you really think the mozdevs can compete with the massive GoogleCorp at what they do best? You think they are going to outGoogle Google?
You can not complain about firefox being slow and also complain about keeping old add-ons.
I haven't seen a lot of people complaining about speed for any browser. I don't think speed is much of an issue for browsers. They have been fast enough for a very long time. Trying to make them faster is fixing a nonproblem. Finding a browser that will do what you want it to do if you want more than what Chrome can do otoh...that's about to be nontrivial.
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>Doesn't a fast browser with fewer addons basically describe Google Chrome?
Browsers are all the "same", with little different details. Those details are the key
firefox is the open standard champion , flexible, open and protects your privacy. Sync is also a killer feature for many people
chrome is big, open, but tracks you and is not as flexible as firefox (google totally controls it)
chromium track you less, but still tracks you, or will be several missing features. It is open, but google still mostly cont
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>1- Old add-on have too much access to the firefox internals
The entire point of an "add-on" is to hack the mainline product without recompiling. Access to internals is not a "problem," it's expected behavior. It would be fine for FF to introduce a lighter, "safer" API and encourage people to move to that, but don't kill one of the primary reasons people still use it.
>performance
There's no performance problem. The problem is JavaScript bloat. People need to quit building full programs in a lightwei
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Firefox remains my primary browser for multiple reasons:
* Handles hundreds of tabs easily, by default
* Avoids reloading pages until needed when restarting with multiple tabs
* Superior url suggestion algorithm keys on text in mid-url
* The addons of course
* Google monoculture threatens freedom and progress
* Google hostile takeover of browser market at expense of community-owned Firefox using tactics learned from Microsoft still rankles
* Google's advertis
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It does. Look up, what's the unique wrkey, firefox uses to get anti-phishing-data from google.
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At some point the technical battle against meta-surveillance must simply be declared lost unless you want to go full Tor, dress up in an airtight jumpsuit, and learn how to navigate the sewer systems.
It can only be fought on a legal and economic front... also it's really the integrity, ethics, motivations, and cultural longevity of the institutions doing it that matter more than the act itself. On the bright side, maybe once the consequences of individualized attention by self-interested corporations and g
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Mod parent up!
Even if you don't expect to win the war, you should still throw indiscriminate wrenches at the thousands of machines. Block, disable, blacklist, sabotage, just spew it all out, if only on principle. It's your machine, try to control what it does, where it (invisibly) goes, what it announces.
Thank you for putting words to the things I do and to the attitude that I have and can't shake, even though life would be simpler without it. I'm usually pretty articulate, but you've expressed the reasons for me doing what I do better than anything I've managed so far.
Then, yes, continue efforts at the source. But my website/software (eg app) is going to scoop up everything in reach, and trying to outlaw it will just cause cat-and-mouse workarounds, loopholes, moving goalposts. It's going to
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Hopefully Seamonkey [seamonkey-project.org] won't go hurtling down the same path with Firefox (they're built on FF49 right now).
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To quote someone on mozilla.dev.apps.seamonkey
Re:Great. (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't support the most recent versions of the best extensions,but if you go back to older versions you will probably find one that works. If you are referring to newer post-FF24 only extensions then yes that would be a problem, but... the palemoon team is probably going to end up doing exactly what you would like to see [slashdot.org].
The idea would be to rebase their core codebase on a more recent version and just factor out Australis. Apparently the Australis UI is not so tightly integrated as to make this not doable. From what I can see Pale Moon or whatever they end up calling the newer refork is going to be the *only* alternative to The Google Browser and its clones. Well aside from just disabling autoupdate on FF52 and living with that which is what I plan to do for the time being. That will probably work for the next 2-3 years. If I have time maybe I can help with the Pale Moon project now that FF has finally pounded a stake through its own heart. Customization is Firefox and once Mozilla kills that it really is dead and there is no reason to use it.
BEEP BOOP (Score:2, Funny)
It's still bad even though it may be something I complained they didn't do before!
If only they listened to ME they would succeed!
I won't tell them or make my own {software} lest I be shown that my needs aren't the needs of everyone.
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If only they listened to ME they would succeed!
If I wanted to run Chrome browser, I would have installed Chrome and not FireFox.
The entire point of using their software was that I wanted to use their software, not something else...
I won't tell them or make my own {software} lest I be shown that my needs aren't the needs of everyone.
Why tell them for a hundredth and one time?
After telling them our needs a hundred times, and their staff delete the forum post or close the ticket or ban you from their support form for asking a "After version X how do I do Y" - we pretty much got the hint that they don't WANT to hear our needs.
Personally I ran FireFox for exa
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{company} did {thing}! {thing} is bad!
Actually it's company continues to do thing it has been doing for the past 5 years. The past 5 years have shown it is demonstrably bad.
It's still bad even though it may be something I complained they didn't do before!
Not a single person has ever said "I wish Firefox was more like Chrome. It bothers me that it has such an incredible plugin system. If only they removed all user choice!"
If only they listened to ME they would succeed!
Well that's kind of a given at this point. Really if they listened to anyone other than the few fwits driving the project their market share could only improve at this point.
I won't tell them
Holy crap are you in for a treat
In the future, they will do the same to Rust (Score:3)
If they were willing to deprecate what was once a flagship technology once, they will do it again.
I've switched to Vivaldi (Score:4, Informative)
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Same. As an old Opera Presto lover, Vivaldi was a welcome addition to the scene. I've been using it since 2015, trying to help with finding bugs and testing new snapshots. Definitely recommend if you're a fan of Opera =version 12.
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firefox will only run webextensions, which use the same api as chrome extensions. So they aren't more powerful.
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That's not true at all. Firefox extends the Chrome extensions API in various places as needed. For example, see the "New APIs" here: https://blog.mozilla.org/addon... [mozilla.org]
Another example: Firefox has implemented a "sidebar" Webextensions API, Chrome has not. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/ch... [chromium.org] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org]
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yeah, but it is still "we build a whitelist". You may have a nice whitelist for the web, allowing youtube, wikipedia, maybe even slashdot. Still you wouldn't call it the free web, even when 95% of the users never encounter something not on the whitelist. Simliar you cannot speak of a full featured extension api, when you need to wait for mozilla to specifiy an API for the part of GUI you want to customize ...
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Chrome is WebKit. Yeah, it's a fork, but it's WebKit.
Pale Moon is very nice (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using Pale Moon for a couple years. I hated when Firefox went to the Australis, chrome clone, interface. I hated when Firefox kept deleting features, especially preferences. Pale Moon is lighter, faster, more customizable, and pays more attention to security ideas. They were the first to deal with html5 canvas fingerprinting.
On the down side, I do occasionally find a site that won't work. I'm not entirely sure if it's Pale Moon, or my combination of script and ad blockers. It's usually a fluff entertainment site, and I don't care enough to turn them all off, or fire up chrome.
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...On the down side, I do occasionally find a site that won't work. I'm not entirely sure if it's Pale Moon, or my combination of script and ad blockers....
The past few months, I've been finding more and more sites that don't work or render properly using the latest and greatest version of Firefox. I've had to use IE in order to use the website. So Firefox seems to be falling behind in the website compatibility area. Given its dismal marketshare, it is not really a surprise to me that web developers seem to be abandoning Firefox.
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The problem with Pale Moon is extension compatibility. It's the extensions that make Firefox worth using. As with Firefox it seems like extension archiving of most recent working versions is a necessity, but I don't know which versions of each extension I use will be compatible with Pale Moon and it's a bit of a research project to figure that out.
Nevertheless I guess I am going to have to do exactly that for Firefox itself soon while the mozilla addons site still works. Pretty soon Firefox itself will be a
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I too was baothered by the FireFox shift toward Chrome, so I went with PaleMoon as my primary browser and have not regretted it one bit.
THe most important addon for me is NoScript and it works fine in PaleMoon.
An obviously bad move (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Well losing the last remaining users won't have too much of an effect on their marketshare at this point.
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The bad part is that this new API is much less powerful, it doesn't let you do many things that you could previously do. So, many of the more complex extensions just can't be done with the new API and thus they'll have to die. The fault doesn't lie with the extension developers but with Firefox which have failed to provide an API as powerful as the old one. They've claimed they're open to additions to the
A Painful But Necessary Transition (Score:4, Insightful)
You do a great job of outlining the pros and cons. That said, I do have to disagree that this isn't the right move. I would argue that it is in fact the right move; it's just that the right move is the most painful move.
Firefox is a wonderful browser. But I fear we're losing sight of just how limited its legacy core is. Legacy Firefox offers no threading, no privilege separation, and no meaningful isolation between tabs or windows.
The browser-as-an-OS concept is no longer a gag, but the actual reality of how browsers work. Browsers are expected to do everything from executing code (JS) to graphics (WebGL) to video (HTML5, etc). Furthermore they are being treated as a multitasking operating system - via multiple tabs - with those tabs all competing for resources. Worse, some of those tabs may be hostile to the system or to other tabs.
This is something Legacy Firefox is ill prepared for, and in doing so it's the odd man out among the major browsers. Legacy Firefox is the MacOS Classic of browsers; a time-tested piece of software with parts going back to the earliest days of the Web. But like OSes 15 to 20 years ago, the world has moved on; it's akin to MacOS Classic going up against MacOS X/WinXP/Linux. The lack of real, preemptive multitasking and security has become a major liability, and becomes downright embarrassing when you realize that Microsoft of all companies was doing things like putting their browser in a low-privilege context a decade ago. Similarly embarrassing is the fact that a single runaway tab can take out the whole browser!
But all is not lost. Firefox can and is being upgraded with electrolysis (e10k). e10k Firefox has taken far too long to be developed - Mozilla should have been working in earnest on this a decade ago - but at long last it's here. And it finally brings with it all of the threading and isolation features that will make the browser safer and more reliable. Or more to the point, it will make the browser competitive in these respects with Edge/Safari/Chrome.
However just like giving up MacOS Classic meant giving up the OS's legacy applications, there is a price to pay for giving up Legacy Firefox: XUL and legacy add-ons. XUL is incredibly powerful, but the Moz devs have laid out a very good case for why it (and the rest of the legacy add-on system) can't be used with e10k Firefox. There's no concept of threading or safety; it's an API that has an unsafe level of access to the browser and can't handle being split up among threads. Its power is why we power users love it so much, but that power is dangerous. Worse, maintaining that power ultimately gets in the way of operating the browser with a safer multi-threaded environment.
And I won't dance around the issue: losing XUL and the legacy add-on system is going to be painful. Just losing the Classic Theme Restorer alone is going to be complete and total hell for this crowd. Never mind the other add-ons that enhance privacy, block ads, and do so many other nifty things. And not all of those add-ons can be remade for e10k Firefox, since they rely on a level of power that will no longer exist.
But you know what? It has to happen. Just like with MacOS Classic, at some point we have to stop using an archaic, unsafe environment origially designed around unitasking in order to move on to something better that can actually fulfill our needs. Even if we were to explicitly design/limit Firefox to Slashdot-level power users - and I would argue that doing so would ultimately be the end of the browser - it's still not in our interest to be using a browser that, at the end of the day, relies on cooperative multitasking. It's a crappy (if not horrific) execution paradigm for the real world. And while I admire the Pale Moon devs for what they're doing, Pale Moon just prolongs the problem. We still have to face this demon some day, if not today.
Is it goi
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Yes, sometimes painful transitions are necessary and I undestand the reason why compatibility with the old extensions has to go but what it hurts me most is that they can't even be recreated for the new APIs. This is gonna be a huge blow for Firefox.
Btw, are you involved with Firefox in some way? You seem to know a lot.
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Nah, just a frustrated user. But also one who has also already gone through this song & dance once before with MacOS Classic, and is keen to avoid the same waffling on this transition.
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Well for me Firefox has never been about performance. It was about customization (and because IE has always sucked). When Chrome came along it was certainly an improvement on IE but it still could not do many of the things that Firefox + XUL extensions could do. It just did not have the same feature set. For me Firefox is fast enough as it is and I don't think a browser needs to use more than a single core or even more than a single thread. Well unless its only point is to compete in benchmarks. The only pe
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Because we need someone who isn't an OS vendor or an advertiser making an open source browser and to champion open standards. But that does us no good if it results in an inferior browser.
Apple is indifferent, Microsoft would rather we go back to IE6, and Google would just as well take over the whole web and track your every move (and then they'd pull an IE6 on us just to be extra evil). Firefox is the outsider, the rebel.
There exist
Actual Post (Score:5, Informative)
https://blog.mozilla.org/addon... [mozilla.org]
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On April 18th. That's huge. Although to be fair you'd have to be the king of bad timing to be releasing a new firefox addon right before Mozilla is pounding a stake through the heart of them. I wonder how long Mozilla will even keep addons available. I'm guessing not very long after they have been deprecated in the current version. Mozilla clearly wants to do whatever it can to get a
I thought it said ... (Score:2)
... defecate.
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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> It won't have any effect at all on what extensions can do.
That's wrong. Everything which changes the browser chrome will be very very limited.
Ad blocking? (Score:3)
Massive loss of capability. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [mozilla.org] - see "Services.jsm API" table.
WebExtensions versus Add-on SDK [mozilla.org] - 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.
No good end (Score:2)
So firefox has the same addons (literally) like chrome, the same limited possiblity to tune the UI, a loss of many good firefox-only addons and the thunderbird developers need to maintain xul themself?
Looks like firefox will get a lot less important and thunderbird may die.
Deletion disorder is a treatable mental condition (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people honestly believe throwing shit and features in the trash because it aligns with their narrow opinions and agendas is a constructive activity. They are incapable or unwilling to accept the possibility of a reality beyond their narrow worldview.
From mass deletion of useful articles from Wikipedia to the bands of trolls constantly closing questions they don't understand on SO. From land of "developers" creating "API"s they constantly and willfully break and defecate (deprecate).. because why shouldn't everyone else be expected to constantly play semantic musical chairs to make *your* unorganized life marginally easier?
All of those who think taking settings away and denying user choice constitutes a better user experience or who truly believe everyone appreciates your nonsensical unproductive abstract notions of art that make software painful and unusable...There is a cure. You can be saved.
Avoid use of ALL computer INPUT device until end of days n ye shall be cured. ~ from Book of Krusteaz 12:10.
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Except they don't. Their replacement is WebExtensions which isn't even close to being a reasonable replacement.
I trust them to do the right thing (Score:2, Interesting)
I've already seen a bunch of posts mourn the whole bunch of addons that will stop working end of this year. Probably, I'll lose some myself.
But personally, I trust Mozilla to do the right thing here. They've probably weighed the pros and cons, and made their decision. I'll see what the end result is. There's enough browsers to choose from nowadays.
Firefox has some unique things why I use it, first and foremost "search in links". Try it, tap the single-quote key and type text that appears in a link. Then hit
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>"I'll see what the end result is. There's enough browsers to choose from nowadays."
And that is where you are WRONG. Please list all the browsers that are:
* 100% open source
* Run on all major platforms, including Linux
* Run on just about any Linux and without relying only on distro packages.
* Will work on 99+% of websites because the browser is an accepted standard (think business software, not just home stuff).
Your list is going to be very small. And that is where a lot of us stand. Firefox is not so
Stop "improving" it (Score:2)
Will the new version still have memory leaks? Because it just isn't Firefox if it doesn't have memory leaks that grow to crippling proportions in 24 hours or so.
Hopefully this new-fangled multi process mode will allow for multiple, simultaneous memory leaks so the browser will become unusable in 2 or 3 hours instead of having to wait a whole day.
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I think its possible that killing the extension ecosystem may have a positive effect on the memory leak problem because at the very least the mozdevs will not be able to blame the extension devs for the leaks anymore. AFAIK the mozdevs don't recognize that there is a memory leak problem. I think they think they fixed it sometime in 3.x or earlier.
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I think its possible that killing the extension ecosystem may have a positive effect on the memory leak problem because at the very least the mozdevs will not be able to blame the extension devs for the leaks anymore. AFAIK the mozdevs don't recognize that there is a memory leak problem. I think they think they fixed it sometime in 3.x or earlier.
I think you're right. They're oblivious to it because they can't admit there's a problem.
It may be a moot point for me, since I just installed Pale Moon and am giving it a try. So far, so good. And it works with the key two must-have extensions I use: Adblock and NoScript.
Seamonkey ? (Score:3)
How long until Seamonkey gets depreciated as well?
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I hope never since I still love the suite product since Netscape v2 days. :(
Time to auto-delete... (Score:2)
I've moved on to Pale Moon, and I'm tired of hearing about Mozilla's self-induced death-spiral.
The Future of Pale Moon (Score:2)
The Future of Pale Moon [palemoon.org]
Thought this would be a relevant link to the only (customizable) alternative to FrozenFox 52.
Re: why hasnt slashdot taken over Mozilla (Score:2)
Slashdotters are often willing to express unpopular opinions so they could never work at MoFo (or Twitter, et.al.). The few engineers I k
Re: why hasnt slashdot taken over Mozilla (Score:2)
... know of there live in fear(avoidance) of the hipster social signalers who love to burn money to stay warm.
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I am so very glad they're getting rid of every single thing that made Firefox popular in the first place
What's left after XUL is gone? Remove access to about:config?
Mozilla is so out of touch with their tech-minded userbase it's unreal. They probably think if they become like Chrome, Chrome users will jump to Firefox. Laughable. Once Firefox becomes Chrome, nobody's going to stick around - there will be no reason to anymore, at that point you either accept Chrome/ium or use a Firefox fork.
So, stick a Firefox fork in them, they're done...
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I think it's more than the tech-minded userbase is about 0.1% of the total population of web browsing users.
This is true, but what people don't seem to realise is that tech-minded userbase is about 100% of the remaining population of firefox users. All the non-tech-minded users switched to chrome ages ago because it has the shiny and unconfigurable chrome-a-like interface they love. As an added bonus, it's it's much faster and doesn't require petabytes of RAM to open more than three tabs.
It seems obvious to me that Mozilla has decided to go for the people who like chrome but just think it's just not slow or resou
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mozilla will stop distributing xul addons at some point. And as firefox doesn't let you install addons, which aren't signed on addons.mozilla.org ... you're still out of luck with xul addons.
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you can't anymore, if you're not using a nightly. The release version blocks installation from files, which are not signed by AMO. They can be distributed on other sites, but they need to be signed on AMO.
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Well I think the important thing is whether you can archive existing .xpi files from AMO now to use as part of the installation of FrozenFox until/unless a practical non Chrome clone exists or for the next decade or so whichever comes first. Presumably signatures won't be a problem if the .xpi files were originally sourced from AMO.
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Tracking protection already works, i.e. on uBlock. But for example deleting flash cookies (as files on your system) is probably not possible.
Moving your tab bar into a sidebar won't work as well.
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Relevant uBlock Origin Issue:
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/622
Use the tags, Luke (Score:2)
This is slashdot. Learn how to hyperlink properly.
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And the problem with that is, that on Chromium on Linux, if you double-click on the URL to highlight it, and then right-click to open in a new tab, then it appends 'Reply to this' with percent encoding to the end of the link, which does not result in a valid HTML document. Additionally, as I said, this is not a luddite forum. If you can't manage a minimal level of markup, kindly fuck off.
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> Your favorite add-ons will continue to work. ...
No, they won't.
The DownThemAll Developer mourned when they first announced the move, the Tabgroups developer recently said he won't be able to port his addon, mozilla ruled out many addons themselfes
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Quicksaver has five extensions, four of which are Featured by Moz://a
1) Findbar Tweak, 2) OmniSidebar, 3) Tab Groups, 4) Beyond Australis, and Puzzle Bars.
All of them will be gone with Firefox 57. I highly doubt Piro will be able to continue Tree Style Tab and co either.
Firefox users are fucked.
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There will be some extensions that don't work, but that was also true with any update as the api wasn't stable due to how add-ons work. Again, add-on developers have always had to deal with api changes.
UBlock Origin will continue to work, as will NoScript. You know, the big ones.
The OP mentioned FlagFox, which is still under active development, having received an update this year. There is no reason to suspect that it will stop working, given how simple it is.
As for DownThemAll, I don't know wha
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uBlock will, as it is already ported. NoScript isn't ported but possible (see uMatrix, which might be a better replacement anyway). Things like CTR, SessionSaver, Tabgroups, DTA might be a bigger problem. DTA not for the UI, but for the better network functions it's using.
> They've had, and continue to have, plenty of time to get their add-on ready for a change they knew was coming ages ago.
It's not like there were all the APIs years ago. Starting to port something doesn't work, when the API isn't availa
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Who are you trying to kid? A lot of the extensions I liked *already* quit working ages ago. Likewise themes.
And the default UI has become progressively shittier over time, with fewer and fewer options remaining for making it sensible again. Nuking the status bar. Moving the tabs *above* the menu bar. And all the other senseless UXtard horseshit.
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That was pretty much my point, yeah. The condescending "this will affect almost no one" bit made it obvious.
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I'm sorry that reality is so difficult for you to accept.
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Trust, but keep one foot wedged in the emergency exit, and one ear cocked for a fell voice on the air:
I cannot continue working on my add-ons anymore. I'm sorry, but it's time. [fasezero.com]
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WebExtensions announcement was made not two months after. "Demotivating" doesn't quite cover it .
Someone wasn't paying attention ... or they're just lying. Anyone paying even a little bit of attention has known about the new extension system for almost two years now.
But don't let facts get in the way of your meaningless hate-fest.
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Ultimately, this will affect almost no one. Planning for this change has been happening for a long time now. Your favorite add-ons will continue to work.
https://developer.mozilla.org/... [mozilla.org]
Those are the facts. That is right from the horse's mouth. Not all e
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Not all extensions are going to be ported. Period.
That's right. I never claimed otherwise. The popular extensions, and the ones mentioned by the OP, however, will be ported. The OP's favorite add-ons will continue to work. This change affects him in no way.
You know, the add-ons that people actually use. UBlock Origin, NoScript, etc. are being ported. Hence, this change will affect almost no one.
For those (very few) devs posting nonsense about how this comes as a total shock, they've had almost two full years to prepare, and they still have the rema
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> The only downside is some builds for some systems have gstreamer
> built in and some don't. MP4 video works on all of them though.
As of version 27.1.0, linux Pale Moon defaults to using ffmpeg directly. No need for Gstreamer plugins as middle-men. The current roadmap is for Gstreamer code to be removed entirely by version 27.2.0. BTW, libav is touted as a "drop-in replacement" for ffmpeg, so it may work in place of ffmpeg.