I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#1

Post by vacri » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:04 PM UTC

I cannot continue working on my add-ons
fasezero.com

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#2

Post by sp332 » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:22 PM UTC

This makes me curious - does Mozilla's new Tab Center experiment use Web Extensions? Or are they refusing to take their own medicine, and using inaccessible internal APIs? https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center (Edit: Deprecated, not inaccessible.)

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#3

Post by detaro » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:33 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #2

This makes me curious - does Mozilla's new Tab Center experiment use Web Extensions? Or are they refusing to take their own medicine, and using inaccessible internal APIs? https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center (Edit: Deprecated, not inaccessible.)

From a quick look at the source[0] it uses the deprecated Add-On SDK[1].

[0] https://github.com/bwinton/TabCenter/blob/master/main.js

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#4

Post by protomyth » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:36 PM UTC

I think there is a niche for a programmer's browser. I often think something half-way between a web browser and the old Lisp and Smalltalk machines.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#5

Post by ianbicking » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:40 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #2

This makes me curious - does Mozilla's new Tab Center experiment use Web Extensions? Or are they refusing to take their own medicine, and using inaccessible internal APIs? https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center (Edit: Deprecated, not inaccessible.)

It uses very inaccessible internal APIs currently (including XUL), but there is an effort to use it to create the necessary APIs so it can be ported to a Web Extension.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#6

Post by mnarayan01 » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:45 PM UTC

I've been praying that Mozilla would rethink this, but that looks increasingly unlikely. I guess switching to a LTS release will tide me over for a time, but this really does feel like the end of an era.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#7

Post by stephengillie » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

Isn't Firefox open source? Can't you just fork the project and start your own browser, where all these changes don't get made?

Is the real concern about forking the userbase and ecosystem, and the fork won't have the critical user base to become self-sustaining?

Edit: added paragraph for clarity.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#8

Post by DashRattlesnake » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:47 PM UTC

Just curious will the new Web Extensions style allow add-ons like Classic Theme Restorer [1] and Tree-style Tab [2] that change the Firefox UI?

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#9

Post by navaati » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:47 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #4

I think there is a niche for a programmer's browser. I often think something half-way between a web browser and the old Lisp and Smalltalk machines.

Oh, it's called Emacs (being half-serious here)

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#10

Post by iancarroll » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 10:49 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #7

Isn't Firefox open source? Can't you just fork the project and start your own browser, where all these changes don't get made? Is the real concern about forking the userbase and ecosystem, and the fork won't have the critical user base to become self-sustaining? Edit: added paragraph for clarity.

Maintaining a fork of a large browser is extremely difficult, especially for coordinating and merging vulnerability fixes.