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I cannot continue working on my add-ons

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Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#101

Post by abeyer »

mindcrime wrote: post #54

Sad, but hardly unexpected. The truth is, the mozilla leadership has never had much vision. In the early days of Seamonkey (and then Firefox) there was a slavish devotion to chasing Internet Explorer, and far too much rationalization of feature selection based on "IE has it" or "but IE doesn't support that." Later, with the ascension of Chrome, Firefox began to try and mimic Chrome the same way. Other than MathML sup…

> The truth is, the mozilla leadership has never had much vision

I'm not sure I agree there. I feel like they've had at least a few pretty strong points of vision. The failure has been more on the execution of producing and maintaining useful software in support of that vision.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#102

Post by gcb0 »

Animats wrote: post #45

Firefox has three APIs: XUL, Jetpack, and WebExtensions. XUL has been on the way out for years, and never worked in mobile Firefox anyway. (Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much.) Jetpack was introduced in 2013, and by 2014, it was actually usable. It's not clear when and whether Jetpack add-ons will stop working. Mozilla's developer documentation is so confused that you can't tell.…

except mobile firefox is the future.

and most extensions are making do with xul. I use noscript and stylish and httpsEverywhere. life is good.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#103

Post by gcb0 »

CaptSpify wrote: post #100
wtbob wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much. FWIW, I love mobile Firefox and I really don't understand why folks use Chrome instead.

As a die-hard FF mobile user.... FF is slow, pages rarely load the first time and I constantly have to manually reload, the interface for making config changes are requires sooooo many clicks. I have no real experience if chrome is better because I never use it, but FF mobile has some real warts

most sites that are slow are also slow on chrome. so doesnt even bother.

the only solution is installing noScript. the only version available is in beta. but it works fine.

you will be suprised how few sites I have to whitelist to see the content I want. and usually besides faster, they get much more usable without Javascript!

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#104

Post by abeyer »

Avery3R wrote: post #24
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.

There's already a fork, pale moon.

Has pale moon ever moved past their "windows first, foremost (and practically only)" attitude?

I seriously looked at it when australis happened before classic theme restorer was stable, but at the time they seemed to have no interest in anything but desktop windows. I suspect a single-platform browser (especially when the platform is windows) is a non-starter for most people.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#105

Post by jobigoud »

baby wrote: post #67

If Tree Style Tab doesn't work anymore. What are the reasons to use Firefox? Also what are the alternatives. I tried Chrome but the Tree Style Tab-like plugin is clumsy. Should I just not update firefox and wait until devs realize tabs were meant to be on the side? Honnestly as a power user I can't browse the web without tree style tab anymore.

I'm the same, I think I'm going to stop updating and secure the last version that support them.

Between auto-update, security patches and new web standards support, how long will this approach be viable though?

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#106

Post by catbird »

jobigoud wrote: post #105
baby wrote: post #67

If Tree Style Tab doesn't work anymore. What are the reasons to use Firefox? Also what are the alternatives. I tried Chrome but the Tree Style Tab-like plugin is clumsy. Should I just not update firefox and wait until devs realize tabs were meant to be on the side? Honnestly as a power user I can't browse the web without tree style tab anymore.

I'm the same, I think I'm going to stop updating and secure the last version that support them. Between auto-update, security patches and new web standards support, how long will this approach be viable though?

I might just have to give up on using the internet if treestyle tabs stops working. I'll get a job on a farm or something and lead a simpler life.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#107

Post by dingo_bat »

Animats wrote: post #45

Firefox has three APIs: XUL, Jetpack, and WebExtensions. XUL has been on the way out for years, and never worked in mobile Firefox anyway. (Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much.) Jetpack was introduced in 2013, and by 2014, it was actually usable. It's not clear when and whether Jetpack add-ons will stop working. Mozilla's developer documentation is so confused that you can't tell.…

> nobody runs mobile Firefox,

I'm here :(

I use it to play YouTube in the background.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#108

Post by thezilch »

st3fan wrote: post #65
Animats wrote: post #45

Firefox has three APIs: XUL, Jetpack, and WebExtensions. XUL has been on the way out for years, and never worked in mobile Firefox anyway. (Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much.) Jetpack was introduced in 2013, and by 2014, it was actually usable. It's not clear when and whether Jetpack add-ons will stop working. Mozilla's developer documentation is so confused that you can't tell.…

> Almost nobody runs mobile Firefox, so that turned out not to matter much Well. The number of installs of Firefox for Android is a nine-digit number. Depending on your perspective that can be thought of as a big or small number. But it certainly is not "nobody".

Most or all stats will show mobile FF browsing usage at about IE6 levels, and I don't think you'll find anyone caring much for the later market any longer.

We [web developers] owe a lot to FF, Firebug, etc, but the writings on the wall for mobile and desktop. Chrome is going to have to screw up really bad, and likewise for the base installs of IE/Edge and Safari. These days, I'm more likely to suggest Brave over FF, if someone really requires a Chrome alternative.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#109

Post by abeyer »

It's sad, but I am seriously worried that this could be the end for firefox. Add to that the recent refocus/re-prioritization on firefox within mozilla, it could be a first death knell for the organization entirely.

I know in my own case, and it seems from comments here and other anecdotal experience, that a significant chunk of remaining firefox users depend on at least one extension that has no migration path, as there simply aren't equivalent APIs implemented or even planned. I really don't understand how they think they are going to maintain a userbase when they remove the last remaining feature that differentiates firefox from the other common browsers. Mozilla starts out in a tough competitive position, as they don't have an OS or platform to bundle a browser with. Alienating the users with the most reason to seek out an alternative seems to just be digging themselves deeper into the hole.

Re: I cannot continue working on my add-ons

#110

Post by sp332 »

AznHisoka wrote: post #26
wvenable wrote: post #11

If this WebExtensions move makes Tab Mix Plus stop working (I use multi-row tabs extensively) then I will no longer have any reason to continue to use Firefox. I put up with it's poor performance and instability merely for this one feature. Nobody needs a clone of Chrome; we already have Chrome.

I also wish chrome would stop prepending http:// everytime i copy an ip from the url bar.

Firefox does the same though?
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