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Firefox 57.0 Released

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Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#661

Post by Yoric »

xtraeme wrote: post #648
Yoric wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this would have meant no Firefox Quantum. As a Firefox dev (I'm still working at Mozilla, although not much on Firefox atm), I have seen many, many occurrences in which I couldn't optimize codepaths, or even in some case fix bugs, because the old extension mechanism made it impossible. Consider the necessary steps: 1. realize that an internal API is broken; 2. come up with a new non-broken API; 3. port…

I hate to be the person to say this, but perhaps a better approach would have been to simply create a build pipeline that iterated over the addons on AMO to find the ones that use functions from the changed API and bulk send out an email about the changes to the authors (this eliminates steps 5 through 8). The addon developers then get the chance to change it or not. If it's broken oh well (eliminating steps 8 throug…

> I hate to be the person to say this, but perhaps a better approach would have been to simply create a build pipeline that iterated over the addons on AMO to find the ones that use functions from the changed API and bulk send out an email about the changes to the authors (this eliminates steps 5 through 8).

This would have automated steps 5 through 8, but not significantly reduced the problem.

> The addon developers then get the chance to change it or not. If it's broken oh well (eliminating steps 8 through 15).

Ah, well, sure, in that case, randomly breaking add-ons all the time would indeed have made our life easier. But everybody else's life would have been much worse, so we decided not to do that :)

> Making it the responsibility of the FF core team to sit on changes while waiting for a reply is a procedural problem not a problem with XUL/XPCOM.

It's a problem of the combination of having no API (i.e. XUL/XPCOM) and not wanting to break user's add-ons.

> Moving to Web Extensions, which fundamentally make it impossible to access the full file system, permanently breaking many useful addons with no functional way to migrate to FF57 and calling that better is frankly dishonest.

Let's just say that we have different priorities. While it's not as powerful, it's better for security, performance, privacy, bugs and future-proofing.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#662

Post by V-2 »

benlower wrote: post #509
manojlds wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it as just as good as chrome, why should I switch? Especially given how good Chrome Dev tools are.

because Google has the worst biz model in the tech industry and is doing harm to the world.

Fortunately brave rebels fight against this harm in every way they can :)

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-go...

The real world is not Star Wars. For all the privacy considerations etc., this comment above reads extremely naive.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#663

Post by Yoric »

Anthony-G wrote: post #616
Yoric wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this would have meant no Firefox Quantum. As a Firefox dev (I'm still working at Mozilla, although not much on Firefox atm), I have seen many, many occurrences in which I couldn't optimize codepaths, or even in some case fix bugs, because the old extension mechanism made it impossible. Consider the necessary steps: 1. realize that an internal API is broken; 2. come up with a new non-broken API; 3. port…

Many thanks for this informative post. I’ve read quite a few of the official Mozilla communications (announcements, blog posts, etc.) and so far, this has been the best explanation I’ve read for the impetus to move from XUL-based add-ons to WebExtensions. I write this from the perspective of a user who will lose almost half of their current extensions when they upgrade to 57.

Thanks :)

(and sorry about your extensions)

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#664

Post by jhasse »

robin_reala wrote: post #87
andrepd wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WebEx Tree Style Tabs is markedly inferior to the "Legacy" version. It is simply an integral and indispensable part of my workflow, so much that I can't even fathom browsing without it. I guess I'll stay on 56 for a while.

If you’re going to stay on a version then you’re probably better off on Firefox ESR as the current version will keep on getting security fixes until the middle of next year (by which time hopefully the features you’re missing will have come back).

I doubt it.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#665

Post by jhasse »

wickawic wrote: post #63
andrepd wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WebEx Tree Style Tabs is markedly inferior to the "Legacy" version. It is simply an integral and indispensable part of my workflow, so much that I can't even fathom browsing without it. I guess I'll stay on 56 for a while.

What is worse about it in your opinion? I was pleasantly surprised with how well it worked, and in fact the old extension had bugs for me where hiding the tab bar wouldn’t work properly.

No native context menus.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#666

Post by Santosh83 »

V-2 wrote: post #659

As one of these people who switched away from Firefox to Chrome a long time ago, I was curious to give it another go now that it's revamped and all. I tend to do it very year or so, but something is always wrong. Unfortunately, I quickly bumped into one simple deal-breaker (the same that discouraged me from using Opera once, if I recall). Firefox adds a few pixels of useless gap space above the tabs, meaning I always…

Not for me. I can slam the cursor to the top edge of the screen and click on a background tab and it comes to focus just fine. This is of course with Firefox maximised. Am on Windows 10 just for info... perhaps the UI is slightly different under your OS...

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#667

Post by _lce0 »

piyush_soni wrote: post #479
barrkel wrote: post #7

Hopefully most of the missing extensions will be developed sooner rather than later. I have 15 extensions installed, 14 of which are "Legacy". The most critical one, Tree Style Tabs, has been converted. That was the key blocker that prevented me from seriously using Chrome. But many more remain; Cookie Controller, RefControl, some kind of Classic Theme Restorer equivalent (to get a menu bar back for Bookmarks, at a m…

For me it's the Tab Groups add-on which is just irreplaceable! Firefox's "Containers" helps a bit but not that much.

The TagGroups is so part of my daily basis that I went back to the v56.0

I cannot stress enough how it helps me to switch between contexts. It's one of those things that you just did not know that you needed so much.

What options do we have?

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#668

Post by xtraeme »

Yoric wrote: post #661
xtraeme wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be the person to say this, but perhaps a better approach would have been to simply create a build pipeline that iterated over the addons on AMO to find the ones that use functions from the changed API and bulk send out an email about the changes to the authors (this eliminates steps 5 through 8). The addon developers then get the chance to change it or not. If it's broken oh well (eliminating steps 8 throug…

> I hate to be the person to say this, but perhaps a better approach would have been to simply create a build pipeline that iterated over the addons on AMO to find the ones that use functions from the changed API and bulk send out an email about the changes to the authors (this eliminates steps 5 through 8). This would have automated steps 5 through 8, but not significantly reduced the problem. > The addon developers…

> Ah, well, sure, in that case, randomly breaking add-ons all the time would indeed have made our life easier. But everybody else's life would have been much worse, so we decided not to do that :)

This is the part that I think you are going to get the most flak for. People are willing to deal with temporary setbacks if the changes can be brought in at some point. Permanently breaking things and calling that better will get the Mozilla Foundation a mountain of angry hate mail from people who committed to the platform.

> Let's just say that we have different priorities. While it's not as powerful, it's better for security, performance, privacy, bugs and future-proofing.

I have no problem if the Mozilla Foundation or the Firefox team has different priorities, but say that rather than telling technical people the reason for the changes is because XUL or XPCOM are somehow so hideous the team had no choice. It smacks of dishonesty when everything that you have described here is a problem with procedure not anything technical.

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#669

Post by thristian »

slrz wrote: post #523
Yoric wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(thanks :) ) > As long as you're here: I was told that the old extension API was way too broad, locking in a lot of design choices that were not really considered from the "do we want to maintain this for years and years" perspective. And that the new one is much more focused and considered. Is that the case? Definitely. The old extension mechanism was basically "here is the toolkit we are using to build Firefox, com…

Thank you for your work on Firefox. > This WebExtension API is much smaller, much better documented, and does not expose internals-only stuff. It also doesn't expose a lot of stuff that's useful and not tied to Firefox internals in any way. The browser is one of the most heavily used programs on people's computers. Integrating it with the rest of your system and workflow can have huge payoffs in user experience and p…

As a fellow fan of It's All Text, I've looked into this a little bit, though I never got around to implementing anything. You're looking for the "Native Messaging" feature: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Na...

I just checked the It's All Text github repo, and their suggested replacement is a thing called GhostText¹, which actually seems a good deal fancier that IAT ever was.

¹: https://github.com/GhostText/GhostText

Re: Firefox 57.0 Released

#670

Post by V-2 »

Santosh83 wrote: post #666
V-2 wrote: post #659

As one of these people who switched away from Firefox to Chrome a long time ago, I was curious to give it another go now that it's revamped and all. I tend to do it very year or so, but something is always wrong. Unfortunately, I quickly bumped into one simple deal-breaker (the same that discouraged me from using Opera once, if I recall). Firefox adds a few pixels of useless gap space above the tabs, meaning I always…

Not for me. I can slam the cursor to the top edge of the screen and click on a background tab and it comes to focus just fine. This is of course with Firefox maximised. Am on Windows 10 just for info... perhaps the UI is slightly different under your OS...

I'm on Windows 10, too, so I assume the UI shouldn't be that far off.

The problem - see the link to Bugzilla I pasted - is supposedly related to the use of multiple displays (which involves different DPI settings). A small thing to be sure, but somewhat annoying, given that switching tabs is a fairly common action when using a web browser.

What's unpleasant is how long it takes to resolve it. From Bugzilla:

> This is a pretty annoying usability regression that will ship in 50. Will we be able to fix it for 51?

It's version 57 :)

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