Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Extensions in Firefox 59

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 243 posts

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#121

Post by virtualwhys »

neil_macintyre wrote: post #113
virtualwhys wrote: post #109

Was hoping to see Web SQL make its way back into Firefox. Yes, it's been deprecated for years, but that hasn't stopped the browser makers with majority of market share (Google > Chrome, Apple > Safari) from continuing to ship it along with the strictly worse alternative (IndexedDb). Now that pretty much every language compiles to Javascript it's a shame to lose SQL functionality on the client. Shared model, shared va…

Is IndexDB slow at querying a database or is it just a pain to implement?

Totally different API, Sqlite is SQL based while IndexedDb is a key/value store with indexing and transaction capabilities (essentially the bare minimum on which a relational database could be built, the irony).

If your model is highly relational then it doesn't matter that querying for one entity is fast when what you really need is to, for example, efficiently join together multiple entities, grouping on N columns to produce some aggregate result. This is completely straightforward in SQL, but a convoluted inefficient, error prone mess in the alternative.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#122

Post by fiatjaf »

npongratz wrote: post #3

I find this pretty exciting for (hopefully; someday) wider adoption of alternative protocols: Starting with Firefox 59, several protocols that support decentralized architectures are available for use by extensions. The white-listed protocols are: + Dat Project (dat://) + IPFS (dweb:// ipfs:// ipns://) + Secure Scuttlebutt (ssb://)

Honest question: who's using ssb://?

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#123

Post by clouddrover »

fro0116 wrote: post #120

Not really related to extensions, but one thing I've been curious of for a while now: Does the Firefox team have any plans to implement something like Chrome's expensive background timers throttling feature? https://blog.chromium.org/2017/03/reducing-power-consumption... It seems more and more relevant these days with the advent of cryptocurrency miners.

Yes, Firefox 58 has background tab throttling:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era...

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#124

Post by fiatjaf »

virtualwhys wrote: post #109

Was hoping to see Web SQL make its way back into Firefox. Yes, it's been deprecated for years, but that hasn't stopped the browser makers with majority of market share (Google > Chrome, Apple > Safari) from continuing to ship it along with the strictly worse alternative (IndexedDb). Now that pretty much every language compiles to Javascript it's a shame to lose SQL functionality on the client. Shared model, shared va…

Why would you want SQL on the browser? You cannot sync it to any SQL backend. Are you shipping pure client-side apps with complex data structures?

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#125

Post by fro0116 »

clouddrover wrote: post #123
fro0116 wrote: post #120

Not really related to extensions, but one thing I've been curious of for a while now: Does the Firefox team have any plans to implement something like Chrome's expensive background timers throttling feature? https://blog.chromium.org/2017/03/reducing-power-consumption... It seems more and more relevant these days with the advent of cryptocurrency miners.

Yes, Firefox 58 has background tab throttling: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/firefox-58-the-quantum-era...

Ah thank you! That's great to hear. Looks like I just couldn't find the right search terms to find it.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#126

Post by soapdog »

guelo wrote: post #112
soapdog wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot for the kind words! :-) talking about safety and integrity, have you seen how Scuttlebutt works? Check the secret handshake part of: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/#handshake In essence, your connection to a given peer is encrypted in a way that only you both have the keys, even if someone breaks that key (such as the peer being a bad agent) it would not compromise your connection with…

It's nice but the fact that you can never delete a message in your feed means that it doesn't really work as a social media protocol. Some people see that as a feature since it is theoretically uncensorable, but that's not how humans like to interact.

I have been using patchwork[1] as my main social network client for scuttlebutt. In my current experience, the fact that messages are not removable makes me more careful when writing and has led to much better and more meaningful interactions on the network.

Also remember that a message being in the feed doesn't mean it is displayed. Scuttlebutt is quite flexible, there are clients that have support for "chess messages" so their users can play chess, patchwork doesn't support those messages so I don't even see them. There is git-ssb[2] which allows people to host and contribute to code directly inside the feed, not all clients show these messages but they are all there.

New messages could be added for flagging a message id as deleted and clients could honor them and not display that message anymore, they would still be on the feed, much like in version control systems we still have access to deleted files (if no one rewrites history).

I enjoy how permanent things are there because as a side-effect it causes people to care more about the ecosystem and culture as those are permanent stuff you're putting out there. Check out this essay "the future will be technical"[3] about the culture on scuttlebutt, you'll see it is quite different than other social networks, but I agree with you, your experience may vary and what I consider an advantage, others may see as a reason not to use.

[1]: https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/ [2]: https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro [3]: https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical...

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#127

Post by damnyou »

kuschku wrote: post #103
hobofan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whitelist on what you can register as protocol handlers is a security measure. E.g. if Paypal uses "paypal:" links which are handled by a OS native application, you can't write a extension that hijacks those links.

So how do I make an extension that supports Firefox 57 or later and does mycustomprotocol:// without prefix? Do I have to Rowhammer my access through Firefox' code? I do not see how it is in Mozilla's right to restrict what a user can do with the user's browser.

Simple. You download the source, patch it, and build your own version.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#128

Post by soapdog »

classichasclass wrote: post #116
soapdog wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I did just like you said using Native Messaging API[1] to communicate with a local companion app using standard input/output shell calls, this app can handle the socket communication, that is how I am handling it for the scuttlebutt experiments I am doing (I mentioned them above with some URLs if you want to check), I hope to start a conversation soon on the add-ons list about the needs of having UDP and TCP avai…

Is this bug 1247628?

oh! I was not aware of that bug! thanks a lot for pointing it to me, I will add myself to the CC list there and join the talk.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#130

Post by pjc50 »

kuschku wrote: post #110
setr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hell does the prefix have to do with user rights? This is a matter of convenience, not capability. You want arbitrary protocols? The prefix is available to you. You want blessed protocols? The non-prefix is available to you. There's no restriction in place. And anyways, given OSS, you can bless your protocol with a custom build. But just because you want it blessed doesn't mean it should be forced onto everyone e…

I follow Stallman’s school of thought that software should never restrict the user in ability. A user should not be protected from themselves, if a user wants to install an addon to intercept paypal:// requests for whatever reason, that should be their choice. And it should not require the user to do custom changes to the system.

Regardless of what RMS thinks, users should be protected from code downloaded from the Internet. There have been too many problems with malicious extensions not to do this.
Post reply on HN