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Extensions in Firefox 59

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#141

Post by kuschku »

tptacek wrote: post #136
kuschku wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restricting what users can do for their own "safety" is what gives us walled gardens such as iOS. I use Firefox precisely because I can (or, rather, could) override basically all browser functionality with addons, without having to set up a custom build server and apt repo myself.

Where by "safety" you mean "the most secure mainstream computing platform currently available, setting a standard to which other platforms approach only asymptotically and with significant end-user effort". Obviously, I can't end decide this debate, such as it is, in a single comment (or, likely at all, with an acolyte!). But someone should get the message into the tech message board bubble that in the modern softwar…

The safest computing platform is an airgapped 386, that doesn’t make it useful.

In the same way, iOS may be safe, but entirely useless for many people’s use cases.

And additional, safety is entirely orthogonal to restricting choice. You can have a walled garden that is insecure, e.g. the Amazon Kindles, or you can have an open system that is secure, e.g. OpenBSD.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#142

Post by superkuh »

rocky1138 wrote: post #59

As a technical user who values choice and customisability, I am totally fine with their choice of disabling tab hiding until you flip a bit in the configs. It's the best of both worlds: customisability for power users and security for regular folks.

Or it would be if it stayed this way. It was this way for a while with extensions. You could install extensions you wanted freely. Then there was a config bit to make it so you could install extensions without Mozilla approval. Then they decided grandma was more important and completely removed the ability to install extensions not approved by Mozilla.

The only way around it is to run a beta version or use the unpackaged unbranded versions manually.

I wouldn't count on power user features remaining for long given Mozilla's current target demographic.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#143

Post by geekamongus »

I went all in with 57 (the first 'Quantum' release) after having been a Chrome user for quite a while. I really haven't missed Chrome at all since I made the move, and in fact, am continually impressed by the little things in Firefox that I keep discovering. Not to mention the speed.

These changes look like they will eventually make things better, especially for extension developers and those of us who get to reap their benefits.

Keep up the good work, Mozilla.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#144

Post by Mathnerd314 »

shmerl wrote: post #5

Mozilla should fix no exit confirmation for Ctrl+Q. It's just too easy to close the browser this way, and extensions that offered this feature aren't working anymore. It's really a problem in general, there is no way to make an extension that customizes browser behavior itself (rather than page behavior), since WebExtensions can't do that.

There is a WebExtension for that, works on Windows & Mac: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-ctrl-...

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#146

Post by contravariant »

joemccall86 wrote: post #9

> To better support mouse gestures, browserSettings.contextMenuShowEvent() has been added in this version. This new API can be set to “mouseup” or “mousedown” by extensions to determine when context menus should be shown. Looking forward to using FireGestures in Linux again.

Now if only they could come up with something that means I don't have to wait for a page to load before regaining control with custom hotkeys / gestures.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#147

Post by virtualwhys »

jgj wrote: post #132
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…

> but no, now one has to wait for sqlite-lite to be built on top of IndexedDb not exactly sqlite-lite, but it's sqlish and it's build on top of IDB: https://github.com/google/lovefield

Thanks for the link, I've been hunting around everywhere looking for a cross platform solution.

In a sibling comment I mentioned the fact that most languages compile to Javascript, the primary benefit being able to share code across client and server. So, if you've got a query DSL on the server that hooks into an SQL database you can use the same code on the client, hooking into an SQL database on the frontend.

All of the IndexedDb wrappers I've seen do essentially their own thing; in Lovefield's case, "The difference is that Lovefield does not accept raw SQL statements; instead, it has a builder-pattern API to build queries", which means it's effectively a client-side only solution if pure SQL is the output target of your query DSL.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#148

Post by shostack »

poopslide wrote: post #140
scrollaway wrote: post #27

Anyone working on this reading the thread? Can we ever expect an extension that will allow the far better tab management that Chrome has? Namely: Being able to scroll between tabs with the scroll wheel, and being able to select multiple tabs with shift/ctrl to drag them/merge them/close them/etc. It's crazy to me that Firefox's original selling point was tab management, and today Chrome's is so much better.

How I wish there was a session manager for Firefox Mobile, or just any Android browser in general.

How I wish there was a session manager for 57+. The Session Manager plugin was great but I'm not aware of any alternatives and Firefox doesn't seem to support a library of multiple past sessions to pick from.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#149

Post by virtualwhys »

CorpusCalcium wrote: post #139
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…

What practical benefit would that really have over just using your choice of SQL engine with wasm, though?

I don't know, is my choice of SQL engine (sqlite) via WASM a realistic solution? How does one compile sqlite to WASM, and how is this made available to the end user?

sql.js[1] is a pure JS implementation of sqlite and it weighs a ton (2.6MB) compared to browser supplied native sqlite. Ideally the user doesn't have to pay the price of downloading a large binary (on top of already large SPA).

[1] https://github.com/kripken/sql.js/

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#150

Post by rocky1138 »

superkuh wrote: post #142
rocky1138 wrote: post #59

As a technical user who values choice and customisability, I am totally fine with their choice of disabling tab hiding until you flip a bit in the configs. It's the best of both worlds: customisability for power users and security for regular folks.

Or it would be if it stayed this way. It was this way for a while with extensions. You could install extensions you wanted freely. Then there was a config bit to make it so you could install extensions without Mozilla approval. Then they decided grandma was more important and completely removed the ability to install extensions not approved by Mozilla. The only way around it is to run a beta version or use the unpack…

I'm very interested to see if they make the same mistake twice.
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