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Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

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Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#101

Post by jessaustin »

Causality1 wrote: post #93
userbinator wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome realized that if it jumped ahead in version number, it could gain a huge PR advantage, and then Firefox was forced to follow that pattern or appear outdated. Personal anecdote, but of all the non-technical people I know (which I define as those who may barely know what a browser is, and only use the computer for browsing a tiny fraction of the Internet), none of them like the constant change, especially when i…

Certainly isn't me. I'm still salty about Firefox 2 removing the "close current tab" button and putting an X on every tab instead. It was nice having that muscle memory instead of having to hunt down whichever tab you're currently focused on.

Surely there's an extension for that?

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#102

Post by userbinator »

Causality1 wrote: post #93
userbinator wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome realized that if it jumped ahead in version number, it could gain a huge PR advantage, and then Firefox was forced to follow that pattern or appear outdated. Personal anecdote, but of all the non-technical people I know (which I define as those who may barely know what a browser is, and only use the computer for browsing a tiny fraction of the Internet), none of them like the constant change, especially when i…

Certainly isn't me. I'm still salty about Firefox 2 removing the "close current tab" button and putting an X on every tab instead. It was nice having that muscle memory instead of having to hunt down whichever tab you're currently focused on.

I've never used Firefox 1.x so haven't used that UI, but it sounds like something they could've made configurable but didn't want to, for whatever reason.

However, in all the tabbed browsers I've used, Ctrl+F4 closes the current tab.

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#103

Post by brisance »

mushufasa wrote: post #60
geofft wrote: post #44

> It is a regular occurrence to hear about open source developers selling their browser extensions, only for their users to be exploited later on by the new owners. ... We are witnessing the failure of browser vendors to recognize the value of our labor and the important role it plays in a healthy browser ecosystem. So this is an interesting philosophical question - the market value of the extension is the value of "…

What if Google/Mozilla just awarded a monthly prize to developers based on the popularity of an extension? Browser providers pay for ecosystem improvements -- a better product.

Ad blocking probably would be #1. What does it mean if Google pays an extension developer for ad blocking? Would it be racketeering? Bribery?

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#104

Post by ww520 »

I wrote browser extensions in pastime. They are mainly for my needs and happen to be useful for others. I'm lucky that I don't need to write extensions for financial reason, and don't ever plan to sell out. On the other hand, I can understand why some developers choose to do so. People get a family to feed. It would certainly helpful for Google and Mozilla to have greater support for the extension developers financially.

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#105

Post by tomc1985 »

asr wrote: post #13

On the one hand, this seems like a real missed opportunity by Mozilla. As Chrome reigns in extensions that conflict with Google's business model, this is a reason to use Firefox. BUT - extensions are also often the cause of a slow and frustrating Firefox experience, which then leads folks to talk about how Chrome is better-performing/faster (I've been guilty of this myself in the past). Mozilla needs to make sure Fir…

Statements like this make me long for the days where extensability and customizability reigned supreme

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#106

Post by wolco »

geofft wrote: post #99
londons_explore wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With many extensions having hundreds of thousands of lines of minified code, a manual check is unlikely to find anything nefarious if it's been well hidden.

IMO, extension authors should not be allowed to submit minified code alone to the extension stores for review. (Options include having standard minifiers that the extension stores run themselves, allowing extension authors to provide a .travis.yml or something where the sources to the build pipeline are themselves auditable, etc.) I can see an argument for withholding source from end users for things like paid extens…

Minified code is easy to beautify. More important what side effects the extensoon does.

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#107

Post by pteraspidomorph »

zaat wrote: post #46
asr wrote: post #13

On the one hand, this seems like a real missed opportunity by Mozilla. As Chrome reigns in extensions that conflict with Google's business model, this is a reason to use Firefox. BUT - extensions are also often the cause of a slow and frustrating Firefox experience, which then leads folks to talk about how Chrome is better-performing/faster (I've been guilty of this myself in the past). Mozilla needs to make sure Fir…

>BUT - extensions are also often the cause of a slow and frustrating Firefox experience, which then leads folks to talk about how Chrome is better-performing/faster IE (used to?) have this bottom notification warning about 'X plugin is slowing IE, would you like to disable it?'. Perhaps Firefox should add similar feature and notify users about slow plugins, maybe even with some actual data instead of a vague slowness…

Your extensions are listed along with their resource usage in about:performance !

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#108

Post by mushufasa »

brisance wrote: post #103
mushufasa wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Google/Mozilla just awarded a monthly prize to developers based on the popularity of an extension? Browser providers pay for ecosystem improvements -- a better product.

Ad blocking probably would be #1. What does it mean if Google pays an extension developer for ad blocking? Would it be racketeering? Bribery?

More of a Mozilla opportunity then.

This would not create a scenario for extension developers to get rich, but it would provide some support to keep going, which could justify turning down potentially harmful monetization alternatives.

Hosting a conference or creating a fellowship for top extension developers could also work -- some measure of appreciation that helps developers earn a living, directly or indirectly.

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#109

Post by mevile »

geofft wrote: post #96
mevile wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of an extension is whatever someone is willing to pay for it. The value of someone's ethics also has a price. It is a different price for everyone. It's silly to go into details about ethics, because maybe I donate half of the unethical income to buy mosquito nets and now I've traded saving lives with inconveniencing users or some other such very personal calculation/rationalization. You can browbeat develo…

This doesn't respond to my argument: if your users knew that your sense of ethics is that attacking their private browsing data to buy mosquito nets is justified, they wouldn't be your users. (That small subset of your users that thinks mosquito nets are a good use of money would either donate directly and ignore your extension, or voluntarily participate in a scheme to turn ad views into mosquito nets such that you…

Ok, I understand now and I don't disagree. Makes sense.

Re: Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

#110

Post by spookyuser »

oceanghost wrote: post #3

I know this is tangential-- I would like to write a FF extension -- can anyone point out some good resources for that? Beyond what's on Moz's official site of course.

One of the things I found most lacking from the official chrome and FF documentation, is how to use NPM with your extension for dependencies and how to automatically build and release to both the FF store and chrome store.

There are a couple of issues that come up if you just plonk a package.json in your root folder, for example - now you the same information like extension name and version number duplicated across two files, the npm package.json and the webextension's manifest.json. Nevermind the fact that it's not obvious at all how to distribute the npm dependencies with the extension once you have them installed on your computer

On all of these issues, the best "tutorial" I've found is just looking at the structure of sindresorhus's "refined GitHub" repo. He and the contributors have totally nailed how to integrate npm, automate the build and manage the package.json files plus much much more, in a very readable way. I would definitely consider mirroring the rough structure of refined GitHub just for sanity reasons. Everything about it makes sense.

Here's a link to the refined GitHub repo --https://github.com/sindresorhus/refined-github

And if it helps here's a link to the extension I built using refined GitHub as a model -- https://github.com/spookyUnknownUser/laconic_hover I tried to implement the most minimally important features of the build and packaging system of refined GitHub in my project.

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