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My frustration with Mozilla deprecating everything I need in Firefox has made it impossible for me to trust them as stewards of a language. Hopefully this contributes to a decoupling of Rust from Mozilla. (EDIT: Am I incorrect that they are deprecating the things I need in Firefox, am I incorrect that I don't trust them, or am I wrong to have hope for a good outcome?)
My frustration with Mozilla deprecating everything I need in Firefox has made it impossible for me to trust them as stewards of a language. Hopefully this contributes to a decoupling of Rust from Mozilla. (EDIT: Am I incorrect that they are deprecating the things I need in Firefox, am I incorrect that I don't trust them, or am I wrong to have hope for a good outcome?)
Can you share some specifics? What exactly have they deprecated?
My frustration with Mozilla deprecating everything I need in Firefox has made it impossible for me to trust them as stewards of a language. Hopefully this contributes to a decoupling of Rust from Mozilla. (EDIT: Am I incorrect that they are deprecating the things I need in Firefox, am I incorrect that I don't trust them, or am I wrong to have hope for a good outcome?)
Can you share some specifics? What exactly have they deprecated?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you share some specifics? What exactly have they deprecated?
XUL-based add-ons are being deprecated, and Firefox is adopting the same extension mechanism as Chrome (but with more extension points). That means that add-ons that make more or less drastic changes to the UI will need to be updated, rewritten or abandoned. This is being done before replacements of equivalent capability have been added to the new API. And there doesn't seem to be signs of awareness of the risks of d…
XUL support isn't removed yet, and the bugs and requests for feedback are open and out there. It's also possible to implement new WebExtension APIs (WebExtension Experiments) and inject them as an add-on, in order to test replacement APIs.
Most of the major addon authors have engaged there, and many already have a WebExtension port. (For those that had Chrome versions, that should be no surprise - the APIs are essentially compatible)
And there doesn't seem to be signs of awareness of the risks of destroying an add-ons platform in the Mozilla team's public representations, or in their reactions to bugs reported by some fairly significant add-on authors considering rewriting to the new API.
It's very well understood that some kinds of very invasive add-ons may no longer be possible, and Mozilla is very well aware of that - to some extent it's very much intentional as it's an essential step to improve the quality on browser upgrades and prevent the continuous breakage that exists now, as well as get some things like Sandboxing working at all. The requirements of the most popular add-ons are tracked, and bugs are filed for the missing parts. But it's not because one popular add-on author whines that he should be allowed some random invasive API hooks, that it will be added. (cough DownThemAll cough)
It's silly to claim the add-on platform will die out when in reality we now have an extension system that works across all major browsers. At least one of those browsers has a (now essentially compatible) add-on collection that has been gradually dwarfing Firefox's. Arguments that add-ons are competitive advantage for Firefox have had no base in reality for the last few years. XUL add-ons and the idea that an addon should interact directly with browser internals have been a stone around Firefox' neck in terms of quality and reliability, and I'll gladly cut the noose.
Swift is a nice language. What's really missing is better non-Mac support. Tools, libraries, etc. It'll become a Top 10 language (by popularity) once it becomes a real option for Linux and Windows.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you share some specifics? What exactly have they deprecated?
XUL-based add-ons are being deprecated, and Firefox is adopting the same extension mechanism as Chrome (but with more extension points). That means that add-ons that make more or less drastic changes to the UI will need to be updated, rewritten or abandoned. This is being done before replacements of equivalent capability have been added to the new API. And there doesn't seem to be signs of awareness of the risks of d…
The only thing Mozilla does in regards to Rust is pay the core developers. Apart from no longer paying them, there isn't much Mozilla can do to influence Rust - it's a community driven project.
It's interesting, and I think it makes sense to me. I started playing with Rust around 0.6 and the focus of the language seemed very different from today. It seemed there was a lot of focus on the more ML-ish aspects of its roots, such as the module system. The language also had a convincing future story for both green threads and garbage collection. While I wouldn't say that it wasn't a systems language, I would say…