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Firefox 68.0

mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox 68.0

#161

Post by BiosElement »

JeremyNT wrote: post #129
lol768 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the other point of view: > We're certainly aware of how significant ad blocking extensions are. This release required a great quantity of features with only a six month timeline until now. > We already support a very limited set of the WebExtensions API to offer features like Reader Mode. Rest assured that more features will land in the coming months. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20298143 This rea…

> This reads like FUD to me. The dev team know how important extensions are to their users. Just because they know how important it is doesn't mean they care . I'm sure Google also knew how important ad blocking was to many Chrome users when they decided to remove that functionality from their browser, too.

uBlock seems to work just fine, not sure why you're claiming they removed it.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#162

Post by photon-torpedo »

bzbarsky wrote: post #34
photon-torpedo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So distributing documentation for offline use as a bunch of HTML + CSS files will now run into problems?

If it's just HTML + CSS and no script, everything will work correctly. The release note refers to script access (XHR, DOM access across windows).

I see, thanks. The linked release notes make it sound like the block is for all files.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#163

Post by callahad »

icebraining wrote: post #150
callahad wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi. I work for Mozilla. Firefox for Android is not dead. You are free to continue using it. It will continue to support add-ons, and it will receive regular security updates and bugfixes for at least the next year. We are focusing all new feature development in Firefox Preview, but we're continuing to support Firefox for Android as an Extended Support Release while we build Preview. And, for what it's worth, we do un…

Will Preview be guaranteed to support extensions before Firefox for Android goes EOL?

I can't make any specific commitment, but there's a lot of time between now and Firefox for Android going EOL (and we haven't committed to specific timing for that, either.)

However, we do have concrete plans for supporting adblocking as a built-in feature in the near future (https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/96), which should make Preview more palatable to folks who rely on add-ons for that, even if only as a stopgap.

More fundamentally, when considering major features like add-on support, we want to take the time to ensure that we're getting our design right at all relevant levels: Firefox Preview, the underlying GeckoView library, and the Gecko engine itself. And though development on Preview moves quickly, there's still a lot of design and development work yet to be done.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#164

Post by cbdumas »

mooreds wrote: post #4

I love Firefox. First thing I install on any new computer. Super happy they keep pushing the web forward. Not a fan of the chromium quasi monopoly (not that the folks behind it are bad, just that any monoculture is problematic). Thanks for pushing the web forward!

I've recently begun running into internal facing web apps that only work in Chrome :(

Re: Firefox 68.0

#165

Post by kevin_b_er »

lol768 wrote: post #120
kevin_b_er wrote: post #47

This marks the last Android release with extensions/add-on support. There will not be a 69 release of this edition of Firefox for Android ("Fennec"). The new remake of the mobile browser ("Fenix") does not have extensions support and it is on an indefinite and easily ignorable backlog. It is explicitly not being worked on this quarter. At the end of this quarter is the scheduled release of Firefox 69. Unless there's…

And the other point of view: > We're certainly aware of how significant ad blocking extensions are. This release required a great quantity of features with only a six month timeline until now. > We already support a very limited set of the WebExtensions API to offer features like Reader Mode. Rest assured that more features will land in the coming months. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20298143 This rea…

More "features will land", not necessarily extensions. They have limited internal extensions API because several of their features were implemented with bundled extensions, but it doesn't talk about extensions/addons themselves.

And, yes, there's the "ad blocking" issue: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/96

What does it actually say? The requirement is "Integrate/support for different adblock lists (see Focus)".

So you can have certain ad-block lists, but not the actual customization and not uBlock Origin.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#166

Post by rustyminnow »

jdlyga wrote: post #17

I've been running Firefox full time on all my computers for a few months now. It's been really good. I've tried to switch away from Chrome in the past, but I've always had to come back due to performance issues or incompatibility with something. But it's basically 95% on par with Chrome now (missing a few things like syncing search engines, etc)

What is "syncing search engines"?

Re: Firefox 68.0

#167

Post by callahad »

wtallis wrote: post #154
callahad wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fennec is moving to an Extended Support Release model so we can focus on Preview. This means that the engine will remain at major version 68 for the next year, but it will still receive security updates and bugfixes. And it will continue to support add-ons.

Why hasn't Mozilla put out a clear statement that Fennec is EOL'd and that the replacement definitely won't be pushed out until it's ready (including support for extensions)? It would go a long way with users if Mozilla could just clearly state that Firefox for Android will be skipping versions 69 through at least ~73 due to Fenix not being ready for public consumption. Stating that extension support is not part of t…

We did make a statement mostly to that effect on the dev-platform list back in April: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform...

It got picked up by a handful of news outlets, but there's just a lot of news these days, so it's easy to miss things.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#168

Post by bovine3dom »

sp332 wrote: post #157
catacombs wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thanks for pushing the web forward! Making a browser that breaks extensions used by millions of people (Vimperator comes to mind) and making extension development harder is not pushing the web forward.

Vimium-FF, Tridactyl, and Vim Vixen adapted. It's true the APIs that allow this kind of thing lagged behind for a while, but there was enough interest to eventually develop those APIs. P.S. Vimperator had 15,000 users according to https://web.archive.org/web/20171016205807/https://addons.mo... Vimium-FF alone has 26,000 now.

FWIW, there are quite a few things that haven't been added to the API, most importantly the ability to accept key events from pages where our content script isn't running.

In fact, very little has been added that has made our life easier (the main one being the search API) since we first started developing Tridactyl. Features have actually been taken away from us - notably the ability to operate on PDFs.

Not to detract from your point, though - most of the API was already there and fine in September 2017.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#169

Post by kevin_b_er »

snek wrote: post #115
kevin_b_er wrote: post #47

This marks the last Android release with extensions/add-on support. There will not be a 69 release of this edition of Firefox for Android ("Fennec"). The new remake of the mobile browser ("Fenix") does not have extensions support and it is on an indefinite and easily ignorable backlog. It is explicitly not being worked on this quarter. At the end of this quarter is the scheduled release of Firefox 69. Unless there's…

This is a lot of FUD. Making a browser is hard, and making a modular browser is harder. It's clearly on their list of things to do, but it's behind all the other "making a browser" things.

They've made no commitment to extensions, but clearly are targeting this new replacement browser for version 69 in a few months.

What they haven't done is given a clear statement. Nothing about if their replacement is going to drop extension support. But every response from Mozilla has been a sidestep and that I cannot overlook.

Re: Firefox 68.0

#170

Post by sp332 »

bovine3dom wrote: post #168
sp332 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vimium-FF, Tridactyl, and Vim Vixen adapted. It's true the APIs that allow this kind of thing lagged behind for a while, but there was enough interest to eventually develop those APIs. P.S. Vimperator had 15,000 users according to https://web.archive.org/web/20171016205807/https://addons.mo... Vimium-FF alone has 26,000 now.

FWIW, there are quite a few things that haven't been added to the API, most importantly the ability to accept key events from pages where our content script isn't running. In fact, very little has been added that has made our life easier (the main one being the search API) since we first started developing Tridactyl. Features have actually been taken away from us - notably the ability to operate on PDFs. Not to detra…

Thanks for the update. It's been a long time since I've seen this brought up here.
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