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Extensions in Firefox 59

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#221

Post by virtualwhys »

nickik wrote: post #217
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…

This would be way better then either: https://github.com/mozilla/mentat

Sure, same with Haskell's Esqueleto, Scala's Slick and Quill, F#'s LINQ, etc., these would all be wonderful to run in the browser, but that's not the reality, nothing is ready yet.

Mentat, for example, is built on sqlite, and in order to use it you have to run an Electron app. If there was a native version of sqlite (or other sqlite-like database) then there would be no such restriction.

It seems the best bet all of the above projects have for a friction-free implementation is WASM. When that's widely supported then one can ship whatever one wants (e.g. WASM sqlite) with their client-side application. Then, finally, it will be possible to use the same query DSL on client and server.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#222

Post by virtualwhys »

pcwalton wrote: post #204
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…

Web SQL was never in Firefox. The problem with Web SQL was that the spec was effectively just "whatever SQLite does". That isn't good enough for the Web. Imagine if the GIF specification had been "whatever GIFLIB does". Libraries like Lovefield can be built way faster than specifications can be written.

> Libraries like Lovefield can be built way faster than specifications can be written.

That may be true, but when said library uses a builder pattern rather than sql statements you can throw out all of your server-side query DSL code and waste time reimplementing everything on the client.

Since SQL has been around for several decades it's not surprising that mature server-side SQL libraries are available in abundance. And these days every language under the sun compiles to javascript -- wouldn't it be great to share the same query DSL code on client and server?

The answer is, emphatically, yes! Current state of affairs makes this virtually impossible to do in a widely supported manner.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#223

Post by shmerl »

simcop2387 wrote: post #57
shmerl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it can undo everything, if you'll lose data in the process. Not every open page is static and some can have user input and what not. Exiting the browser will wipe it all out, and restarting it isn't going to help. So confirmation for Ctrl+Q is a must, there is no question about it. And if you don't want it - they can make an option that can turn it off.

This guy has been working for me on linux and macos to prevent ctrl+q/cmd+q from exiting the browser, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-ctrl-...

Well, I don't really want to disable it, but I need a confirmation for actual quitting.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#224

Post by shmerl »

floatboth wrote: post #29
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.

browser.tabs.warnOnClose = true, browser.showQuitWarning = true, DO NOT SET "Show my windows and tabs from last time"

It doesn't make any sense. I want to have "Show my windows and tabs from last time" and I want to have warning on quit.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#225

Post by Sylos »

grumdan wrote: post #179
Sylos wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The config bit for allowing unsigned extensions was temporary from the start. They did not later redecide that they wanted to remove it, they knew from the beginning that it did not offer the security that they wanted to achieve. Because any extension or sufficiently capable malware on your system can change about:config values, meaning that if Mozilla ever makes a mistake in the extension approval process and lets a…

> Because any extension or sufficiently capable malware on your system can change about:config values, meaning that if Mozilla ever makes a mistake in the extension approval process and lets a malicious extension slip through, or you get such malware on your PC, then that extension/malware would be able to flip that config bit and open the flood gates for all malicious extensions. If such a malicious extension or oth…

It's much easier to hide the flipping of one about:config value in your code than it is to hide a full-fledged spyware suite.

Same for OS-level malware, which can only do so much suspicious things before it's noticed by antivirus software or the user.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#226

Post by grumdan »

Sylos wrote: post #225
grumdan wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because any extension or sufficiently capable malware on your system can change about:config values, meaning that if Mozilla ever makes a mistake in the extension approval process and lets a malicious extension slip through, or you get such malware on your PC, then that extension/malware would be able to flip that config bit and open the flood gates for all malicious extensions. If such a malicious extension or oth…

It's much easier to hide the flipping of one about:config value in your code than it is to hide a full-fledged spyware suite. Same for OS-level malware, which can only do so much suspicious things before it's noticed by antivirus software or the user.

Just flipping the about:config bit alone doesn't help much though. Any malicious extension installed after changing the setting would still have to have some payload with similar malicious behavior.

Moreover, even if Firefox was compiled without support for that setting, malware could patch the Firefox binary (or download and install a malicious version) to disable the check and then it'd still be able to hide itself as a Firefox extension instead of a binary somewhere else on the system. Once there's malicious code running on the system, it's game over and a flag disabling installing more malware using one out of many possible methods is not going to help much.

However, not having the setting may help for users that get tricked into toggling it through some web page telling them to and then installing a malicious extension, but that's a different scenario than an already compromised system.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#227

Post by btschaegg »

adambyrtek wrote: post #91
btschaegg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certainly not what OP is using, but if you're interested in tabbing of arbitrary windows as a built-in OS feature, I'd suggest you have a look at how BeOS used to do that. You can still try it with Haiku[1]. I'm also fairly certain that functionality could be implemented with a handful of scripts in awesome (in a floating way instead of using pre-existing tiling WM features). [1]: https://www.haiku-os.org…

Many tiling windows managers like i3 and XMonad have a tabbed layout: https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_changing_the_container... https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmonad-contrib-0.13/docs...

> Many tiling windows managers like i3 and XMonad have a tabbed layout

I'm aware of that - I use Sway on my linux machines, which ported that over from i3. But thanks for pointing it out, anyway :)

What I didn't know is that openbox and fluxbox can do this too, as oblio notes (but that's more out of disinterest for those two - maybe I should have a closer look).

I mainly pointed at awesome because I find it to be - well - awesome for being so flexible. You can do almost anything if you want to bend it for your specific workflows - be that in a tiling or floating layout.

For example: I still have a couple of scripts lying around that introduce the workspace behavior of the Gnome 3 shell in an awesome desktop.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#228

Post by btschaegg »

electroly wrote: post #177
btschaegg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certainly not what OP is using, but if you're interested in tabbing of arbitrary windows as a built-in OS feature, I'd suggest you have a look at how BeOS used to do that. You can still try it with Haiku[1]. I'm also fairly certain that functionality could be implemented with a handful of scripts in awesome (in a floating way instead of using pre-existing tiling WM features). [1]: https://www.haiku-os.org…

BeOS did surprisingly little with its tab titlebars. It couldn't even automatically stack them. If you wanted to use them as actual tabs you had to hold down shift and manually move each individual tab to the right spot along the top of the window, and then manually move the windows on top of each other to sorta simulate pages being stacked. No sort of "drag these windows together and we'll turn them into tabbed page…

I find BeOS mainly curious because it experimented with strange features on each level (e.g. said tabs, BeFS/Tagging, etc). I think every one of those features should (and probably would) have gotten an overhaul by now if Be Inc. was still around.

That said, I haven't looked much at their APIs. If the tabbing behaviour is exposed properly, I can imagine it would be quite easy to write a small utility that stays in the tray and does that automatic tabbing separately.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#229

Post by gkgicccj »

cstdr wrote: post #186
gkgicccj wrote: post #160

I'm still annoyed by some fx changes that are purely out of chrome jealousy. The address bar suggestions used to be 2-lines and were so readable until someone just blindly copied the unreadable version of chrome.

You mean like this " rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/6ZXAchD.png> ? You can get the old look back via userChrome.css. Relevant styles from mine: #PopupAutoCompleteRichResult .ac-separator { page-break-before: always; width: 47px; } #PopupAutoCompleteRichResult .ac-separator-text { display: none !important; } #PopupAutoCompleteRichResult richlistitem { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; align-items: center; height: au…

You created an account just to answer me? Thank you! I forgot to upvote earlier.

Re: Extensions in Firefox 59

#230

Post by baby »

oblio wrote: post #214
baby wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confident that it will happen. It’s actually easier to understand tabs on the side for new users. And it makes more sense in general.

None of the other browsere seems to support it, so there's that. On the other hand, "never say never", right? :)

That's probably where the next evolution of browser will come from :) but I'm just trying to guess, who knows right
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