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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

#31

Post by swozey »

jhasse wrote: post #25
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 I doubt that this is true. Some extensions like Adblockers even make browsing faster.

Dark Reader which is one of my must-haves has a known Firefox performance issue on a LOT of sites that makes Firefox almost unusable for me, so I recently begrudgingly switched back to Chrome.

https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader/issues/535

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

#32

Post by cameronbrown »

jordanmoconnor wrote: post #27

I make an extension for a living. Use Stripe and bake billing/account management into your app. Same experience across browsers.

I'm curious, is it just an extension or do you have other contact points with customers?

I feel like it's hard to justify paying for an extension so I'd love to know how you convince people to pay.

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

#33

Post by NeedMoreTea »

jhasse wrote: post #25
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 I doubt that this is true. Some extensions like Adblockers even make browsing faster.

For a demonstration install Dark Reader on an ageing or budget machine. It can render Chrome sluggish and frustrating and Firefox almost unusable.

There's a fair few others that can upset Firefox but never seem to be the same extent of annoyance for Chrome.

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

#34

Post by cpeterso »

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.

I know you asked for resources beyond Mozilla's site, but Mozilla's documentation for extension developers is very accessible and includes complete code for example extensions:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

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

#35

Post by Causality1 »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #12

Chrome and Google not caring or supporting these kind of things I get but Firefox's recent efforts seem to be either gross negligence or targeted moved to destroy their addon ecosystem. I thought Firefox was going to get better with their redesign but it seems like it just resulted in lost functionality. Their misguided quest to get more market share has been a completely failure and pushed anyone who valued their cu…

Been trending that way for years now. Making a browser that does what you want it to do is way easier than making a browser that does what your users want it to do. Sometimes I wonder if the "iterate version integers every six weeks so our e-peen looks bigger" approach is to blame.

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

#36

Post by throwaway5389 »

I've experienced slowness / crashes with FF extensions, as some people have described here, annoyingly the problem doesn't seem to be reproducible. I'd optimally like to have 4-5 plugins maximum - key-driven browsing, adblock, CSS overrides and JavaScript injection.

What's the best way to blame / troubleshoot a bad plugin? Because as soon as I add them all I experience 1-2 page crashes/infinity loops per hour

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

#37

Post by throwaway5389 »

bduerst wrote: post #20

>The Chrome Web Store and the Microsoft Store do not offer features for supporting extension developers. That doesn't seem right - doesn't Google let developers monetize extensions in the chrome web store? You can publish Hosted Apps, Chrome Apps, Chrome Extensions, and Themes in the Chrome Web Store. Collectively these are called simply "Items". You have many choices when it comes to making money from items that you…

> it's also why Chrome cracked down on extension APIs recently by restricting what is shared with the extension

It'd be nice if they had 'trusted devs' or similar. Even if they provided a paid meatbag extension review service, I'd pay to get the plugins I use reviewed!

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

#38

Post by Wowfunhappy »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #12

Chrome and Google not caring or supporting these kind of things I get but Firefox's recent efforts seem to be either gross negligence or targeted moved to destroy their addon ecosystem. I thought Firefox was going to get better with their redesign but it seems like it just resulted in lost functionality. Their misguided quest to get more market share has been a completely failure and pushed anyone who valued their cu…

> I thought Firefox was going to get better with their redesign but it seems like it just resulted in lost functionality. Their misguided quest to get more market share has been a completely failure and pushed anyone who valued their customizable experience away.

Well, it got me to switch from Chrome to Firefox on Windows, so there's that at least. Firefox feels much faster to me now, and strongly reminds me of Chrome in the very early days.

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

#39

Post by kenhwang »

jhasse wrote: post #25
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 I doubt that this is true. Some extensions like Adblockers even make browsing faster.

LastPass makes the browser slower and sometimes even locks up the tab. It definitely does happen.

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

#40

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

eitland wrote: post #5
iamnotacrook wrote: post #2

That's not their core business. It's redolent of the complaints when Twitter etc limit their API/number of tokens per app etc. They're doing it because it no longer serves a purpose. Perhaps Mozilla is slightly different but Google would only benefit from ad/tracker blockers going away.

> Google would only benefit from ad/tracker blockers going away. In the long run, this might sadly be true, but I disagree for now. No way Google is doing this because of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because they haven't completely squeezed out all competitors yet. Removing or utterly crippling addons now would force users to realize what Chrome is while there still are options, meaning a huge chunk of th…

They pay the biggest and most popular adblock extension already long time ago to get their stuff whitelisted. Ublock is a niche thing.
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