Firefox to adopt Chrome Add-Ons format

Major upcoming changes to Firefox add-ons

[Robert Charlton]

The Future of Developing Firefox Add-ons
Mozilla Add-ons Blog
Kev Needham - Aug 21, 2015
[blog.mozilla.org...]

Today we are announcing some major upcoming changes to Firefox add-ons. Our add-on ecosystem has evolved through incremental, organic growth over the years, but there are some modernizations to Firefox that require some foundational changes to support:

- Taking advantage of new technologies like Electrolysis and Servo
- Protecting users from spyware and adware
- Shortening the time it takes to review add-ons...

Key topics of the long post include...
- Introduction of a WebExtensions API (adding cross-browser standardization)
- Multi-process Firefox and Add-ons
- Signing (including a review process for Add-ons)
- Deprecation of XUL, XPCOM, and the permissive add-on model
...and an overview of moving forward...

Mozilla is clearly aware of the tradeoffs that the changes will entail.

We're announcing all of the changes today to make developers aware of our plans and to give everyone an opportunity to offer feedback. We are committed to doing what we can to make this transition as easy as possible.

There were 153 comments on the post when I just saw it, and I've only managed to read a fraction of those so far.

[bill]

This will probably be of most interest to developers

We are implementing a new extension API, called WebExtensions—largely compatible with the model used by Chrome and Opera—to make it easier to develop extensions across multiple browsers.

It looks like developers will be able to work with one codebase for their Chrome and Firefox addons.

[Leosghost]

The rest of us ( who would like our add ons to continue to work without their devs having to recode them ) will switch to palemoon..
[palemoon.org...]

[lucy24]

switch to palemoon

:: scurrying to investigate, as I'm always up for another third-party browser ::

with other operating systems in development

And they're on release 25? Is "in development" code for "naah, we don't really feel like it"?

[bill]

Couldn't get Pale Moon to install because it's not smart enough to let me set my proxy during the setup. Looks interesting though.

Regardless, this announcement would apply to them too for future plug-ins. If they want to continue to allow plug-ins...

[Leosghost]

Regardless, this announcement would apply to them too for future plug-ins. If they want to continue to allow plug-ins...

Nope ..they have said that they'll continue to support add ons that use current coding methods for add ons..Wheras FF will depreciate the current methods....
Referenced in the comments of the blog post that Robert linked to above..

[bill]

Interesting. Wouldn't that mean that they'd risk a lot of add-on development drop-off as developers move to the new 'standard'?

[Leosghost]

According to what I have been able to find out the people working on palemoon will allow all the "current coding methods fro add ons, and palemoon will also be able to run the new ones ( those which work on chrome etc ) ..So it will be able to run "legacy addons" and those to com..Many commentators are making the point that FF could do the same, but that the Mozilla people chose not to continue to support the methods used uptil now..
FF has been becoming much more "top down" driven of late ( Australis ) ..
Palemoon is more about listening to the users and the devs..

[keyplyr]

Chromecast/Googlecast is nice if added to Firefox. However, even though I use Firefox as my default browser because of the Web Developer Toolbar, it's really not much work to just launch Chrome, turn on the stream, then minimize that browser and continue to use Firefox while I watch TV... hey, that's multi-tasking!