Firefox Moves Away From XUL-based Addons In Favor Of WebExtentions

[deviant88]

So sad, with this firefox will lose even more users, its probably gonna become a minor player in browser market and donate some of its userbase to chrome with that decision.

[colonel_mortis]

Good news: In the Mozilla WebExtensions wiki, they state that they are planning to add some features that chrome doesn't support in its extensions. Specifically:

We plan to add our own APIs based on the needs of existing Firefox add-ons.

• NoScript-type functionality. This would come in the form of extensions to webRequest and possibly contentSettings.
• Sidebars. Opera already supports sidebar functionality; Chrome may soon. We would like to be able to implement Tree Style Tabs or Vertical Tabs by hiding the tab strip and showing a tab sidebar.
• Toolbars. Firefox has a lot of existing toolbar add-ons.
• Better keyboard shortcut support. We'd like to support Vimperator-type functionality. (@alpenwasser)
• Ability to add tabs to about:addons.
• Ability to modify the tab strip (Tab Mix Plus).
• Ability to take images of frames/tabs (like canvas.drawWindow)

So most existing firefox extensions can probably be ported to WebExtensions, with only some particularly deeply hooking, unusual extensions not being supported. Hopefully.

[AlwaysFSX]

So most existing firefox extensions can probably be ported to WebExtensions, with only some particularly deeply hooking, unusual extensions not being supported. Hopefully.

I assume even then they could work with the new thing to make old stuff work?

[NoMooreMercy]

I've been using the Opera beta for a few weeks and I love it, longtime Firefox user here and I just don't really understand this move at all.  

[GoldSrc]

I just came back to Mozilla due to retarded Chrome loading all my 30+ tabs at once when I open it, not to mention eating all my ram.

If this breaks IDM I will strangle a cat /jk

[pk-man]

NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RIP

 

FF running themselves into the ground.......