11 ms·

I must say that Mozilla have made the right call with extensions in Firefox 57. Web extensions are probably a small part of it but I have switched back to FF a

by lenni 9y ago

I must say that Mozilla have made the right call with extensions in Firefox 57. Web extensions are probably a small part of it but I have switched back to FF after ~5 years of Chrome. I also like the redesign but the killer feature was the noticeable speed up. I consider myself a fan again!

asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
Great to see that new users are getting catered for meanwhile those of us that used Firefox the whole time get ignored.
- baldfat 9y ago
  I have been a Firefox user since it was called Phoenix. This is the best Firefox , but I have lost a ton of extensions including my Vim extensions. So right now I use Qutebrowser and know that the new plugins will get added.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Did you check out vim-vixen? If so, what's your opinion on it?
    - baldfat 9y ago
      Yup I am now using Firefox again :)
    - ivanche 9y ago
      This looks great! Do you know is there any way to select one tab from the list I see when I type :tabopen?
      - idlewan 9y ago
        You can use Tab and Ctrl+Tab, but there has been a pull request adding Ctrl+n and Ctrl+p.
    - zcid 9y ago
      The problem with all vim-style extensions is that they have been limited in potential functionality. For instance they won't work in any builtin pages such as about: pages or the new tab page or https://add-ons.mozilla.com https://add-ons.mozilla.com. This forces the user to think about whether their command will work or not and induces an uncertainty in their flow. The other issues regarding limited control over the browsing experience may be resolved with future API expansion, but the previously mentioned hobbling is something with which we are most likely permanently stuck.
    - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
      This is going in the correct direction. If Firefox provides the correct API's we might have the power of vimperiator back. Off the top of my head it needs: 1. A way to load config from the filesystem so I can keep its config with my other dotfiles 2. To be able to work on about:addons etc 3. To work in reader mode 4. Vim keybindings in textareas/inputs (although for modularity this could be a separate addon). 5. A way to open textareas etc in an editor - again for modularity this could be a separate addon. 6. Be able to open file:// 7. A way to focus on the page content (away from e.g. url bar) - this could be a FF level hotkey though. EDITED - I'm adding things as they come up.
      - Anthony-G 9y ago
        As a former user of the wonderful VimFx and ItsAllText extensions, this list is very close to my own wish-list for Firefox's WebExtensions API.
    - nicolaslem 9y ago
      I was using vimperator and was quite worried that FF 57 will mean the end of convenient browsing for me. But a few days before upgrading I found vim-vixen. It does 95% of the job. The performance improvements of FF 57 are well worth these 5% missing.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    I've been using Vimium-FF since I first installed FF57 Developer Edition. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/
    - baldfat 9y ago
      My vimfx stopped working in FF57 and the developer stated he had stopped development as well as vimium on Firfox I was using.
      - ethagnawl 9y ago
        Vimium is _good_ but I really wish it would use the browser's native search widget when searching via `/`. I've been meaning to look into the documentation, but my assumption is that this is a limitation of the WebExtensions API.
- jccalhoun 9y ago
  I've been using firefox since the start and I don't feel ignored.
- oblio 9y ago
  Don't be like this. I've been using Firefox since way back in the day when I stopped using Opera 12 (and I had been using it even before that, I just had really crap hardware for a long time so I had to use Opera). The devs obviously care about the product and its users and sometimes have to make tough decisions. I think Firefox 57 is a good thing for Firefox's future. It's basically what the Mozilla rewrite or Firefox's being spun off from Mozilla did, but this time with less of a big-bang. And 1 year from now 99% of the current extensions will work. And no, for the obvious question, they couldn't have done it the other way. I've been part of several migrations of this kind and people don't really move voluntarily 100% during migrations. Yes, the nice folks do it in time (say, 40%) but the rest have to be dragged along kicking and screaming.
  - mook 9y ago
    I agree that they had to force turn off old-style extensions at some point to force adoption, but I feel like the same release where most of the APIs needed to port the old extensions over (and still missing a bunch of things) was way too soon. Even quite a few of the actively maintained, high profile extensions are not ready. Same reason why a disturbingly large number of Jetpack extensions has to use require("chrome")… they never got around to flushing out the implemented API set.
    - Qub3d 9y ago
      Firefox has given developers 3 years and over 10 FF releases to work on migrating extensions [0]. Would you have preferred 5 years? a decade? Every change breaks someones workflow [1]. It sucks, but it happens because we need to acknowledge a point when the current system holds back progress more than the headaches introduced by a new system. [0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-firefox-add-ons/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev... [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
      - zeveb 9y ago
        > Firefox has given developers 3 years and over 10 FF releases to work on migrating extensions. No it hasn't: Firefox still doesn't ship an API capable of supporting many existing extensions. The developers of those extensions haven't had three years to port; they still can't port. I really like how fast the new Firefox is, but I won't use it until Keysnail works.
- JeanMarcS 9y ago
  I don't believe that's the case. Evolution is important. Sometimes you have to get rid of old stuff to get ahead. By doing so, Mozilla shows that it cares about his user. Letting use old stuff that are not maintained anymore (if they are, a compatible version will shows up) lead you to situations like win32
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    By doing so, Mozilla shows that it cares about his user. By completely trashing a tool I'd spent years customizing without anything resembling feature parity ready by release? It's not really on the devs to port something when the new system is missing APIs. The "They had 5 years!" argument directed at the addon devs could just as easily be directed back at Mozilla... Or perhaps by ignoring the loud negative feedback when I and many others said we didn't want paternalistic "thou shalt not install unless we say okay" controls on add-ons like Chrome has? Or was it instead by ignoring my repeated questions on how to fix a ten-year-old SSL handling bug that causes a great deal of pain for sysadmins? (Vendors have a poor habit of reusing SSL certs - Firefox will flat out tell you to pound sand and not allow you to visit a site with a dupe cert. Chrome, IE, Opera, and I believe Edge will warn you that this is abnormal, but otherwise continue) If this is how Mozilla cares for its users, I'd hate to see what they consider neglect.
- bonaldi 9y ago
  My first browser was Mosaic, and I was on Firefox while it was called Phoenix. v57 brought me back to Firefox (from Safari), so I think it's great to see they're not just laser-focusing on what was a rapidly shrinking userbase. It's not a zero-sum either: those of you who always used Firefox will surely benefit from it not dwindling into obscurity.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  I've been a Firefox user since Phoenix 0.1, and a Mozilla Suite/Netscape user before that. I used Chrome for a couple of years, but went back around when FF56 was released. FF57 is absolutely the greatest version of Firefox to date. I have yet to hear a single legitimate complaint against it that actually holds up to scrutiny.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    I have yet to hear a single legitimate complaint against it that actually holds up to scrutiny. It breaks about 2/3 of the extensions I was using, and many of them don't currently have similar replacements available. That's a big loss in some of the functionality that made Firefox attractive as my default browser. I understand the desire to fix fundamental architectural limitations. In the medium term some of those extensions will probably be updated or replaced. In the long term, the improvements may well pay off in terms of better security and better performance and easier development allowing faster progress. As a software developer I can see that the move was rational even if it is also somewhat controversial. But in the short term, the loss is still significant for some users. That's a perfectly legitimate concern, and it's apparently sufficient that some people are not upgrading this time.
  - pfooti 9y ago
    You can't inspect websocket frames. It is a tiny quibble in the face of big amazing improvements. But it is a thing (and is why I still use chrome primarily for development), and the extension used to patch this in to the devtools broke in the big extensions change.
    - robin_reala 9y ago
      They’re planning to build that in at the beginning of the new year: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c37 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c37
  - megous 9y ago
    It broke web experience for me. I write userscripts / extensions for most websites I frequent, and almost none work anymore. Granted, it's because Greasemonkey decided to break backward compatibility, but that was triggered by this move to a new extension model. I tried to think forward, and proactively convert my greasemonkey scripts to new style FF extensions a few months back, to avoid dependency on GM. But abandoned that after it became clear that I'm not allowed to install my own extensions on regular Firefox, because of forced thir-party signing requirement. I have no need for signing. I could create an extension by zipping a directory. Now the workflow is 1000x more complex with all the crap loaded from npm required to sign it. My web experience is s*it, ATM. Firefox is great anyway. But it is power user hostile in some aspects too. Personal extensions/userscripts are central to my use of the web. So this is all quite annoying, since signing was enforced. And now even my userscripts broke with 57, as expected.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Starting to think that they should have forked and rebranded, and let XUL Firefox live on within Mozilla much like the Suite/Seamoney did after Firefox and Thunderbird. But then Mozilla management has been "weird" ever since they decided to chase Google's tail with rapid fire releases. And frankly i fear that it, like some other big name FOSS projects, have attracted managerial types that are there more to pad their resume with "social" projects than actually caring for what they are dealing with. And those in turn have introduced a "push to prod" culture of development...
  - hsivonen 9y ago
    The fork is Firefox 52 ESR. It's probably enough to wait for some extensions that weren't ready when 57 was released, but 52 ESR isn't going to stick around indefinitely. SeaMonkey isn't a good role model here. Even before 57, the SeaMonkey release interval had lenghtened to multiple months. That is, evidently it hasn't been tracking Gecko security updates at Firefox's pace.
- 5580 9y ago
  I started with Netscape Navigator and used FF until 2016. As of FF 55 I started to like Firefox again. As of 56, I was mostly sold on it. As of 57, it is the only browser I consider worth using. I understand getting salty about losing extensions, but sometimes a company has to make decisions that will get them back on track and recording some growth again. Sometimes a company has to overhaul their product to make it work for _more_ people and not their "minority but vocal core."
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  Downvoting this is preposterous when it's a legit point. I've been using Firefox since the Phoenix days and now many of my old extensions that I've been using for years are non-functional; it's very much telling old users to pound sand for the sake of new users.
  - scriptkiddy 9y ago
    It's really not though. Try to put yourself in Mozilla's shoes for a moment: You run arguably the most "free" and "open" internet browser in the business. You are constantly pushing for standardization in the face of competing browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Edge; all of which are trying to establish a walled garden powered by browser specific features. Your browser is consistently losing market share to Chrome because you don't have the cash to spend on marketing partnerships and pre-installs like Google does. Your browser is a means to an end, not the end itself. Your browser exists purely to push forward the tenets of the open internet and open source software. You need market share to push further standardization and improvements to the web experience. To get this market share you need to ensure that your browser offers at least the same performance and security as other browsers. In order to do this, you need to make some backwards incompatible changes or risk falling into obscurity. It's a sacrific you have no choice but to make.
    - wtallis 9y ago
      There's no question that breaking backwards compatibility is eventually necessary. That doesn't mean Mozilla did a good job of handling this transition. They absolutely screwed a lot of their existing users, and without good reason. They have had no overlap between support for WebExtensions and XUL extensions. They've been marking XUL extensions as "Legacy" for months but prohibiting you from installing a WebExtension on anything prior to FF 57, forcing everyone to deal with jarring changes to all of their extensions at the same time.
  - SubiculumCode 9y ago
    Backwards compatibility was not an option for Mozilla to move their architecture forward for a modern multi-core computer. A rational person would understand this and move on, or find a way to support a fork of FF 56. I have been a user of extensions since the earliest days of Mozilla Firefox (and earlier) and I love the new browser.
- mnl 9y ago
  I understand that in principle the new model of extensions is the way to go... but then Firefox without Session Manager, FireFTP and no way to read MAFF files just doesn't have the distinct functionality that kept me using it in the desktop. Perfect is the enemy of good I guess.
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  I’ve been using Firefox since Netscape 1.1N, and I did my part to help us move on to the new extensions.
AckSyn 9y ago
They've made it so plugins no longer work the same, which effect two I use every day and has forced me to stay on ESR unless something changes. TileTabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs/) and TabGroups (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-pa...) The plugins updated for 57+ versions don't do the same thing as they did before, which is a no-go.
AndrewDucker 9y ago
I agree. Been using Firefox continuously since it first appeared. And I miss some of my extensions. But they're clearly working on improving what you can do with extensions, only now they're doing it in a coherent manner rather than just letting people have access to the browser chrome to hack about whatever they fancied. And that feels much more stable and architecturally stable as something to build on for the future. I'm prepared to give them a few releases to build on that and make it both fast and extensible.
- simcop2387 9y ago
  > And that feels much more stable and architecturally stable as something to build on for the future. I'm prepared to give them a few releases to build on that and make it both fast and extensible. This should also enable them to keep the extensions that use supported apis working between releases much easier. I remember the early days of firefox where any update meant that some random subset of your extensions would break because they were doing something to the UI that the devs didn't expect.
marcosdumay 9y ago
Wether it was the right thing or not depends on the details. The overall decision is a sane one, but FF now has to develop enough of a flexibility to have a good extension ecosystem again. At least now they can get that flexibility with sandboxing and access management. Anyway, Mozilla's history is such that I am not convinced they will do this.
skgoa 9y ago
Overall I agree, but NoScript not working anymore directly resulted in me having to kill all Firefox processes when an ad stopped me from closing a tab by constantly opening new alert windows.
- clouddrover 9y ago
  NoScript has been released for Firefox 57: https://hackademix.net/2017/11/21/noscript-1011-quantum-powerball-finish-and-rebooting/ https://hackademix.net/2017/11/21/noscript-1011-quantum-powe... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/
  - wtallis 9y ago
    Late, and very incomplete, despite the best efforts of the extension's author. It'll be months at a minimum before the missing features are restored.
- minitech 9y ago
  You can just close the tab regardless of whether it’s showing an alert nowadays. (I also recommend µMatrix – it’s pretty much a better version of NoScript.)
  - notzorbo3 9y ago
    Is there uMatrix for the new Firefox? Are there even plans? Because I refuse to use a browser without uMatrix. edit: I see it's there. Released yesterday. Yay! Now if only Firefox could add a "Add to desktop" option, I could really switch!
  - wtallis 9y ago
    > I also recommend µMatrix – it’s pretty much a better version of NoScript. No, it isn't. uMatrix is a replacement only for the shallowest feature of NoScript. There's a ton of stuff that classic NoScript does that nothing else provides (including the new WebExtensions NoScript, so far).
danjoc 9y ago
As a counter anecdote, I'm removing FF from all my workstations today. I've been using FF for years. I gave quantum a chance until NoScript shipped. Now it's clear that this is not going to work for me anymore. Moving to Brave. Bye FF. >I also like the redesign but the killer feature was the noticeable speed up. FYI, it was faster when NoScript worked. Tabs didn't crash constantly either.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  Not having slowdowns like you, nor tabs crashing. Reminds me of when Chrome first came out, I ditched Firefox, till I realized Chrome didn't have proper adblocking, and when they did it was awful compared to Firefox's adblocker. It's improved since, but I'm not interested in Chrome since. Firefox has only gotten better and better for me. I guess everyone will experience the new versions differently.
  - Zancarius 9y ago
    I've been a long time user of Firefox, and after v55, I've been incredibly pleased with the improvements in tab handling (I'm one of those imbeciles who often has hundreds and hundreds of tabs open) and browser performance overall. Like you, I haven't had any stability issues, and the overall resource use is still far lower than Chrome/Chromium/derivatives (like Brave). I'm somewhat disappointed with the removal of the old XUL API and the death of many extensions, but expecting this, I trimmed what I had installed to an absolute minimum. So far so good; can't say I'm really missing anything except maybe Session Manager. I do have some empathy for your parent comment: I'm not particularly fond of NoScript v10's UI either, if that's their chief complaint. It's different and somewhat cartoonish, but I don't know if my reaction is because of the stylistic changes or the fact that it just changed. Regardless, Raymond Hill released a version of uMatrix for Firefox 57 which I feel has somewhat more power than NoScript in certain areas (selectively blocking cookies is a nice addition), and I like the UI better. It's not as intuitive, arguably, as the original NoScript, but it's information-dense and provides a fantastic picture of what's going on--better than NoScript ever did.
    - 9y ago
chippy 9y ago
Firefox 57 was directed at people who moved away from it, to Chrome users, I'm glad it has made an impact - however, it has upset many people who were using it as their main browser and who depended on a number of extensions which used APIs which were disabled. There's talk that some API's will be built back, and hopefully with the increase in new users it should be worth it. For example, on Xubuntu, a low resource friendly Linux distribution run by many on devices with small screens, Firefox 57 now is unable to hide the title window bar and unable to customise the size of tabs, reducing available screen estate by about an inch. In development versions of Firefox, they are enabling CSD for Firefox windows, so in a few months this might be better for the title bar, and in the article it seems as if theming tabs are being addressed. A particular bug for me is the second time they removed being able to change to the next tab by mouse wheeling over the tab bar. They removed it in Firefox 34 or so (it was default, in built function) and pointed to using Extensions as the workaround. Now they have removed these very extensions that enabled that. If only an extension could change userChrome.css! That would solve many people's problems.
- infogulch 9y ago
  > If only an extension could change userChrome.css! That would solve many people's problems. This! Even if extensions were very restricted to only toggle pre-defined css rules or something, this could go a long way.
- bwat49 9y ago
  > If only an extension could change userChrome.css! That would solve many people's problems. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/re-style/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/re-style/
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  Users who wish to continue using legacy Firefox extensions can use Firefox ESR 52. It will receive security updates through April 2018 at which point it will move to a later version of Firefox which no longer supports legacy extensions. Over the next 5 months, the WebExtensions API will continue to be expanded enabling more of the older extensions' features to work with the modern extensions framework.
threepipeproblm 9y ago
But the people who chose a browser for speed already had Chrome. Now the people who would choose a browser that lets them run their software of choice, on which they have been relying on years, have no browser. There are hundreds of people tweeting about how Firefox 57 has ruined their browser experience, and they are representative Firefox users -- the kind who have been using it all along, and relying on all the software Mozilla just broke. I don't think Firefox will gain market share by alienating all these people, while attempting to beat Chrome at its own game. I wonder if there is any set of circumstances that would cause Mozilla to realize that making a new browser and calling it Firefox was a bad idea. If market share still continues to tank -- like were they realize for every person like the parent commenters, there may be many pre-existing users who have no reason to use Firefox anymore -- would they then admit it was a mistake? My guess is there is no such set of circumstances... witness the fact that Mozilla originally cited declining market share as a motivating factor for this big change, but then recently we have stories like this https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/25/new_war_for_mozilla/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/25/new_war_for_mozilla...
- frenchy 9y ago
  I'm personally really happy for firefox 57. I never switched to Chrome, primarily because of privacy concerns, and I suspect that there are a good number of users in a similar situation. The migration to web-extensions was a little annoying (had to find a different password generator). While they could have split the product into two (like they did with Firefox & Seamonkey) and let the former product languish, I'm not that would have made many users much happier. For what it's worth, you can still use Firefox 56 (or even Seamonkey).
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  There was no way forward for a better browser without braking the old extension system. It is bound to irritate some people, but a rational person should find it hard to blame Mozilla for their choice. It is now a modern browser capable of making use of a modern computer's capabilities.
qbaqbaqba 9y ago
What will you do when google improves chrome's speed? Will you stick to Firefox?
- fgonzag 9y ago
  As long as Firefox and Chrome are somewhat similarly performant, I will always choose Firefox. I'm trying to wane off google products and services as much as I can, as I believe they have too much control over our digital lives. Most people are fine with that and I respect that, but I rather take as little control back as I can.

by lenni 9y ago

asfdsfggtfd 9y ago

Great to see that new users are getting catered for meanwhile those of us that used Firefox the whole time get ignored.

baldfat 9y ago
I have been a Firefox user since it was called Phoenix. This is the best Firefox , but I have lost a ton of extensions including my Vim extensions. So right now I use Qutebrowser and know that the new plugins will get added.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Did you check out vim-vixen? If so, what's your opinion on it?
  - baldfat 9y ago
    Yup I am now using Firefox again :)
  - ivanche 9y ago
    This looks great! Do you know is there any way to select one tab from the list I see when I type :tabopen?
    - idlewan 9y ago
      You can use Tab and Ctrl+Tab, but there has been a pull request adding Ctrl+n and Ctrl+p.
  - zcid 9y ago
    The problem with all vim-style extensions is that they have been limited in potential functionality. For instance they won't work in any builtin pages such as about: pages or the new tab page or https://add-ons.mozilla.com https://add-ons.mozilla.com. This forces the user to think about whether their command will work or not and induces an uncertainty in their flow. The other issues regarding limited control over the browsing experience may be resolved with future API expansion, but the previously mentioned hobbling is something with which we are most likely permanently stuck.
  - asfdsfggtfd 9y ago
    This is going in the correct direction. If Firefox provides the correct API's we might have the power of vimperiator back. Off the top of my head it needs: 1. A way to load config from the filesystem so I can keep its config with my other dotfiles 2. To be able to work on about:addons etc 3. To work in reader mode 4. Vim keybindings in textareas/inputs (although for modularity this could be a separate addon). 5. A way to open textareas etc in an editor - again for modularity this could be a separate addon. 6. Be able to open file:// 7. A way to focus on the page content (away from e.g. url bar) - this could be a FF level hotkey though. EDITED - I'm adding things as they come up.
    - Anthony-G 9y ago
      As a former user of the wonderful VimFx and ItsAllText extensions, this list is very close to my own wish-list for Firefox's WebExtensions API.
  - nicolaslem 9y ago
    I was using vimperator and was quite worried that FF 57 will mean the end of convenient browsing for me. But a few days before upgrading I found vim-vixen. It does 95% of the job. The performance improvements of FF 57 are well worth these 5% missing.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  I've been using Vimium-FF since I first installed FF57 Developer Edition. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vimium-ff/
  - baldfat 9y ago
    My vimfx stopped working in FF57 and the developer stated he had stopped development as well as vimium on Firfox I was using.
    - ethagnawl 9y ago
      Vimium is _good_ but I really wish it would use the browser's native search widget when searching via `/`. I've been meaning to look into the documentation, but my assumption is that this is a limitation of the WebExtensions API.
jccalhoun 9y ago
I've been using firefox since the start and I don't feel ignored.
oblio 9y ago
Don't be like this. I've been using Firefox since way back in the day when I stopped using Opera 12 (and I had been using it even before that, I just had really crap hardware for a long time so I had to use Opera). The devs obviously care about the product and its users and sometimes have to make tough decisions. I think Firefox 57 is a good thing for Firefox's future. It's basically what the Mozilla rewrite or Firefox's being spun off from Mozilla did, but this time with less of a big-bang. And 1 year from now 99% of the current extensions will work. And no, for the obvious question, they couldn't have done it the other way. I've been part of several migrations of this kind and people don't really move voluntarily 100% during migrations. Yes, the nice folks do it in time (say, 40%) but the rest have to be dragged along kicking and screaming.
- mook 9y ago
  I agree that they had to force turn off old-style extensions at some point to force adoption, but I feel like the same release where most of the APIs needed to port the old extensions over (and still missing a bunch of things) was way too soon. Even quite a few of the actively maintained, high profile extensions are not ready. Same reason why a disturbingly large number of Jetpack extensions has to use require("chrome")… they never got around to flushing out the implemented API set.
  - Qub3d 9y ago
    Firefox has given developers 3 years and over 10 FF releases to work on migrating extensions [0]. Would you have preferred 5 years? a decade? Every change breaks someones workflow [1]. It sucks, but it happens because we need to acknowledge a point when the current system holds back progress more than the headaches introduced by a new system. [0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-firefox-add-ons/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev... [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
    - zeveb 9y ago
      > Firefox has given developers 3 years and over 10 FF releases to work on migrating extensions. No it hasn't: Firefox still doesn't ship an API capable of supporting many existing extensions. The developers of those extensions haven't had three years to port; they still can't port. I really like how fast the new Firefox is, but I won't use it until Keysnail works.
JeanMarcS 9y ago
I don't believe that's the case. Evolution is important. Sometimes you have to get rid of old stuff to get ahead. By doing so, Mozilla shows that it cares about his user. Letting use old stuff that are not maintained anymore (if they are, a compatible version will shows up) lead you to situations like win32
- Karunamon 9y ago
  By doing so, Mozilla shows that it cares about his user. By completely trashing a tool I'd spent years customizing without anything resembling feature parity ready by release? It's not really on the devs to port something when the new system is missing APIs. The "They had 5 years!" argument directed at the addon devs could just as easily be directed back at Mozilla... Or perhaps by ignoring the loud negative feedback when I and many others said we didn't want paternalistic "thou shalt not install unless we say okay" controls on add-ons like Chrome has? Or was it instead by ignoring my repeated questions on how to fix a ten-year-old SSL handling bug that causes a great deal of pain for sysadmins? (Vendors have a poor habit of reusing SSL certs - Firefox will flat out tell you to pound sand and not allow you to visit a site with a dupe cert. Chrome, IE, Opera, and I believe Edge will warn you that this is abnormal, but otherwise continue) If this is how Mozilla cares for its users, I'd hate to see what they consider neglect.
bonaldi 9y ago
My first browser was Mosaic, and I was on Firefox while it was called Phoenix. v57 brought me back to Firefox (from Safari), so I think it's great to see they're not just laser-focusing on what was a rapidly shrinking userbase. It's not a zero-sum either: those of you who always used Firefox will surely benefit from it not dwindling into obscurity.
KozmoNau7 9y ago
I've been a Firefox user since Phoenix 0.1, and a Mozilla Suite/Netscape user before that. I used Chrome for a couple of years, but went back around when FF56 was released. FF57 is absolutely the greatest version of Firefox to date. I have yet to hear a single legitimate complaint against it that actually holds up to scrutiny.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  I have yet to hear a single legitimate complaint against it that actually holds up to scrutiny. It breaks about 2/3 of the extensions I was using, and many of them don't currently have similar replacements available. That's a big loss in some of the functionality that made Firefox attractive as my default browser. I understand the desire to fix fundamental architectural limitations. In the medium term some of those extensions will probably be updated or replaced. In the long term, the improvements may well pay off in terms of better security and better performance and easier development allowing faster progress. As a software developer I can see that the move was rational even if it is also somewhat controversial. But in the short term, the loss is still significant for some users. That's a perfectly legitimate concern, and it's apparently sufficient that some people are not upgrading this time.
- pfooti 9y ago
  You can't inspect websocket frames. It is a tiny quibble in the face of big amazing improvements. But it is a thing (and is why I still use chrome primarily for development), and the extension used to patch this in to the devtools broke in the big extensions change.
  - robin_reala 9y ago
    They’re planning to build that in at the beginning of the new year: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c37 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508#c37
- megous 9y ago
  It broke web experience for me. I write userscripts / extensions for most websites I frequent, and almost none work anymore. Granted, it's because Greasemonkey decided to break backward compatibility, but that was triggered by this move to a new extension model. I tried to think forward, and proactively convert my greasemonkey scripts to new style FF extensions a few months back, to avoid dependency on GM. But abandoned that after it became clear that I'm not allowed to install my own extensions on regular Firefox, because of forced thir-party signing requirement. I have no need for signing. I could create an extension by zipping a directory. Now the workflow is 1000x more complex with all the crap loaded from npm required to sign it. My web experience is s*it, ATM. Firefox is great anyway. But it is power user hostile in some aspects too. Personal extensions/userscripts are central to my use of the web. So this is all quite annoying, since signing was enforced. And now even my userscripts broke with 57, as expected.
digi_owl 9y ago
Starting to think that they should have forked and rebranded, and let XUL Firefox live on within Mozilla much like the Suite/Seamoney did after Firefox and Thunderbird. But then Mozilla management has been "weird" ever since they decided to chase Google's tail with rapid fire releases. And frankly i fear that it, like some other big name FOSS projects, have attracted managerial types that are there more to pad their resume with "social" projects than actually caring for what they are dealing with. And those in turn have introduced a "push to prod" culture of development...
- hsivonen 9y ago
  The fork is Firefox 52 ESR. It's probably enough to wait for some extensions that weren't ready when 57 was released, but 52 ESR isn't going to stick around indefinitely. SeaMonkey isn't a good role model here. Even before 57, the SeaMonkey release interval had lenghtened to multiple months. That is, evidently it hasn't been tracking Gecko security updates at Firefox's pace.
5580 9y ago
I started with Netscape Navigator and used FF until 2016. As of FF 55 I started to like Firefox again. As of 56, I was mostly sold on it. As of 57, it is the only browser I consider worth using. I understand getting salty about losing extensions, but sometimes a company has to make decisions that will get them back on track and recording some growth again. Sometimes a company has to overhaul their product to make it work for _more_ people and not their "minority but vocal core."
deadmetheny 9y ago
Downvoting this is preposterous when it's a legit point. I've been using Firefox since the Phoenix days and now many of my old extensions that I've been using for years are non-functional; it's very much telling old users to pound sand for the sake of new users.
- scriptkiddy 9y ago
  It's really not though. Try to put yourself in Mozilla's shoes for a moment: You run arguably the most "free" and "open" internet browser in the business. You are constantly pushing for standardization in the face of competing browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Edge; all of which are trying to establish a walled garden powered by browser specific features. Your browser is consistently losing market share to Chrome because you don't have the cash to spend on marketing partnerships and pre-installs like Google does. Your browser is a means to an end, not the end itself. Your browser exists purely to push forward the tenets of the open internet and open source software. You need market share to push further standardization and improvements to the web experience. To get this market share you need to ensure that your browser offers at least the same performance and security as other browsers. In order to do this, you need to make some backwards incompatible changes or risk falling into obscurity. It's a sacrific you have no choice but to make.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    There's no question that breaking backwards compatibility is eventually necessary. That doesn't mean Mozilla did a good job of handling this transition. They absolutely screwed a lot of their existing users, and without good reason. They have had no overlap between support for WebExtensions and XUL extensions. They've been marking XUL extensions as "Legacy" for months but prohibiting you from installing a WebExtension on anything prior to FF 57, forcing everyone to deal with jarring changes to all of their extensions at the same time.
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  Backwards compatibility was not an option for Mozilla to move their architecture forward for a modern multi-core computer. A rational person would understand this and move on, or find a way to support a fork of FF 56. I have been a user of extensions since the earliest days of Mozilla Firefox (and earlier) and I love the new browser.
mnl 9y ago
I understand that in principle the new model of extensions is the way to go... but then Firefox without Session Manager, FireFTP and no way to read MAFF files just doesn't have the distinct functionality that kept me using it in the desktop. Perfect is the enemy of good I guess.
floatingatoll 9y ago
I’ve been using Firefox since Netscape 1.1N, and I did my part to help us move on to the new extensions.

AckSyn 9y ago

They've made it so plugins no longer work the same, which effect two I use every day and has forced me to stay on ESR unless something changes. TileTabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs/) and TabGroups (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-panorama/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups-pa...) The plugins updated for 57+ versions don't do the same thing as they did before, which is a no-go.

AndrewDucker 9y ago

I agree. Been using Firefox continuously since it first appeared. And I miss some of my extensions. But they're clearly working on improving what you can do with extensions, only now they're doing it in a coherent manner rather than just letting people have access to the browser chrome to hack about whatever they fancied. And that feels much more stable and architecturally stable as something to build on for the future. I'm prepared to give them a few releases to build on that and make it both fast and extensible.

simcop2387 9y ago
> And that feels much more stable and architecturally stable as something to build on for the future. I'm prepared to give them a few releases to build on that and make it both fast and extensible. This should also enable them to keep the extensions that use supported apis working between releases much easier. I remember the early days of firefox where any update meant that some random subset of your extensions would break because they were doing something to the UI that the devs didn't expect.

marcosdumay 9y ago

Wether it was the right thing or not depends on the details. The overall decision is a sane one, but FF now has to develop enough of a flexibility to have a good extension ecosystem again. At least now they can get that flexibility with sandboxing and access management. Anyway, Mozilla's history is such that I am not convinced they will do this.

skgoa 9y ago

Overall I agree, but NoScript not working anymore directly resulted in me having to kill all Firefox processes when an ad stopped me from closing a tab by constantly opening new alert windows.

clouddrover 9y ago
NoScript has been released for Firefox 57: https://hackademix.net/2017/11/21/noscript-1011-quantum-powerball-finish-and-rebooting/ https://hackademix.net/2017/11/21/noscript-1011-quantum-powe... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/
- wtallis 9y ago
  Late, and very incomplete, despite the best efforts of the extension's author. It'll be months at a minimum before the missing features are restored.
minitech 9y ago
You can just close the tab regardless of whether it’s showing an alert nowadays. (I also recommend µMatrix – it’s pretty much a better version of NoScript.)
- notzorbo3 9y ago
  Is there uMatrix for the new Firefox? Are there even plans? Because I refuse to use a browser without uMatrix. edit: I see it's there. Released yesterday. Yay! Now if only Firefox could add a "Add to desktop" option, I could really switch!
- wtallis 9y ago
  > I also recommend µMatrix – it’s pretty much a better version of NoScript. No, it isn't. uMatrix is a replacement only for the shallowest feature of NoScript. There's a ton of stuff that classic NoScript does that nothing else provides (including the new WebExtensions NoScript, so far).

danjoc 9y ago

As a counter anecdote, I'm removing FF from all my workstations today. I've been using FF for years. I gave quantum a chance until NoScript shipped. Now it's clear that this is not going to work for me anymore. Moving to Brave. Bye FF. >I also like the redesign but the killer feature was the noticeable speed up. FYI, it was faster when NoScript worked. Tabs didn't crash constantly either.

giancarlostoro 9y ago
Not having slowdowns like you, nor tabs crashing. Reminds me of when Chrome first came out, I ditched Firefox, till I realized Chrome didn't have proper adblocking, and when they did it was awful compared to Firefox's adblocker. It's improved since, but I'm not interested in Chrome since. Firefox has only gotten better and better for me. I guess everyone will experience the new versions differently.
- Zancarius 9y ago
  I've been a long time user of Firefox, and after v55, I've been incredibly pleased with the improvements in tab handling (I'm one of those imbeciles who often has hundreds and hundreds of tabs open) and browser performance overall. Like you, I haven't had any stability issues, and the overall resource use is still far lower than Chrome/Chromium/derivatives (like Brave). I'm somewhat disappointed with the removal of the old XUL API and the death of many extensions, but expecting this, I trimmed what I had installed to an absolute minimum. So far so good; can't say I'm really missing anything except maybe Session Manager. I do have some empathy for your parent comment: I'm not particularly fond of NoScript v10's UI either, if that's their chief complaint. It's different and somewhat cartoonish, but I don't know if my reaction is because of the stylistic changes or the fact that it just changed. Regardless, Raymond Hill released a version of uMatrix for Firefox 57 which I feel has somewhat more power than NoScript in certain areas (selectively blocking cookies is a nice addition), and I like the UI better. It's not as intuitive, arguably, as the original NoScript, but it's information-dense and provides a fantastic picture of what's going on--better than NoScript ever did.
  - 9y ago

chippy 9y ago

Firefox 57 was directed at people who moved away from it, to Chrome users, I'm glad it has made an impact - however, it has upset many people who were using it as their main browser and who depended on a number of extensions which used APIs which were disabled. There's talk that some API's will be built back, and hopefully with the increase in new users it should be worth it. For example, on Xubuntu, a low resource friendly Linux distribution run by many on devices with small screens, Firefox 57 now is unable to hide the title window bar and unable to customise the size of tabs, reducing available screen estate by about an inch. In development versions of Firefox, they are enabling CSD for Firefox windows, so in a few months this might be better for the title bar, and in the article it seems as if theming tabs are being addressed. A particular bug for me is the second time they removed being able to change to the next tab by mouse wheeling over the tab bar. They removed it in Firefox 34 or so (it was default, in built function) and pointed to using Extensions as the workaround. Now they have removed these very extensions that enabled that. If only an extension could change userChrome.css! That would solve many people's problems.

infogulch 9y ago
> If only an extension could change userChrome.css! That would solve many people's problems. This! Even if extensions were very restricted to only toggle pre-defined css rules or something, this could go a long way.
bwat49 9y ago
> If only an extension could change userChrome.css! That would solve many people's problems. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/re-style/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/re-style/
JohnTHaller 9y ago
Users who wish to continue using legacy Firefox extensions can use Firefox ESR 52. It will receive security updates through April 2018 at which point it will move to a later version of Firefox which no longer supports legacy extensions. Over the next 5 months, the WebExtensions API will continue to be expanded enabling more of the older extensions' features to work with the modern extensions framework.

threepipeproblm 9y ago

But the people who chose a browser for speed already had Chrome. Now the people who would choose a browser that lets them run their software of choice, on which they have been relying on years, have no browser. There are hundreds of people tweeting about how Firefox 57 has ruined their browser experience, and they are representative Firefox users -- the kind who have been using it all along, and relying on all the software Mozilla just broke. I don't think Firefox will gain market share by alienating all these people, while attempting to beat Chrome at its own game. I wonder if there is any set of circumstances that would cause Mozilla to realize that making a new browser and calling it Firefox was a bad idea. If market share still continues to tank -- like were they realize for every person like the parent commenters, there may be many pre-existing users who have no reason to use Firefox anymore -- would they then admit it was a mistake? My guess is there is no such set of circumstances... witness the fact that Mozilla originally cited declining market share as a motivating factor for this big change, but then recently we have stories like this https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/25/new_war_for_mozilla/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/25/new_war_for_mozilla...

frenchy 9y ago
I'm personally really happy for firefox 57. I never switched to Chrome, primarily because of privacy concerns, and I suspect that there are a good number of users in a similar situation. The migration to web-extensions was a little annoying (had to find a different password generator). While they could have split the product into two (like they did with Firefox & Seamonkey) and let the former product languish, I'm not that would have made many users much happier. For what it's worth, you can still use Firefox 56 (or even Seamonkey).
SubiculumCode 9y ago
There was no way forward for a better browser without braking the old extension system. It is bound to irritate some people, but a rational person should find it hard to blame Mozilla for their choice. It is now a modern browser capable of making use of a modern computer's capabilities.

qbaqbaqba 9y ago

What will you do when google improves chrome's speed? Will you stick to Firefox?

fgonzag 9y ago
As long as Firefox and Chrome are somewhat similarly performant, I will always choose Firefox. I'm trying to wane off google products and services as much as I can, as I believe they have too much control over our digital lives. Most people are fine with that and I respect that, but I rather take as little control back as I can.