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Categories: compatibility developers documentation

Add-ons Update – 2017/10

7 responses

Here’s your monthly add-ons update.

AMO

We changed the way contributions are handled on AMO. This should be simpler to maintain, and offer more payment options for developers.

The Review Queues

We recently moved to a new review model, where developers don’t have to wait for long before their add-ons are reviewed. Legacy add-ons still go through the old model, but there are only a small number of updates awaiting review now. So I’m discontinuing this section of the monthly update for now.

Compatibility Update

Firefox 57 is now on the Beta channel and will be released on November 14th. It will only accept WebExtensions add-ons. In order to ease the transition to 57, here are some changes we’re implementing on AMO.

Recognition

We would like to thank the following people for their recent contributions:

  • ian-henderso
  • Jp-Rivera
  • Apoorva Pandey
  • ilmanzo
  • Trishul Goel
  • Tom Schuster
  • Apoorva Singh
  • Tiago Morais Morgado
  • zombie
  • wouter
  • kwan
  • Kevin Jones
  • Aastha
  • Masatoshi Kimura
  • asamuzaK
  • Christophe Villeneuve

You can read more about their work in our recognition page.

7 comments on “Add-ons Update – 2017/10”

  1. charles wrote on

    > “…It will only accept WebExtensions add-ons by default…”

    putting “by default” make it sound as it’s possible change it via some preference, but it isn’t, right?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Right. There’s a preference, but it only worked on Nightly, so this something I forgot to change from past posts.

  2. Foxa wrote on

    Not Completely Satisfied!

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      Sorry!

  3. JimFlorida wrote on

    Will this “Mozilla Add-ons Blog” disappear after Nov 14, and if it doesn’t disappear, do you anticipate making occasional posts if needed?

    1. Jorge Villalobos wrote on

      The blog will continue to exist, for sure.

  4. Ray E wrote on

    I build extensions for a living for myself and other customers. They key reason I would ever recommend Firefox, was because of the powerful features of XUL/XPCOM, otherwise, if I wanted WebExtensions, I would just use Chrome, as it is a far more popular browser with less problems.

    I can only think that you and a number of others are secretly getting paid by Google, to destroy Firefox. If not, you should be, because these changes are fantastic for Google Chrome.

    When I look at all the baloney that Firefox is pushing with this “Net Neutrality” garbage, as if making more laws is going to make the internet “freer”, it really seems like Firefox is done for, there is no reason to use it at all after Nov 14th.

    Even if I wanted to port extensions over, you have no equivalent way of doing it, it is impossible:

    From your own list of porting: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Comparison_with_XUL_XPCOM_extensions

    Services.jsm API WebExtensions equivalent
    nsIAndroidBridge None
    nsIXULAppInfo
    nsIXULRuntime None
    nsIAppShellService None
    nsIBlocklistService None
    nsICacheService None
    nsICacheStorageService None
    nsIClipboard Partial: see the clipboard API, and Interacting with the clipboard.
    nsIConsoleService window.console
    nsIContentPrefService None
    nsICookieManager2 cookies
    nsIMessageSender Content scripts
    CrashManager.jsm None
    nsIDirectoryService
    nsIProperties None
    nsIDOMStorageManager None
    nsIDOMRequestService None
    nsIDownloadManager downloads
    nsIDroppedLinkHandler None
    nsIEventListenerService None
    nsIEffectiveTLDService None
    nsIFocusManager None
    nsIIOService
    nsIIOService2 None
    nsILocaleService i18n
    nsILoginManager None
    nsIWinMetroUtils None
    nsIMessageBroadcaster
    nsIFrameScriptLoader Content scripts
    nsIObserverService None
    nsIPermissionManager None
    nsIMessageBroadcaster
    nsIProcessScriptLoader Content scripts
    nsIPrefBranch
    nsIPrefBranch2
    nsIPrefService See Settings.
    nsIPromptService None
    mozIJSSubScriptLoader None
    nsIScriptSecurityManager None
    nsIBrowserSearchService None
    nsIAppStartup None
    mozIStorageService storage
    nsIStringBundleService i18n
    nsIPropertyBag2 None
    nsITelemetry None
    nsIThreadManager None
    nsIURIFixup None
    nsIURLFormatter None
    nsIVersionComparator None
    nsIWindowMediator None
    nsIWindowWatcher None

    The free market will come up with something to replace what you have gotten rid of, and the entire Firefox browser will soon be a “legacy”, taken down with the extensions it destroyed.