{"id":7918,"date":"2016-08-25T09:46:36","date_gmt":"2016-08-25T16:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/?p=7918"},"modified":"2016-08-25T09:46:36","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T16:46:36","slug":"webextensions-in-firefox-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/addons\/2016\/08\/25\/webextensions-in-firefox-50\/","title":{"rendered":"WebExtensions in Firefox 50"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firefox 50<\/a> landed in Developer Edition this week, so we have another update on WebExtensions<\/a> for you!Please use the WebExtensions API for any new add-on development, and consider porting<\/a> your existing add-ons as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a great time to port because WebExtensions is compatible with multiprocess Firefox, which began rolling out in Firefox 48 to people without add-ons installed. When Firefox 49 reaches the release channel in September, we will begin testing multiprocess Firefox with add-ons. The goal is to turn it on<\/a> for everyone in January 2017 with the release of Firefox 51.<\/p>\n

If you need help porting to WebExtensions, please start with the compatibility checker<\/a>, and check out these resources<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since the last release, more than 79 bugs<\/a> were closed on WebExtensions alone.<\/p>\n

API Changes<\/h2>\n

In Firefox 50, a few more history APIs landed: the getVisits<\/a> function, and two events–onVisited<\/a> and onVisitRemoved<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Content scripts in WebExtensions now gain access to a few export helpers that existed in SDK add-ons: cloneInto<\/a>, createObjectIn<\/a> and exportFunction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The webNavigation API has gained event filtering. This allows users of the webNavigation API to filter events based on some criteria. Details on the URL Filtering option are available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a change to debugging WebExtensions. If you go to about:debugging and click on debug you now get all the Firefox Developer Tools features that are available to you on a regular webpage.<\/p>\n

Why is this significant? Besides providing more developer features, this will work across add-on reloads and allows the debugging of more parts of WebExtensions. More importantly, it means that we are now using the same debugger that the rest of the Firefox Dev Tools team is using. Reducing duplicated code is a good thing.<\/p>\n

As mentioned in an earlier blog post<\/a>, native messaging is now available. This allows you to communicate with other processes on the host\u2019s operating system. It\u2019s a commonly used API for password managers and security software, which need to communicate with external processes.<\/p>\n

Documentation<\/h2>\n

The documentation for WebExtensions<\/a> has been updated with some amazing resources over the last few months. This has included the addition of a few new areas:<\/p>\n