
The likely end of DownThemAll - deltaprotocol
http://www.downthemall.net/the-likely-end-of-downthemall/
======
tptacek
There is no piece of software in the world harder to secure than a browser.
There's almost no other piece of software where compromises have higher
stakes. Further, the verdict is probably in on whether browsers should use
multi-process sandboxes, and how careful they need to be about privilege-
escalated Javascript, which is an _enormous_ loophole for runtime security
measures like ASLR and DEP.

Firefox's multi-process model is apparently called Electrolysis. Electrolysis
apparently breaks XUL extensions.

If that's the short term cost of getting Firefox to the same level of security
that Chrome is at, it seems more than worth it.

If this were an encrypted messaging application like TextSecure making an
extension-breaking announcement for security, we'd have no trouble
understanding the stakes. What some people seem to have a hard time accepting
is that their browser is their most important encrypted messaging application.

~~~
aaron695
> If that's the short term cost of getting Firefox to the same level of
> security that Chrome is at, it seems more than worth it.

Without the extensions I perhaps see no point to FF. Is secure and dead worth
it?

Plus is there evidence of issues around this in the wild? Is it worth the risk
of being a possible FF killer?

~~~
Ellipsis753
I'm in the same boat as you.

I use Firefox purely for a large number of quite complex extensions (which
have no Chrome equivalent). If these no longer work or ever extension has a
similar version in Chrome I guess I'll switch to Chromium.

Then again. Perhaps there will be some kind of long term fork of Firefox
before the switch?

~~~
joenathan
If my FF extensions break I'll probably switch to Edge, it's faster and will
be using the same extension API. The only reason I use FF is the extensions
that can't be found anywhere else.

------
nathanb
I think some of this might be Firefox OS mentality creeping into the browser.

I have used Firefox since right after it stopped being called Firebird (0.8 -
0.9 days). I loved it because it seemed to be built around an aesthetic of
tinkering. Coming from Konqueror, which is like the tape deck in your mom's
minivan, Firefox was like a fancy hi-fi sound system. You get decent sound
with the defaults, but if you really know what you're doing you can produce
jaw-dropping results.

In grad school, I did some research work examining and improving a Firefox
extension. I had toyed with extension writing before, but the power that
extensions had over the DOM on one end and the whole browser experience on the
other end was amazing.

Now, I think Mozilla developers have gotten the Firefox OS mentality and are
treating the browser core like a kernel. Sure, you can do anything you want in
user mode, but the kernel is inviolable.

I understand that Firefox is a Big Boy browser now. People are using it the
world over; using it in corporate settings; trusting it to keep their personal
information safe. That has got to put a lot of pressure on the Mozilla devs to
make sure the browser is locked down as tight as can be.

I can install the Developer Edition. I can still tinker. I can customize my
own experience to my heart's content. But as an extension author myself, I
sympathize mightily with the developers of DownThemAll. I want to make others'
browsing experiences better too, and lately I feel like Mozilla have been
working against me rather than with me on this.

Firefox is actually a really good browser. They've made some pretty
questionable decisions of late, but I do think their tech is as good as any
browser tech out there today. But I liked Firefox not because I like _their_
browser but because I could make it _my_ browser, and Mozilla keep making it
harder to do that. That makes me sad.

------
hyperion2010
This seems like a classic case if thinking people use your software for the
core features you develop. I hate to break it to you but people don't use
windows for the control panel. Firefox and other browsers have become
development platforms and many of their "users" don't use their platform for
its 'control panel,' they use it for some useful tool built on top of it.

To use a linux kernel term, this breaks userspace (might be a sign that
browsers have some serious OS envy). This is particularly bad because if many
of your users use your platform for a tool that only works on an old,
unsupported version (think XP), you actually make the security situation WORSE
since those users don't care about security, they care about the tools they
need to get their jobs done. They are still going to use those tools and you
have just left them hanging out to dry from a security perspective. Talk about
passing the buck.

~~~
pcwalton
> To use a linux kernel term, this breaks userspace (might be a sign that
> browsers have some serious OS envy).

No, the equivalent of breaking userspace would be breaking the Web platform.
This is more like breaking the in-kernel API for .ko modules—and the official
Linux policy on this is [1]. Firefox has always been much _less_ inclined to
break its internal XPCOM APIs than the Linux kernel has been to break its
internal in-kernel APIs.

[1]:
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt)

~~~
hollerith
>No, the equivalent of breaking userspace would be breaking the Web platform.

Suppose someone secretly believes that the true users of my web browser are
the owners of the web sites I visit. (Perhaps they own a web site or they make
their living working for web-site owners, which makes it natural for them to
care about the freedoms and the interests of site owners more than they care
about my freedoms and interests.)

That secret belief would tend to make them overestimate the usefulness of the
Javascript that the sites I visit cause to execute on my browser and to
underestimate the usefulness and importance of any extensions or add-ons I
choose to install on my browser.

I think the true situation is that there are two important userspaces -- one
in which front-end web-app code runs and another in which extensions and add-
ons run. (There is some overlap between these two userspaces.)

Also, one of the arguments being given for the need to restrict what add-ons
can do is security even though most exploits of the browser are caused not by
the user's installing a bad add-on, but rather by the user's visiting a bad
web page. Yet I see no one on this page mentioning the latter kind of exploits
(which an add-on can sometimes protect against, for example, by blocking ads).

------
carlosrg
I don't know if it's very smart to limit one of the most distinctive features
of Firefox, the powerful add-ons available. Erodes the differences between
Firefox and other browsers. If Firefox is going to be just another Chrome,
people will just use Chrome.

~~~
AstroJetson
I agree, if they are all going to look alike, work alike and the base is now
Chrome, then might as well use Chrome. But frankly if I wanted to use Chrome
then I'd be using Chrome now.

I've stopped the version madness here, I have some plugins that I love that
preclude me from going forward. I'd rather see the team go "Hey we have 2.3
million person years of backlogged bugs, we are going to fix them before we
make a fundamental change to the browser.

Security is an issue, but with my work machine I'm not hitting sites that
would put me at risk.

~~~
cwyers
> Security is an issue, but with my work machine I'm not hitting sites that
> would put me at risk.

How can you possibly know this for certain?

------
justin_
I'll be pretty upset if the addons that let you modify the Firefox UI via XUL
have to go away. Tree-style tabs[1] for example is one of the major extensions
keeping me with FF. There's really no alternative for Chrome since they can't
completely change the tab UI like Firefox can. Check out the screenshots!

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

~~~
thristian
Tree Style Tabs is one of my favourite browser extensions of all time, but
it's alreody pretty broken on Firefox 42, and apparently it depends quite a
bit on reaching into the browser's UI code and rewritiing chunks of it. I will
be very sad if it breaks completely, but not very surprised.

~~~
efng
when I lose Tree Style Tabs, I will be deeply saddened and how I browse will
be greatly changed.

------
beloch
From the Firefox announcement:

Re: Why they are removing XUL:

"XPCOM and XUL are two of the most fundamental technologies to Firefox. The
ability to write much of the browser in JavaScript has been a huge advantage
for Mozilla. It also makes Firefox far more customizable than other browsers.
However, the add-on model that arose naturally from these technologies is
extremely permissive. Add-ons have complete access to Firefox’s internal
implementation. This lack of modularity leads to many problems.

A permissive add-on model means that we have limited flexibility in changing
the foundations of Firefox.

...

"The tight coupling between the browser and its add-ons also creates shorter-
term problems for Firefox development. It’s not uncommon for Firefox
development to be delayed because of broken add-ons. In the most extreme
cases, changes to the formatting of a method in Firefox can trigger problems
caused by add-ons that modify our code via regular expressions. Add-ons can
also cause Firefox to crash when they use APIs in unexpected ways.

Re: When XUL is being ripped out

Consequently, we have decided to deprecate add-ons that depend on XUL, XPCOM,
and XBL. We don’t have a specific timeline for deprecation, but most likely it
will take place within 12 to 18 months from now. "

Re: The gap in capability

"A major challenge we face is that many Firefox add-ons cannot possibly be
built using either WebExtensions or the SDK as they currently exist. Over the
coming year, we will seek feedback from the development community, and will
continue to develop and extend the WebExtension API to support as much of the
functionality needed by the most popular Firefox extensions as possible."

\-------------------------------

It's overly optimistic to assume add-on developers will have new versions
ready in just a year if the API they're expected to rewrite everything in
isn't even ready yet. I can understand why Mozilla is making this move, but
it's being rushed. If WebExtension were ready _today_ then this announcement
would be more reasonable, but it's not even close!

Hopefully Mozilla is just trying to scare their add-on developers into action,
so they'll speak up and tell Mozilla exactly what they need from WebExtension.

Starting over in a new API means a lot of existing add-ons will probably die
anyways, but hopefully the important ones will make the move if Mozilla gives
them enough time and support.

~~~
cwyers
> add-ons that modify our code via regular expressions

That's... actually kinda terrifying.

~~~
mook
It is. And it's done because Firefox doesn't expose the right hooks and isn't
interested in exposing them. They obviously know what's happening already.

From the addon's point of view, the option is do it via regular expressions or
not at all; it turns out the most users don't actually care how things get
done.

------
geofft
From a technical point of view, what is DownThemAll? It seems like it looks at
the structure of the current web page, identifies all links, and then
downloads them (in some cases using range requests, as with '90s-era download
accelerators), with options for pausing and resuming downloads and renaming
them in certain ways.

What prevents this from being done using a Chrome extension to look at the
page structure and render some UI, plus a bit of native code using the native
messaging API to actually store the files on disk?

[https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging)

"Developer frustration" is a more-than-valid reason, but I'm trying to
understand if this is a claim that _no software like DownThemAll can possibly
be written_ without Mozilla introducing purpose-built extension APIs.

~~~
aaron695
The main reason people install it I thought is because

1\. It allows downloads to start and stop. No more 90% of that iso then having
to start again.

2\. It opens up 4 thingies on the file and downloads simultaneously. So 4
times quicker if the website is restricting bandwidth per connection.

~~~
geofft
> 1\. It allows downloads to start and stop. No more 90% of that iso then
> having to start again.

I'm surprised Firefox doesn't do this itself, as in, this sounds like a clear
bug. Is there some reason the upstream project by itself doesn't get this
right?

> 2\. It opens up 4 thingies on the file and downloads simultaneously. So 4
> times quicker if the website is restricting bandwidth per connection.

... this works in 2015? I'm pretty sure I remember people trying this and
website owners deploying countermeasures in the '90s.

Is this secretly a bufferbloat workaround or something?

~~~
lorddoig
> this works in 2015? I'm pretty sure I remember people trying this and
> website owners deploying countermeasures in the '90s.

Oh yes, it works. It works wonders. It can very often quadruple the d/l rate.

------
blinkingled
Speaking of Download managers - Chrome still doesn't have a decent one and I
for one will miss DownThemAll if it goes away - it is definitely a useful
piece of software.

Wonder what the new signing and addon development policies will do to FF
market share - there won't be any reason not to just use Chrome anymore. I get
the security part but the reason I use FF is because it is less memory hungry
and has these extensions that either are not on Chrome or work poorly on it.

~~~
chillacy
I used to use DTA on Firefox but switched a few years ago to native ones. I
ended up writing one [http://maxelapp.com/](http://maxelapp.com/) which works
for Macs. It can intercept downloads from Chrome with a chrome extension

------
dangoor
As people have been saying in the thread that links to the announcement, it is
not at all clear that extensions that today can do things in Firefox that are
not possible in Chrome will be unable to do those things in the future. The
_mechanism_ for things like changing tab management and such would surely
change, but that doesn't mean there won't be one.

~~~
smacktoward
It also doesn't mean there _will_ be one. Uncertainty about the future of an
API is bad, it always causes developers who build on that API to panic and
assume the worst.

~~~
brighteyes
Uncertainty is bad, but it's unavoidable in this case, for two reasons:

* They need feedback from addon makers in order to design the new API.

* Mozilla does all its work in the open anyhow.

There is no way to avoid an announcement about an intention to change the API,
before stating the API in full. Yes, it caused uncertainty, and that's a
downside, but open development is generally worth it.

~~~
mook
> There is no way to avoid an announcement about an intention to change the
> API, before stating the API in full. Yes, it caused uncertainty, and that's
> a downside, but open development is generally worth it.

It's quite possible to announce that they're starting to implement the new
API, wait a year or two until it's capable enough, _then_ start talking about
deprecating the existing one. Just like it was possible to finish implementing
extension signing (or at least to the extent that people can automate signing)
before deciding on a time frame to enforce it, or to get the automatic SSL
certificate issuer (Let's Encrypt) working before talking about deprecating
non-SSL HTTP traffic.

Basically, don't put the cart before the horse, let people implement
transition plans. Wanting to have better things is fine; scaring people
without having actionable mitigation strategies isn't so nice.

~~~
brighteyes
I agree a more organized PR approach might be more effective, but it would be
impossible to keep a secret like that when you're doing open development.

People would quickly ask "what is the long-term plan here?" and you can't lie
to them.

~~~
mook
> People would quickly ask "what is the long-term plan here?" and you can't
> lie to them.

Sure; but you wouldn't need to. Just don't have a time line set (as opposed to
the 12 ~ 18 months set here). They've done it once with Jetpack already, that
just didn't go anywhere because the APIs weren't flexible enough to actually
not need all the underlying guts. Hopefully this one would have better
results, but that requires lots of work on the part of Mozilla to actually
implement enough API surface for the thing to be useful.

~~~
brighteyes
So you're suggesting they say "we intend to deprecate this feature", but _not_
give a timeline?

It seems much more open and fair to give a timeline. That way it's predictable
and lets people plan.

~~~
mook
> So you're suggesting they say "we intend to deprecate this feature", but not
> give a timeline?

Yes; but that only works if they don't actually _have_ a timeline. Do the
necessary work to let people explore options, then evaluate and give a
timeline (in the same order as what it took to get all that implemented).

The timeline currently is "you have 12 to 18 months, but can't actually
start". That's pretty much a recipe for frustration.

~~~
brighteyes
I guess it's a matter of opinion, but I greatly prefer it they way they did
it.

Announcing "this is going away" without a timeline would make me worry "when?
now? in a month?" Instead, by saying "12 to 18 months", I know this is a long-
term thing and I can plan for it. The timeline is very useful information.

~~~
feanaro
But the point is that they _shouldn 't_ have set the timeline until a
replacement was reasonably in place. They could (and should) have said "this
is going away 12 to 18 months after we've been able to determine what APIs are
needed and implemented them".

------
timdafweak
Not just DTA, but FireGestures, Easy DragToGo, and all the amazing extensions
that made me stick by Firefox even though most of my colleagues left for
Chrome. It is a sad day.

~~~
Nadya
It's a sad day for me because I use FireGestures entirely for their wheel
gesture "[Popup] List all tabs" that allows me to scroll between my tabs from
anywhere on the page. It's a strange feature that I've only been able to find
in FireGestures (and wish I could find as a stand-alone extension).

I use DTA! with AntiContainer quite frequently.

Palemoon doesn't (properly) support Tab Groups, so I refuse to use it. The
add-on is broken and doesn't restore tabs if the browser crashes.

I feel like my only option is to disable FF updates and hope I never get bit
by a security issue. As GNU IceCat doesn't work on my machine. Or learn how to
compile from source and maintain my own personal fork...

(And before anyone suggests it, using Aurora/Web Dev version is not an option
for me. I've already been there, tried that.)

------
johansch
They should spearhead the work on pushing the spec people (and in extension
the actual developer teams) at the browser companies to support what is needed
to implement DownThemAll in Chrome/Opera/Safari/New Firefox. I have the
feeling there isn't that much that is lacking today (sparse file writing
support?).

This is clearly a use case that users want.

(DownThemAll is the sole reason I have Firefox installed. Would love to have
it work in e.g. Chrome.)

------
akavel
As to NoScript:

\- from a linked Mozilla blog post:

 _> [...] A major challenge we face is that many Firefox add-ons cannot
possibly be built using either WebExtensions or the SDK as they currently
exist. Over the coming year, we will seek feedback from the development
community, and will continue to develop and extend the WebExtension API to
support as much of the functionality needed by the most popular Firefox
extensions as possible. [...]_

([https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-
dev...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-
firefox-add-ons/))

\- then, from a link posted at the end of the Mozilla blog post (in an
"Update" section):

 _> [...] One concern people have is that their favorite add-on is no longer
going to be supported, especially add-ons for power users. Some of the ones
being mentioned are:_

 _> [...] NoScript, [...]_

 _> We’re working with Giorgio Maone, the developer of NoScript, to design the
APIs he needs to implement NoScript as a WebExtension. [...]_

([https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-
add-o...](https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-on-
changes/))

~~~
Excavator
Giorgio's post on the matter:
[https://hackademix.net/2015/08/22/webextensions-api-
noscript...](https://hackademix.net/2015/08/22/webextensions-api-noscript/)

------
tacone
Don't be so pessimistic. 18 months are a lot of time, Mozilla folks are smart
and often listen to their users, there's the browser.html experiment going on,
etc.

I have a gut feeling that in a way or another, things will roughly be the same
for extensions developers.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Also, Mozilla are going to have their developers work with add-on developers
to help port them.

------
rhelmer
First, see [https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-
add-o...](https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-on-
changes/)

1\. these ideas are being announced far in advance of any actual changes

2\. firefox devs (see link above) actively want to support current popular
extensions, by adding to the Web Extension APIs

In fact, you can participate in this discussion with Mozilla devs more
directly:
[https://webextensions.uservoice.com/forums/315663-webextensi...](https://webextensions.uservoice.com/forums/315663-webextension-
api-ideas)

Nobody working on Firefox _wants_ to take away your most useful extensions,
become a "clone" of Chrome (or any other browser) or otherwise has ulterior
motives. The goals is really about improving performance and security and
making add-ons easier to write and port between browsers.

~~~
nathanb
Unintended consequences are still consequences.

Most extensions are developed by volunteers; many of the rest are, at best,
subsidized as a second job through donations or ad affiliates. These
volunteers don't always have the time to fight for the APIs they need.

DownThemAll has been around for a long time. I'm sure its developers are as
passionate and involved as you will find anywhere in the Firefox ecosystem.
But for the past couple of years, and especially recently, it has felt like
Mozilla are working against extension developers rather than for them.

Each developer must decide individually when the sunk cost becomes too much.
This move will probably be that point for a number of developers.

~~~
rhelmer
Good points, and I'll respond to the "sunk cost" bit by adding that backwards
compatibility is a double-edged sword. My favorite pet example of this is MS
versus Apple - the former has historically cared deeply about being backwards
compatible, while the latter has gone through several hardware and software
architecture changes that have required total rewrites from third-party
developers.

The situation with Firefox is a little trickier, staying backwards-compatible
for _web content_ has always been an important goal, but anything living
inside the _browser chrome_ does not get the same assurances.

Right now extensions live somewhere between these two worlds, and we've had
over a decade of experience with them so I think it's time to carve out their
own space, with dependable APIs that are more stable than the internal browser
APIs, but faster-moving and more privileged than the web.

------
aidenn0
"The new APIs would only allow for a severely limited in functionality,
severely stripped down DownThemAll! at best."

This is speculation. The new APIs aren't finished yet, and the announcement
they linked to specifically addresses this concern, stating that the new APIs
_as implemented today_ don't allow for a lot of existing addons functionality,
and specifically states their intention to work with addon developers to
ensure that the functionality can be added.

------
s_dev
Shame, I used to use it back in college. Like most colleges there was a proxy
so torrenting without ssh tunnelling was difficult and I didn't have a server
to tunnel in to anyway.

Most people just bought RapidShare (also gone) and downthemall saved mind
numbing ctrl+c/v for .rar files along with being able to pause and resume
downloads which few others have seemed to grasp as well as they did.

------
Havoc
How DTA is this dominant at all is a bit of a mystery to me. It allows me to
download sequentially names files in rudimentary batches yes but thats not
exactly mindblowing tech.

~~~
Nadya
This is a large reason why:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-
mover_advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage)

But what you listed also isn't all it provides. Imagine being 99% done with a
35.6GB download. If Firefox crashes, you get to start that download _from the
beginning_. As if you hadn't downloaded any part of it at all.

DTA would recover and you'd download 1% of that 35.6GB instead of the entire
35.6GB.

That's a large reason to use DTA over the built-in download manager by itself.

~~~
douche
One would hope that anyone providing a 35GB download would provide a torrent
or magnet-link download. Maybe I'm wrong, but is seeding the torrent any more
expensive than the same bandwidth from a web/ftp server? And then, it's also
possible to offload some of the bandwidth onto the swarm, assuming there's
more than one concurrent download.

It is a little amazing that the downloading functionality provided out-of-the-
box in all the major browsers is such hot garbage still.

~~~
Nadya
So instead of a download manager I need a torrenting program? ;) That's just
shifting the problem of "poor downloading" to a different tool. Many would
prefer to not have to install another program and would prefer installing an
add-on for a program they already have installed.

I do agree with you about torrent/magnet link being provided. Though sometimes
large .iso downloads don't come with a torrent/magnet link.

E:

Regardless of file size - even if the download is only 20mb - it's annoying to
have to redownload the entire 20mb instead of starting where it left off. What
if I'm having connection issues? What if the server is having connection
issues? Starting at n% and slowly making progress is better than starting from
0% or having the download be impossible...

------
brillenfux
At this point, would it make sense to fork Firefox?

~~~
smalley
I think that's what the Pale Moon
([https://www.palemoon.org/](https://www.palemoon.org/)) folks were doing some
time ago. I'm pretty sure they support most of the original firefox extensions
without the signing etc.

~~~
cauterized
Too bad there's no Mac version.

~~~
richardboegli
Pale Moon for Mac OSX 24.7.1

[https://forum.palemoon.org/viewforum.php?f=41](https://forum.palemoon.org/viewforum.php?f=41)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099556)

------
Karunamon
Something I just thought of... if these changes are presumably meant to keep
malware addons out of the browser, then it's necessarily operating in an
infected environment.

(I.e. something already had the ability to do things in the context of the
user without that user's permission, and we're just preventing it from doing
this one thing via restricting what the user can do)

In what way does this meaningfully secure the browser from malware, with that
in mind? If I've got code running in the user's account, I don't need to hook
into the browser engine to direct the user at popup ads, phishing sites,
harvest their keystrokes, or do any number of other evil things. Hooking into
the browser is one of the _least_ interesting things that evil me could be
doing. I've got access to the browser's memory, the TCP stream, the ability to
launch whatever programs the user does, and am probably traveling along with a
payload to allow for privilege escalation.

So, WTF?

~~~
mschuster91
The problem these days is established extensions that get legitimately sold or
their access data hacked, and malware rolled out to the users.

Or extensions which actually do their job, but after a delay, e.g. a month,
deploy the malware payload.

Enforcing someone from Mozilla to take a look at the actual APIs used in the
extension is a pretty reasonable way to prevent a lot of this.

Also, disallowing local installs of unsigned stuff is usually a good practice
- lots of "download managers" is bundled with "premium" "extensions" turning
out to be toolbars collecting and shipping off your data, replacing your ads
etc.

~~~
mook
> The problem these days is established extensions that get legitimately sold
> or their access data hacked, and malware rolled out to the users.

Published extensions on addons.mozilla.org (i.e. the built-in extension
distribution channel) already go through a review for every update. Someone
from Mozilla _already_ has to take a look.

Of course, the addon review queue is currently ~ 10 weeks (according to their
blog, from Aug 12). Relative to the 6 week Firefox release cycle, it's like
saying if Apple enforced application signing for OSX where you need to submit
your app, wait a year and a half, then get a signed version back.

------
rcxdude
For me, tree style tabs and the ability to have 100s of tabs open is the
killer feature of firefox, and the reason I don't use any other browser. I
will likely stop updating if these cease to work, and switch to any other
browser which allows me to continue my workflow (or maybe start developing my
own fork).

I suspect that a substantial portion of firefox's remaining users are there
not because of the core browser (which is now almost indistinguishable from
chrome), but because of an extension which either no-one cares or no-one is
able to port to another browser.

------
Parafernalia
I've started searching for an alternative download accelerator. So far, the
best option seems to be the Citrio browser. It's downloading capabilities are
on par with dTa: [http://www.tutorialspoint.com/articles/citrio-a-chrome-
like-...](http://www.tutorialspoint.com/articles/citrio-a-chrome-like-browser-
with-a-built-in-download-manager)

------
jfb
People still use download managers? I honestly had no idea.

~~~
chillacy
DTA was pretty good for its download acceleration abilities. That's still
useful, especially for content hosted far away.

~~~
jfb
Yeah, I don't doubt it. I've been spoiled by living close to the data I want
to download. I imagine that people at the far end of attenuated links would
have a very different experience.

------
scrollinondubs
Mozilla is dead. Long live Mozilla Extended Support Release!
[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/)

~~~
hadrien01
Here's hoping the old extension system deprecation comes after the release of
ESR 45, so we can have support for old extensions until March 2017!

------
ionised
Man, if my favourite extensions no longer work properly then I don't know what
I'll do.

I think I might have to go full Stallman and wget + email html-only web pages
to myself.

------
fuzzythinker
Off topic. The url reads like down-the-mall in all lower case. s/Can be a
pivot if no backoff from Mozilla/s

------
mbrownnyc
Am I the only one who can't read an article when the text is aligned on the
left size of a window like that?

------
cooleng
Mozilla begin to abuse their power

------
eiji
I'm maintaining two Add-Ons with around 20k active users. I agree with his
predictions, but I also find it hard to give to much attention to voices like
the one expressed here.

It's hard for me to tell how much of this is genuine concern, or just how many
donations or how much income he will loose because of this. I never see
numbers from these Add-Ons. The one in question here has 1,300,000 daily
active users.

Sure, if I make $1500 per month on an Add-On, I would be very upset if things
change. Then I'd rather see the XUL/XPCOM stuff around for another 15 years.

~~~
tn123
Thanks for implying I'm in it for the money without even knowing me. Nice ad
hominem you got there.

Let's just say that the donations do not nearly cover the time I spend
developing add-ons, helping other add-on developers out with their questions,
volunteering on AMO, writing patches for core Firefox and so on.

~~~
eiji
I'm sorry if I offended you. All I'm saying is you could be in a position of
conflict of interest. Unfortunately, your user base would never mobilize on
your behalf, because they don't understand the technical details behind the
comprehensive Firefox extension system that would be deprecated.

That's a problem. The user don't understand what they are about to loose, but
the big name developers with millions of users have a vested interest in the
status quo. I don't have a solution for that. There are a lot of Add-On
developers out there for which this is a business. Firefox extensions can
generate an income.

At least you make no secret about it. The euro coins are right next to the
article. I mean that in a good way.

------
tomc1985
This, along with all the other simplifications in tech lately, along with
everyone's inexplicable obsession with tablets/phablets/phones, signals the
end of the power user era

------
tunap
This is what happens when humans achieve success. Rather than maintain the
course they are obligated to exploit to the nth in order to squeeze every gram
of return from an idea(product) until they can get no more. Then, they will
get creative and pull out every hook & crook to squeeze some more. Thanks
Mozilla, for everything up until your mass-collection, feature- bloat,
entrapment blitz you've set out upon. Perhaps DTA will make their plug-in
compatible with PaleMtoon now. Chances are the forks will come out on top &
Moz can go f-up Thunderbird & Seamonkey for awhil as their top-heavy pyramid
topples.

edit:admittedly a pipe dream, markets ruled by duops and oligops never lose
the top players, they just cannibalize each othet and bloat.

~~~
AustinScript
I don't understand what is being exploited?

~~~
tunap
The end-user, of course.

"Surreptitious spying is all the rage. Everybody is doing it."

