
How you can contribute to Firefox 57 success - Vinnl
https://diary.braniecki.net/2017/09/01/all-hands-on-deck-how-you-can-use-your-skills-to-contribute-to-firefox-57-success/
======
darrmit
I just tried the Nightly on Windows and I'm very impressed. Much faster and
better looking.

Long time Firefox user and have been dreading the extensions going away, but
it looks like Nightly has resolved some of the problems I was using extensions
for (i.e. duplicate tab context menu) and I know some of the more prominent
extensions (like NoScript) are being worked on.

~~~
jorvi
just tried it on macOS and I have to agree it feels very well made.

Some issues though: instead of going for 'native', they still seem to feel
like Firefox is a little planet of its own. It doesn't use macOS-style menus,
nor transparency. Not that Chrome uses all macOS style elements, but it at
least feels like it has had some effort put into making it feel at home on
macOS. There's also some weird defaults / ignorance of convention: every
browser launches a private window with cmd+shift+n, Firefox uses cmd+shift+p.
There's still a separate search field next to an URL&search field. Probably a
few more that I missed.

~~~
zbraniecki
Glad you like it!

On the issues - what you listed is the eternal dilemma of cross-platform
software. Balancing cross-platform behavior vs. platform-compliance.

There are choices that are just "Firefox-specific" like the shortcut to open
private window. Other items like "Gecko menus vs MacOS menus" are tradeoffs of
productivity. Having one set of menus for all platforms is easier to maintain
than separate for each.

Those choices are hard to make perfect. I've been recently fixing the drop-
down menu lists styling [0] to allow websites to style some of it, while
keeping it looking native when they don't. It's pretty tricky to get it right
:)

[0]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1386015](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1386015)

~~~
JohnBooty
I always favor native over non-native, but the FF's non-native bits are
tasteful enough for me not to care. Do I wish FF used native tabs on macOS?
Sure, but FF's tabs are functional enough and visually innocuous enough for me
to simply not really care.

And, _wow_ does FF57 "feel" fast. Not sure if it's because I have Stylo
enabled, or what, but the UI feels faster now. I'm not sure if I've felt that
way about any other FF release. And I have used them all.

------
electrotype
Please Firefox developers : always keep in mind that power users are loyal to
Firefox for some specific reasons. One of those reasons is that Firefox is, by
far, the browser with the most customizable interface. The "Customize..."
feature is why I personally stick to Firefox :

[http://i.imgur.com/AH1ahF3.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/AH1ahF3.jpg)

I really don't care which browser is #1 in speed tests. I don't care about
integrations with social networks. I simply want a browser that I can
configure the way I want!

Another suggestion : when you change something, even if you are 100% sure
everybody will like it, please at least leave an "about:config" option that
can revert that modification.

Sadly, I realized that, when Firefox is updated, I'm not trilled anymore to
see what new features are included, I'm instead anxious to see what has been
changed/removed!

~~~
chrisseaton
Why do you want to customise so much? I know there are people like you but
maybe like the Firefox developers I don't understand it. I use software as it
comes. I almost never change any options. I don't even change my desktop
wallpaper. I think making developers add options for everything creates bloat.
Just use the defaults!

~~~
andrepd
I'm not quite sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but one of the things I
value more in software is costumizability. I don't _want_ someone else to make
my choices for me and force me in a given mold. No browser, no software, can
be made perfect for everybody. Different people want different things, so a
good software must always offer users the option to change it to fit their use
case.

For instance neither "classic" top tabs nor a side list/tree is the "best" or
"right" way to design a tab selector. Some users will prefer one, others the
other. You should give them choice.

~~~
chrisseaton
I'm not being sarcastic - I genuinely don't understand why people value being
able to tweak such trivial things and why they want to spend their precious
time and effort doing it.

I think building support for a choice about something like tab placement is a
waste of time and code - I don't understand why people can't adapt to one way
or the other and then we all benefit from simpler code with fewer bugs.

I don't think we need to decide if top or side tabs are better, because I
can't see how it matters much. Just pick one, hard code it, and everyone get
on with the things that matter.

~~~
andrepd
It does matter to me. When I'm working I often have a large amount of tabs
open. Side tabs let me view more tabs at one,which top tabs can't since they
don't let me view more than ~10 at once. Furthermore, screens are wider than
taller, while webpages scroll up and down. Makes much more sense to have all
the real estate you can get vertically, while the tabs go on a sidebar.

I spend several hours _every day_ on a browser, switching tabs hundreds of
times. I am measurably and subjectively more efficient with side tabs than top
tabs. Why is this something that doesn't matter? It's not trivial, I literally
cannot browse without side tabs without getting annoyed. It's absolutely _not_
a waste of time and code if it's important to people.

------
ivanstojic
Back in ~2015, there were several Firefox developers who visited a local
hacklab where I used to hang out. I was aware of a bug in the current version
of FX at that time, and I knew how to fix it. I wanted to get their help to
create a patch for the bug and get it submitted.

After about two hours of trying, we were unable to produce a working build
from a tagged release point in their version control - even before applying
any changes.

I'm hoping the new tooling works better.

~~~
hsivonen
I'm curious: Which operating system?

The Linux x86_64 build experience has worked very well on Ubuntu for many
years. These days you don't even need to copy and paste the apt incantations:
./mach bootstrap takes care of that.

~~~
ivanstojic
It was on a Mac, which I admit probably isn't where the core of development
lies.

~~~
fabrice_d
Many gecko/firefox devs work on Macs, so it is very surprising to hear that,
unless your are running a somewhat old and unsupported version of MacOS (you
need 10.7 according to [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Mac_OS_X_Prerequisites)).

------
AsyncAwait
Reading the comments, I get that many users are upset about the XUL extension
APIs being dropped, but what I don't get is that many of them plan to switch
to Chrome.

a. You're getting a less powerful set of APIs in Chrome than in Firefox, even
with WebExtensions being used by both.

b. You're supporting a browser by a major corporation that is already number
one anyway and has a IE-style chokehold on the web, giving them even more
power is not the best solution, helping Mozilla make the new APIs as close in
power to the old ones would be a better alternative in my opinion.

Again, it's everybody's personal choice and am not saying what anyone _should_
be doing, just found it curious that many consider switching to WebKit/Blink
to be the solution, where they won't get more power and give Mozilla even less
of a say in terms of web standards and just having a decent alternative to
WebKit.

------
kirillkh
Dear Mozilla developers! I've been using Firefox since v1.0. And I want you to
know that by ditching the old plugin architecture you are alienating your
faithful users, myself included.

I'm sorry, but I decided to stick with Firefox 55 for now, possibly switching
to Palemoon later. I need my old extensions to work: Status4Evar, EdgeWise and
Classic Theme Restorer. I can't stand the current FF UI and I will not give up
on this.

~~~
JohnBooty
While we're throwing anecdotal statements around...

Dear Mozilla developers!

I've been using Firefox as my daily driver nearly non-stop since it was
_Phoenix_ and I'm totally cool with you dropping the legacy stuff.

~~~
rnhmjoj
I'm totally cool with dropping legacy stuff that has a proper replacement.

~~~
Sylos
Then you must hate all of your software. It's impossible to always continue in
the direction that happened to be chosen more than a decade ago. At some
point, you will run into problems, which in the case of Firefox were severe
problems in performance, security, maintainability and complexity as well as
stability of the extension API. You can't fix all of these problems without
breaking things, without doing things differently.

And yes, it is to some degree subjective whether this is worth it, but at the
end of the day, you, as someone who uses lots of extensions and complex
extensions, are only a very small fraction of the Firefox user base. Most
users have no extensions or just the obligatory ad blocker. They don't benefit
at all from keeping onto the old architecture with all of its problems, which
they are suffering under.

And then, yeah, Mozilla has to at some point piss you off in order to help the
majority of their user base. It's not like all other browsers had such a
complex extension API and Mozilla is just being lazy by dropping it.

------
lucb1e
Hit the download button for nightly, only to start reading the comments here
and realizing that a bunch of addons will stop working. Checking my list,
FireGestures will stop working, Self-Destructing Cookies apparently already
stopped working this version (broke localStorage deletion), and a more obscure
one (QuickJava) is also legacy. The latter is the only one I could find that
adds easy on/off toggles for Javascript, CSS, Flash and Proxy. They want to
receive telemetry to see how people use nightly? Well, here's my datapoint:
can't use it altogether.

I might as well switch to MSIE as update to 57.

~~~
zbraniecki
This sheet may help you find replacements:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFcEXMcKrwoIAECIVyBU...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TFcEXMcKrwoIAECIVyBU0GPoSmRqZ7A0VBvqeKYVSww/edit#gid=0)

FireGestures -> [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxy-
gestures...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxy-gestures/)
SDC -> [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-
autode...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/)

It'll take a bit for the new generation of extensions to fully replace the old
one, but it's happening.

~~~
rjzzleep
I'm not sure they will. Vimperator etc. has a lot of dependencies some of
which will never come to be. But the parts that could, like a proper keyboard
api hasn't even been reviewed for months. The community complained about the
lack of apis, they made a webextension experiment, which is apparently the way
you ask for api extensions and it's pretty much just being ignored(the thread
is 2 years old [1][2]). The customization thing mentioned also applies since
the plugin creates a custom status bar and hides all sorts of other stuff.

I'm not sure what browser I'm going to use to be honest. All the hotkey
browsers are buggy as hell since they use qtwebkit, webkitgtk, qt-webengine
and whatnot. Chrome has extensions like cvim which sort of work, but they
suffer from issues like not being able to properly hook keys and properly
notify the user about the state you're in making me frequently make mistakes
on what I want to do. As the sibling said a poor imitation of what was
possible before.

If firefox just immitates chrome, what's the point in having it? How about
trying to eat some of IE's lunch by making enterprise customization a first
class citizen? But then again not sure if that matters. And yes I'm aware of
GPO[3], but calling that first class citizen is disingenuous at best.

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061)

[2] [https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut-
api](https://github.com/Koushien/keyboard-shortcut-api)

[3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/gpo-for-
firef...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/gpo-for-firefox/)

~~~
Endy
Did you try Pale Moon?

------
Teichopsia
TLDR; could someone point me to a tutorial or an explanation on how to
properly install FF, update & save the open tabs without making bookmarks
(that last point is and edge case we can skip if it's difficult), and having
the current icon, on a nix system that has explanations for 5 year olds?

I would love to help but being an amateur I've encountered a few pain points,
unless the issue is my search skills are lacking. A few days ago I finally
updated my Firefox version on Debian 9 to the developer version 56 (previous
54). The problem has been finding documentation on both the Debian and Mozilla
websites on how to do it the right way. Found a decent tutorial, made a back
up, installed and my machine is working much better. It is old and got little
memory :)

Then FF said there was an update. I got stumped. From what I could find FF
sync has a limit of X bytes. I ended up looking into making a web extension
but that's going to take me some time. It seems I could save the open tabs
using Tabs.tab from the API, maybe. Sorry, I digress.

In short, how can I have two FF versions on at the same time, different
directories obviously, with their respective icons, while manually updating
them? I guess it would be to delete all the files in the dir, unpacking, and
call it a day? Still need help with the two versions though.

If you read all of this, thank you.

~~~
klondike_
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but try just using the same profile
for both installs. It contains all the information about your browsing session
including tabs, bookmarks, extensions, cookies, etc.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-
create-...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-
remove-firefox-profiles)

~~~
616c
His point is concurrent usage of one profile. FF does not support this.

Queue the FF is not tread safe jokes (and only that, not a flame).

OP: you can use Firefox Sync. There is a cloud version by Mozilla but also a
WSGI app you could host. I know it is not a 100% solution, but what was
recommended to me when I asked during FF alpha and beta testing with stable
way back when.

~~~
Teichopsia
Sorry if I explained myself incorrectly. My main point isn't concurrent usage
of profiles.

I lack the necesary knowledge on how to correctly install two different FF
versions and have them accesible with their respective icons. In my case, FF
dev version and the one discussed in the article to help out with bug
testing/development.

The issue is since I'm on Debian, auto update does not work. From my limited
understanding, I would need to install FF 57 in its own directory. For this
one I don't need a profile. But I don't know how to install it and have it
accesible either by command line or the FF icon that comes with the browser
since I already have my main FF I want to keep.

The second part is regarding the profile, sync with the other browser I
recently installed.... I was about to go down a mental rabbit hole :)

The problem is, the lack of noob friendly documentation. I know I could figure
it out if I research the issue through different topics on Linux
administration. I was hoping that maybe someone knew of a tutorial which
talked about the different steps on how to install Firefox on a nix system,
explaining the different concepts as if I were a five year old. The best I've
managed to find is a tutorial laying out the steps. But it didn't explain the
concepts behind those steps.

That tutorial mentioned how to replace debians FF from the repo. But whenever
a new version comes out I would need to delete it and unpack the new one,
linking it to the old icon.

I hope it's clear now. Thanks for the reply.

~~~
StavrosK
I use Ubuntu, which should be pretty similar to Debian as far as this is
concerned:

I literally just downloaded the zip file (or maybe a .deb?) and unzipped it in
a directory in my desktop. All I had to do after that was make sure I didn't
have _both_ browsers open, and everything worked properly. They both used the
same profile, and the tabs I opened in nightly were available in stable and
vice versa.

I did nothing more than unzip the browser, and everything works perfectly.

~~~
Teichopsia
I'll give that a try. How did you link the icon? Or was that automatic too?

~~~
heywire
Maybe this is what you're looking for? (I just installed Nightly on my Ubuntu
17.10 install and wanted separate icons myself).

[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6tt7wj/nightly_cre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6tt7wj/nightly_creates_a_new_icon_on_my_dock_when_i/)

~~~
Teichopsia
Seems to be about right. Thanks!

------
rnhmjoj
I won't be happy if it were to fail but certainly I won't despair either. I
don't want amazing performance improvements at the cost of huge functionality
losses. This update is simple a regression: almost every add-on I have been
using will stop working and has a stupidly limited or no replacement at all.
There will really be no reason for me to still use Firefox over any other
browser now.

The only option seems to switch to the ESR version, at least for a while it
will work.

------
tradesmanhelix
This sums up my feelings re. Firefox 57: [https://www.change.org/p/mozilla-
save-mozilla-firefox-s-best...](https://www.change.org/p/mozilla-save-mozilla-
firefox-s-best-feature).

Sorry Mozilla - for the reasons expressed above, 56 will be the last version
of your browser I'm able to effectively use given the demands of my browser
workflow. If my use-case no longer fits your business case, then we will part
ways.

Currently, it looks like my best options are either Waterfox (with its pledge
of continued XUL extension support), or Vivaldi.

~~~
Sylos
Vivaldi has less powerful extensions than Firefox 57.

I can't imagine Waterfox or Pale Moon being able to keep XUL extensions alive
for much longer. It was a major maintenance burden for Mozilla, so it's pretty
much an impossible task for the comparatively tiny developer teams behind
those.

Having said that, Firefox 52 ESR is still supported until June 26, 2018. So,
you could use that. And the Waterfox + Pale Moon devs could base themselves on
that until its EOL.

~~~
tradesmanhelix
Vivaldi provides arguably the most customizable UI of any browser out of the
box (see: ability to move tabs to any side of the screen), plus their culture
seems to me to be all about customization and providing options. I like that.

Firefox ESR is pointless - it's just delaying the inevitable. I tried Midori,
but it runs poorly on KDE. Palemoon is pretty bad - I tried it and it doesn't
properly support existing XUL extensions that work fine in Firefox, so it's a
no-go in my book. Waterfox, on the other hand, is fast, works exactly like
Firefox, and is at least willing to give continued XUL support a shot.

So, it's Vivaldi or Waterfox as best I can figure at this point.

------
dingo_bat
57 nightly feels extremely snappy. Scrolling is no longer janky. The theme is
good and sensible (at least on Windows). I am seriously going to try to ditch
chrome for this. Yay! The old Firefox is back!

------
heardy
I just updated FF Nightly on Android and the new Photon UI is very big, very
white and very obtrusive feeling in comparison to before I updated. I've got a
pretty small android phone, I'm sure it looks better on the phablets of the
world, but I ask for a dark UI option and small screen footprint please.

Edit: Found some images [http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/08/08/mozillas-new-
photon-...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/08/08/mozillas-new-photon-ui-
arrives-firefox-nightly-android/) I just noticed, it recolors my system
stsusbar too. So, it's white on white while FF is open. Everywhere else it's
black.

~~~
majewsky
The new look screams "generic". You can say what you want about the old
design, but you could always tell that someone was using FF Mobile because of
the distinct black rounded background on the buttons. The new design looks
like literally every other mobile browser in existence.

~~~
mintplant
On the other hand, the most comment complaint I've seen in the wild about FF
for Android is "the UI looks weird / doesn't fit in with the rest of Android".
You can't please everyone.

------
Ar-Curunir
To counter all the negativity in the comments: I've been exclusively nightly-
only for a year now, and I've only seen improvements. Most addons I use have
replacements/WebExt versions, and the UI and performance are much better.

------
JBiserkov
Most comments here seem to be the result of an "How you can _complain_ about
Firefox 57" article posted somewhere else.

------
pix64
Mozilla can contribute to Firefox 57's success by finishing all the missing
WebExtensions APIs. So many extensions are going to be impossible to recreate.

~~~
zbraniecki
Help us! Write patches to dependencies of this bug:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059)

~~~
kirillkh
Thanks for that link, now I can clearly see that from the power-user
perspective WebExtensions is a dead-end. If you look at the RESOLVED WONTFIX
issues linked in that bug, you will find a lot of them are rejected based on
political reasons. For example:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706)

Listen, I don't care whether features that I need don't fit the WebExtensions
security model or whether they are confusing to a clueless user. If you can't
support these features as part of WebExtensions, please design a separate set
of APIs. Fine with me if you market extensions targeting these lower-level
APIs as "dangerous, use at your own risk".

------
saghul
Lovely blog post. Well written, thorough and clear. Getting people involved in
a large project is not an easy feat, and I think this may open the eyes of
people not knowing were to start.

Well done!

------
JohnTHaller
You can grab a copy of Firefox 57 Nightly in portable form so it won't affect
any local stuff from PortableApps.com here:
[https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox-portable-
nigh...](https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox-portable-nightly)

It's a great way to test out the features in a lower risk fashion. You can do
the same with Beta, Dev, and ESR channels as well.

------
sanbor
I'm still surprised that they're spending time in a VR API while lacking many
basic things like print preview functionality. Also In the last year every
time I give firefox a try they dev tools are very buggy. Instead of improving
the dev tools they waste time in Firefox for devs (which is funny because as
web developer I want to develop in the same browser that my users, but instead
Firefox for devs is a version ahead, so once I thought my website worked okay
in Firefox but it really didn't because it didn't work well in the stable
version of Firefox). I feel like the browser is getting faster though which is
good. I also like Mozilla as an organization but I feel that they still lack
the direction and focus to make Firefox better than Chrome. To be fair, I
think Firefox for Android is better than Chrome for Android. And Firefox Focus
it's neat too!

~~~
Endy
There's an XUL print preview plugin. :-)

~~~
sanbor
Good to know, thanks! I'm just still astonish that after so many years they
haven't implemented that functionality. I don't print stuff all the time but
sometimes you want to save things as pdf and fiddle a little bit margins/etc.

------
megous
It would be nice if I didn't have to abandon my privacy - reveal my personal
extensions to some third party server - in order to use my own extensions
without too much hassle.

Now, I have to patch omni.ja every single time I get update to Firefox from
Arch Linux, to disable signature verification. I can automate it a bit,
although it's not a robust solution, because I'm patching some JS code that
can change at any time.

Beta is not an option, because I don't want it for regular use and it is not
in Arch Linux repositories anyway, so I can't get it either.

I don't get it. It's still possible to disable signature verification with
little effort (one line change) programmatically from outside of Firefox, yet
power users have to jump through stupid hoops in order to continue using their
browser the way they want.

I wish fight against malware/malicious extensions was not also inconveniencing
power users.

------
nkkollaw
Wow. What a difference.

Congratulations. This is definitely a huge step forward. The UI finally looks
as good as the other guys, and it's fast, too!

If you had finally figured out that private mode's UI is too similar to the
normal one, too, I'd even be amazed (let me help you: make the address bar and
tabs dark instead of light).

------
Karunamon
So I downloaded Nightly on a lark. 4 addons disabled, with a link to this
page:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-add-
technology-...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-add-technology-
modernizing?as=u&utm_source=inproduct)

> _You can still personalize Firefox with add-ons the same way you do now,
> except they won’t break in new Firefox releases._

This is a bald faced fucking lie. And I don't mean that in the "sorta
misleading" sense, I mean that somebody wrote something that they knew was
false and 'outta be slapped for it.

57 is getting pushed out the door with missing functionality, and that is an
absolute fact. You absolutely "can not still personalize Firefox the same way
you do now", because you're taking that away from everyone without having the
replacements ready!

I can sorta understand the reason to kill XUL/XPCOM, but what I can't
understand is this desire to drop it on the world come November before all the
bits are in place yet.

Guys, Firefox isn't going to turn into a pumpkin if you let it cook for
another few months.

On another note, all companies have a resource that they may not be aware of.
It's called "good will". Mozilla is burning prodigious amounts of theirs:

    
    
        * Between the CEO drama,
        * the UI rewrite that was apparently received so badly it's getting reverted 4 years later
        * the forced addon signing,
        * the telemetry dark patterns, 
        * the forced addon breakage... 
        * the junk like Pocket, Hello, and VR APIs recieving nontrivial amounts of developer attention while stuff people actually use like print preview and SSL is either ignored or have years old debilitating bugs
    

Combined with the demonstrated "fuck you, we know better than you" attitude
that permeated all of these decisions (I really think Mozilla and GNOME are
going to wind up under the same umbrella at some point)...

And what to show for it? Pissed off users, and an also-ran niche browser with
almost no tangible competitive advantage (and in fact, a mounting number of
_dis_ advantages)

I've got no faith in this company anymore. Eventually, there is going to be a
"Mozilla foundation shutting down" topic at the top of this site, and the
people making the decisions are going to be completely blindsided as to why.

~~~
frik
Thank you, good summarization of the unfortunate drama around Mozilla.

What ever is going on in their management, they give a shit about the Firefox
and Thunderbird community. The last 5 years they did so many stupid things.
It's time to close Mozilla corp and turn it back to a real open source
community project. It's time to fork, like Firefox forked of Mozilla Suite. I
have no faith that Mozilla going anywhere, in a few months we will read a post
mortem of how the managed to loose 30% world wide browser market share in 2
years.

------
iamnotlarry
This includes a call for help on Photon, the "new user interface."

"Since the UI is written in major parts in JavaScript and CSS and an HTML-like
language called XUL, anyone with webdev skills can improve it!"

I thought 57 was dumping XUL completely. Wasn't that a major point of 57?

~~~
throwaway2048
XUL is still there, and there are no immediate plans to get rid of it. Mozilla
has just decided that you dont get to use it anymore, the deadline is purely
an administrative decision.

Its great to see they are going to drive firefox off a cliff with yet another
anti-user decision.

The situation with popular extensions has improved, but there is going to be a
lot of pain, especially with XUL functionality that they refuse to implement
in WebExtensions.

[https://arewewebextensionsyet.com/](https://arewewebextensionsyet.com/)

~~~
brighteyes
> XUL is still there, and there are no immediate plans to get rid of it

It's true it's still there, but I think the plan is using it less and less. No
new UIs are written in it and many things have been rewritten from XUL to
HTML5. Eventually it could be removed entirely.

~~~
throwaway2048
longer term that is sensible sure, but the ecosystem is not ready for it.

Its amusing to me that mozilla expects everyone else to be moved off XUL, but
not their own code because it has legitimate reasons....

~~~
angelsl
They are moving everyone else off so they themselves can move off XUL.

------
fiatjaf
So the devtools were rewritten from scratch? Are they fast now? If they are
I'll jump in.

~~~
Manishearth
IME pretty fast.

You can even contribute to them without a Firefox clone, they're an entirely
separate repo that contains a webpage that can be run in both Firefox or
Chrome as a regular website and used to debug both. It's fun!

~~~
mintplant
For reference,

Org: [https://github.com/devtools-html](https://github.com/devtools-html)

Debugger.html repo: [https://github.com/devtools-
html/debugger.html](https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html)

------
WCityMike
Honestly, I can't believe how tone-deaf the entire organization has been on
this. I know that's not popular to hear, but I keep seeing people tell them,
over and over again, that the loss of customizability and functionality -- and
the repeated elimination and crafting of design and UX to bring it into a
mirror-image of Chrome UX -- is not what their users want. Yet every person on
the Firefox team that I've seen actually respond has insisted, in the face of
this overwhelming feedback, that it's necessary and desirable. That's fine,
but I think they're going to get a rude awakening afterwards. It'll be
wonderful if I have to eat my words on this, but I don't think so. Firefox is
really just becoming a mirror image of Chrome, and if they're not, then
they're not doing a great job on understanding why people valued -- and, yes,
that's purposefully past-tense -- Firefox, and they're doing a very poor job
on distinguishing why people should choose to stay with Firefox over Chrome.

------
yakult
Sure, we CAN contribute. But what's in it for us?

Are we going to get a browser that caters to our own needs? No, evidently
power users are no longer the target demographic.

Are we going to make a browser that we can recommend to our nontechie friends?
No, I don't trust them to navigate all the opt-outs and dark patterns around
your telemetry. I don't even trust myself to never misclick.

Is contributing going to win us goodwill from our collegues? No, you've
alienated them too.

Is this about ideology, then? Are we building a browser for a better world?
..it would be much more convincing if you guys didn't fire your CEO over
political speech.

And that's where we're at right now. Maybe the 97% or whatever non-addon-using
demographic in your telemetry data will make up the shortfall in
contributions.

------
fiatjaf
Does anyone know how can I stop the menu from vanishing (very slowly) and
reappearing when I hover the top of the window? I just want it to stay there.

~~~
fiatjaf
Right, that's a fullscreen thing only. I was getting it because i3wm puts
Firefox in fullscreen mode when I do <Mod>+f.

Just remembered that about:config exists and disabled the vanishing menu.

------
Endy
How can we best contribute to the total removal and scrapping of WebExtensions
in favor of a more robust XUL development environment? How can we contribute
to Firefox not becoming another meaningless Chrome clone like Opera or
Vivaldi? Because that's what I think would be the best success of Firefox,
long-term.

~~~
zbraniecki
I know you're sarcastic, but I'll try to answer anyway :)

> How can we best contribute to the total removal and scrapping of
> WebExtensions in favor of a more robust XUL development environment?

I don't know if that would be possible. We're moving a lot of XUL around these
days and we'll be moving even more, hopefully to HTML soon.

You'd have to gain trust in the community as a reliable person willing to
maintain and keep relentlessly updating your addons APIs as the UI of Firefox
moves underneath it.

> How can we contribute to Firefox not becoming another meaningless Chrome
> clone like Opera or Vivaldi?

I assume by "another clone" you refer to the fact that we're switching to
WebExtensions which is a system shared with other browsers. In that case, pick
any of the bugs here:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059)
and help us extend the API surface to support more features :)

> Because that's what I think would be the best success of Firefox, long-term.

I agree! We already support more APIs in WebExtensions than any other engine
as far as I know. And we only started.

~~~
Endy
I'll be blunt. When you break compatibility with Classic Theme Restorer,
Status-4-Evar, and QuickNote, I'm switching over, 100%, to Pale Moon. Between
Australis and WebExtensions, Firefox has been moving farther and farther away
from a browser I want to use. It's really getting to a point where I'm happier
using Lynx.

------
mwill
Mozilla has lost any good will they had with me, I'm actually dropping Firefox
this year. The entire reason I switched to it was tab groups, which isn't
getting ported over, so I'll be switching back to Chrome.

~~~
yoasif_
Simplified Tab Groups is being ported to WE:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-
groups/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups/)

[https://github.com/denschub/firefox-
tabgroups/issues/60](https://github.com/denschub/firefox-tabgroups/issues/60)

------
hendersoon
Due to breaking XUL extensions with no adequate replacements, mouse gestures
in particular, I recently switched from Firefox to Vivaldi.

After thirteen loyal years with Firefox as my primary browser they finally
forced me away. Bye, Mozilla.

~~~
sgift
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxy-
gestures...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxy-gestures/)

Works great on my nightly installation, but have fun with Vivaldi.

------
r3bl
And yet, no Yubikey support, that they were hoping will land in November in
stable.

~~~
foobar20198
So does that mean Mozilla don't use 2FA?

~~~
mintplant
2FA is actually globally enforced for all internal Mozilla accounts, IIRC---
it's just not done over U2F. I'm not sure whether the details are public so I
can't elaborate further.

------
cmurf
It'd be easier to test and keep current with what Mozilla wants tested if they
had a delta update for the nightly rather than a monolithic binary. For
example if they jumped on board with delivering a flatpak version.

~~~
zbraniecki
If you download nightly from nightly.mozilla.org, we'll keep offering you
delta binary updates twice per day! :)

------
amingilani
For people that need legacy addons like I needed LastPass, go to about:config
and toggle _extensions.legacy.enabled_ to _true_

------
ebauch
first AMD with Ryzen and now FF. Working with nightly in the past few days and
don't miss a thing. Of course not all plugins are ported yet, but ublock works
already. keep up the phenomal work.

------
fiatjaf
Is OpenSearch support planned? Or is there an extension that does implement
it?

~~~
fiatjaf
Oh, nevermind, there's a different kind of OpenSearch support that seems very
nice. I think I'll stay with Firefox this time.

------
Grue3
Two words: Tab groups.

~~~
yoasif_
Simplified Tab Groups is being ported to WE:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-
groups/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups/)

[https://github.com/denschub/firefox-
tabgroups/issues/60](https://github.com/denschub/firefox-tabgroups/issues/60)

------
TheAceOfHearts
It has been a while since I last tried compiling Firefox, so I don't know if
things have improved. In some of my previous setup and build attempts I ended
up giving up out of frustration. Just updating the docs would probably be of
huge help to many users.

~~~
JosephLark
I'll add a +1 to this very issue. I likewise am not sure if it's still the
case, but a few years ago I was looking into contributing some ES2015
implementations to the FF JS engine but couldn't get Firefox to compile based
on the docs. I get that software development involves some amount of grit to
grind out a problem and solve it, but to have to do so right at the beginning
of possibly contributing to an open source project was asking just a bit too
much of my free time and I bailed and have never made the attempt again.

~~~
zbraniecki
Building SpiderMonkey is not hard at all today:
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/Sp...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/SpiderMonkey/Build_Documentation)

The only issue is that you have to clone whole mozilla-central even if you
only work with small part of it. But once you pull it, the building and
hacking on it is quite easy :)

------
ygaf
And they need help in collecting theoretically anonymous data:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15071492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15071492)

~~~
zbraniecki
We also need help in making it practically anonymous :)

~~~
kuschku
And you need to submit complaints to your local data privacy official about
this planned data collection which is not opt-in (and therefore violates the
privacy laws).

If you live in the EU, submit a complaint to your local data privacy official,
in Germany those are the Landesdatenschutzbauftragten and
Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragten, for example, you can find the ones for
Schleswig-Holstein here:
[https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/impressum/](https://www.datenschutzzentrum.de/impressum/).

Submit a complaint today, so that a legal process against Mozilla can happen
before they implement this.

~~~
sgift
Section 28, (6) of the BDSG (German Federal Data Protection Act):

(6) The collection, processing and use of special types of personal data
(Section 3 (9)) for own commercial purposes shall be admissible when the data
subject has not consented in accordance with Section 4a (3) if

(...)

4\. this is necessary for the purposes of scientific research, where the
scientific interest in carrying out the research project substantially
outweighs the data subject's interest in excluding collection, processing and
use and the purpose of the research cannot be achieved in any other way or
would otherwise necessitate disproportionate effort.

\---

[https://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_bdsg/englisch_bd...](https://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_bdsg/englisch_bdsg.html#p0383)

\---

IANAL. Everyone may draw their own conclusions.

~~~
kuschku
You quoted:

> The collection, processing and use of special types of personal data
> (Section 3 (9))

BDSG Section 3 (9) says:

> (9) “Special categories of personal data” means information on a person’s
> racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical
> convictions, union membership, health or sex life.

This exception does not apply to behaviourial tracking, such as the list of
the visited domains.

This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer.

------
Markoff
I might give it a try again as usual every year at least once, but I always
end up with conclusion Firefox is unresponsive, freezing and has problems with
rendering compared to smooth experience with Chrome. I would be very happy to
ditch app from Google, but if it's crashing, freezing and has basic problems I
am not gonna waste time with firefox, Chrome just works.

So I hope I will be surprised and Firefox finally made some revolutionary
changes.

Btw. it's even worse on Android, you will hardly find slower browser + there
is no pull down to refresh page which is showstopper for me and even with
plugins there was no way to implement it.

------
vortico
It's really sad. I love Firefox, but I think when 57 releases, it'll mark the
beginning of the end before everyone switches to Chromium, when they realize
it's easier to switch browsers than to find alternatives for all their
extensions due to Mozilla's way-too-early deprecation of the existing
extension API before many developers are able to switch APIs. Many extensions
simply cannot be switched, like Vimperator, due to lack of features in the
WebExtensions API or the complexity of the change. Other extensions were
developed as one-off projects, like "Google Similar Images" or "Remove Google
Redirect in Google Results", so their developers are not around anymore to
update to WebExtensions.

That and Mozilla's search for "anonymized personal data" kill the benefits of
using Firefox in the first place, which for most people is to avoid using
Chrome/Chromium, made by a conglomerate advertisement company. Just last week,
I updated to 56 beta and despite disabling Pocket in my about:config,
advertisements for news companies (Wired, etc) were displayed thanks to
Pocket's "popular news articles" section in my previously blank New Tab page!
Even Chrome does not force bundled software like Pocket, despite their
stronger incentives for doing so.

I downloaded nightly 57 and it gave me a preview of how bad the extension
situation really is. It's like a forced downgrade to a completely different
browser, so why not switch to something entirely different at that point? This
is what I'll be forced to do, after certificates expire in a few years in the
then-out-of-date stable 56 distribution.

~~~
kosinus
I'm really not sure and curious how much extensions are actually used in
practice. Personally, I use Chrome with 1password, that's it.

Extensions scare me. They're a huge potential invasion of privacy, especially
with recent hijackings of Chrome extensions in the store.

I'm also more confident that Mozilla will always listen to users, and give us
the necessary opt-outs. I really don't trust Google as much.

~~~
vortico
[https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2011/06/21/firefox-4-add-
on-...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2011/06/21/firefox-4-add-on-users/)
Here's an article from 2011 claiming that 85% of Firefox users have extensions
installed and will thus be bothered by the change, and on average, users have
5 addons installed. It is my gut estimate that half of these addons have no
replacement or a worse replacement.

As for the opt outs, this may be true for most things, but I am not able to
opt entirely out of Pocket's "Recommended by Pocket" trending adverts, nor am
I able to turn off Firefox's addon signing requirement to develop or try new
addons from GitHub, unless I download a tweaked build version of Firefox.

~~~
zbraniecki
I do not have numbers for how many users use extensions, but my gut feeling is
that it's much lower than it was in 2011. We've been moving to e10s over last
months enabling it for users who don't have legacy addons (so, they either
don't have addons or they have e10s modern addons).

I found a status update from the e10s meeting from Jun 2nd -
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/E10s/Status/June2](https://wiki.mozilla.org/E10s/Status/June2)

It indicates that over 60% of beta users had e10s activated which can only be
activated for users who don't use old extensions. Based on the telemetry data
it seems that only 3% were not eligible. I'm not involved in e10s project so I
don't know the details and updates, but I believe that the number of users
affected is actually quite low (which doesn't mean irrelevant, just that
majority of users won't be affected).

> As for the opt outs, this may be true for most things, but I am not able to
> opt entirely out of Pocket's "Recommended by Pocket" trending adverts

In the home tab? The icon on the top-right corner allows you to uncheck the
"Recommended by Pocket" and "extensions.pocket.enabled" about:config option
allows you turn off pocket completely.

Now, that we own Pocket, I hope we'll merge it more seamlessly into Firefox
Accounts because I feel like the sole fact that it uses it's own brand name
makes it feel like Firefox comes with a separate piece of software bundled.

~~~
vortico
`extensions.pocket.enabled = false` does not disable the "Recommended by
Pocket" checkbox. I was not expecting Pocket telemetry to continue to work
with this set to off.

~~~
zbraniecki
Interesting. It does for me. It's not only disabling it, The "Recommended by
Pocket" doesn't even show up in the about:home sidebar.

Can you try restarting the browser, and if it doesn't help, file a bug pls?

~~~
vortico
Filed:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1396336](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1396336)

~~~
zbraniecki
thank you! :)

------
foobar20198
It seems a bit awkward to me when Mozilla keep asking for contributors.
They're profiting from Firefox (via the huge search engine deal), it's in
really poor taste when such organisations then beg for contributors. They have
enough money to employ people to keep their product going... Kinda the same
with e.g. Facebook's open source projects, although I guess there are worse
places to contribute (and FB's projects might actually be useful for other
companies work - hence contributing isn't a complete waste of time).

My only exception would be scratching my own itches, but here they're asking
for help with company goals.

~~~
zbraniecki
Hi! I'm the author of the post.

So, it's not "asking for help", it's informing how you can help. I'm also not
"begging for contributors" or asking to help with "company goals", I'm
suggesting ways to help with our current major release. If we're successful,
it should make the whole Web better thanks to bringing more competition and
choice to the user.

Major open source projects are actually fun to work with for many people.
They're very challenging not just because of problems you solve, but also
because of the massive project culture and technical infrastructure in place
that you learn in the process. That learning helps people grow as engineers.
Also the feeling that you made an impact on the lives of millions of users is
quite awesome. For others, they're already Firefox users and it's just about
fixing a bug that was itching them.

So, generally speaking, there are reasons to help major open source projects,
even if they can afford to hire full time engineers as well.

Two side notes:

1) We're _way_ , _way_ smaller than all our competitors. The number of
engineers that Google, Apple and Microsoft can hire to work on their browser
engines is significantly higher than what Mozilla can do. We can't compete and
never will be able to. That's why, beside of our culture and Mozilla
Manifesto, we rely on our ability to attract contributors. 2) It's a chicken
and egg. Keeping the project really open (not technically open as in - we'll
dump the source code to github every once in a while), requires continuous
effort. Having a healthy community of contributors is important for our
project culture to stay open. If people stop contributing, some things will
naturally decay into less open state making it harder in the future for new
contributors to come in. And I'm not even talking about code only. Mozilla's
marketing, engineering, privacy, security, UX and other projects are working
in the open.

~~~
foobar20198
My comment wasn't specifically targeted at your blog post, more the general
impression I've been getting of Mozilla. And sure, Mozilla is more open than
Apple and MS, and probably a bit more open than Google.

But fundamentally, Firefox decisions are made by Mozilla employees, to further
the goals of the Mozilla company (which makes money from those decisions -
sure, to be hopefully reinvested). Firefox isn't like those other large open
source projects where the codebase and thus decisions are owned by many
independent (and mostly commercial) entities. Outside contributors have very
little say in the product, so I wouldn't say its any better for people to
contribute to Firefox vs e.g. Chrome. I.e. Mozilla wants their code - but in
the many cases that have become publicised it doesn't seem like Mozilla wants
their opinions.

(This is probably just the reality of end-user facing software projects with
major UX components. But it's still sad to see contributors being invited in
when they'll be ignored in the decision-making.)

// Edit: and it looks like fabrice_d made pretty much the same point while I
was writing my comment : )

~~~
zbraniecki
Yeah, I see what you're saying.

I think there's a deeper debate that Mitchell is running over the last few
years at Mozilla, and that's how to find a balance between "your voice is
heard" and "someone is making a decision".

If you voiced your opinion, and the decision has been made that is not in line
with it, it's _very_ easy to feel that "my voice didn't matter. Mozilla
doesn't want my opinion".

I believe that it's a fallacy of communication.

So, in total. Sure, as the project grows and priorities change, we get to a
more structured way of making decisions. It's getting harder for a casual
contributor to steer the decision in a completely different direction. But I
do not believe that it's any different from Fedora, Wikipedia, Gnome, KDE,
Wordpress or any other open source tech. When you're a 10-person github
project, it's easy to say that anyone can file an issue and change the course
of it. When you're a multihundred million users project with 20 years of
legacy code, and thousands of contributors, it is harder to see the connection
between your opinion and the result.

But I do believe that if you gain trust in the community, and use the right
forums (and I realize that finding the right forum to voice your opinion is
not easy), you do have an impact. Even if the final decision is not in line
with it, which will happen, unless you and the decision owners are always 100%
correct.

