Re:Firefox 68.0
by iamnotacrook on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @12:14PM
(#20393338)
Did they "break" - ie some bug caused a problem - or did they change the framework add-ons used after giving months of notice? Most users use no add-ons, and wouldn't notice the change, and many of those who do were aware of this ahead of time even if the add-on developers were slow to wake up to the reality.
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Exactly, months. Likes that's enough time to completely rewrite your extension using an half-baked replacement.
To name a few, Cookie-Autodelete [1] had to wait 7 months to get an API to clear the LocalStorage; noscript [2] lost tons of functionality and will probably never recover;
[1]: https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete/issue...
[2]: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/01/noscripts-rating-drops-aft...
> Did they "break" - ie some bug caused a problem - or did they change the framework add-ons used after giving months of notice?
It's not clear what you're asking. Mozilla changed the add-on API, and the new API does not have all the features that the old API had. Two add-ons that I liked very much died during the switch.
> Most users use no add-ons
Do you have the data for this? I know I live in a techie bubble, but it sure doesn't fit with my experience or the experiences of others I know who talk about it.
Firefox Public Data Report:
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior
"Has Add-on" has been between 33-38% for the last two years.
And a very good chunk of those (most I'd say) is only running some form of ad blocking.
This is an old post, but in 2009 about 1/3 of FF users had extensions installed. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2009/08/11/how-many-firefox-... Without newer data, you'll have to guess whether the new addon model increased or decreased that fraction.