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Is Mozilla making a huge mistake by breaking add-ons so badly on Firefox 4?
I'm stoked about Firefox 4; I think many of us are. It's a beautiful browser, and with the addition of Tab Candy (now "Panorama"), it's even cooler.
Whenever Mozilla release a new version of Firefox, add-ons break. It's become routine, so nobody's overly worked up about it by now. The Mozilla add-ons site is littered with yesteryear's great extensions, including such crowd pleasers as Hit-a-Hint, which has not been updated since 2007.
Okay, ... so with every iteration, some add-ons get left behind, and some are updated by their creators and live on. That's just how the system works, right?
In the past, whenever a new Firefox version came out, the blogosphere was soon full of posts showing how to disable the add-on compatibility check. You just make Firefox stop checking for compatibility, and all of your add-ons work again. Great!
But with Firefox 4, something has changed: Mozilla has made bold, significant, lasting changes that may drastically impact the amount of work the average coder needs to put into their extension to make it compatible with Firefox again.
That's a gutsy move. I mean, when you see a blog post aimed at developers that includes language such as "The nsIExtensionManager interface is no more, along with its RDF backend," you can tell they're not taking any prisoners in their quest for modernizing the aging browser, which now seems kind of sluggish when compared to Chrome (and even Opera 10.61).
You can see it in the adoption rate, too. I have 22 add-ons on my own system, including massively popular ones like Read it Later, Greasemonkey, Adblock Plus, Delicious Bookmarks, ... you get the picture. Firefox is now in its 4th Beta, and none of these extensions are compatible yet (at least on my system.
That's definitely an indication, at least to me. And that's a change as compared to past release cycles, where add-on compatibility updates were much swifter (and easier).
Right now, Firefox 4 is kind of like Opera. It's very neat, very sexy, and completely lacking in add-ons. Chrome definitely has the upper hand on Firefox 4 right now in terms of "working extensions."
It seems like Mozilla is taking a large step back in hopes of taking an even bigger one forward. I hope this dance move works.
Comments
33
Subscribe to commentsLocutusAug 25th 2010 6:35PM
In my opinion, Mozilla has to do these things, and what better time than at a major version number change? The developers all know these changes are coming, and they'll have months (and have had months) to develop fixes. Changes like the backend things and Gecko 2 need to happen in order to advance the browser, and while it'll leave a trail of distruction behind, would you rather have that trail now or when you find even more great add-ons?
fiendsanAug 25th 2010 6:39PM
yeah, and with talks about paid extensions, fremium extensions, extensions with ads, it doesnt look so good...
and yeah you are totally right, on chrome and a lot of users use the developer/beta versions and there is never the fear of compatibility... when firebug (not complete), greasemonkey (for managing mostly) and scrapbook extensions are full time available in chrome im switching for good ^_^'
benAug 25th 2010 6:51PM
They break every time there is an "major" upgrade.
JoshAug 25th 2010 7:11PM
If you had actually read the article, you would have seen that previous major releases merely broke compatibility. All you had to do was update the version of the add-on is compatible with or disable the compatibility check and you were fine for 90% of the extensions. Now... not so much. They are just flat out broken. Firefox 4 is turning out to be a much bigger update than anyone had previously figured it would be.
DamianAug 26th 2010 12:35PM
@Josh: You are completely wrong, ALL major versions broke almost all add-ons more than just version number requirements. In my opinion the 1.0 -> 1.5 update was much worse than this. I think it was months until after 1.5 was released that add-ons finally started updating.
This is the nature of Firefox XUL based add-ons, it's a powerful add-on system which allows you to do almost anything, so Firefox changes can break add-ons on a deep level. For add-ons which can be made more simply and want a stable API not to break them, this is what Jetpack is for.
FaraAug 25th 2010 6:53PM
The only add-on I use, tab mix plus, works with minefield, but I'm using dev-versions of the extension, and some of those are not the best either.
platta13Aug 25th 2010 6:53PM
ABP works perfectly on my ff 4b4...
Wiizer [Now with 320 Gigs On My Launch PS3!]Aug 25th 2010 7:03PM
I actually uninstalled the beta once I found out that the majority of my extensions wouldn't work in it.
What's the point of Firefox if there's no add-ons?
FaraAug 26th 2010 5:46AM
The awesome bar.
xabbottAug 25th 2010 7:14PM
You can't keep building for legacy in mind. I'm glad they aren't resting on the past and willing to do big revamps. I quit using Firefox because compared to Chrome it was far too sluggish. But I'm ready to go back once 4.0 is out.
Daniel BloisAug 25th 2010 7:39PM
I am also glad they are willing to do what Microsoft has feared for years - Moving forward by breaking backward compatibility. Now I think Microsoft will do that with Windows 8 but I think we would be in a much better situation if they did it sooner.
lorezAug 25th 2010 7:40PM
People need to realize firefox 4 is still in beta. Of course it's kinda broken especially on add-ons support. Nevertheless, disabling the compatibility check i was able to get Adblock plus, Screengrab, TinEye, Yet Another Smooth Scrolling, Live IP Address, FlashGot and All-in-One Sidebar running perfectly fine. That's the vast majority of my add-ons. For a beta I am pretty satisfied.
cmsb55Aug 25th 2010 9:46PM
"Chrome definitely has the upper hand on Firefox 4 right now in terms of "working extensions"."
Wrong. Firefox still has tons of extensions that work just fine with the current stable version (3.6 I believe). That is the version most people are using right now since people who don't know much about computers generally avoid betas. You can start complaining about the extension situation if this problem persists past the date of Fx 4 becoming stable. Additionally, people using the Firefox 4 beta aren't too worried about this at the moment since anyone using a beta should know how to force extensions to work.
infoAug 27th 2010 8:56PM
You said:
"Chrome definitely has the upper hand on Firefox 4 right now in terms of "working extensions"."
Wrong. Firefox still has tons of extensions that work just fine with the current stable version (3.6 I believe).
Now read what you wrote. You quote A compared to B, then bitch that it's wrong because A compared to C works.
The article said Firefox 4 doesn't currently have working extensions and you say that's wrong because Firefox 3.6 does? Give yourself a smack.
3tearAug 25th 2010 10:13PM
One of the unfortunate side affect of all these changes was the introduction of this bug/limitation: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=531886
It essentially made it very difficult for developers to develop certain types of addons.
That said, I'm in favour of the changes in general. Sometimes you just have to break stuff if you want to move forward in a different direction.
richrecruiterAug 25th 2010 11:00PM
Agree, this is the first time when you haven't been able to hack old extensions to work with a Firefox beta. Developers don't seem all that interested in updating their extensions - none of my 14 add-ons are compatible with Betas 2-4. I've been sticking with Firefox 4 Beta 1 because everything broke after that.
pspmikekAug 25th 2010 11:26PM
First off, I did a post from an add-on developers point of view on this subject:
http://kaply.com/weblog/2010/08/03/wont-someone-think-of-the-add-on-developers/
But to understand why a lot of add-ons are not being updated (yet), you need to understand what Mozilla is doing with Firefox 4. Betas are being released every two weeks, regardless of the state of the code. So if an add-on developer wants to stay current, they have to update their add-on every two weeks (and there have been add-on breaking changes in just about every beta). Most add-on developers do this in their spare time, so they don't have time to keep up with every change.
When the release candidates start probably in October/November, you'll see more add-ons update for Firefox 4.
Johnny latelyAug 25th 2010 11:43PM
Firefox four is horrible ...it a google chrome clone ... the default config , is completely unusable, to be able to do anything with it you have to dig through menu after menu instead of just clicking the buttons that used to be right there on the browser .... fox 4 will cause me to make at least 200 clicks extra a day ... bookmarks bar is gone ( more extra clicking) forget about skinning your browser there isnt a browser to skin ... yes you can dig through all of the menus and settings and get the look somewhat back to the traditional fox, but why do i have to do that , the whole concept of a browser is to make our lives easier and give us access to all the information in the world , how is forcing me to go through menu after menu to get something done simplifying my life
3.6.8 will be the last fox i ever use ... i'll hold on to it like internet noobs held onto IE6
cmsb55Aug 26th 2010 12:06AM
I stopped reading when I read "bookmarks bar is gone". It's not gone. I don't know what you are doing using a beta if you don't know how to do something as simple as getting it to appear. I'll just let you figure it out by yourself.
rokicAug 26th 2010 1:44AM
CTRL+B. And if you want the old-time menu, press ALT.