I have been using mozilla browsers pretty much since they started. Hell, I used them before mozilla started if you count netscape.
I have been quick to forgive all the bad moves they have made in the last decade, but it’s clear that they have been chasing what they think average people want. while making the overall experience worse.
I know people are saying it’s opt-in, but if it’s going to be opt-in anyway, why not just make it be a plugin?
Except for a brief stint with konqeror in 2004, this is the first time I am seriously considering switching away for my daily driver. I just have no idea what the current browser landscape looks like.
> if it’s going to be opt-in anyway, why not just make it be a plugin?
Because Firefox neutered the plugin system too much for that to be viable.
It's such a shame, too. They have added all sorts of things to the mainline browser that really should be plugins. They have abandoned the idea that the browser itself should be lean, and users should be able to add whatever bells and whistles they prefer in the form of plugins.
What part of this exactly do you think is not possible with a standard firefox extension? I don't see anything.
Even if I'm missing something, firefox has a history of creating new APIs to allow extensions to do things that they want done, for instance with the container tabs extension. That, frankly, is the only remotely acceptable way to incorporate branded third party AIs into the browser.
> What part of this exactly do you think is not possible with a standard firefox extension?
I don't know, because I don't know exactly what that functionality does. My comment was really more general: since the plugin system changed, there are quite a lot of things that are no longer possible or are no longer possible in a non-clunky way.
My assumption is that if it could have been done as an extension, it would have been. That the reason they build all these things into the mainline browser is because it's not possible to do them (or do them well enough) as extensions.
> firefox has a history of creating new APIs to allow extensions to do things that they want done
Kinda, but that's a very high friction path that can't be relied on. If the extension system doesn't currently have functionality that is needed to accomplish a thing, there's no point in starting to develop the thing until that functionality is added. That functionality won't be added unless there is a great deal of demand for it to begin with. That leads to a chicken-and-egg situation where there can't be provable demand without an implementation showing people want it, but you can't have an implementation without proving demand enough that Mozilla will bother to support it.
The chicken and egg problem doesn't apply when it's mozilla developing the extension, they can add support for it because they want to add support for it with no proven demand...
Perhaps the problem is that they no longer think that a slim, modular browser is a desirable thing, then. I don't know. All I know is what it looks like from the outside.
Yeah, things have been downhill since they killed the old plugin system. Though I think this should be possible with the current plugins.
I understand the security problems with the old way, but they could have spent all these years working on a sandbox with granular permissions.
But for something like this they could make a system that only works with their own official plugins. tie the plugin versions to browser versions, and include the hashes of every plugin. people could install whichever ones they want, and malicious plugins wouldn’t be able to just drop in without also editing the browser binary.
Im sure there are a million other ways too, but designing a secure plugin system for first party software is so much easier than one for third party software.
I have been quick to forgive all the bad moves they have made in the last decade, but it’s clear that they have been chasing what they think average people want. while making the overall experience worse.
I know people are saying it’s opt-in, but if it’s going to be opt-in anyway, why not just make it be a plugin?
Except for a brief stint with konqeror in 2004, this is the first time I am seriously considering switching away for my daily driver. I just have no idea what the current browser landscape looks like.