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Comment by romanovcode | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree.

Yes it's a change but it serves a good purpose - to standardize the extension development and making sure that 1 extension can be running on multiples browsers e.g. Firefox, Opera, Edge, etc..

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WebExtensions is the lowest common denominator.

Yes, it's a good purpose to have a standard base. It's bad, though, that nothing besides the blessed parts are officially customizable anymore.

Previously, extensions had messed up with anything they wanted (they could override most of the browser's core). That had allowed third parties to do incredible things that weren't ever considered by the browser developers.

With WEs, though, the only things that browser developers had specifically thought about are possible. All for user's convenience, so they can switch to Chrome, Edge or Opera.

It's the same thing as plugins, unsigned drivers, etc. etc. If the platform gives unfettered control, that is nice in that it gives power users flexibility, but it comes at the cost of seriously jeopardizing the experience of non-power-users who don't understand the intricacies of the software. They expect the platform to protect them by default. This applies to the whole package -- security, performance, and overall experience.

Vendors have learned that if they fail to provide this protection, the average user will blame them directly, not the extension that makes memory usage bloat 6x. The solution is to enforce stringent controls, including limiting modifiable parts of the experience to some well-defined areas.

>All for user's convenience, so they can switch to Chrome, Edge or Opera.

Nah, it's the other way(s) around - it's for [longterm] developer convenience; so users don't have to switch to another browser because an add-on they need isn't available in FF.

This too, but to the lesser extent. That's because Firefox had much more powerful extension system than other browsers.

Unfortunately I don't think so. The only draw keeping FF alive for years has been its extension system. They gave up the unique UI flexibility, now they are giving up the flexible extensions. When Google makes it so easy to find and install Chrome everywhere, and sync it with your mobile device, now that the extensions world will be on "par" FF is even less distinct than it was and thus less reason to use it. This is the beginning of Firefox's final dive.

In a few more releases I really won't have any concrete reason to recommend FF over Chrome anymore (and no, 99% of users outside of this forum don't care about memory usage and keeping 100 tabs open at the same time)

Then they should bring back the old UI we came to love. I want my blue title bar on Windows, my menu bar, my status bar, my square tabs, etc, etc. Also, I can't imagine living without EdgeWise, so they would have to incorporate that, as well. Other people use different sets of features, which are also not supported in the new plugin model. How can Mozilla ever hope to plug all these holes (pun intended)?

You get square tabs in 57 i think.

> I want my blue title bar on Windows, my menu bar, my status bar, my square tabs, etc, etc.

So like this [0]? The title bar isn't blue, but neither is any other title bar on Windows 10.

To achieve this on Nightly I opened the Customize view, switched the theme to "Light", checked the "Title bar" checkbox, and enabled "Menu bar" under the "Toolbars" dropdown. Tabs have squared edges by default.

[0] https://vgy.me/KvNgxS.png

No, like this: https://vgy.me/VBLBYH.jpg And when the FF window is not focused, the title bar is grey. Like it's supposed to be.

It's not part of a plugin, though, I had to patch something manually (I never remember what and have to re-google it every time).

> my square tabs

Square tabs have been back for a while now. The Compact Light and Compact Dark themes are included in Firefox by default. Set the theme in Add-ons Manager -> Appearance.

I use Compact Light.

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