Detect when your installed Firefox addons have changed owners

Related from last week "Detect when your installed Chrome extensions have changed owners" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39620060 (291 comments) Yes, I know the discussion is also linked in the documentation of the tool.

It's strange that addons have so much unsandboxed power. I think browser manufacturers are not very keen on letting users customize their browsing experience. Otherwise they would give them finer control over what addons can do.

Fortunately, most customizations can be done via bookmarklets.

Benefits of bookmarklets:

- Easy to edit

- Inactive until clicked

- Work in all browsers

- Work on mobile

- Integrate nicely into the UI. You can move them around, put them into any bookmark folder, assign shortcuts.

I wrote this bookmarlet editor which makes it easy to convert between clean code and a bookmarklet:

https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor

Here is one that I use to read HN:

    if (!location.href.match('ycom'))
        location.href='https://news.ycombinator.com';

    doTheMagic = function() {
        if (typeof e!=='undefined')
            e.style.background='#c0c0c0';

        e=Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.age a:not(.seen)')).sort().at(-1);e.style.background='#ff0';
        e.classList.add('seen');
        e.scrollIntoView({behavior:"smooth",block:"center",inline:"nearest"});
    }

    doTheMagic();

    if (typeof theMagicIsActive=='undefined') {
        document.addEventListener("keydown", function(evnt) {
            if (evnt.key === "n") doTheMagic();
        });
        theMagicIsActive = true;
    }

When clicked and HN is not already opened, it opens HN. When on HN, it jumps to the next newest story. Or comment - it also works in the threads. After jumping to the newest story, clicking it again jumps to the next newest story. Instead of clicking it, pressing "n" also works.

Also works in the comments view of a profile. So when you want to see if someone replied to your comments, you click on "comments" in your profile and then on the bookmarklet to jump to the newest reply.

I noticed about myself that in recent years I am becoming increasingly paranoid when it comes to addons and avoid installing any but the most popular/trusted, not just for Firefox, but all applications I use. If there is an addon that does something I want and doesn't fit my criteria for trust, I either write my own private clone, adjust my habits not not need it or (the most frequent outcome) just suck it up.

On the Chrome extension, the top HN comment was pointing out that it doesn't show change in owners, but change in the owner's key, which makes it susceptible to false positives and false negatives. Does the Firefox version work any more reliably?

I like the idea of this and I'll probably use it. But what I really want to know is when my extensions are updated. Some extensions will open an information page when this happens, but I want a browser setting to let me know when any extension updates.

I know there is a setting to not auto-update on an case-by-case basis, as browsers auto-update extensions by default as a security measure. In that case, an alert that there are updates would be welcome.

Any solution to this, or am I missing a setting somewhere? (On Firefox or Chrome)

I now disabled for all extensions the automatic updates. All extensions are working as expected so I will only update one of them in case of problems. In which case I also (mental note) will check the ownership.

Can an extension see what other extensions are installed and their versions? Can your extension maybe show when one of them is updated? Can also be a way to keep 'manually' an eye on changes?

Thank you for this! I read about the chrome extension[0] and was hoping something like this would come to FF. I have already installed this.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39620060

Trying to show us something in this fork?

A lot of discussion on the main one earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39620060