Mozilla To Ditch Firefox Extensions? 415
An anonymous reader writes "Although some have raised concerns about how sane switching to Jetpack is, it seems that Mozilla's new gadget is bound to replace the powerful extension mechanism we know. Maybe Mozilla wants to replace all the great add-ons we use daily with gadgets that add an entry to the Tools menu, or maybe they just want to draw thousands of inexperienced developers into putting together a bunch of HTML and CSS that won't integrate in the UI. It seems to me that in light of recent decisions we've discussed before, Mozilla isn't going in the right direction. What do you think ?"
Is that you Steve? (Score:5, Informative)
I think that if you want to spread FUD you should make sure that you don't link to a web page that makes this statement in the second paragraph Mr. Billmer.
No more AdBlock with JetPack (Score:5, Informative)
Right now, it looks like AdBlock, Flashblock, CustomizeGoogle, and my own AdRater couldn't be implemented under JetPack. The Jetpack API documentation [mozilla.org] has a section "Content - Methods for interacting with web pages. [mozilla.org] That's the mechanism anything that deals with ads needs. That leads to "Page modifications" [mozilla.org], which leads to This documentation is under development. Please see the page modifications API proposal for now." [mozilla.org]
That leads to Jetpack Extension Proposal #17 - Page Mods [mozilla.org], which discusses how to implement Greasemonkey-like functionality using Jetpack. Current status is "Implementing (since May 27, 2009)".
So the functionality needed for AdBlock, etc. is vaporware. It's not even clear that, if implemented, the proposed mechanism would support AdBlock. The author of Adblock Plus wrote last month "Jetpack has to support Adblock Plus, not the other way around. As it is now, Jetpack isn't suitable for complicated extensions." [adblockplus.org]
It's significant that Mozilla gave priority to implementing "themes" and such, which are needed for vendor-branded browsers, while putting off implementation of user-oriented features like ad blocking. Is this a back-door effort to get ad-blocking out of Firefox?
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:3, Informative)
...and not even offering the features I'd come to love in the competition.
FF had tabs long before most other browsers (except perhaps Konquerer), had anti-phishing, and in general was once light and fast.
As for features today? AdBlock Plus, BetterPrivacy, NoScript... those three alone are more than worth the weight, not to mention the tons of multimedia add-ons.
Also, FWIW, Firefox isn't the only big boy on the bloat scale, at least in Windows. IE only appears light because it has a habit of stuffing most of its weight into a pile of processes hidden under the catch-all name of "svchost.exe", with additional chunks hidden in the OS itself.
As a sysadmin, I love the fact that I get far better diagnostic info from Firefox when something isn't working right (especially in troubleshooting certificate errors).
Safari and Chrome aren't bad, in fact they're pretty good. OTOH, I stick with Firefox because it's nearly universal - from Linux, to Mac, to Windows, to FreeBSD... Most of the others go a good distance in cross-platform as well, but not as far. IE I only bother with for work and work-related sites (boss drank the koolaid and asked for seconds).
So insofar as the 'bloat' goes, I don't mind that as much, given the featureset.
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:5, Informative)
I think that feature (and many others) were primarily copied from Opera.
While I do think Firefox is bloating, and really think they've made some questionable decisions (such as force-feeding the terrible Awesomebar), I can't think of anything wrong with this move. The extension model needs revision, and only elitist bastards would be upset that they're making it simpler and more accessible.
Re:No more AdBlock with JetPack (Score:3, Informative)
You realize in their demo video, they write a adblock like jetpack with 80 lines of code.
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:4, Informative)
This is exactly why sysadmins shouldn't pretend to be developers, and vice-versa. I don't use IE a lot (only if Firefox and Chrome both fail) but this statement is just wrong, a lazy repeating of a tech 'urban legend'. Go run Process Explorer and it'll show you what the svchosts are doing (hint: hosting services like DNS clients, etc). As for "additional chunks hidden in the OS itself", where exactly is this hidden, especially now that modern IEs don't even have any filesystem-browsing capability?
IE (like Mozilla, like Chrome) uses a lot of DLLs, but memory use etc is counted per process, and what IE reported upto IE7 was actually a fair representation of what each process used. With IE8 on, there are per-site processes like Google Chrome (not per-tab for both browsers as usually thought -- in fact, IE8 released this feature before Chrome) and you can get a better idea of how much memory a site is consuming.
Re:No more AdBlock with JetPack (Score:1, Informative)
I'm pretty sure there are several extensions out that do similar things as UnAd which simply use CSS masking to remove the ad frames.
I'm also pretty sure AdBlock actually refuses to even load the ads and saves bandwidth, whereas these extensions do load them, but hide them.
Re:No more AdBlock with JetPack (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it is, because when they announced the Jetpack stuff, they also told us all that standard extensions were going away and we'd all have to adapt to the Jetpack API.
Wait a second, they haven't done that.
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't sound like the old extension mechanism is going anywhere:
http://steelgryphon.com/blog/2010/01/09/on-personas-and-themes/#comment-107468 [steelgryphon.com]
(that comment is by the blog author; the key part is "I personally don't think we're anywhere near the point where we can look at the old-style extension model and claim it's not needed anymore. But the goal is to drive everything that can be moved to Jetpacks to that model, because it's a better model for users and developers." )
Re:this isn't news... (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft did nothing "nice". They were dragged, kicking and screaming, into court and had their fingers slapped to the tune of over one billion US dollars by the EU for their misbehavior. And they attempted to poison the well by inserting patents into the published documents, patents incompatible with GPL software such as Samba. There are plenty of references to the court cases, but the interview with such developers of Samba as Jeremy Allison at http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070919214307459 [groklaw.net] are particularly enlightening.
The Samba site also has this note about the patent encumberment and GPL incompatibility Microsoft tried to slip in: http://us1.samba.org/samba/ms_license.html [samba.org].
And if you think there's anything "nice" about their efforts, go read the documentation. It was apparently written by monkeys trying to produce Hamlet, and bears little if any resemblance to how the protocols actually work.
Re:this isn't news... (Score:3, Informative)
They didn't open up documentation on networking protocols to be nice, they did it because the EU was holding a gun to their head.
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:this isn't news... (Score:5, Informative)
Enough blame to go around.
Let Your Fingers Do The Walking (Score:5, Informative)
Have anything to back this up, or are you just talking out of your ass?
There's this new thing called The Google. It works really well. You just type something like "Gates.Foundation drug patents [google.com]" and it lets you start to find out things for yourself. In this case, the first few links will lead you to find out about UNTIAID [wikipedia.org]. Basically, the story goes like this. During the 1990s, developing nations (especially India and Brazil) began to amass the manufacturing capability and expertise to produce advanced pharmaceuticals for minute fractions of the wholesale cost of those drugs on the world marketplace, the price being set by the IP holders in Western countries who enjoyed the political access necessary to keep extending patent lifetimes and extensions almost indefinitely. At the start of the Noughties, a crisis was looming when several companies, mainly Indian, began retailing vast quantities of anti-HIV/malaria/TB drugs to poorer countries (mostly African) at costs way below what Western companies were prepared to sell at. For a while it looked as if literally half the world was ready to secede from the international patent system in an effort to provide medication for as many of their sick populations as possible. After several rounds of negotiation, within which the Gates and Clinton foundations were major players, a compromise was established. Rich Western countries, NGOs, and foundations made it clear that their aid money was contingent on poorer countries recognising Western patents and refusing to buy from "rogue" companies or countries. In return, their access to grant/loan/development monies was assured, and several cartels and exchanges established whereby these countries could purchase Western patent-protected medications or the right to produce such medications at "below market" costs (but still literally several times the cost of producing such medications outside the patent system). UNITAID is one of these exchanges. The Gates foundation is one of the major players in UNITAID, and its lobbying recently has concentrated on maintaining relatively high remuneration fees to the Western IP holders, thereby maintaining relatively high costs for the drugs. For the poorer countries, it's a classic Faustian bargain: they get grant money, but they have to spend much of this money buying higher-priced drugs. Given the public-private partnerships and funding/tax arrangements, it's a classic example of corporate welfare where grant money nominally allocated to developing countries is funnelled back to Western IP holders, either as actual cash or as tax deferments.
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:3, Informative)
Hanging my post randomly: I think we now need a "Twitter feed blocker" extension. It's all text, so I can't block it with AdBlock Plus.
NoScript seems to work, although I guess if you have to allow the site to use scripts, it might not. It also might not if you allow Twitter (which I don't, since I don't use it).
If the site is designed modularly, and the "Twitter feed" script is a separate file, AdBlock Plus can block just that file.
Re:Same as microsoft, gnome, etc dumb it down (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, that is why I specifically said "This is in some cases a strength, because extensions can be very powerful".
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:3, Informative)
StumbleUpon is on Chrome [google.com]
Re:Let Your Fingers Do The Walking (Score:1, Informative)
Wow, and by spouting a wall of text, you sound almost smart.
Tell me, do you work for a big pharma company? Seriously, they're easy targets, but do you - or anyone modding this - have ANY idea at how expensive new drugs are to create? They take years to a decade of studies, trials, research, refinement, etc. And sometimes, right at the end, after you've sunk billions of dollars into it - it doesn't work out. A trial comes back negative. [cancer.org] A long-term side effect is discovered. The drug is rejected, and you just lost all of your investment. Billions of dollars, years of effort by thousands of people - all for nothing. It's an enormous gamble, and enormously expensive - the only way these companies stay in business at all is by wringing every penny they can out of a drug while it's under patent - because there's no guarantee there will be a new drug to pick up the revenue when the old one goes generic. If you're wondering, some of these companies get 30% or more of their total revenue from a SINGLE DRUG.
Now, it's similarly easy to say that they're being cruel and heartless not to give these drugs away for free to impoverished nations - and in an ideal world, you'd be right. Unfortunately, if they do so, none of those drugs will reach the people that need them. It will be like all international aid, but an even larger bonanza for the black market - they'll all be smuggled back out of the country and to those countries that pay full price. Along the way, who knows how they'll be tampered with, "watered down", etc to extend the profit. In the end, people in poor countries still don't get drugs, the black market gets a huge influx of cheap drugs with a huge potential for tainting and unknown interactions, and the pharma companies don't recoup their enormous investments.
But yes, let's all pile on - of all things - the Gates Foundation, which has been one of the more pre-eminent charities in the world over the last decade. I know this is Slashdot and anything with "Gates" is automatically evil, but this is insanity.
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:3, Informative)
Really? What was that browser called?
Opera certainly wasn't late.
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:3, Informative)
Check out the products list at Mozilla Labs [mozillalabs.com]. There are some interesting ideas being tossed around. They are exploring sync technology in a project called Weave. There is a project called Prism that lets you split web apps out from the browser. It seems like Mozilla is also trying to evolve and improve the way people use and develop for their browser system. Take a look at that page and decide for yourself. I think the author of the article should have presented what else is going on with Mozilla's development vision and not just singled out Jetpack. It's only part of the picture. The article is really troll and flamebait.
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:5, Informative)
As for "additional chunks hidden in the OS itself", where exactly is this hidden, especially now that modern IEs don't even have any filesystem-browsing capability?
The trident engine loads when Explorer loads. Replace the shell with an alternative shell, and disable DLL preloading with a tool like Autoruns. IE start time will shoot up to crazy levels. When I did it on an old Win2k-AthlonXP PC (obviously with IE6), it jumped from about 6 seconds cold start to 20 seconds.
Not much point doing it though. Lots of programs depend on Trident, like Steam.
P.S. Disabling Explorer knocked off 45MB memory usage. Disabling Trident knocked off another 25MB. Since 25MB is roughly what Firefox uses to display Google, shouldn't IE8 use 1MB? The rendering engine is already loaded into memory - unless it has to make copies or something.
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:3, Informative)
Just as a note, vimperator is an excellent example of how not to write extensions in a number of ways. Leaks all over the place, assertions firing due to it doing things that are explicitly forbidden by various contracts, etc.
Running it against a debug build is pretty horrifying.
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:2, Informative)
I saw Chrome's "process manager" for the first time the other day and was quite impressed. The fact that Google collects information via Chrome, and its limited extension/plugin repository (which doesn't provide the functionality I want) has so far kept me from giving it much of a serious look, but now, I'm having second thoughts.
You should look at iron then: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php [srware.net]
It's google chrome minus the google.
Re:Toughts About Direction (Score:3, Informative)
The GNN browser was actually Internetworks, from a Massachusetts company called BookLink; it was also the embedded AOL browser for the first few versions before IE replaced it.
(And the GNN server was NaviServer, from CA-based NaviSoft. And the Mac client used a different browser, whose name I can no longer remember.)
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:TOO MANY LINKS man! (Score:1, Informative)
I run flashblock to remove the annoying flash I don't want to see. That does not mean I want all flash to go away, sometimes I do want to see flash; videos mainly these days, but sometimes games and even the occasional horrible website that is 100% flash.
Speaking as a Jetpack Ambassador... (Score:2, Informative)
I believe much of this confusion could be alleviated if everyone concerned watched this video http://www.vimeo.com/8372101 [vimeo.com] (a talk on the topic by Aza Raskin, head of UX at Mozilla) - and for those who can't be bothered with it all, you can skip to 35:10 or read this rough transcript:
"The rough plan for where we're going with this, is that by Firefox 3.7, this will be baked into Firefox in some degree, so that's end of Q2. [snip] And by Firefox 4 we're really going to be pushing for making Jetpack or Jetpack enabled extensions the premier way of writing extensions, and while I don't think we're ever going to phase out the old model entirely [...] we're going to be pushing that almost everything happens inside of this." -- Aza Raskin
-- cers / Christian Sonne