::Laughs in Firefox::
Who knows… Firefox might just follow suit. If devs have to write their extensions one for Chrome and once for Firefox, the Firefox one will probably be the first to die.
From the article:
Firefox plans to support Manifest V3 because Chrome is the world’s most popular browser, and it wants extensions to be cross-browser compatible, but it has no plans to turn off support for Manifest V2.
I doubt they’ll ever choose to shut down V2, but Google is already forcing their hand a little by making them require supporting V3 to stay relevant
Not if more people use FireFox…
Firefox also supports mobile extensions, unlike Chrome.
Isn’t that already how it works? Are there extensions trust work unchanged on both browsers? At the very least they’d have to maintain them on both addon stores.
There’s a common specification called WebExtension, which is used by all modern browsers. Firefox had their own API (XUL/XPCOM) before that, but they deprecated it in 2017. Safari also used to have its own system for extensions, but it’s been deprecated since 2019. The Manifest API is a subset of WebExtension, which defines an extension.
Firefox plans to support Manifest V3 because Chrome is the world’s most popular browser, and it wants extensions to be cross-browser compatible, but it has no plans to turn off support for Manifest V2.
If Google decided to break V2 compatibility with V3, Mozilla should announce V4 (or V3 extended), which is V3 but with the missing stuff readded.
That’d be a good practical and great product/tech marketing move. Just like most people won’t see how V3 is worse than V2, V4 will indicate it’s the evolved and improved V3.
It would also simplify supporting V3 and V4 at the same time for extension authors. A great practical gain for extension authors, not having to read and understand two manifest schemes and APIs.
Mozilla’s V3 implementation already extends out removing artificial limitations from it. Mozilla’s doing a reverse E3 and I’m all here for it.
Now if only the nincompoop IT dept on my company allowed me to run Firefox…
We went through all this shit with Microsoft and Internet Explorer. It’s time to break up Google’s monopoly.
I’ll develop my own browser before using an ad-infested internet. Luckily I don’t have to do that, because there are alternatives and also because it would be a damn time consuming project to put it mildly 😅
I went back to FireFox way back when the announcement of V3 killing adblockers in chromium first was made. I could go without everything else a browser offers, as long as it has ad blocking.
I legit want AR glasses for the same thing; to block ads IRL.
I actually really like the AR glasses idea. That said, They need to be open source and de-spookified, and there needs to be some kind of regulation that they can’t store or transmit images without first displaying a recording indicator.
It’s probably not going to happen like that, though, so I’m not mad existing ones have such bad battery lives.
