I wouldn't go that far. I have to say I have very mixed feelings myself. On the one hand I love everything that Mozilla has done for open source to date and the Firefox browser is the one and only browser that meets my needs. I could never switch to any of the other browsers and feel at home, and I do have all of them installed and use them for web testing. So I have some allegiance to the brand and the organization. But it's also like a relationship in that it has it's moments of love and hate, of rejoicing and of bickering and shouting, then kissing and making up again.

I've got over 50 active browser extensions including many of the top ones which use XPCOM and many of those I feel I can't live without, so I'm definitely on edge as to whether they'll get ported forward to the new APIs or if they even can be for sure. I'm not angry about it at least not yet since it's an unknown quantity at this point, but I do feel a little nervous to say the least. Also, while I love Firefox overall and what they've done over time, I have not been a fan of every single change and I have often cursed at some of the decisions they've made, but I either found a way to undo those changes via about:config settings, or via additional browser extensions. Things like tabs on top, the search toolbar changes, the Austrailis theme changes, disabling of the status bar, and so on and so on. But again, all of these things I've been able to undo via extensions or tweaking so that brings me back to feeling cool about it mostly because I know that nobody can reasonably expect to love every change that is made, and it isn't reasonable for everyone to expect the default configuration to be exactly what they personally want either. What's important to me as a more technical user is to do whatever for defaults for the average Joe, but please let me reconfigure it to what I want somehow and to that end I've found a way for 99% of things and am reasonably content even if I bicker from time to time about some of it. Again, it's a love-hate relationship but the make up hex is great. :oP

So, that brings us to the current roadmap of Firefox's evolution. I've been following the development for eons, since before it was Firefox even and keep track of their various experimental projects, Mozilla Labs stuff and various features they've planned for the future over time. I've seen many of those features come to fruition in the browser and work out fantastic, such as pdf.js as an example.

But here's where it gets mirky... One of the biggest features I've wanted to see for a very long time, is multi-process Firefox a.k.a Electrolysis or E10S for short. They've been working on that on and off for at least 6-7 years or more now, however the project got put on hold for a while a few times and has taken this long largely because it requires making some large fundamental changes to the way the browser operates internally and in such a manner that will cause a number of incompatibilities with extensions and they've wanted to steer clear of things that would break backward compatibility in any major way. So it got back burnered several times while they sidetracked to work on better performance and memory handling and other things which were needed but which could be done independently of Electrolysis. They milked that for several years now and felt it was time to reawaken Electrolysis and work out the remaining issues.

Now there are many out there who fear multi-process Firefox for various reasons but a lot of them just do not fully understand it and the technological pros and cons and just have fear of change. There are also some good reasons to be concerned about the change too, although most people who fear it don't really grasp them all that well. Suffice it to say though that all of the major browsers have moved or are moving to multiple processes because it provides well defined technological improvements to the overall browser experience including greatly enhanced performance on multi-core systems, greatly improved security, stability and reliability. They've weighed all this a long time ago and decided the reasons to do it greatly outweighed any reasons to not do it and I have to agree with them on that having studied it fairly extensively.

Having said that, unfortunately there are still core changes to the browser that need to be made which modify internal browser behaviour in a way that many browser extensions just simply will not work with. This is because the XPCOM/XUL extension interface basically opens up the entire browser internals to be twiddled with almost no limitations by any and every extension out there, making it next to impossible to change the browser's internal code over time without something breaking every release. That is very powerful and flexible but it is also quite unsustainable and either causes extensions to break and/or greatly limits what kind of technological improvements can be made to the browser. In short, we can't have it both ways as nice as that would be.

So, at some point they ultimately would have to do a major redesign to revamp the browser and make it more future proof and to do that pretty much guarantees some things are going to break because the existing design is so incredibly flexible that it is practically designed to break. All of the other browsers either avoided that level of exposure of browser internals to extensions all along, or moved away from it a long time ago - but none of them have ever been as popular as Firefox is in terms of extensions either so they didn't have nearly as many extension developers or end users to risk pissing off. ;)

Well, they've decided that the time to do this is now, and I agree - if major changes are going to happen it is better sooner than later as the longer the existing codebase moves on the more painful it will be to change it later, and ultimately if they don't change it they will end up losing to the other browsers in performance, security and reliability eventually, especially as the web moves forward with more and more dynamic content and rich multimedia experiences. The userbase has slowly been declining in recent years losing users to Chrome and to a lesser extent other browsers, and if that continues at some point it risks losing funding and that will result in dropping developers and ultimately the project dying. While it is an open project with volunteers, the majority of the work done on Firefox is by people paid to do it. The browser has to succeed in order for the organization to get funding through search engine defaults etc. in order to pay the developers to keep developing it. If that dries up then there is no more Firefox and that is worse than any restructuring they can do right now to try to make it more sustainable for the future.

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So, at some point they ultimately would have to do a major redesign to revamp the browser and make it more future proof and to do that pretty much guarantees some things are going to break because the existing design is so incredibly flexible that it is practically designed to break. All of the other browsers either avoided that level of exposure of browser internals to extensions all along, or moved away from it a long time ago - but none of them have ever been as popular as Firefox is in terms of extensions either so they didn't have nearly as many extension developers or end users to risk pissing off. ;)

Well, they've decided that the time to do this is now, and I agree - if major changes are going to happen it is better sooner than later as the longer the existing codebase moves on the more painful it will be to change it later, and ultimately if they don't change it they will end up losing to the other browsers in performance, security and reliability eventually, especially as the web moves forward with more and more dynamic content and rich multimedia experiences. The userbase has slowly been declining in recent years losing users to Chrome and to a lesser extent other browsers, and if that continues at some point it risks losing funding and that will result in dropping developers and ultimately the project dying. While it is an open project with volunteers, the majority of the work done on Firefox is by people paid to do it. The browser has to succeed in order for the organization to get funding through search engine defaults etc. in order to pay the developers to keep developing it. If that dries up then there is no more Firefox and that is worse than any restructuring they can do right now to try to make it more sustainable for the future.

So Electrolysis will cause some changes that upset people on all sides of the fence, but it is a necessary technology and one way or another people will need to adapt to it or alternatively switch to another browser if they feel one of the other options out there meets their needs better. But one wont find a more open more powerful extension API in any of the other browser now or after the Mozilla changes take place either, nor as many extensions available. They're aware of people's concerns and have indicated their willingness to work with extension developers to try to extend the new APIs to add features that are needed for existing extensions to be ported forward. There's still a lot of time left that they can close the gaps if everyone plays ball and works together for the greater good here.

On the topic of extension signing, that has come about as a security necessity due to all of the shady malware extensions and other hacks that tag along when people install various free download software such as from sites like download.com, software informer and other virus/malware/crapware ridden sites that secretly install crap into people's browsers that they don't want and which has full access to all of their browsing habits, personal details etc. and destabilizes the browser - which Mozilla then takes the blame for. People claim Firefox is unstable but if you remove all of the crappy extensions people use and all of the malware addons that get installed by people unwittingly, the browser is rock solid stable overall and practically never crashes. Yet, with all of that crap in there, when it does crash - the browser gets the blame and Mozilla gets the blame, not the actual real culprits. Mozilla wants to protect its users against that crap and they've tried various tactics to try and do so over time and the malware idiots keep finding ways around it anyway. So I can't really blame Mozilla for going with mandatory code signing on extensions as its the only way to protect against the malware threat proactively and without requiring the massive userbase to suddenly become security experts. I believe Chrome already requires this as well, so if people get pissed off at Mozilla for doing it and jump ship to Chrome they're only going to get the same experience with less features, less extensions and less capabilities anyway, so IMHO staying with Mozilla and even being pissed off at them is a better choice in the end, for many people such as myself anyway.

There will be growing pains going forward, but they'll do what they can to smooth it over I'm sure. It is good for us to bicker about the things that tick us off too because they see our words and that helps them to shape things, but like GOG, Google, Facebook or any other tech company out there - they're too big to please every user with every decision they make.

I anticipate Electrolysis and the features and functionality it brings to the table, but I do so with fear too of any breakage and disappointment that may come along with it in the early days. There are 18 months left though and a lot can change in that time. I have a lot more faith in Mozilla than any other browser vendor though even if I end up inconvenienced in a number of ways in the end. Everyone's personal experience will naturally vary however as we all have different needs and expectations.

I'll curse at them while I buy them a round of drinks personally.

I have the same problem. Only I think it's a problem :) But on a more serious note, I've installed and configured Pale Moon, and it does about 80% of what I need. I'm hoping extension authors who don't plan on rewriting will be helpful in enabling them for Pale Moon in the cases where there's work to be done. Another way of looking at that would be: Mozilla keeps breaking my browser, and then I depend on random people on the Internet to fix their mistakes. Fortunately, many people agree these are mistakes, what with Classic Theme Restorer being the most popular extension ever. For anyone reading this who doesn't know what it does, CTR enables you to modify the interface to its pre-Australis (ie, Chrome) incarnation. But what's Mozilla's response to literally millions installing such an extension? At first smug condescension, presently silence. I wouldn't call a slow, broken implementation of a nifty attack vector exactly fantastic. I don't dispute the information (or even disagree with the opinions) in the previous [removed] paragraphs, but here we differ: why would they *have to* do this? They don't have to, there's no higher power or pressing need forcing them to do so, and this amounts to little more than busywork.

Breaking your product in a major fashion is, on the other hand, something to be avoided at all costs. Or at least it should be, but Mozilla never understood this. Even before this last batch of utter disappointingly decisions, they never made life for extension developers easy.

Exposing the internals in this way is the last unique selling point of their product. In the days before light / when IE ruled the night, it was a different story. But in the present? What's their competitive edge? For most people, it's nothing. That's why *most* people jumped ship for Chrome. What they don't seem to understand is that the users who are left are the power users. And "power" in this context means the power of extensions. Remove that and what's left? A once glorious free software project rapidly declining in popularity (and rapidly gaining in features no one asked for (Hello, Pocket, etc.)).

Now, you may ask, if I understand the benefits of Electrolysis, how can I say they don't have to revamp it? Simple, its benefits are significantly lesser than destroying the present extension ecosystem. I personally don't care about Mozilla any longer. They've spent all the goodwill points accumulated over the last decade-and-odd-years. And if a fork of their software gets to the point where it does all the things I care about, and does so without introducing spyware/adware/bloatware, I'll happily switch to it. Again, I disagree. Mozilla seems to believe making a Chrome clone is somehow going to magically bring back the users who went over to Google. That strikes me as a very irrational thing to believe. Why would a Chrome user go back to Firefox? Previously it was worse (in their eyes), now it's...about as good? There's no reason to switch back (obviously said users care nothing for privacy, otherwise they wouldn't have switched). What I think will happen is that the project will bleed to death, slowly. It's not exactly a wild prediction, it's exactly what's happening now. I can only hope this death brings about positive change: another phoenix, a Pale Moon Corp or perhaps even a completely new project (there's this one guy writing a Common Lisp browser, which is something I'd pay to use if it ever got to a...well, usable state). Yes, some devs might get an API unto themselves. Yay for them? What about everyone else? And it remains to be seen if they can actually accomplish this - I've read the posts, and the last word on it was an admission that they have no idea themselves. Personally, I think 18 months in software development in next to nothing, and there's very little chance of them managing to do much of anything by then.

I don't really care what they do with extensions on their site, but mandating it for others is a terrible move. There are many legitimate use cases here, in addition to the matter of Mozilla taking it upon themselves to decided what extensions consenting adults may or may not use. You're right, Chrome does this. Exactly my point. A corp now says what's OK - is that really the approach you'd expect or want from a FOSS project? Just how damn a Chrome clone must they become before they're satisfied? Perhaps if they left the option to disable checking, I'd swallow it, but AFAIK, they're planning to remove it. What then? Am I to patch and recompile Firefox every other week? Pissing off the users they have left and counting on still being better for these users after the changes makes zero sense if what they change is what made them better. Being pissed off at Mozilla < not being pissed off at Google, all things being the same. At that point, the only argument is privacy, even though Mozilla has made inroads towards eliminating that particular inconvenience from their Product (again, Hello, Pocket, advertising, WebRTC). Sure, but how about millions of users? Still not enough, if one's to judge from the Australis debacle. Firefox has dropped in user share since Australis - but some people just can't take a hint. While I understand that there will be positive changes for some, I also see that there will be negative ones for nearly everyone. And personally, none of the positives apply to me. I suspect Firefox w/ Electrolysis will be a significantly worse experience for me, running it on an old, single-core, low-RAM computer as I am (why do I think this? I've tried Chromium).

While this is all very interesting... can you please take it somewhere else? :P

Things are not looking all that good for Firefox...

The reviews still won't work. And I can't quite figure out why. It's definitely to do with the AngularJS stuff and the GreaseMonkey sandbox, but none of the workaround's fix it and the code is a mix of stuff that won't work in the script scope and stuff that won't work in the page scope so I can't just run it in one or the other.
If I could find out an alternative way to save the information I could do without the sandbox (as the original Review script did) but the best I could do then is save to localStorage or cookies which would just end up getting cleared each time people closed their browsers if they don't save stuff like that.

I may have to look into alternatives (like a full blown Firefox Add On rather than just a userscript) but I'm not sure how much more complicated that might be or whether it would even solve the problem...

I'm still working on it though.

Don't give up.

For what it's worth, I can easily live with Local Storage, but others (e.g. HSL) may have a problem with it.

Yes,, please don't give up. There's so much potential for this, it will absolutely be 'fundamental' to using this site.

Also, SkeletonBow has convinced me to give FireFox another shot, not using the default version, but using Nightly x64 with E10S and dear god is it snappy! I'm looking for a good Chrome-like omnibar extension so that I also get my favorite behavior of Chrome. We'll see how my testing goes, but I might switch over. Good news though is that I'll get to use AdaliaFundamentals more often now, so please Adalia, keep it up.

Thanks for the encouragement :)

Don't worry, I'm not. There will be some kind of work around, I just need to figure out what it is, but I've been banging my head against it for three or four days with no luck so I'll probably take a break and see if anything comes to me.

HSL is certainly one of the reasons I'm looking for another option before resorting to local storage as I know he clears everything on browser close, and I'm sure others do to. I'd like it to work for as many people as possible without them having to change their behaviour...

:)
It really is a last resort, as there's not much point in having preferences that periodically get forgotten...
Leaving the reviews bit out is certainly an option, but my future plans for the account page probably rest on figuring this out and if I have to leave that out too it's not much of a unified script...
I'll find a way.

Thanks for all your work on this :)

Understood, I just wanted to make clear that you need not stress over my use of Adalia Fundamentals.

Whew. Thanks for all your support guys, I think we're there.

New update is here, my tests suggest everything works as intended in Firefox now, but some more thorough testing by regular Firefox users would be greatly appreciated.

I'm going to take a break from it for a bit, but probably next week I'll start adding new features (and I'll test them in Firefox before release this time!)

Yeah!

*tips hat to adaliabooks*

Two questions:

- I assume that if one changes the default settings for reviews on the game page they don't stick. Will you add options in the script menu?
- Do (or will) the GOG Downloader links only work for the installers? Asking, because for Technobabylon for instance, I get the GOG Downloader links for the installers and for one of the extras, but the rest of them are the direct browser download links.

Sorry if these have been asked before, brain too tired at the moment.