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[Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla, but I'm not involved in Firefox decision making]

> Mozilla wants to make Firefox look like Chrome, probably to replicate features which seem to draw users in

This is false IMO

> by changing the extensions API to make it less powerful

This is not about copying Chrome. This is about moving off of an API which was effectively "our entire codebase is your public API, here, have fun", which is horrible for making it easy to evolve the codebase. We had this problem with electrolysis (multiprocess firefox) already, lots of addons broke because of it. Additionally, the base of this API is XUL, which is a technology many want to phase out.

Firefox is using the same base extension API as Chrome. It's a sensible choice -- if you're going to design an extensions API from scratch, why not standardize the base so that many extensions become interoperable. The base manifest format and most of the normal APIs from Chrome are the same, however the new system has many other APIs which chrome doesn't have, and the intent is to continue adding these so that most of the former very powerful extensions are still possible. But I'm already using extensions that won't work in Chrome because Chrome doesn't expose that functionality.

> by supporting standardised DRM in the browser

If Netflix didn't work in the browser Firefox would not have any users left.

Mozilla fought this battle, and lost.

Then what is the real story? I have the same impression as OP: FF seems to spend most of it's time playing "me too" with Chrome, while blatantly ignoring what the users are requesting.

It's frustrating because I really want FF to succeed, but they keep shooting themselves in the foot. If they aren't following with Chrome, they why do so many of their decisions end up mirroring Chrome after Chrome has made their decision?

Which decisions? The only one I can think of is Web Extensions, and like I said, the reason behind that is not to copy Chrome, but because the old system was _terrible_ and hindered progress, and since they needed something new anyway, basing it off of Chrome was a way to get a large set of new addons working on it off the bat.

In addition to web-extensions (which could have been handled waaaaay better IMO if that was their goal):

The general UI and their overall design philosophy

shelling out data to places that I don't approve of (pocket/ga)

rapid releases

toggle-able options

> The general UI and their overall design philosophy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14805761

> shelling out data to places that I don't approve of (pocket/ga)

Pocket was not shelling out data, Pocket was an addition of an add on by default, one which did nothing unless you tried to use it (and if you did you'd have to sign in to a 3rd party site -- it's all pretty obvious)

Mozilla has a deal with GA that restricts the data collected. https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785#issue...

The data collected is IIRC only aggregate numbers.

Neither of these are "copying Chrome", they're just "things you don't like"

> rapid releases

The web is evolving pretty fast too. This has become necessary over time.

> toggle-able options

no idea what you mean here

Just because they are making one change that isn't exactly like Chrome doesn't mean that they aren't generally copying Chrome . That very much looks like the general design philosophy that they are borrowing from Chrome.

I know you had to "turn on" pocket. That doesn't counter my argument.

I also don't care what agreement FF with Chrome. It's still shitty to do, especially if your selling point is privacy. Having a special agreement doesn't make doing shady things with your user's data OK.

But I don't see how they aren't "copying Chrome". One of them is using another product that is made by the same creator as Chrome, the other copying the "here's a feature that nobody wants that sends your data elsewhere" which, AFAIK, they didn't do before Chrome started doing it.

I strongly disagree that rapid releases are necessary. What issue came up that needed to be implemented within one FF release cycle?

toggle-able options were way back when FF used to have different settings in the options page where you could make changes to the UI, functionality, etc. Almost all of those are gone now for a "simplified" set of options.

>I know you had to "turn on" pocket. That doesn't counter my argument.

Kinda does, especially since Google never used pocket?

> they didn't do before Chrome started doing it.

Chrome uses GA for general telemetry IIRC, a feature which Firefox has basically always had. Firefox's telemetry is much more privacy conscious (it collects very basic numbers and nothing personally identifiable). I'm not sure why about:addons decided to use GA instead of Firefox, but this isn't "copying something Google did first".

These are decisions which you may not agree with, but you're reaching when you describe them as "copying Chrome".

> toggle-able options were way back when FF used to have different settings in the options page where you could make changes to the UI, functionality, etc. Almost all of those are gone now for a "simplified" set of options.

about:config still exists. Most options are still there under advanced in settings. The UI is even more configurable, because themes exist and you can drag-drop UI elements to other parts of the browser.

>> I know you had to "turn on" pocket. That doesn't counter my argument.

> Kinda does, especially since Google never used pocket?

Pocket also gave way to a new type of add-on that's impossible to remove and installs silently. They do show up in about:support, at least, but only as names [1]. I feel like that whole episode was treated very poorly by Mozilla, with a lot of misinformation [2] and reasonable documentation requests being ignored [3].

[1] what's even "presentation@mozilla.org"?

[2] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/2PYq2w8te...

[3] e.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1179699

IIRC that kind of addon always existed. Some kinds of browser functionality was implemented that way.

It doesn't exactly "install silently", it's there by default. Just like the code for the bookmarks toolbar is there by default. It uses the addons API, is all.

The Presentation addon IIRC handles some prompts for https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Presentatio...

I'm not sure why it's structured as an addon, but it's basically browser functionality.

I'm not sure how to read the Go Faster docs [1]. I undestand that they can get updated silently, but it doesn't say anything about pushing new ones. I assume that's also possible, as it totally makes sense, but I don't have any proof.

The Go Faster initiative seems to have started around June 2015 [2] with Pocket being one of the first users [3] [4].

> The Presentation addon IIRC handles some prompts

Thanks for the information.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Go_Faster/When_To_Use_Syste...

[2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Go_Faster/Meetings

[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694

[4] This first comment in #1215694 has a nice Orwellian tinge: "We're moving pocket to a built-in addon. This will facilitate user choice [...]". We all know how that went.

> but it doesn't say anything about pushing new ones. I assume that's also possible, as it totally makes sense, but I don't have any proof.

I don't think they can be

> with Pocket being one of the first users [3] [4].

So were Hello/Loop. I think you've got the cause-effect backwards here. It seems to have started off as a way to add experimental features that needed a different update cycle (before Test Pilot existed). Now that Test Pilot exists all of these addons are basically for core browser functionality (e.g. the dev tools may move to this model at some point). So right now it's just a way of shipping code with a different release cycle, and being used for things that would otherwise be baked into the browser itself.

Anyway, this is super off topic.

> > by changing the extensions API to make it less powerful

> This is not about copying Chrome. This is about moving off of an API which was effectively "our entire codebase is your public API, here, have fun"

But at the same time it also breaks access to non-mozilla things, i.e. external libraries and the operating system (e.v. via js-ctypes). Which means it becomes more difficult to interact with native, which turns the browser more into a non-interoperating silo.

It also prevents valid use-cases such as modifying the UI, download management, implementing novel network protocols (think ipfs) and integrating it with the internal network request APIs.

While the arguments for webextensions are clear to me the no-compromise approach is not. There are no escape hatches that are conceptually comparable to sudo, rust's unsafe blocks, phone unlocking or whatever.

Mozilla was fairly loudly warned by developers that this will hurt specific addons and exclude entire categories of addon features and they went ahead anyway. In other words they did choose to make their addon system less useful. I don't think this can be argued away.

> I don't think this can be argued away.

I'm not arguing that away.

I'm saying that it doesn't imply firefox is copying Chrome.

There are tradeoffs here. The team weighed them and made a decision. It was not about copying Chrome.

> It also prevents valid use-cases such as modifying the UI, download management, implementing novel network protocols (think ipfs) and integrating it with the internal network request APIs.

Not necessarily, webextension APIs that provide better scoped hooks to this can be added. Except perhaps the novel network protocols one. But it depends.

> Not necessarily, webextension APIs that provide better scoped hooks to this can be added.

That mere possibility does not alter the fact that upon release of FF57 a long-tail set of features will unavailable at that given point, in other words there will be a decline and mozilla might work over time to win back some fraction of that decline.

The net effect compared to today is still a decline in features, which is what will be perceived.

Without escape hatches this system will always be inferior in its versatility. Which is why most runtimes do have escape hatches, they admit that any provided APIs will never be sufficient for all valid uses.

Escape hatches are provided by WebExtensions Experiments.

https://webextensions-experiments.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

You can't bundle those with an extension and get it published on release.

They only function for prototyping things and hoping mozilla will bless them eventually.

> changing the extensions API to make it less powerful

Changing the extensions API to decouple it from the browser's internals, allowing long-needed refactoring, a move to multiple processes, sandboxing, etc.

And because the old extensions API must be completely scrapped (and ought to have been scrapped years ago), it makes more sense to replace it with a new thing that's compatible with other browsers rather than a new thing that only works with Firefox.

Firefox isn't simply aping Chrome, even visually. The next UI refresh is going to look more different, not more similar. https://www.primeinspiration.com/mozilla-firefox-getting-new... The extensions API is being changed to disengage addons from the guts of the browser, which will let the team make bigger changes to CPU- and RAM-hungry areas of the codebase. The new extensions API has had a huge amount of work put into it to expand it before the old-API cutoff around November. The point is to make the browser perform better, not to make it less capable.

Whether it's the point or not, making the browser less capable is exactly what is happening.

There was a point about 7 or 8 years ago where Firefox was my favorite browser. It was the scrappy upstart that was better than IE in every single way - and look, plugins!

I had a decent plugin load, including a bunch of stuff not in the store, could skin the UI (anyone remember "Classic Compact"?) to shrink down the more annoying UI elements, use vim key bindings, and a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember anymore. I had to scroll two or three pages to list them all.

Slowly, they started taking that power away from me.

Slowly, the UI started becoming more obnoxious.

Slowly, the performance got worse and worse.

The moment Chrome got a decent ad blocker, I left and never looked back. Firefox is basically turning itself into a Chrome clone, with a side of user hostility and ancient bugs.

And they have only themselves to blame.

Yeah, I have 15 extensions running right now. You can still get full themes (called "complete themes", not the skins they call "themes"), and there's even a "compact" category. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/complete-themes/com... Not having abilities like vimperator is a bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1320332 I can't deny that the new API doesn't have enough power, but that's temporary. Being Chrome-like and having weak extensions are not goals. There's even a meta-bug that tracks new proposed functions that Chrome doesn't have. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215059

Thanks for the link to the themes page (I must have overlooked that and thought they blew up the theme system outright), and there are a couple of promising ones I'm looking at now.

That said, given the treatment of how some other bugs are handled, especially one particularly noxious one regarding dupe SSL certs that's been kicking around for nearly a decade now that renders Firefox unusable for technical enterprise users, the fact that it's filed in their tracker doesn't mean much, and their classification of that bug as "(REOPENED bug which will not be worked on by staff, but a patch will be accepted)" tells me that compatibility isn't that much of a priority internally.

Why not let it bake a little longer and then release it? Surely Firefox won't turn into a pumpkin if they fail to push it out the door by November?

> by supporting standardised DRM in the browser

Firefox is trying to avoid losing marketshare and you're complaining about a big usability win. In what way could causing every video service on the planet to start steering users towards Chrome/Edge/Safari help that?

(Yes, I realize we don't like DRM but normal people are far more concerned about not having to do anything other than click play on Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/etc.)

"normal people" should learn not to use shitty services like Netflix and friends. Maybe by putting a big red warning when someone visits their page or something.

Do you think going all comic book guy is going to anything? Netflix has 100M subscribers so you might start by thinking about what so many people find worth paying for.

Learning the answer to that question will also show you why this attitude is completely ineffectual in the fight against DRM.

There's also a far bigger difference: Chrome looks native (with elements of Material Design mixed in) on every platform. Meanwhile, Firefox aims to have the same Firefoxy look on every platform. Users definitely notice this and choose accordingly.

Using your dominant position in one sector to push your products in others is the exact kind of behavior that gets you tagged as a monopoly in the legal sense of the term.

> Mozilla wants to make Firefox look like Chrome, probably to replicate features which seem to draw users in, by changing the extensions API to make it less powerful

The current Firefox marketshare is a predictable outcome of that strategy; by eliminating everything that made Firefox distinct from Chrome, they've made made going with the biggest, most well-funded version of Chrome the most reasonable choice. It has resulted in a Chrome monopoly, but there's really no way to prevent it: even when given a explicit choice between Chrome and mostly-Chrome, people will usually choose Chrome.

edit: After the elimination of the old-style extensions, I've run out of distinct features that justify sticking with Firefox, and am left with pure ideology. An ideology that I don't even think that Mozilla places any importance in anymore, so I might as well be using Chromium.

Indeed. The one thing that got a relative of mine to go Chrome was that the flash games on Facebook performed "better".