Chrome extensions on Firefox are happening

Soon it’ll even be able to support Chrome add-ons and extensions. Its quite a big decision towards making the browser attuned with all extensions.

Mozilla has announced that it’s changing its approach to add-ons in several key ways.

The bad news for developers is that Mozilla is switching to new technologies – Electrolysis and Servo – and this means that work will have to be done on existing extensions to ensure compatibility. One thing Firefox always had going for it was that it had an extremely rich add-on ecosystem and that add-on developers were often able to do things in Firefox that weren’t possible in a browser like Chrome (including modifying the user interface).

Like Chrome, the new Firefox will use multiple processes to isolate misbehaving content (and, as with Chrome, it’s memory footprint will undoubtedly grow significantly) and it will gain a new API called WebExtensions which will allow “code written for Chrome, Opera, or, possibly in the future, Microsoft Edge [to] run in Firefox with few changes”.

To ensure third-party extensions provide customization without sacrificing security, performance or exposing users to malware, we will require all extensions to be validated and signed by Mozilla starting in Firefox 41, which will be released on September 22nd 2015.

Currently the company uses a blacklist to ban extensions masquerading as malware but it’s proved ineffective, so all developers will now need to submit their extensions for review by Mozilla before they are published.

To ascertain easy development of extensions across multiple browsers, a new extension API in Firefox called WebExtensions similar to the Chrome and Opera system, will be made available by the company.

Deprecate of XPCOM and XUL-based add-ons.

“Without a fundamental shift to the way Firefox add-ons work, we will be unable to use new technologies like Electrolysis, Servo or browser.html as part of Firefox”, also noted Mr. Needham. Add-ons have complete access to Firefox’s internal implementation.

So, within the next 12 to 18 months from Firefox will no longer support XUL, XPCOM, and related programs.

Overall, this marks a major change in how Firefox will treat add-ons.

The effect of these changes are that existing add-ons will have to be re-engineered and some may not make it through the approvals process which will not please users who rely on rejected add-ons.

While Mozilla devs are seeing this as a way for “their” extensions to work on other browsers, let’s not forget this can be seen the other way as well. As one poster wrote, this will make “Migrating away from Firefox will be as painless as possible”.

At the same time, on Y combinator, another person opined that this move will mean that Mozilla will be “getting rid of [its community of] people who are willing to dive deep into the internals do develop something that nobody thought of before?” If Mozilla was operating from strength, as it was three and more years ago, it would have characterized the API as a way for Firefox add-on code to run in its browser rivals, or simply ignored the competition.