Firefox will soon be able to run Chrome extensions following major changes

This API which is modern and centered around JavaScript has several advantages including by default support to multi process browsers and mitigating risk of malware and add-ons misbehaving.

Developing Firefox extensions have been more complicated compared to developing add-ons for Chrome, partly because Firefox uses technologies such as XUL and XPCOM.

“We are implementing a new extension API, called WebExtensions-largely compatible with the model used by Chrome and Opera-to make it easier to develop extensions across multiple browsers”, said Mozilla’s Kev Needham. To that extent, developers will apparently only need to tweak their code a bit in order to get their extensions up and running on Firefox. Mozila will also deprecate XUL and XPCOM simultaneously as these are the foundation for the extension system and the move has irked many Firefox developers. Though developers also make extensions for Web portals like Safari and Opera, your favorite tool may not exist for your preferred browser. Mozilla will now require all extension signed and validated starting with Firefox 41 due for release in September, 2015. “Extensions that change the homepage and search settings without user consent have become very common, just like extensions that inject advertisements into web pages or even inject malicious scripts into social media sites”, Mozilla wrote earlier this year.

With these new changes, Mozilla has acknowledged the difficulty faced by its developers to design cross-platform add-ons.

Chief among the changes is how Firefox would start connecting differently to its add-ons, or extensions.

This new WebExtensions API will be good for developers as well as users as previously developed extensions will be able to be ported to the new version of Firefox. That’s going to be a disappointment for some, but it’s certainly not a reason for immediate outrage: Firefox has long been far more customizable than other browsers, but it was customizable in a way that could pose security and stability issues. Add-ons have complete access to Firefox’s internal implementation. For example, “It’s not uncommon for Firefox development to be delayed because of broken add-ons”.

These technologies and the current model being used by Firefox for its add-ons will now be phased out within 12 months to 18 months.

It’ll be interesting to see how this move will impact the Firefox add-on ecosystem. That will cause trouble for, as Needham explained, “A major challenge we face is that many Firefox add-ons can not possibly be built using either WebExtensions or the SDK as they now exist”. However, developers were able to do things within Firefox that was not possible with other browsers, and with these changes, this unique feature will be compromised.